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Ask HN: How do you go about finding a job?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you go about finding a job?

#71

Post by rldjbpin »

as someone relatively junior and switching roles, it has been tough to find one after finishing school. wish my journey would been a success story for using hn for job search, but got no luck here. it might be the same for most non-NA talent.

tried finding vacancies on several job boards, and directly on companies' career sites. while (public) employment agencies are promoting using llm for writing cover letters and cv, i have been personalizing them the old-fashioned way. several a/b tests later, i got nothing but automated rejection letters.

the only way i found success was from my personal connections. i suppose referrals do work out for people, but even that is not a silver bullet. maybe it is a skill issue to not find success the normal way, but in retrospect i found not much to do different the next time i need to find a job.

Re: Ask HN: How do you go about finding a job?

#72

Post by kkapelon »

potamic wrote: post #57
kkapelon wrote: post #39

I have found 3 jobs (including my current one) by just writing blog posts. People read the blogposts and asked me to join their company.

Could you share your blog?

As an example I wrote this comparison guide between 12 CI companies back in 2017 https://blog.codepipes.com/continuous-integration/hosted-ci-...

Most of them contacted me and asked me to update pricing or had other clarifications about their product

But 3 of them actually said they were impressed and asked me to join their team. I chose Codefresh and this is the company I still work today.

Re: Ask HN: How do you go about finding a job?

#73

Post by chadQuinlan »

keyle wrote: post #6

The older I get, the worse I find the experience. I've had so many poor experiences with recruiters over the years, I think I'm becoming allergic. It's getting harder to pierce through the BS layers with all that new meat on the market, and to make the matter worse, recruiters are even less skilled than they ever were and are often offshored now. It's insane today. When I'm on the hiring side, we can't find candidate…

Will agree on the connections side of things. My team recently hired a new engineer, having received of thousands of applicants, including many through the corporate referral program. The only people who made it past recruiter screening were those whose referrers messaged the hiring manager directly. With recruiters getting blasted with unqualified applicants (mostly migrants with only a cert to their name) and AI applications, it's hard to get any legit applications some daylight to be reviewed.

Re: Ask HN: How do you go about finding a job?

#74

Post by chadQuinlan »

delbronski wrote: post #12

Personally, I'm not interested in a FAANG or hot startup job. So not sure if my "classic" strategy works for those positions. I also got 15+ years experience(in my late 30s). I use the exact same approach today as I did 15 years ago. When I'm in job hunting mode I search through job postings every morning. If I find an opening that stands out I write the company a short email stating my interest and why I think I'd b…

Where do you even find the emails addresses? Or are you saying you add that to the application notes or whatever?

Re: Ask HN: How do you go about finding a job?

#76

Post by sebestindragos »

Can't speak for myself since I haven't had to search for a job since the market went downhill, but my wife started exactly at the same time. Her experience has been dreadful, looking for a junior dev position fully remote nowadays feels like hunting for unicorns.

So her approach was to basically search through every job board available online (following my advice since I found my last job outside of linkedin). But keeping up with tens of open tabs in chrome is exhausting and very time consuming.

That actually got me an idea to basically automate the search part and webscrape every tab she had open and send a notification when new jobs get posted, this way you only get to see a clean feed with jobs from all sources.

That's how https://first2apply.com/ was born and now she's only using that. Haven't found that fully remote junior role yet tho :/

Re: Ask HN: How do you go about finding a job?

#77

Post by thorin »

axegon_ wrote: post #20

I deleted my linkedin years ago: I found it utterly useless. i won't lie, my social media game is as bad as they get but linkedin seems like the least effective option. I have not gotten the standard "while your credentials and experience is very impressive blah-blah" bollocks message from linkedin applications. So far it's been either local job boards or angel.com. Recruiters are a mixed bag. I've had wonderful and…

Most recruiters use Linkedin as a primary tool though and I've had several real jobs offered on a plate through IMs on there, including my current role. In the UK at least this seems the easiest way to go.

Re: Ask HN: How do you go about finding a job?

#78

Post by LouisSayers »

I have a decent CV (comp sci degree, awards etc) and over a decade of experience.

My strategy is quite simple - when I need a job I search for and apply for jobs I like the look of.

I might apply to a handful of companies. I tailor my CV for each one. Then I treat the interviews seriously, researching intensively and preparing as best I can, doing the problems they're known to give, practicing answers to questions etc.

It's pretty straightforward but requires a lot of work and means I have a high rate of passing through and getting offers.

My last interviewing experience was a few months back and I applied for 4 jobs, and got 2 offers. I didn't get past CV stage with the other 2 companies. I've moved around a lot with at most 2 years at a company so that probably hurts my success rate. It's always me quitting, I've never been fired or layed off.

I've gotten work via a friend before (side job), as well as through recruiters. I still get emails every now and then from recruiters that have me on their list. I even got a job via hackernews - Posting in an "Open for work" thread.

Re: Ask HN: How do you go about finding a job?

#79

Post by gaws »

LouisSayers wrote: post #78

I have a decent CV (comp sci degree, awards etc) and over a decade of experience. My strategy is quite simple - when I need a job I search for and apply for jobs I like the look of. I might apply to a handful of companies. I tailor my CV for each one. Then I treat the interviews seriously, researching intensively and preparing as best I can, doing the problems they're known to give, practicing answers to questions et…

> I might apply to a handful of companies. I tailor my CV for each one. Then I treat the interviews seriously, researching intensively and preparing as best I can, doing the problems they're known to give, practicing answers to questions etc.

Don't you risk burning yourself out?

Re: Ask HN: How do you go about finding a job?

#80

Post by LouisSayers »

gaws wrote: post #79
LouisSayers wrote: post #78

I have a decent CV (comp sci degree, awards etc) and over a decade of experience. My strategy is quite simple - when I need a job I search for and apply for jobs I like the look of. I might apply to a handful of companies. I tailor my CV for each one. Then I treat the interviews seriously, researching intensively and preparing as best I can, doing the problems they're known to give, practicing answers to questions et…

> I might apply to a handful of companies. I tailor my CV for each one. Then I treat the interviews seriously, researching intensively and preparing as best I can, doing the problems they're known to give, practicing answers to questions etc. Don't you risk burning yourself out?

It's not something that happens very often, so I'm OK with pushing myself a bit before interviews.

The way that I see it is that it's a financial investment. Not only can you increase your chances of multiple offers (which can lead to increased salary), but performing well could be the difference of $10k+ salary per year.

If you think of raises as a percentage of salary and compound that over the years you might spend at a company, then potentially we're talking multiple 10's of thousands over the lifespan of working at a company - all for a bit of extra effort up front.

It is extra strain for sure - the smart thing to do is to start your prep a month or more before applying. Also, don't keep your prep code in the IDE. I did this (had an 'archive' folder), and Intellisense was picking up the name of an existing class I'd used during my practice (not sure if the interviewer noticed that...)!

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