[flagged]
Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?
261–270 of 1001 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?
#262I 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.
Not necesarly the only way as someone who often interviews candidates, if I'm getting bombarded by spam applications, the least you can do for me to take your CV seriously is a cover letter related to the job posting / company. I don't understand any candidate who sends out a letter without researching the company for 30 minutes and taking another 10 to write a thoughtful cover letter. if you're not willing to put th…
That goes a long way, tailoring the CV and, if absolutely needed, cover letter for each application. The CV also when recruiters reached out to you, as they still have to present it to HR and hiring managers (also having a recruiter presenting the CV and candidate helps a lot, and means the CV can be a bit less polished). And if recruiters, or the companies behind them, require a cover letter, being contacted first by the recruiter makes writing those a lot easier since you don't have to cold sell yourself as much. And the first discusion / phone screening, ehich propably didn't require a cover letter, gives you hints and hooks to use in the letter (I say that as person who hates selling myself and especially writing cover letters, also I found my last job that way).
Now the trickey part is, so, to have solid recruiters hiring for real positions reaching out to you. For some reason, they did in my case more or less every time I kind of needed it. I have not the slightest clue so why, my LinkedIn profile was up to date but far from polished...
Well, I content myself with being lucky for some reason, and I am aware how lucky I am when it comes to that and quite grateful to universe, and hope to never have to go through that whole process again, because applying, getting new jobs, tinse and repeat, gets stressful at a certain point. And now I reached a point in my career where I like the stability of a job, collectively (and relatively high) bargained salary, good, bordering very good to almost stellar, retirement benefits, I job that is truely challenging (new stuff that allows me use my experience almost completely, while being borderline scary at times) working on a product for which projected end-of-service-life is over a decade after my legal retirement age.
That being said, I had a period in which I had to write a ton of applications whipe seeing the clock running down on my unemployment benefits. That alone can be soul crushing, so I try to cut people somenslack when it comes to CV and cover letter polishing. It still means one shouod put some thought behind both tasks so.
Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you say "recruiters," do you mean in-house recruiters or third party recruiters? Getting an in-house person on your side certainly is a great way to speed along the hiring process, but I've literally never had a third party recruiter send anything my way that ever came close to working out. It's gotten to the point where if I get an email from a 3rd party recruiter, I just don't look at it -- although I'm not su…
3rd party recs aren't entirely aligned with either the employee or the employer, but that fat cheque is a massive incentive that makes things happen. I've heard of recruiters who placed portfolio managers and ended up getting seven figures due to the compensation arrangement. The thing about 3rd parties is they are really useful if you're already on the inside. If you have all the relevant CV points, they will get yo…
How do you find these third party recruiters and convince them to work with you?
Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
I couldn't understand this comment and wondered whether you had misread the parent. The point is that they are posting job openings and getting thousands of applicants per role i.e. They are oversubscribed.
That literally cannot be true unless the supposed "more or less qualified" applicants actually aren't qualified. Now, I suppose it's possible that thousands of people are lying on their resumes just to get a chance to work at Dropbox, but given this year's layoffs, I find it far, far more likely that people on the hiring side have gone off the deep end. You can disagree with me on that, and that's fine, but stay with…
> having it stay open for months on end, right
I stayed with you. Here's the non-sequitur. New positions appear on an ongoing basis and the latency from opening to accepted offer is non-zero.
Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?
#265I 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.
Fwiw: I’m an employer, and sometimes people ignore the “how to apply” instructions on our site (which say to email to jobs@) and reach out straight via eg LinkedIn and I always file those in my “can’t follow a simple instruction” pile. Not to say that what you say will never work, but I think it’s worth pointing out that at some companies, application processes might exist for a reason. For me, having all application…
Sure it works for you but if you need tools to manage then I can't imagine the average applicant in your process has very good odds.
Even if only a few companies hire through direct contact, many of the ones that do will hire more than 1 in 10 of the relatively infrequent direct contacts, while their HR process may be sitting on the thousands of regular applications.
Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?
#266I 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.
Depending on sector, you may find you only get traction through recruiters. I work in finance, almost everything is through third party recruiters and there are two reasons for this. 1. We are only allowed to hire through either an approved recruiter or the company job portal. The company job portal gets so many applications for each job it's absurd, and we have to sift these ourselves to some degree (HR are meant to…
> Perks. We often meet directly with recruiters in person, and they have expense accounts and take us for lunch/drinks we don't have to pay for. This makes us want to keep using them over direct applications (yes recruiters, this 100% works, we won't use you if you're shit regardless but we'll 100% entertain looking at your candidates if you take us for lunch or drinks - check compliance limits before suggesting a venue though).
How badly are you paid?
Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
This and… Use your new free time by not applying to… Work on a project that interests you and share it online Exercise both physically and fiscally Spend time with people you care about and also care about you And keep working on projects and sharing them, maybe even with hn The comments on here are legion of individuals who post some project and have to then fight away recruiters…
What do fiscal exercises look like?
You invest in Apple or Tesla, get hit with 30% tax, and receive communication from IRS while living in Europe and having nothing to do with USA. Then try to clarify the whole mess.
Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah I thought they meant a recruiter at the company and not an intermediary. Thanks.
Either way, really - many in-house recruiters do actively source via LinkedIn and encourage inbound messages there from interested candidates. But it seemed like this was a suggestion to use LinkedIn as a front door rather than as a back door.
The bigger the employer, the more likely it is, that after a first recruiter phone screen, you still havebto go through the normal recruotment / application process, for compliance reasons mostly. No big deal, as the recruiter is working on your behalf on the other end, if he decided to invite you to an interview with the hiring manager, to fast track you application through whatever arcane or byzantine process there is.
Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?
#269I 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…
>not this US-style agent-works-for-me stuff
These still exist for large companies (especially US companies) and those with internal recruiters. It's a shame that the latter get tarred with the general term - they have very different motivations and methods.
Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?
#270[flagged]