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Ask HN: What am I doing wrong?

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Re: Ask HN: What am I doing wrong?

#21

Post by mostlystatic »

dromedariusCase wrote: post #13
roflyear wrote: post #3

Hi boss, First, you can view your name in your GitHub. Might want to remove that for HN. Your GitHub activity is also private. I would just remove the link if you don't want to make it public. I also don't like your GitHub picture. I would use something else or no picture. Put a BIO in your GitHub if you're going to keep it. Regarding your resume, I would put the awards near the bottom. Start with any job experience,…

Thank you for the long response, About experience, the thing is I don't have any... and I don't know how to get my foot into the door to get some. Any tips?

I'd consider expanding more on the freelance work you did through Upwork. What problems did you solve for your clients and what technologies did you work with?

Re: Ask HN: What am I doing wrong?

#22

Post by muzani »

The timing is terrible. And junior jobs have always been extremely hard to land, even in a strong market. A lot of very good people are being laid off and haven't found jobs yet, and you're competing with them.

I graduated from a really good college, into fairly weak market and had to take PHP jobs that didn't fully cover the bills. I'd suggest just sucking up your pride and taking a low quality job. Just work hard, build connections to others in the industry, and hop on to better work once it recovers.

Or try another field; I graduated with a degree in telecommunications engineering, but the telcos were becoming stagnant. So we rode on the mobile/web dev boom.

There's also the possibility that it may not recover, that FAANG in general peaked and are on a decline.

Re: Ask HN: What am I doing wrong?

#23

Post by drakonka »

dromedariusCase wrote: post #10
codegeek wrote: post #8

To get a job as an entry level person, you either need to demonstrate that you have all round skills and you can fit into a team OR you need to target specific companies/teams that could utilize your existing experience (.e.g Java developer) To do that, you first need to differentiate yourself from the 1000s of other entry level applicants. Some tips: 1. Determine if you want to apply for a specific type of role. As…

Thanks for taking the time out of your day to respond. I really do appreciate the advice. I honestly have no clue what to write for a cover letter. Everything that I write just ends up sounding fake / makes it obvious that I just want a job for money's sake (which for me, at the end of the day, is what it comes down to). I actually received the opposite advice from some others I asked, where they said to just use the…

I noticed this divide in the given advice as well: some say to carefully tailor each application to the job, others say to fire and forget. I think if you're sending 200 applications out the fire and forget way might be more manageable. Personally, the former (tailored applications) has worked better for me (so far).

For some context, I've been doing this for around 15 years, which might make my thoughts pretty irrelevant since job hunting as a junior now is surely different than job hunting as a junior a decade ago.

Nevertheless, I have not sent 200 job applications in my life. How people manage it is beyond me. My approach is usually to send a very tailored cover letter, and a reasonably tailored CV (when a CV is required - lately they just pull it from LinkedIn... which in my opinion can make a custom cover letter even more impactful when you're actually looking).

For the cover letter, I take points straight from the listed job description. There are usually "must have" and "nice to have" points listed there, both technical and personality traits ("go-getter!", "self-motivated!", whatever).

In my first couple of junior jobs, I started with a brief preamble (name, what I do, etc...) I also include something showing that I did some research on what the _company_ does ("I was very excited to read about Company-X's unique approach to Thing-X"). This was followed by covering each desired point they mentioned in the job description, with a sentence or two about how I meet that requirement. For points I did not fulfill, I mentioned the _closest_ experience I could, and mentioned something hand-wavy about expecting to have no trouble hitting the ground running and learning-thing-x quickly on the job. For junior jobs, I think you can leverage the "passionate, quick learner" thing quite well where needed.

But like I said - I am not sure how relevant this approach is for juniors today. When I applied at a large company years ago, I had one phone screen and one in-person interview before being given an offer. When I interviewed other candidates at the same company a couple of years ago there were multiple rounds of interviews, assignments, discussions with HR, followup panels, etc. I have no idea if I would've been given an offer at the same company if I'd been applying as a junior eight years later.

Re: Ask HN: What am I doing wrong?

#24

Post by clusterhacks »

You are at UCSD - surely they have co-op and internship recruiting programs on campus? When I was an undergrad (longer ago that I want to admit), I did several co-ops and a summer internship. These programs are often hiring pipelines for employers. All my job offers, even after doing a MS in CS after my BS in CS, came from companies I had worked for already as an undergrad.

Also, (and I have suffered for NOT doing this better), reach out to colleagues or even recent UCSD grads from the CS program and ask for referrals. Just be low-key about it - you aren't asking for any "big" favors or nepotism-like stuff, just maybe an internal referral to their company? I think people should do this more often. Employers often offer current employees a bonus for every hired referral so those folks may get something out of it too.

Lastly, submitting resumes online seems to often be a blackhole of nothingness. Because I'm not Mr. Professional Network I have almost always applied using online submissions to jobs and haven't always had a good response rate with that method. But my longest (and current, maybe forever) gig came from a referral from someone in my social network.

[EDIT]: I noticed one of your other comments that implies you could maybe graduate sooner rather than later. This may be a controversial idea but think about taking LONGER. Double major or really think hard about getting into some big name company internship programs.

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