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Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

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Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

#131
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of résumé highlights that the applicant is a black lesbian? This sounds more like a porn movie script. “Hardcore All-Girl Positive Discrimination XVII”

lol you really are not afraid someone's going to press a cancel button on you? based.

Hah. I’m saying the idea that a man could pose on their résumé as a black lesbian sounds more like a male fantasy scenario, because that’s not how professional résumés work at all.

Where do you even put the lesbian part? College extracurriculars?

Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

#132
Reading the other comments, it's wild how different people's experiences with this can be even in the same country. In my experience, in the UK, the availability of types of jobs is dependant on the city and seniority level. London seems to have the most front end jobs for example.

As to how to get hired, although I have succeeded with direct application, recruiters are a very popular way here to get a job, especially in web development.

Finding a recruiter you trust to be working close to your interests is important, but not critical. The best recruitment firms I have found through talking to colleagues and managers. Managers often have a strong opinion on which firms refer the best candidates.

I expect another angle is the type of company you're expecting to get a job at and the compensation level. I've never applied to a FAANG, but I expect all of this advice goes out the window. Perhaps though if it is applying to too-senior jobs that is your problem then talking to a trusted recruiter could be helpful.

I don't know anything about resume scoring services, but perhaps they are flawed in some way? Your CV could be great for applying to certain types of jobs, but not for the ones you are applying for. I can suggest forwarding it on to someone who you look up to, who is able to give candid, honest thoughts on it. For example the company you were working at may not be a prestigious company or the technology you were using may not contain the keywords that hiring managers often are looking for.

You haven't given much information so there are many possibilities as to what is going wrong, including ones outside of what I have mentioned. Good luck.

Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

#133
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is what it has come to. There are thousands of resumes being sent at my company, yet the recruiter can't find anyone. Why? Because no one is applying through her link. It sounds like your recruiter is purposely ignoring any resume that is not explicitly sent to her personally. It sounds like a job security move at the expense of both the company and candidate's best interests.

A lot of resumes are not even for the job she posts. Bots and other 3rd party recruiters are also trying to game the system so they drown real candidates. When a resumes is from her link, there are high chances it's a real person who took the time to read the job description.

The post-modern labor dichotomy between robots and human robots is mirrored on the hiring side in ATS and HR, respectively.

Sadly, this is not new:

https://medium.com/@jannaq/the-robot-takeover-is-already-her...

Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

#134
post #85

I thought I'd add a data point to this discussion. I'm in the UK and the traditional dev/tech job route was via something like JobServe, Indeed etc., where you see a role advertised via an employment agency and you send your CV hoping for a callback. I'm in a stable contract so I'm not looking but two weeks ago, I was contacted by two agents, one day apart, both unrelated to one another, completely out of the blue. T…

as a rule of thumb I ignore all UK agents, they have the attention span of a coked up butterfly. from my experience they try extract as much information out of you (your salary, last company, are they hiring, give me phone number to their manager or hr) and never call even if they scheduled a call. they never update you if the role you applied for have been filled in meantime, you simply get ghosted and your email ge…

To the contrary, it took about six years until the most persistent UK recruiter stopped calling me back. There is certainly a function of how well does your CV match their clients in there.

Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

#135

I know this is completely off-topic but I am Dutch and never MET anyone that was laid off. Non of my friends, family and even colleague's (and I work in IT-consultancy so I see loads of people). How common is this in America? Is it normal that in your career your are fired at least once?

There have been some industry wide collapses- the dot com bust in 2000-2002 most notably, a few more industry specific slumps such as during the housing market crash in 08, and most recently FAANG-esque companies went on an absolutely wild hiring spree during COVID lockdowns and remote-work period.

Many big tech companies went through a round or two of layoffs in the last year. I interviewed I think two or three junior devs a few months back who had been hired at Facebook or Twitter or some other company and let go within a few months of being hired.

