Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

761–770 of 1001 posts

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

#761

Post by noodle »

bsima wrote: post #644
noodle wrote: post #602

As someone on the other side, with open positions we're hiring for: There are probably fewer job openings than there were, but I don't think my company or anyone in my network have changed HOW they're hiring, but we have definitely noticed a huge uptick in volume of applications. Earlier in the year, we were getting almost nothing. Now we're getting hundreds of resumes a week for each open position, and the bulk of e…

> Now we're getting hundreds of resumes a week for each open position, and the bulk of each one of those resumes do not come close to even being in conversation range of the posted JD. What percentage of these resumes do you think are generated by GPT?

Honestly, I don't know. I don't see enough of the "not close, easy rejection" type resumes, I see things after they've been filtered. But I'll see if I can get an answer to that question.

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

#762

Post by fnimick »

neon_electro wrote: post #734
fnimick wrote: post #705

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got explicitly failed from a first round interview because I took too long to solve a graph traversal problem. I reasoned my way through and got to the optimal solution, the interviewer confirmed that it was the optimal solution, then said I "should have recognized a variant of Dijkstra's algorithm" and that I had failed for not knowing it in advance. Personally, I think developing it from scratch shows more promis…

Did that experience actually reflect what you'd be doing on the job, or was it just another bullshit interview experience?

Absolutely no relevance. And even if there was, I'd like to see a business where having to take an extra fifteen minutes to reference an algorithm textbook is the difference between success and going under.

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

#763

Post by evantbyrne »

WinLychee wrote: post #670
evantbyrne wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've started grinding leetcode, reviewing system design, and behavioral questions. You MUST memorize perfect responses to regurgitate as fast as possible on the interview. Again, you cannot afford a single mistake in process right now or they will pass on you. I'm not discounting that it is hard to find tech jobs right now, but have you considered that this attitude of "grinding leetcode" is possibly contributing t…

No, the first round is usually a timed coding interview where the goal is to get an optimal solution as fast as possible. You should not be talking much with the interviewer. The intro (if there is one) is a quick exchange of names and last job worked at, then immediately diving into coding problem. You cannot start with a naive solution, interviewer will ask you to skip and go straight to optimal (this happened to m…

That is fascinating. I wouldn't even show up for an interview if they told me to prepare for that kind of exam. What kinds of companies are these and where are they located? Sounds like an interview designed by an omega nerd nightmare boss.

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

#764

Post by criley2 »

neon_electro wrote: post #739
criley2 wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In hindsight nobody asked anything _super_ hard, but you cannot make a single mistake, or a suboptimal solution, or give the wrong response to a question right now. >I've started grinding leetcode, reviewing system design, and behavioral questions. You MUST memorize perfect responses to regurgitate as fast as possible on the interview. Again, you cannot afford a single mistake in process right now or they will pass…

What kind of time pressure do you put on candidates? Do you expect them to sit there live for 45 minutes and complete something that reflects what it would be like to work there day to day?

Depends on the interview or the level but I prefer open-ended situations like "imagine a local small business that sells widgets. They want a backend that keeps track of inventory and a frontend that displays widgets and prices to customers." Or whatever the idea is. Some candidates only need that much and begin asking questions, designing systems, writing code, whatever they want. Others need more guidance and I'm happy to continue defining how this app should work or how big the audience will be or any other details. To me it's about exploring their experience with the whole process holistically and letting them dive into their subject matter expertise naturally. From this idea, there is no "completion" of the exercise as no one is actually going to write a backend and frontend in 45 minutes.

But I think you learn an enormous amount about an engineer here. How will they use this time? What will they focus on? The details they choose to spend time on, how did they turn out?

I've seen Principals take the whole 45 minutes on system design asking extremely detailed questions and building a system far superior to anything I would have engineered myself (interviewing up level). I've seen Jrs hash out a simple database structure in 5 minutes in a comment block and spend 40 minutes writing a simple react app that shows this hypothetical data. Obviously this principal wasn't hired for their front-end knowledge and this Jr wasn't hired for their system design, but still, very valuable to see how they do it.

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

#765

Post by rsynnott »

collaborative wrote: post #493
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…

I haven't looked for jobs in nearly 9 years now. Is a LinkedIn profile essential nowadays? I have dropped all social media and LinkedIn is one of the most invasive. I really dislike how it notifies you for everything

I don't think it's essential, but it's probably helpful. I also haven't looked for jobs in a long time, but interview a lot; it's unusual, through not unheard of, for a candidate not to have one (I don't think it counts against them with us, but I'm sure it does in some places).

Also, if I did find myself in need of a job, and didn't have anything particular in mind, I'd probably start replying to the recruiting messages I get on LinkedIn.

I think you can turn off the notifications; it notifies me for messages but nothing else. I assume I configured that at some point.

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

#766

Post by imchillyb »

neon_electro wrote: post #732
flanbiscuit wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my job I created a slack bot that posts a daily random leetcode challenge every morning (easy and medium difficulty only, for now). It's there for fun because we're a team of devs who love coding. But I also created it so I can practice every day just in case I get laid off (we had 2 rounds of layoffs within a year). But honestly, I'd still enjoy the daily challenge either way

And your company doesn't mind you doing that during work hours?

Not OP, but...

Framed as team events, challenges, building exercises, etc. most companies will allow short frames for them. It's all in presenting superiors with a cost analyses that speaks to them in their native language: Profit/Loss/Excel.

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

#767

Post by formulathree »

I've been applying too. I've landed tons of interviews about 40 total. Did them all.

All failed but one. It's definitely harder than before. Much harder.

I got failed for the most trivial reasons. There were interviews where I passed and did all the tasks required and the interviewer gave me positive signals like "good job", "talk to you soon" and boom the recruiter told me I was rejected the next day.

There was one where I made it to the final round onsite. Everyone liked me in the onsite. Schooled the technicals with code that worked first run and they canned me because behavioral. One guy (the director who I wouldn't even be reporting too) didn't like my reasoning for wanting to work at the company because I focused on my interest in the technology rather then the mission.

Like literally I just didn't talk about the mission... a specific thing and that was it. Besides that 4 out of 5 people during the final interview told me "talk to you soon" and one told me "I hope we see more of you in the future".

So yeah it's harder, brutally harder not just on the screening but even up the pipeline. I would say my resume is impressive enough that recruiters still contact me and I can make it to a first technical.

I think the people who are getting hired the most right now are people with connections. Who knows who.

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

#768

Post by deathanatos »

tomp wrote: post #231
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.

Interesting. Literally every job I’ve gotten was either through a recruiter or cold outreach.

And I'm 2 cold outreach, 1 recruiter, 1 from network.

Everyone's experience is different?

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

#769

Post by dmvdoug »

softwaredoug wrote: post #452
dmvdoug wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some people are bad at interviewing and selling themselves. 100% me. Also, hi, Doug.

Whenever I meet another Doug we have to fight Highlander style to try to get the others powers. ;)

There are few enough of us left that if we spread out far enough we will only jostle each other 20ish times per year for, oh, six seasons.

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

#770

Post by CodeSgt »

dustincoates wrote: post #654
ransom1538 wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember a report from facebook hiring, when they broke down how each person applied. It was something weird like %0.01 were hired by "walk in". Some person literally walked into FB headquarters and left with a job. I will say, if you walk into an office, you will NOT get ignored.

I actually got my first job out of college this way. I was trying to get a job in something completely unrelated to what I studied, so I was doing whatever I could think of to get noticed. I still can't believe it worked, but it set me on a good path, at least.

How long ago was this now?
Post reply on HN