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Ask HN: How effective have the job posts on HN been?
51–60 of 99 posts
Re: Ask HN: How effective have the job posts on HN been?
#52My experience as job applicant: Who is hiring, March 2014: I received three responses to my applications. One for code samples (no follow up afterward), one for quick phone conversation, and one for phone interview (Ed: three different companies). Seeking Freelance, March 2014: No response. Who is hiring, Feb 2014: No response. Seeking Freelance, Feb 2014: No response. YC Companies /jobs: No ACK or response in last t…
Same experience here. Need to pass an online code puzzle -> a short phone interview -> No response.
I have done hiring at a YC company and elsewhere based on HN. Especially for sales jobs I would not respond because I want closers. Not people who wait around for the other party to act. ( Relevant: https://elasticsales.com/blog/2013/01/24/how-hire-best-hustl... )
For hiring freelancers on here, and FT engineers, I don't respond a lot to get an idea of personality, communication style, ability to confront, etc.
For anything outbound, I would have constant touch points since you are trying to sell the candidate the role, not the other way around.
Many people just weren't good fits culturally or technically and when you are running a startup there things get overlooked.
hn0114@boun.cr - send me your resume with a subject line that says resume feedback and i'll take a look
Random anecdote, I was walking SXSW last week and some kids came up and said hi since they noticed the YC founder I was with. One said " I applied to your company and I don't think I got a response ". I took that kids card because his attitude is one to make things happen. So if you want something, make it happen.
Re: Ask HN: How effective have the job posts on HN been?
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same experience here. Need to pass an online code puzzle -> a short phone interview -> No response.
Why is it considered acceptable to just cut off contact after a phone interview or an onsite interview? If you get an onsite interview or phone interview, they should at least have the decency for a form letter "Thanks for applying, but we chose someone else." (especially after an on-site interview)
Some people don't like to reject others so they take the easy way out and just go silent.
This is a tragic mistake, because if you are running a company you need to be able to do something much worse -- cut people who are currently working for you.
Re: Ask HN: How effective have the job posts on HN been?
#54From the viewpoint of a job applicant, I have been very happy with the job postings on HN. Of the 4 jobs that I applied to over the past 3.5 years (I'm pretty selective), all 4 responded to me on the same day, and 3 resulted in phone interviews. Those numbers are very good compared to other job posting sites. I found that job aggregation sites like Monster performed absolutely terribly. In that same category are the…
Your talk about "black holes" made me realize that when I apply anywhere I should put some URLs into my cover letters to see if anyone ever reads them.
Re: Ask HN: How effective have the job posts on HN been?
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same experience here. Need to pass an online code puzzle -> a short phone interview -> No response.
Why is it considered acceptable to just cut off contact after a phone interview or an onsite interview? If you get an onsite interview or phone interview, they should at least have the decency for a form letter "Thanks for applying, but we chose someone else." (especially after an on-site interview)
It is not acceptable.
I have tried to be courteous to everyone who has applied where I am. However, keep in mind that one recruiter may be dealing with 20-50 applicants in that week.
And it is never fun rejecting people. It is easy to want to put it off.
Re: Ask HN: How effective have the job posts on HN been?
#56[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: How effective have the job posts on HN been?
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same experience here. Need to pass an online code puzzle -> a short phone interview -> No response.
I have done hiring at a YC company and elsewhere based on HN. Especially for sales jobs I would not respond because I want closers. Not people who wait around for the other party to act. ( Relevant: https://elasticsales.com/blog/2013/01/24/how-hire-best-hustl... ) For hiring freelancers on here, and FT engineers, I don't respond a lot to get an idea of personality, communication style, ability to confront, etc. For a…
So, you want something (good hires), and you do nothing to get them? You are contradicting your own advice.
If somebody doesn't respond to me, I take that as an extremely loud and clear signal of "not interested" or "can't be bothered". It goes both ways.
Re: Ask HN: How effective have the job posts on HN been?
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We're based in Cape Town, so perhaps reader geography plays some part. I did a bit of geographic canvassing of HN, and while I only went through the "top 100" posters due to it being a pretty manual process, it does indeed seem pretty concentrated, with US/UK/Canada accounting for >80% of those I looked at. Summary at the bottom of this page: http://www.kmjn.org/notes/hacker_news_posters.html
Perhaps its time for another HN Poll: Where are you located?
One was conducted about 5 months ago:
Re: Ask HN: How effective have the job posts on HN been?
#59I got my current gig at Monetate in December 2013 after seeing a post on Who's Hiring November 2013.
It turns out we've hired 7 our ~20 software engineers like this over the last few years.
Re: Ask HN: How effective have the job posts on HN been?
#60My experience as job applicant: Who is hiring, March 2014: I received three responses to my applications. One for code samples (no follow up afterward), one for quick phone conversation, and one for phone interview (Ed: three different companies). Seeking Freelance, March 2014: No response. Who is hiring, Feb 2014: No response. Seeking Freelance, Feb 2014: No response. YC Companies /jobs: No ACK or response in last t…
Same experience here. Need to pass an online code puzzle -> a short phone interview -> No response.
I know people are busy (doubly so when hiring or looking for a job), so generally I think the best policy is to not take it personally and simply move on when people don't respond. It happens on both sides of the search, and dead ends are to some extent just part of the game.
However, with the rise of the code puzzle/challenge test/work sample, I wonder if it might be time to forge a new professional ethic where it's understood that it is an important courtesy to give an applicant's work attention and useful feedback in return for investing time in completing a challenge.
With that in mind, lately I've been thinking it's important to set expectations (and figure out if you're likely to end up wasting your time) by asking at least two questions before agreeing to submit work on sample problems:
* if they have reference solutions or other rubrics that someone in-house has recently completed, and if they'll be willing to share those with candidates who submit work
* what kind of time they're planning to devote to giving attention and feedback to candidates who submit work
If they have a reference solution, that's a good sign that they have clear ideas about what their standards for success are and a good baseline of the likely time involved in completion.
And if they're willing to at least say that they'll spend real time on studying solutions and giving feedback (ideally something within an order of magnitude of the time they ask candidates to invest) -- or at least show you the rubric -- that's probably an indicator that you're not going to waste your time.
If they don't give an indication that they can do either, it may be a better use of time to move on. And if enough developers use that as a standard, I think it'll be less common to submit work with no response.
(This isn't, by the way, meant to be anti-challenge. The merits seem pretty clear to me, and I've gotten offers including my current job from submitting responses to tests. I've also, however, spent hours or even days* doing free work with nothing useful in return.)
(* One more useful question: does the sample involve working with the Facebook API? Just say no.)