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All the best advice we could find on how to get a job

80000hours.org

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Re: All the best advice we could find on how to get a job

#11

Post by sotojuan »

mjevans wrote: post #6

The connections section is both focused entirely on LinkedIn (arguably a worse form of Life Invader than Facebook; I refuse to use either of these or any other such service). How is someone that values their privacy supposed to get a job or even break in to having a job where they make connections to peers?

> How is someone that values their privacy supposed to get a job or even break in to having a job where they make connections to peers?

You can't really connect and socialize with people online without being a little lenient about privacy.

Still a social network, but Twitter is great. I can ask more "famous" people to retweet a tweet from me asking for jobs or even get them to connect me with someone (if you spent a bit of time meeting them). Also, depending on your community their chat or forum may help. For React, I've gotten interviews and contracts from their chat. For real life, meet ups are good though you gotta be a bit extroverted.

I've also never used LinkedIn.

Re: All the best advice we could find on how to get a job

#13

Post by r3bl »

merpnderp wrote: post #8
mjevans wrote: post #6

The connections section is both focused entirely on LinkedIn (arguably a worse form of Life Invader than Facebook; I refuse to use either of these or any other such service). How is someone that values their privacy supposed to get a job or even break in to having a job where they make connections to peers?

I'm not sure there is another way. But if you are in IT, and don't mind working with recruiters, LinkedIn is an incredibly efficient way to hook up with tons of recruiters willing to find you jobs doing exactly what you're looking (and qualified) for. We just lost a guy with barely 2 years experience on a lark response to a recruiter on LinkedIn. He made some ridiculous requests and the recruiter hooked him up.

> I'm not sure there is another way.

Of course there is. The guy who recruited me for my current position basically took a look at two things: my website / blog and my GitHub profile.

He was able to find far more useful things than he could by simply looking at my LinkedIn profile. He found out about me because he tweeted that he's looking for someone and one common "friend" (friend is a bit of a strong word here since I have never met that person offline at that time) replied to his tweet mentioning me.

That was it.

Re: All the best advice we could find on how to get a job

#14

Post by BenjaminTodd »

sshykes wrote: post #4
BenjaminTodd wrote: post #2

Hi everyone, I'm the author of the piece. If you know any other good resources or statistics we should incorporate, I'm keen to hear about them. If you disagree with something, feedback is very welcome.

Please get rid of the annoying "this will only take a second" popup, I was reading but closed the window immediately when that shit started.

Sorry about that. I find popups annoying too. Unfortunately we just find we get a way higher conversion to the newsletter when we use popups, and since people need to engage over several months to get value out of the advice, getting people onto the newsletter is really important.

Re: All the best advice we could find on how to get a job

#15

Post by merpnderp »

One thing in this article that really caught my eye was "Do free work". When I was a young kid I remember my grandfather, who was about to retire from a long career at the power utility having been head of the union, and much beloved by all his coworkers and managers, told me about how he got that job. He had been laid off at a grain mill, and was getting by as a butcher. But a friend of his got him in the door to see the hiring manager at the utility. My grandfather said I'll work two weeks for you for free, and if I make you happy, then you can hire me. After the first day, he was hired. I guess this also touches on the article's point about networking.

Re: All the best advice we could find on how to get a job

#16

Post by kafkaesq »

p4wnc6 wrote: post #5

I've been unemployed for about 14 months since resigning from my most recent role -- a role which my close family and friends characterized as "destroying me." After becoming unemployed, with enough savings to sustain myself for a long search, I then faced a significant family trauma that required me to move away from Boston (where I had lived and worked for most of the past decade), back home to do basically full-ti…

Am curious as to this obscure fact about GCDs and integer lattice points you got dinged for, actually.

Re: All the best advice we could find on how to get a job

#17

Post by merpnderp »

p4wnc6 wrote: post #10
merpnderp wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure there is another way. But if you are in IT, and don't mind working with recruiters, LinkedIn is an incredibly efficient way to hook up with tons of recruiters willing to find you jobs doing exactly what you're looking (and qualified) for. We just lost a guy with barely 2 years experience on a lark response to a recruiter on LinkedIn. He made some ridiculous requests and the recruiter hooked him up.

This is not how it works. Recruiters generally spam everyone based on an inventory of jobs they have, and half the time, the recruiter is more interested in pumping you for information about where you currently work or where else you've applied. When recruiters do put you forward for a job, they require you to give up all negotiation power in advance, and generally they are paid bonuses on top of their commission if…

Maybe I should contact his recruiter and find out :P don't tell my boss.

Re: All the best advice we could find on how to get a job

#18

Post by p4wnc6 »

kafkaesq wrote: post #16
p4wnc6 wrote: post #5

I've been unemployed for about 14 months since resigning from my most recent role -- a role which my close family and friends characterized as "destroying me." After becoming unemployed, with enough savings to sustain myself for a long search, I then faced a significant family trauma that required me to move away from Boston (where I had lived and worked for most of the past decade), back home to do basically full-ti…

Am curious as to this obscure fact about GCDs and integer lattice points you got dinged for, actually.

I was asked a slight variant of this question: http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/918362/what-is-the-n... >, as the third tech question in a 1-hour interview.

The interviewer also did not give me any time to ask him questions. Also, nothing about the job suggested aptitude in this sort of math mattered, I think they just wanted to screen for Math Olympiad types. I wish they would have just asked me though. I'd happily tell them I'm not a Math Olympiad type, don't want to be, don't value that skill set or believe it translates to better on the job performance, and could have saved them (and me) a lot of time and expensive plane ticket and hotel room.

Re: All the best advice we could find on how to get a job

#19

Post by ryandrake »

p4wnc6 wrote: post #5

I've been unemployed for about 14 months since resigning from my most recent role -- a role which my close family and friends characterized as "destroying me." After becoming unemployed, with enough savings to sustain myself for a long search, I then faced a significant family trauma that required me to move away from Boston (where I had lived and worked for most of the past decade), back home to do basically full-ti…

Wow, I feel for you, having been there myself a number of times. The playing field is so stacked against applicants it's not even funny. One thing though:

> I've done literally hundreds of phone interviews, had 7 different on-site interviews, and received offers from 2 of them (both of which I rejected because they asked me to accept compensation/benefits packages that were substantially worse than what I had when last working).

That might have been a mistake. When nobody's hiring (as is the case today), you kind of have to take what you can get. Plus, being already employed increases your odds of later getting another job, hopefully back where you should be compensation-wise. If I were an unemployed tech worker today, I would literally take the first job I could get, so at the NEXT interview I didn't have to admit that I'm out of work.

Re: All the best advice we could find on how to get a job

#20

Post by robertwiblin »

yumaikas wrote: post #12

Haven't read the article all the way, but the "Hey HN, sorry to do this" dialog caught me off guard (I know that referrer headers can be used for it). Nice touch, BenjaminTodd.

Hah that was me actually! :D

Glad it brought a smile to your face.

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