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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?

#811

Post by op00to »

eulers_secret wrote: post #723
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 got my first job by walking in. It was at a medical center, and I just asked the receptionist for the IT department. Got routed all over the med center. When I got to IT I found the telecom manager was way over worked and needed help, but had no time to search. So he interviewed and hired me on the spot. This was in 2007. I wouldn’t do that today, you won’t get past security at most places. It does happen, though.

That’s awesome! Nice initiative!

I got my first real tech job in a similar way. I was moving into a dorm at a state university (1999 or so) and the network was not working. No one around, so I went into the unlocked networking closet, found the IP for my floors switch, realized the ports were all disabled, got them enabled and passed out static IP information by the time the dorm networking manager got there. Was also hired on the spot!

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

#812

Post by ryandrake »

neon_electro wrote: post #729
whaleofatw2022 wrote: post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and the bulk of each one of those resumes do not come close to even being in conversation range of the posted JD. Been seeing a lot of this too. Backend specific job, .NET, and we get a bunch of folks who are front-end devs with maybe python or node.

Do you make it clear that you will only accept candidates with strictly .NET experience? I've had plenty of reasonably positive experiences applying to places where I have the overall skill set (front-end or back-end) but do not have the exact tech stack the company uses as my strongest set of hard skills.

Both companies and applicants dance way out-of-step with each other on this.

Companies list 10 things as "requirements" but are willing to hire candidates without all of them. To me, requirement means must-have, but what do I know? Candidates know that companies are not serious about the requirements, so they ignore them and apply. But, some of the requirements are "must have" from the point of view of the company, but they never say it. And sometimes even if they say "Experience in obscure XyZ framework is a must!" they still may bend the rules if John Carmack-like talent applies. It's such a mess.

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

#813

Post by foobiekr »

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

Use your network, not LinkedIn, to find jobs.

But set up a LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn is the lubricant of "hey, my friend X is looking - here's his linkedin" in a way that "hey ..., here's his personal website" or "here's some word doc or PDF in some random format that is annoying."

I've hired a lot of people and there is little more irritating than highly polished, curated resumes with a lot of noise and fluff on them. There may have been a time when that mattered, but honestly I just want to see your location, education, degrees, and the jobs you've had.

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

#814

Post by troyvit »

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?

The last time I had resumes to look at it was a few years ago, pre-gpt. We had pretty a specific hard requirement (elixir experience), and easily 95% of the resumes had no mention of it. So I don't know if I'd blame artificial intelligence, more like natural stupidity.

[edit] And by stupidity I mean people who just spam every job they see trying to get a hit. Like what were you planning to do if you got the job?

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

#815

Post by ryandrake »

galangalalgol wrote: post #758
dustincoates wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wonder what would happen if you somehow managed to find what coffee shop the hiring manager was working from that day and sat down next to them striking up a conversation. Obviously most of the ways you could do that are super creepy if not illegal, but then so is most of what FB and crew make.

Your comment reminds me of an awkward story: I worked at a company once where we were having trouble with Apple's AppStore review. The app was delisted and we were losing money daily. It was so bad the CEO came in and led a meeting to brainstorm what to do--all wild suggestions welcome, and worker-bee me got to be a fly on the wall. One of the VP-level execs mentioned in this meeting that he happened to know some breakfast or coffee shop where Tim Cook can sometimes be found before work. Well, the CEO loved this, and for a brief moment, "Physically accost Tim Cook in Palo Alto" was one of the leading candidates to solve our AppStore problem.

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

#816

Post by underlipton »

kaycey2022 wrote: post #554
carlosjobim wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have no qualms to participate in the lowest kind of corruption, then it's not hard to understand why the labor market is dysfunctional.

Calm down V for Vendetta

No, they're right. The only saving grace is that it's not limited to the private sector; our political processes basically run on bribes, too, so they're just following our leaders' example. Just need to get bureaucracy in on the act, and we'll have the "Eastern Europe on the Eve of Collapse" trifecta.

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

#818

Post by WinLychee »

evantbyrne wrote: post #763
WinLychee wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you view the list here: https://leetcode.com/problemset/all/ you will see the questions tagged by company (there is a paid option as well). If they have a name you know, they probably do this style of interview.

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

#819

Post by Michelangelo11 »

phpnode wrote: post #674
sethaurus wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been very disclosive about my diagnosis, and many people I work with have in turn revealed their own diagnoses to me. I'd like to hear more about your experience with this ⸻ how is this info getting used against people?

All weaknesses or differences can be used against you. When you’re interviewing for a job you are presenting an idealised version of yourself that makes the decision to hire you easy from the interviewer’s perspective. That’s not the time to bring up flaws. In general though this idea that people should talk openly about their mental health problems is good for society and terrible for the individuals concerned. Peop…

Amen. Unfortunately, but ... Amen.

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

#820

Post by the_only_law »

jawerty wrote: post #468

I've been mentoring many new engineers and students this past year and there's a lot of people in your position. Overall, the biggest setbacks are network and a lack of focus in the niche. Frontend developer at a professional level requires a top 5% (roughly) resume to be a competitive applicant. I live streamed about some of the harsh truths people are dealing with now (not learning fundamentals being one of them) h…

How do I get a “niche”. I would have loved to work in some particular field I was interested in, but my whole career I was never qualified for that because well, they wanted someone already established in that niche. So I took what I had, which were generalist jobs. Never had a problem quickly picking up relevant parts of the business domain, but never really became an expert in anything particular. I’m an expert in figuring shit out I guess, and I’ve done some more interesting things on the side, but it never mattered.
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