Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 1001 posts

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

#161

Post by InvOfSmallC »

SCUSKU wrote: 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…

Hey, I tried your website, it selected 314 jobs. Doesn't look like is matching correctly. Or I am a jack of all trades.

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

#162

Post by rvz »

Madmallard wrote: post #82

software engineering is incredibly saturated at this point you have to be marketable in another way

More like a over-saturated field and now 'less engineers' are needed thanks to AI.

> "you have to be marketable in another way"

Correct. I would look at personal GitHub projects over Leetcode BS if I was finding a candidate at this point.

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

#163

Post by ChainOfFools »

Paul-Craft wrote: post #93
throwaway2037 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, definitely update your LinkedIn profile. Put something catchy in there. And post something once a week to generate some activity. It is totally influencer bullshit, but this war -- getting a job. You can also flag your profile in LinkedIn as looking for opportunities.

What do you mean "put something catchy in there?"

I wish I knew, currently rolling the dice on going back to school for computational neuroscience, and if tech doesn't bite on that then there's always a masters in psychology as a backup. Or just bite the bullet and remortgage the house for a nice safe MD.

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

#164

Post by ricardobayes »

Ilasky wrote: post #2

I've had similar issues - so much so that I've created Resgen[0] just because it was tough getting call backs. It turns out I really needed to tailor my resume to each job and it resulted in a lot more call backs. [0] https://resgen.app

This site is amazing. Finally something with a clean design, no fluff and it's fast.

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

#165

Post by supriyo-biswas »

Pmop wrote: post #120
firefoxd wrote: post #63

I hate to say this, stop applying. Find a recruiter on LinkedIn. 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. The regular resume channel is reserved for bots at this point. Contact a person and you have more chances.

I also had good results with recruiters. They will actually get you at the door, so you better be prepared. Seems to be a decent strategy for people who are bad at networking like I am.

Recruiters get a lot of flak here and elsewhere, but having recently interacted with a few for a recent job change, their incentives are aligned to have some skin in the game, and they can do the emotionally draining part of pushing the company to speed up the process for you without having to send multiple emails or waiting for months for your rejection.

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

#166

Post by benjaminwootton »

iExploder wrote: post #104
ItsBob wrote: 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…

In my experience from both sides of the table, agents have always been the route to market in the UK whereas applications through HR have been a black hole.

Not saying you are wrong, but my (London, mainly BigCo) experience and read is that 90%+ of tech jobs are filled through agents.

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

#167

Post by ivolimmen »

meeuwer wrote: post #138
ivolimmen wrote: post #122

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?

Yeah but that is only in large corporations right? I have one friend that works at KPN and survived 3 rounds of lay-offs. I personally could not cope with that kind of stress. I only work at and for smaller companies. Currently I am the only employee at my company. It's only me and my employer.

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

#168

Post by ulfw »

InvOfSmallC wrote: post #161
SCUSKU wrote: 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…

Hey, I tried your website, it selected 314 jobs. Doesn't look like is matching correctly. Or I am a jack of all trades.

No the website doesn't work at all. It shows me the same 314 jobs. Not a single one relevant.

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

#169

Post by misja111 »

Pmop wrote: post #120
firefoxd wrote: post #63

I hate to say this, stop applying. Find a recruiter on LinkedIn. 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. The regular resume channel is reserved for bots at this point. Contact a person and you have more chances.

I also had good results with recruiters. They will actually get you at the door, so you better be prepared. Seems to be a decent strategy for people who are bad at networking like I am.

Exactly, this is my experience as well. It has happened more than once to me that my application didn't get any response, but then when I contacted a recruiter he could get me in for an interview at the same company. One time I even got the job.

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

#170

Post by SCUSKU »

mrcnkoba wrote: post #150
SCUSKU wrote: 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…

Could you describe the process of learning the skill of being interviewed?

For me, I was actually just really bad at selling myself (job interviews are not where you should have false humility I learned).

I was very fortunate in that my girlfriend helped me a lot here. But quite frankly what she did was very straightforward. She would do a 30 minute mock interview with me, and ask me pretty standard behavioral questions. Questions like:

- Can you tell us about a time when you had to work on a project with a tight deadline? How did you handle it? - Can you give an example of a project or initiative that you spearheaded and the impact it had on the company or team? - How do you prioritize and manage your tasks and responsibilities when faced with competing demands or tight deadlines?

I answered these questions on my own in a notes app, and then when she would ask me I would then draw on my previous experiences and figure out how to answer question that tells a story as best as possible.

This really helped me a lot.

One tip I would give is to generate these questions, try copy/pasting the job description into ChatGPT and ask it to generate a list of interview questions for that role! I found that much better than sifting through the SEO spam for interview questions.

Post reply on HN