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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

#91

Post by HillaryBriss »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #68
cscharenberg wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Remember, though, America has a critical shortage of programmers and we desperately need to allow more to immigrate!!!

Adding to that paradox, a major theme of the original post is that personal connections are really important to getting a startup job.

So, startups are really looking hard outside the founders' circle of friends to find the most qualified applicants?

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

#92

Post by dominotw »

leeny wrote: post #74
dominotw wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 :/

yea, apparently their CTO didn't like anyone without python experience. bizarre.

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

#93

Post by jlees »

wdewind wrote: post #72
cscharenberg wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Startups (depending on the size) are both wonderful and terrible places for a new bootcamp grad. There is a lot to learn, and learn quickly, which is something any bootcamp grad has had to master -- but there is often a dearth of mentoring and, as time goes on, patience for junior mistakes. Larger startups are much better than small ones, in my experience working both on the startup and bootcamp (instructor, mentor) sides of the table -- especially larger startups who have already hired from that bootcamp, or a similar one, before. Then you have the alumni-mentor train going, and life is great.

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

#94

Post by gedrap »

vinceguidry wrote: post #34
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…

Naiveté is a useful quality in a candidate for the right company. It signals the potential for loyalty. Once you've had your idealism broken by corporate bullshit, there's no easy way to get it back.

Absolutely.

When I was at my first job after the university, yet to learn about office politics, how things work and large companies, hyped up by the recruiter and all that stuff, I genuinely thought 'OMG so many things could be done better, I can do it!'. And given it was a company with hundreds of millions in revenue, where hourly revenue was more money than I had even seen in my life... Yeah I was hyped up! Just imagine adding 0.1% to the bottom line! :)

I am still naive, maybe not that much, and hoping that in the right company, I can do it. Won't change the world, but I can change some things for the better. Moved across Europe, joined a small (in terms of staff head count) company where I had a bit of connections. Great decision.

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

#95

Post by Kalium »

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…

> 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 used to believe that putting in effort and showing originality would help me get the job I wanted. Over time, I came to understand that was a huge drain on my time, energy, and emotional well-being for the sake of people who basically never noticed.

For instance, at my current employer we use JobScore. In theory, an applicant can submit a cover letter and a portfolio and so on. People who look at engineering applicants go straight for the resume and ignore details like cover letter.

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

#96

Post by AlwaysRock »

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.

Hey "former recruiter" what do you do not? I'm currently a recruiter now and always interested in hearing about what people do after recruiting.

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

#97

Post by niij »

elliotec wrote: post #67
niij wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're the best boss in this thread. On a side note, what are higher ups looking for in a young applicant? I'm graduating in the fall with a CS Undergrad and don't have any startup contacts (I live in a smaller town in Missouri) and am trying to get my foot in the door somewhere that is doing interesting work.

Projects. Contribute to open source as much as possible and build as much stuff as possible that you can show off. Then you should have no issue finding something interesting. Might have a better chance searching outside your hometown though.

Thanks! I've been meaning to carve time out of my school schedule to make some contributions to a few projects on Github.

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

#98

Post by patio11 »

ryandrake wrote: post #86
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…

Time to do such research is not always a luxury a job applicant has. The hypothetical job candidate would, I'm sure, love to be able to get to know the intimate details of the 30 companies they need to apply to right now (because their savings dries up in 3 months and they have a family to feed), but that takes a lot of time. Maybe you didn't happen to have watched Bob's presentation at $CONFERENCE. Chances are, you…

If unsolicited apps are 1/10th as effective as solicited ones (generous!) then you only have to research 4 companies to outdo 30 shots in the dark.

You can find e.g. the name of the CTO of Fog Creek. It's FizzBuzz-level difficulty or less.

You can find e.g. any published work of Thomas Ptacek to bond over. You didn't have to run into him at Black Hat, or even know that he has spoken at Black Hat, to find a video of him speaking at Black Hat.

You may not know who is in charge of Fraud at Square. You know who probably knows? Well, to a first approximation, any engineer there should (or be able to find it out trivially). Can you find any engineer at Square?

We have the good fortune to be in an industry where people are hyper-connected, publicly identified, and Internet routable. Use these facts to your advantage when looking for a job.

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

#99

Post by johns »

Kalium wrote: post #95
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…

> 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 used to believe that putting in effort and showing originality would help me get the job I wanted. Over time, I came to understand that was a huge drain on my time, energy, and emotional well-being for the sake of people who basically never noticed. For instance, at my current employer we u…

That's too bad. A cover letter is 100x more valuable than a resume.

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

#100

Post by Kalium »

johns wrote: post #99
Kalium wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 used to believe that putting in effort and showing originality would help me get the job I wanted. Over time, I came to understand that was a huge drain on my time, energy, and emotional well-being for the sake of people who basically never noticed. For instance, at my current employer we u…

That's too bad. A cover letter is 100x more valuable than a resume.

Could you explain why you say that?
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