I got hired at Twitter(pre-IPO) through the monthly Who's Hiring post. Definitely the best outcome from multiple povs - career, money, learning, future-proofing. I would literally not be able to do what I am doing today if I hadn't clicked on that HN Who's Hiring thread & taken a chance.
Ask HN: Ever been hired through a “who's hiring” post?
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Re: Ask HN: Ever been hired through a “who's hiring” post?
#122I got hired from a "want to be hired" type post, not replying to a company listing.
I was hired recently as a product designer, and my understanding is that the CTO saw me in a thread and passed me on to the design team. Overall, a great experience, because I was talking to real people from the jump, rather than going through a recruiter/web form layer in the beginning.
I've gotten many other inquiries from similar postings, but few were of interest. In general though, the answer to the question "do people respond to the postings" is a strong yes.
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The freelancing section is a different story. I've only gotten one serious lead ever from that, and he dropped off shortly after in search of cheaper labor. So it goes.
Re: Ask HN: Ever been hired through a “who's hiring” post?
#123A post from "the other side of the table" :). The previous company I worked at, I hired two people through who's hiring posts. We pretty much tried it out for about six months as we didn't have much luck through the more traditional channels our division's HR department used. So yes, there are real positions being filled through these posts. That said, just because it's on Hacker News and this is an informal place do…
And the most recent whos hiring from yesterday I only saw one "cover letter required". I do that when I hire. I love reading them. So many are obvious boilerplate copy/paste that the applicant is sending to everyone, or, poorly written (these go to the trash can). The ones that are keen have a story to tell about how the position aligns with their experience. On the applying side, I choose only 5 companies last time…
Confirmation bias? How do you know those companies were actually responding to your cover letters, and not your other strengths? Do you have evidence that if you'd sent out no cover letters (or a single sentence copy and paste job), that you wouldn't have gotten the same response rate?
Re: Ask HN: Ever been hired through a “who's hiring” post?
#124I used to browse the "who's hiring" every month, even though I had a job I loved. I saw an ad for an MLB team (Astros) looking for an analyst, which was super interesting to me. I sent in an application, went through the process and ended up taking the job.
I don't browse them anymore, there is no way there is anything better for me out there right now.
Re: Ask HN: Ever been hired through a “who's hiring” post?
#125Indirectly. A friend pointed me to the forum when I was looking for a job - I reached out through the company website listed on a few posts and accepted an offer at one of them :)
Re: Ask HN: Ever been hired through a “who's hiring” post?
#126A post from "the other side of the table" :). The previous company I worked at, I hired two people through who's hiring posts. We pretty much tried it out for about six months as we didn't have much luck through the more traditional channels our division's HR department used. So yes, there are real positions being filled through these posts. That said, just because it's on Hacker News and this is an informal place do…
You have to see it from th job hunter's perspective. It is very common to send out 20 resume's and maybe get a single response or two. It is very time consuming to write a custom multi-paragraph cover letter with every application. Eventually all job hunters learn that you get the same response rate when you write one sentence cover letters as you do when you put a lot of effort into them. Why spend so much effort wh…
Well, it works both ways.
You might send out 20 resumes. As a hiring manager - especially when using a "no filter" approach like posting on here (keep in mind that IME people posting jobs on Hacker News are more likely doing "guerilla hiring" and circumvent their HR departments) - I easily get 100+ resumes, and I don't have days to spend trawling through them. I think it was rands of randsinrepose who mentioned before that the average time an HR person or a manager gets to spend on figuring out if a deeper dive is worth it is about 30s.
So I have to filter them by something. If you as an applicant - who would like at least an interview with me -can't even put in the effort to write in a few sentences that tell me why I should look at your resume, I somehow have to assume that you'll put in similar effort after I hire you. That's not a good first impression and IMHO it counts when you're dealing with a hiring manager as opposed to an HR department.
Keep in mind I'm not asking you to write a cover novel. Put yourself in my shoes and tell me which of the resumes you'd look at if you have only limited time:
1. The one that says
"My resume attached", or fewer words to that effect
2. The one that says
"Hey, I'm applying for your job opening because I love writing web apps in Ruby on Rails with a ClojureScript front end".
Re: Ask HN: Ever been hired through a “who's hiring” post?
