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How to get hired at a startup when you don't know anyone

shane.engineer

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Re: How to get hired at a startup when you don't know anyone

#71

Post by mixmastamyk »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #17

I don't get why you have to go to such extremes to get hired. In my experience getting hired at a startup is like getting hired anywhere else - in fact generally it's easier. You send in a CV, attend one or two interviews (personal and technical), and get a decision. I'm not sure what it's like now but weren't companies finding it really difficult to find engineers in SV not that long ago? That should make things eve…

Since the destructive idea started that one bad hire was a disaster for a company, it has been a lot more difficult than that. It is probably a major factor in the talent shortage, as companies are no longer willing to take any chances or train anyone, even for jobs that would take four hours of training!

I've watched companies in the last year I interviewed with wait and suffer? a year to fill a position, even though I could have done their silly rest-api job with one arm behind my back, haha.

Re: How to get hired at a startup when you don't know anyone

#72

Post by wdewind »

cscharenberg wrote: post #66
wdewind wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if that's true. This strategy certainly isn't going to land you a job at Google/FB/etc. but I'd be happy to chat with someone in their 30s who'd just gone through a bootcamp kind of thing and was offering a similar deal as someone who is currently hiring at a startup and we had a position for a junior/recent college grad. To me the biggest snafu is that it's a lot easier to do the whole "I'll work for fr…

At most companies if you changed careers near 30, you will never get a chance to talk with someone and show your potential. The HR filters are so tight that unless you know someone on the inside of a company who can pull strings, you'll never get asked in for an interview. I'm watching my wife - a lawyer with math degree and programming experience - struggle to even get responses for junior QA positions. I think the…

Apply to startups. I don't know what else to tell you. I'm seeing TONS of people (for better or worse) get placed in jobs after completing coding bootcamps. Some of them have >90% placement rates.

Re: How to get hired at a startup when you don't know anyone

#73

Post by wcchandler »

I've done something similar. I wanted to branch into a new discipline, so to show off my ability to pick up a new skillset, I learned how to juggle. At first it started off as a joke, because their jobsite said "juggle multiple things."

I spent a couple of hours, recorded video of my progress and posted it to YouTube. I didn't get the job. I actually went out on a limb and reached out to somebody privately to make sure it wasn't too "out of the ordinary" and that I didn't ruin my chances for anything in the future. Thankfully, mostly everyone forgot about it. I guess it wasn't unique or clever enough?

Re: How to get hired at a startup when you don't know anyone

#74

Post by leeny »

dominotw wrote: post #55
leeny wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former recruiter, I can't second this enough. Applying online is like shouting into a black hole. Pinging a real person with sincere, earnest content and talking to them like they're a person is so much better.

>Pinging a real person with sincere, earnest content and talking to them like they're a person is so much better. I was a bigtime Rdio fan. I loved their clean design, discoverability. I pinged a real person with big list of improvements and bugfixes that was I was collecting over many months. I told them I wanted to work for them and sent them my resume. They got back to me with "We have sent over your suggestions t…

And look where they ended up :/

Re: How to get hired at a startup when you don't know anyone

#75

Post by evook »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #65
evook wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was young, I cloned services and wrote a letter to the company offering to buy a exclusive one year license or it would get released as open source in addition with a demo. That was giving me some job chances. Now it's all about who you know, and what condition a potential employer is offering. No car, home office, solo office, dynamic hours and I'll walk out of an interview when the pay isn't obscenely high.…

Are you saying you basically extorted these companies for a job based on the threat of releasing open source software?

I wouldn't say that. I was after the money back then, but some companies actually liked that attitude of mine. Also lacking a product cycle those threads expired by themselves.

Re: How to get hired at a startup when you don't know anyone

#76

Post by VarunAgw »

leeny wrote: post #51
patio11 wrote: post #36

An intermediate step between "send in a resume and cover letter that no one reads" and "send in an unsolicited blow-their-minds project", which may well bounce off the same spam or attention filter which bounces a resume, is "convince one person in the company that they want you to apply there." This is much, much less difficult than engineers think it is. People with hiring authority are on the same Internet you are…

As a former recruiter, I can't second this enough. Applying online is like shouting into a black hole. Pinging a real person with sincere, earnest content and talking to them like they're a person is so much better.

I wish this was true everywhere. I've tried this few times on the companies I was very excited about, but it never worked so far for me. Most of the time, they don't even care to reply. I don't like faking interest, so I just drop my applications into the black hole these days.

Re: How to get hired at a startup when you don't know anyone

#77

Post by Kluny »

blairbeckwith wrote: post #12

This is so true. It's really shocking how little effort and originality some/most people go to in getting the job they want. I have a similar story, although nowhere near as much effort. When I was 20 and hating life in school, I really wanted to work at Shopify. At the time, they were maybe 80 people. I've never made a resume and didn't feel like that would get me noticed. Sio I simply sent a cold email to Tobi, our…

Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. I've sent naive emails like that with no response, or a polite "that's nice, kid, but come back in 4 years with your degree." I've also tried putting exceptional effort into a job application, like by using their API or writing a promotional piece about them on my blog that showcases their company while demonstrating my deep understanding and interest in what they do. Maybe I was just doing it wrong, but my reward for such efforts was nothing but silence.

Meanwhile, sending out form resumes seems to eventually and consistently work, with way less effort.

Re: How to get hired at a startup when you don't know anyone

#78

Post by tedmiston »

swighton wrote: post #22
mschip wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I put a much higher priority on the people I work with. So I would add to that risk the scenario where I get the job but it turns out to be a bunch of bros. Maybe there was some public insight to the kind of people this person would be joining to mitigate that risk.

I spent a lot of time learning everything I could about the company, the people, their product, etc. I knew half the engineers by name from various videos they had posted and was fully convinced it was a company of amazingly talented people.

Just curious -- were there other companies you put this much effort into studying and making such a stellar first impression? Did you feel sure enough you would get this position that you didn't need to?

Re: How to get hired at a startup when you don't know anyone

#79

Post by ryandrake »

leeny wrote: post #51
patio11 wrote: post #36

An intermediate step between "send in a resume and cover letter that no one reads" and "send in an unsolicited blow-their-minds project", which may well bounce off the same spam or attention filter which bounces a resume, is "convince one person in the company that they want you to apply there." This is much, much less difficult than engineers think it is. People with hiring authority are on the same Internet you are…

As a former recruiter, I can't second this enough. Applying online is like shouting into a black hole. Pinging a real person with sincere, earnest content and talking to them like they're a person is so much better.

> As a former recruiter, I can't second this enough. Applying online is like shouting into a black hole.

If this is true, why even have an online job site? Why waste everyone's time?

Re: How to get hired at a startup when you don't know anyone

#80

Post by patio11 »

ryandrake wrote: post #79
leeny wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former recruiter, I can't second this enough. Applying online is like shouting into a black hole. Pinging a real person with sincere, earnest content and talking to them like they're a person is so much better.

> As a former recruiter, I can't second this enough. Applying online is like shouting into a black hole. If this is true, why even have an online job site? Why waste everyone's time?

For one thing, existence of a jobs page tells desirable candidates to find the real way to apply; non-existence leads some candidates to assume you're not hiring.

Every company with 10+ engineers is hiring engineers but many people don't know that yet, so, have a jobs page.

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