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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?

#371

Post by m00dy »

cientifico wrote: post #341
whiddershins wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, no one calls someone with 5.5 years of experience a junior engineer.

I do, and quite frequently. After more than a 2 decades in software development (rails/web/...), for me to consider a developer to be a senior it needs to: * Communicate: For example: can explain tech concepts to non tech people, or inform on Monday that the sprint will be unlikely to be done in time. * Can estimate and adapt to changes. Be boring and predictable. * Can work/collaborate/teach with other devs. I got t…

honestly, I'm a senior developer and I don't give a fuck about collaboration.

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

#372

Post by Roark66 »

herbst wrote: post #335
jameshush wrote: post #46

Reach out to people you've worked with in the past. After having five years of experience, you should have worked with at least a handful of people who need someone to fix another broken website. These could be managers, people on your team, people on OTHER teams, vendors, salespeople you've spoken to, anyone. Ideally, you should ALWAYS keep in contact with people you've worked with, even if it's just emailing them "…

I would be totally weird out if some of my past co-workers suddenly reaches out to me with bullshit smalltalk to ask for a job. Or random people from my past sending me happy birthday ever year. I am probably not social enough to understand that, but that sounds like a lot of work just to stand out as kinda weird.

Haha, I once had to reach out to two guys I worked with 5 years ago for references, because the role I was applying for required two references from two previous jobs and these two guys were the only ones that were still working in that place. No doubt it was a bit weird for them, but one's gotta do what one's gotta do. They both agreed BTW.

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

#373

Post by scarface_74 »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #266
mightykipper wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ve…

I was briefly a dev lead responsible for hiring contractors. The company I worked for already had a contract with a certain recruiting agency - the same one I came in through.

The brief stint I was at the company, the recruiter gave me tickets to the local professional baseball team that included access to premium suites and tickets to the local professional football team.

But yeah I get it, having a free meal wouldn’t mean much to me.

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

#374

Post by misja111 »

skrebbel wrote: post #216
misja111 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> do you use it as a major factor when choosing candidates? If you do, why? Definitely. Motivation is of major importance in whether a new employee will be successful or not. And if a candidate obviously has put a lot of effort in preparing for the interview, then this indicates that he/she is motivated to get the job. Ofc it is not the only factor to take into consideration, but surely an important one.

Fwiw I’m an employer too and I strongly disagree with this. In fact we try very hard to see if we can separate “interviewing skill” from “real work skill” because we only care about the latter, and with programming roles there is little overlap between the two skills. The idea that someone investing time and effort into being a smooth interviewer somehow shows that they’re “motivated” seems like a weird tribal dance…

What I'm looking for, and that's also what I wrote, is that candidate has put some effort. This can also be in getting to know about the company or in updating his/her CV. There are candidates that are so fond of themselves and their perceived technical skills, that they act like diva's and don't find it necessary to put any effort. I'd rather not have those as my colleagues. I'm not saying that not preparing automatically means the candidate is such a diva, there can ofc be many other reasons, but it's an indicator to be alert for.

And again, this is not the only indicator I'm looking for. A candidate who didn't prepare much but can tell very enthusiastically about some project or technology is obviously motivated as well.

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

#375

Post by fnordpiglet »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #238
fhaldridge7 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would it very strange to get happy birthday messages from former colleagues. Do people really do this?

Yes, but in my limited experience it's been former managers who are looking to see if they can re-hire you (at either your previous job or wherever they moved onto themselves).

I think that’s just selection bias. Managers became mangers because they’re the type of person that keeps in contact with their prior coworkers and associates.

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

#376

Post by lylejantzi3rd »

KirillPanov wrote: post #330
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.

Why?

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

#377

Post by fatfingerd »

skrebbel wrote: post #293
fatfingerd wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

By tools, you mean a gmail label, yes?

Sure, anything that acts as an external structure to not even know the very basics is not a good sign for their odds..

People should write you a cover letter on the off chance that you open a spam folder of such volume that you can't bother to manually label a mail as belonging in it?

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

#378

Post by yodsanklai »

rsynnott wrote: post #282

It's not a good job market, but it doesn't seem normal to spend six months applying and only get _one_ interview. It might be worth asking friends or former colleagues, ideally people who actually are involved in recruiting (hiring managers etc) to take a look at your resume and LinkedIn profile and see if there's anything glaringly wrong with them. Is your resume in a weird format, or is it structurally weird/overde…

> _wild_ title inflation

I'm wondering if it's important to put a specific title on one's resume. I assume many companies don't have any titles at all and everybody is just a "software engineers", whether they are a fresh graduate or 10 years of experience tech lead. What is more relevant is the scope of the job done which should be listed in a job description.

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

#379

Post by reverend_gonzo »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #360
cientifico wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do, and quite frequently. After more than a 2 decades in software development (rails/web/...), for me to consider a developer to be a senior it needs to: * Communicate: For example: can explain tech concepts to non tech people, or inform on Monday that the sprint will be unlikely to be done in time. * Can estimate and adapt to changes. Be boring and predictable. * Can work/collaborate/teach with other devs. I got t…

You think it takes 5+ years to acquire those skills?! Man, I would be driven insane in an environment like that. Such a long time and a relatively low bar.

I know people with 20y that can’t do that.

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

#380

Post by laichzeit0 »

herbst wrote: post #335
jameshush wrote: post #46

Reach out to people you've worked with in the past. After having five years of experience, you should have worked with at least a handful of people who need someone to fix another broken website. These could be managers, people on your team, people on OTHER teams, vendors, salespeople you've spoken to, anyone. Ideally, you should ALWAYS keep in contact with people you've worked with, even if it's just emailing them "…

I would be totally weird out if some of my past co-workers suddenly reaches out to me with bullshit smalltalk to ask for a job. Or random people from my past sending me happy birthday ever year. I am probably not social enough to understand that, but that sounds like a lot of work just to stand out as kinda weird.

Yeah this is weird. Work is not just a place where you transact time/utility for money. You can also get to know people and form friendships. I still regularly chat with past work colleagues and meet up with them when I travel.

In the last 20 years I’ve interviewed for exactly one job, and that was my first one out of university. Since then it’s always been people I know offering me new positions. People don’t just hire a random person off the street unless it’s some MegaCorp sausage machine or they’ve exhausted all other options.

Look you can follow this disengaged, unsocial approach, but it’s suboptimal.

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