Note that "fired" and "laid off" are very different things, with different causes, worker protections, and expectations around i.e. severance. I don't know that it is uncommon to get laid off at some point, but it also isn't something that you really go into a job expecting will happen either. Personally, the only people I know of who were laid off were in non-tech fields.

Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

#137
post #85

I thought I'd add a data point to this discussion. I'm in the UK and the traditional dev/tech job route was via something like JobServe, Indeed etc., where you see a role advertised via an employment agency and you send your CV hoping for a callback. I'm in a stable contract so I'm not looking but two weeks ago, I was contacted by two agents, one day apart, both unrelated to one another, completely out of the blue. T…

as a rule of thumb I ignore all UK agents, they have the attention span of a coked up butterfly. from my experience they try extract as much information out of you (your salary, last company, are they hiring, give me phone number to their manager or hr) and never call even if they scheduled a call. they never update you if the role you applied for have been filled in meantime, you simply get ghosted and your email ge…

Recruiters usually just pay lip service and pretend to send your CV through. They data mine and will have already put people forward at jobs you think you're applying to. About 30-50% of the time your CV won't be sent immediately, if at all, until their other candidate is rejected and I have (personal) evidence of this.

The reason for this is 2 fold:

1. They directly stop you competing with their current candidate, who is probably the highest % cut.

2. They indirectly stop you being put forward by other recruiters when you say "oh another recruiter has put me forward" (which they haven't, but you have a verbal contract with).

So the number of jobs you think you're applying to is actually less .

If you suspect this is happening (and make sure genuinely it's not just a delay in the HR dept first by asking probing questions) call the company and ask them directly, state that the recruiter is being a little slow corresponding and you'd like to confirm the status of your application. If they haven't heard of you, terminate your verbal contract with the recruiter and send your CV directly to the company. This happened for my current job, and now I'm earning a substantial amount of money (think tech arch, top end salary).

My boss said during hiring "I don't know why they wouldn't pass on your CV, you were clearly the better candidate".

Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

#138

I know this is completely off-topic but I am Dutch and never MET anyone that was laid off. Non of my friends, family and even colleague's (and I work in IT-consultancy so I see loads of people). How common is this in America? Is it normal that in your career your are fired at least once?

They prefer stealth layoffs here in the Netherlands. The end result is the same: you’re out, but with no severance and gaslit AF. Thanks Rutte, I guess?

Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

#139
Something that worked for me is that I have a profile where I am a domain expert who is reasonnably good at data science and software development. I am no rock star in any of the three fields, but this particular combination is pretty rare. I got my last 2 jobs this way: most applications just got lost, or ended in a meh screening interview, but there was this one job posting in the year that required this mix of skills, and I was just the obvious choice and got hired pretty much without competition.

I am not suggesting that you start a PhD in some obscure domain, but any additional skill can help stand appart from all other generalist front end developers. For instance in my last company we did quite a lot with geographical data, and if a front end dev showed even just the slightest knowledge of geodata (like knowing what a map projection is, or a knowledge of the technologies used to display maps efficiently on the web), he would quickly go on top of the pile. So if the is any domain where you know just a bit more than the average guy, even just as a hobby, I would say that it makes sense to display it on your CV and search for postings that might be related.

Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

#140
post #101

I was laid off in August 2022, and it took me 6 months to find a new job. I was able to land a decent number of interviews but I interviewed poorly and didn't get any offers. Doing interview prep actually helped a lot -- now having been on the other side it is very apparent when someone hasn't prepared and practiced interviewing. It really is a skill in and of itself. I found my current job through the January HN Who…

> now having been on the other side it is very apparent when someone hasn't prepared and practiced interviewing. It really is a skill in and of itself.

And now that you can recognize that skill in isolation, do you use it as a major factor when choosing candidates? If you do, why?

Do you think the people interviewing you could recognize that you were specifically bad at interviewing, and not at everything?

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