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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?

#81

Post by bdg »

raverbashing wrote: post #76
RomanPushkin wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being in a major corporation sometimes can play against you: - I see a couple of corporations on your resume, do you have experience working in a startup environment? - ... If you have Blind app access, try to search for "I really thought after Google, I should be employable" post

> "I really thought after Google, I should be employable" Well, I can see the employer side as well "After Google" you'll complain about the lack of chef on site, about how the automation tools are not quite like how it was in Google, how "oh in G we used to do that differently" etc

Yep. Had multiple ex-Faang folks who couldn't ship the most basic tickets in a startup because there weren't 10 invisible teams making their lives easier.

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

#83

Post by viraptor »

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.

Why stop applying? If you have time to apply - apply. Meanwhile, if you're not happy with results, engage a recruiter too.

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

#84

Post by rewmie »

raverbashing wrote: post #76
RomanPushkin wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being in a major corporation sometimes can play against you: - I see a couple of corporations on your resume, do you have experience working in a startup environment? - ... If you have Blind app access, try to search for "I really thought after Google, I should be employable" post

> "I really thought after Google, I should be employable" Well, I can see the employer side as well "After Google" you'll complain about the lack of chef on site, about how the automation tools are not quite like how it was in Google, how "oh in G we used to do that differently" etc

I recall reading something how some companies frowned upon FANG candidates because they were concerned the candidates were more trouble than what they were worth. Stuff like the toxic corporate mentality inherited from a FANG, and overestimation of their own ability even if they were actually good. We're talking about things like SDE1s acting like the principal engineer in their new role right out of the gate and nitpicking everything to try to portray themselves as problem solvers at the expense of their whole team. Something similar to a messiah complex coupled with entitlement. This rubs people the wrong way.

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

#85

Post by ItsBob »

I thought I'd add a data point to this discussion.

I'm in the UK and the traditional dev/tech job route was via something like JobServe, Indeed etc., where you see a role advertised via an employment agency and you send your CV hoping for a callback.

I'm in a stable contract so I'm not looking but two weeks ago, I was contacted by two agents, one day apart, both unrelated to one another, completely out of the blue.

The first agent was more like a headhunter-type in that he arranged to "interview" me the following day via Teams to drill into my background and skillset. It lasted about 40 mins. Now, I can say, hand on heart, that in all my 20+ years of work that has never happened. Ever. He didn't have a role in mind, just that he wanted a few good candidates to pimp around to his contacts (CTO's and such).

My experience in the UK has been that you apply for a role you find on JobServe, you phone and chase the agent, and you hope to get through the cattle market, not this US-style agent-works-for-me stuff.

The other agent had a role in mind but he also grilled me extensively. Again, never happened before... they usually ask you about the keywords they're looking for and that's it: call done in 2 mins. This call took over 30 mins.

I asked the first guy what was going on as his style was more like the US system where a recruitment agent will work for YOU, and try to get you a role somewhere, whereas the UK model (unless headhunted!) was very much that the agents worked for the companies in question and acted like a CV-buffer to filter out the crap.

One of the agents hinted that there are a lot of average candidates out there at the moment looking for a smaller number of roles so they are aggressively filtering them before handing over to the clients.

I suspect that there have been a bunch of rejected CV's sent to the clients and they're now wanting better candidates... either that or agencies are indeed swamped in average candidates (not pissing on them, but if you have avg candidates and good candidates, the avg ones will lose out).

Anyway, things are a bit weird in the UK at the moment so I thought I'd chime in.

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

#86

Post by koopuluri »

Could you elaborate on how you're applying to these companies?

The highest probability approach to getting an interview is via an internal referral: i.e. someone at the company you want to work at refers you.

After you've exhausted your network, cold emails with a strong pitch to engineers & engineering managers at companies that are aggressively hiring is the best approach to gain referrals.

A couple of friends and I wrote a playbook to help folks land interviews: https://koopuluri.com/get-interviews. We go into detail about what a strong pitch is, how to craft one, and how to effectively cold email.

Happy to help in any way, feel free to reply here / email me (in bio).

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

#87

Post by throwaway2037 »

nelsonfigueroa wrote: post #69

Are you on LinkedIn? I am not currently looking for a job but I still get a lot of recruiters on LinkedIn reaching out to me. I get the impression that there are still a lot of opportunities out there. But then again this may not be the case in your location.

Yes, definitely update your LinkedIn profile. Put something catchy in there. And post something once a week to generate some activity. It is totally influencer bullshit, but this war -- getting a job. You can also flag your profile in LinkedIn as looking for opportunities.

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

#88

Post by Tade0 »

tap-snap-or-nap wrote: post #72
5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #41

FED is finished . i would suggest moving into something with higher barrier to entry. last 4 FED my company hired are ex-sales/ex-whatever bootcampers (yes my company is cheap). remote working is the final nail. still few good FED jobs but you have 10,000s expert leetcoders fired by faang to compete.

I am amazed people are still getting jobs as FED

The corporate world is still in large part using Angular - it's a niche nowadays, but a safe one considering that bootcampers usually pick React.

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

#89

Post by matheusmoreira »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #22
bluedemon wrote: post #5

[flagged]

Most companies can barely stay solvent let alone engineer a conspiracy. I admit there was wage collusion in the past but I reckon that is as coordinated as it gets. We need a new boom of startups figuring how to do useful stuff with computers without resorting to overhiring on success.

New boom of startups? If the US federal reserve keeps increasing interest rates, startups are pretty much done.

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

#90

Post by firefoxd »

rewmie wrote: post #77
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.

> 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. It sounds like your recruiter is purposely ignoring any resume that is not explicitly sent to her personally. It sounds like a job security move at the expense of both the company and candidate's best interests.

A lot of resumes are not even for the job she posts. Bots and other 3rd party recruiters are also trying to game the system so they drown real candidates.

When a resumes is from her link, there are high chances it's a real person who took the time to read the job description.

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