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
And the most recent whos hiring from yesterday I only saw one "cover letter required". I do that when I hire. I love reading them. So many are obvious boilerplate copy/paste that the applicant is sending to everyone, or, poorly written (these go to the trash can). The ones that are keen have a story to tell about how the position aligns with their experience. On the applying side, I choose only 5 companies last time…
Confirmation bias? How do you know those companies were actually responding to your cover letters, and not your other strengths? Do you have evidence that if you'd sent out no cover letters (or a single sentence copy and paste job), that you wouldn't have gotten the same response rate?
I'm not sure it's confirmation bias, but if it is multiple people have had the same experience.
For the last two jobs I got by actually actively seeking out an opening rather than being contacted by a recruiter, I only send out 2-3 applications each, but with a cover email that was custom to each company.
On one occasion I had a 100% interview rate, on the second one a 66% one (1 out of the three companies had an automated screening system and I'm pretty sure I was too expensive for them).
Re: Ask HN: Ever been hired through a “who's hiring” post?
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
That seems to happen everywhere these days - I've sent out several applications recently (non-HN) and had absolutely nothing back, not even an acknowledgement. It says a lot for the professionalism of a company when they can't even auto-respond a receipt, although a personal rejection would always be nice - if you can't be bothered to say you're not interested, why should I be bothered to apply ?
Founder here. I used to reply to every applicant individually because I couldn't believe someone wanted to work for my startup. But then that got to be burdensome so I set up a reply template, but even then people would reply to the template and continue the conversation. Then my co-founder pointed out that spending lots of time replying to everyone wasn't a good use of my time. Point is it's nothing personal. If you…
This does sound so unprofessional if you are hitting "Archive" button after skimming through resumes/cover letters. You do understand that candidates spend significant amount of time applying for an open position and trying to get your attention. Everyone's time is equally valuable.
A 'reply' template is rarely useful. If it is not a yes/no response, then you are just wasting more of the candidate's time by making them wait.
As a founder if you aren't able to handle the volume of the applications that you are receiving, then you should delegate the work to someone else and get them to filter the applications.
Re: Ask HN: Ever been hired through a “who's hiring” post?
#129While I have not, I have had three experiences recently that I would like to relay for whatever it is worth. In the past years that I have responded to these monthly posts, three of them have progressed into multiple phone/Skype interviews and two of those multiple phone /Skype interviews have progressed to on site interviews one in San Francisco and one in Berlin.
The one that consisted solely of multiple rounds of phone/Skype interviews went on over the course of a few months and had positive feedback each time. Very recently one of the cofounders emailed me and said they have decided that they aren't going to hire for this role at all. So it was interesting to see this company advertising the same position yesterday. The cofounder emailed me a week ago.
The two interviews I had that progressed from multiple phone/Skype interviews to actual on site interviews were very similar. I felt that the onsite went very well and the feedback that I got from the recruiters was that "everyone really liked me" and "thought it was a good fit" and "how did I feel about it. In each of those I had mutual positive feedback and said I was interested in moving forward.
What followed in both of these was unprofessional and disrespectful behavior. Recruiters responded with "Great, you will hear back from me by the end of the day" and we talked salary and relocation issues. And then days and weeks would go by with radio silence. Needless to say this puts the candidate in a really awkward position. Feeling that enough time had significantly passed I reached out to the recruiters and new assurances would come about they are waiting on something and they would be getting back in touch asap, by the end of the day or latest tomorrow etc. Then the dithering and silence would be being anew.
All three of these companies had postings yesterday for the exact same positions. In fact all three perennially post these same positions on the "Who's Hiring" threads.
Anyway, thanks for letting me share.
Re: Ask HN: Ever been hired through a “who's hiring” post?
#130A post from "the other side of the table" :). The previous company I worked at, I hired two people through who's hiring posts. We pretty much tried it out for about six months as we didn't have much luck through the more traditional channels our division's HR department used. So yes, there are real positions being filled through these posts. That said, just because it's on Hacker News and this is an informal place do…
You have to see it from th job hunter's perspective. It is very common to send out 20 resume's and maybe get a single response or two. It is very time consuming to write a custom multi-paragraph cover letter with every application. Eventually all job hunters learn that you get the same response rate when you write one sentence cover letters as you do when you put a lot of effort into them. Why spend so much effort wh…
As a job-hunter, I always write a well-researched cover letter, and I don't care if some employers ignore them.
As a hiring manager, I love a good cover letter.
So no, I don't see it the way you describe.