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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?

#91

Post by physicsguy »

Things that disqualify CVs straight away for us:

* Unclear if have right to work in country. This needs to be stated up front! Our company can't sponsor visas, so if based in another country unless it says something about the visa status, we basically have to throw it away.

* Poor grammar, spelling, attention to detail on CV. I get some CVs through that are almost unreadable. I'm not saying if there's a single typo then we'd disqualify, but if it's littered with them it shows poor attention to detail and that's quite important professionally!

Things that would make me think twice about interviewing:

* Too much emphasis on stuff that's not relevant.

* Big gaps in employment

* Working for weird companies that show poor judgement in itself. For e.g. - Crypto exchanges, predatory companies, etc.

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

#92

Post by Paul-Craft »

pjbeam wrote: post #12

We are getting literally thousands of more or less qualified applicants for most of the roles we're hiring for at Dropbox right now. Can't speak for other places but I imagine it's similar for some. I don't know anything about your resume or qualifications but it very well may not be _you_ that's the problem, per se. As others have suggested I would see who you know places who can pull you out of the pile.

Thousands, eh?

I'd assume you're not actually hiring "thousands" of people, which means that a very large percentage of those "more or less qualified" applicants are not passing the interview rounds.

Since it's logical to assume that you'd actually want to hire someone for those open roles, it's not too hard to see where the disconnect is.

Of course, I don't mean "you" in the sense of you, personally, and I don't intend this to be a personal attack of any sort, but it really does say something about how utterly insane people on the hiring side have gotten in the past few months.

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

#93

Post by Paul-Craft »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #87
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.

What do you mean "put something catchy in there?"

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

#94

Post by seanmcdirmid »

viraptor wrote: post #83
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.

Recruiters will get you in the door. Better yet, recommendations from the company you are applying to will work even better.

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

#95

Post by Tao3300 »

physicsguy wrote: post #91

Things that disqualify CVs straight away for us: * Unclear if have right to work in country. This needs to be stated up front! Our company can't sponsor visas, so if based in another country unless it says something about the visa status, we basically have to throw it away. * Poor grammar, spelling, attention to detail on CV. I get some CVs through that are almost unreadable. I'm not saying if there's a single typo t…

> Big gaps in employment

Really curious what you suggest as a remedy for this one. It seems to boil down to "sorry, you're screwed now" or "lie but don't get caught"

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

#96

Post by tossoff49463628 »

If you admit that you have a slight bent towards entrepreneurship or similar you are out of the door instantly. If it’s somewhere like a YC startup and they realize you’re not young and willing to sacrifice your life, same thing.

Edit: to make that less bitter sounding.

To be more helpful: A resume gap that you’ll casually admit to or honesty in monetary requirements also are instant disqualified status these days. No more low interest rate free for all.

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

#97

Post by Paul-Craft »

sosodev wrote: post #65
LargeTomato wrote: post #13

Yes, it's awful. I applied to 60 companies and got 3 responses. I have a background in big tech and applied to mostly large and medium sized tech companies.

That ratio isn’t bad tho

That's half the response rate I was getting years ago when I was trying for my first job with no internships and a non-CS STEM degree from BFE Midwest Liberal Arts College.

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

#98

Post by Varriount »

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.

I've had the best luck with recruiters that have contacted me directly on LinkedIn. Conversely, I've had zero luck with the recruiters that contact me via phone call.

My assumption is that this is because many of the latter are operating under the "if we get you hired we get XX% percent of your salary" model, and are thus inclined to submit as many applications as they can.

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

#99

Post by devoutsalsa »

One resource you can look into is specific channels for your skills. For example, if I'm looking for Elixir work, I'll look at the jobs in the weekly Elixir Radar newsletter => https://elixir-radar.com/. And there is also an #jobs channel on the Elixir Slack account => https://elixir-lang.slack.com/

Good luck OP!

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

#100

Post by pavlov »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #48
frontman1988 wrote: post #33

Try applying with a different name, maybe there's some discrimination factor at play as well

I recall reading many years ago about a woman who had to change her name to be male to get calls. That is in contrast with a few years ago where a man changed his resume to be of a black lesbian and started getting calls.

What kind of résumé highlights that the applicant is a black lesbian?

This sounds more like a porn movie script. “Hardcore All-Girl Positive Discrimination XVII”

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