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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?

#321

Post by otikik »

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.

Not completely disagreeing with the OP but before going the recruiter route make sure you have exhausted the social network route.

Your resume has way more chances to be considered seriously if instead of just sending it to the company inbox someone already working for that company recommends you. If you have any friends, family or ex-colleagues working on a nice place, tell them that you are looking for a position and ask them if they would mind referring you. Although it's becoming rare, some companies still have a "referral bonus" for employees that bring up other employees. You might even do them a favor.

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

#322

Post by Roark66 »

Depends where you are and what you're looking for I guess. Here in Poland the market for remote jobs is great.

Of course a big factor is that on average I estimate the rates paid here are half of these in UK/US (comparing my own rates for remote vs on-site).

Also the way you look for work matters a lot. Every market has its specifics. In some locations it's better to send dozens of cv's in the others it's better to have alerts for exactly matching jobs and when they appear phone the recruiter within the first 5 minutes after the ad was posted. I used both techniques with great results.

And the most important thing. Do not give up! And never trust words, unless they are in a form of a contract.

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

#323

Post by rsynnott »

enilakla wrote: post #281
mixtieboo wrote: post #270

[flagged]

I find it fascinating yet sad that some people have such adverse opinions toward whole generations, essentially. Why such animosity?

Media influence; note their concentration on millennials specifically. The media loves to obsess over the misdeeds of the terrible millennials and boomers. My personal theory to explain this is that ~everyone currently in a position of editorial power in media is gen X; note that the media never mentions gen X.

However, change is coming, as the gen Xes will start aging out soon. Within about a decade, expect the media to be decrying the villainous gen Xes and Zeds, as the top editorial jobs go millennial. Constant memes about cereal will replace the stuff about avocados, etc (Gen X are the peak breakfast cereal generation, as they were largely around before truth-in-advertising rules severely restricted manufacturers from claiming that the product containing a lot of sugar was good, actually).

This isn't new; "everyone significantly younger than or older than me is terrible" has been a meme for, at least, thousands of years. Shows up in ancient Roman and Greek stuff, say. The _degree_ to which people think that Other Generations are weird and bad may be growing, though, as the media writ large becomes more pervasive.

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

#324

Post by Paul-Craft »

offices wrote: post #264
Paul-Craft wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You know this isn't about 1 person at 1 company hiring for 1 role, right? This is about the job market as a whole. Who do you think is on the other end of these transactions?

Context. Seriously.

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

#325

Post by jpadkins »

xlbuttplug2 wrote: post #306
a_t48 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So much this - nearly every job I’ve gotten in tech has been due to knowing someone working there, or knowing someone who knows someone.

The problem being that when you muck up the interview, you get outed as a quack to someone you know.

flopping interview != quack

Everyone knows that interviews have high false negative rates (depending on your hiring criteria). You have to mentally guard yourself that interviews are not a complete judgement of you; they are at best a small pinhole view into your capabilities.

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

#326

Post by rsynnott »

bogota wrote: post #55
5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

blind is the most obnoxiously insufferable community. i'm glad they're not employable! TC 0. how's that.

I don’t wish TC 0 on anyone but Blind has to be one of the most toxic communities. I spent a few months on it when working at a FANG adjacent company and after seeing people personally calling out managers and just generally any visible person I stopped using it.

It really is an astonishingly nasty community, probably at this point, self-reinforcing; no-one normal is going to stick around.

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

#327

Post by kypro »

DoesntMatter22 wrote: post #19
kypro wrote: post #7

It's bad, but it's not that bad. The fact you have only had one interview this year is very odd in my opinion. I've been on the market twice this year and it's been harder for sure (especially earlier this year), but it's far from impossible to find something. I don't know if you're looking for advice or just anecdotes here, but I'll share some thoughts for what might be happening... Frontend development has changed…

Imo this is the worst market I've seen since 95 when I started.

Yeah, I'm not denying it's bad. It's the worst I've seen too – although it's picked up significantly from the start of the year.

I would warn people against blaming the market entirely for their problems finding work. I've seen stats suggesting that most tech employees who have lost their jobs have been able to find work within a couple of months. My own experience suggests this is the case. It's harder for sure, but it's far from impossible.

If someone's been looking for 6 months and are not even getting to the interview stage something else is going on. To blame it on the market would deny themselves the opportunity to self reflect on why they're finding it difficult. I've seen a lot of that this year.

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

#328

Post by orwin »

herodotusxviii wrote: post #236
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.

If you don't mind, could you tell me how I should go about finding a recruiter directly on LinkedIn? I've been out of the market for three years now (had to take care of sick family) and it's extra brutal; I've been contacted by a few recruiters but I'd really like to speed up the process of networking with them if possible. Thank you. (I'm in the Inland Empire in Southern California).

Tbh once I listed my AWS architect qualifications, I went from 1 contact/week (since March, it was a bit better before) to 5/day.

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

#329

Post by rsynnott »

stonks wrote: post #105
physicsguy wrote: post #91

Things that disqualify CVs straight away for us: * Unclear if have right to work in country. This needs to be stated up front! Our company can't sponsor visas, so if based in another country unless it says something about the visa status, we basically have to throw it away. * Poor grammar, spelling, attention to detail on CV. I get some CVs through that are almost unreadable. I'm not saying if there's a single typo t…

Why working in crypto exchanges would show poor judgment? There are still technical problems to solve. I knew a principal engineer who heavily disliked blockchain because it uses a lot of energy for proof of work, but with proof of stake this should be better now.

I mean, why don't you want to hire Bernie Madoff's accountant? He was still solving accounting problems, and he'll be out of jail any day now.

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

#330

Post by KirillPanov »

scelerat wrote: post #25

Same here. 22 years experience full stack; leadership roles. Can't get an interview. Taking an ML class. I think telling some recruiters I had a baby on the way was a mistake.

I have my system configured to auto-delete all applications containing the phrase "full stack".

Best decision I ever made.

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