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Ask HN: Ever been hired through a “who's hiring” post?

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Re: Ask HN: Ever been hired through a “who's hiring” post?

#141

Post by aaronchall »

mobiuscog wrote: post #86
trifarious wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Founder here. I used to reply to every applicant individually because I couldn't believe someone wanted to work for my startup. But then that got to be burdensome so I set up a reply template, but even then people would reply to the template and continue the conversation. Then my co-founder pointed out that spending lots of time replying to everyone wasn't a good use of my time. Point is it's nothing personal. If you…

This basically says you don't value people. You want them to go through all of the effort for you. You say that replying to everyone isn't a good use of your time, but having to apply to everyone, with the likelihood of being ignored apparently is a good use of my time ? My time is just as valuable as yours. The Github idea is great... except there's no way I can magic up a project 'relevant to the company' for all o…

> My time is just as valuable as yours.

The co-founder's time is worth what? They just got investors to hand them millions of dollars over a few meetings, on the assumption that if successful, they'll be worth hundreds of millions one day.

You are one of dozens of applicants. Some guys with 20 years have the problem that it was the same year over and over. How do they know your skills are even current and relevant?

If you're an experienced programmer, maybe you're going to make $50 to $100 an hour (depending on your market). But if you're applying to multiple firms, wouldn't you put yourself to work at that opportunity cost to differentiate yourself enough to get the job you want?

Why wouldn't you be willing to jump through whatever hoops necessary to get the job you want?

Re: Ask HN: Ever been hired through a “who's hiring” post?

#142

Post by cgore »

cableshaft wrote: post #58
BhavdeepSethi wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like the standard 2 phone screens + 5 onsite interviews.

5 onsite interviews? Since when is that 'standard'? Unless you mean one day with talking to 5 different people. I wouldn't consider that to be 5 separate 'rounds', though.

We do the following:

1. look at resume

2. recruiter phone screen, just basic are you a human who knows how to answer the phone, usually 15-30 minutes

3. tech phone screen, 45 minutes

4. half-day in-person set of interviews, some tech and some not

And then make a decision, although we'll filter out at each step.

Re: Ask HN: Ever been hired through a “who's hiring” post?

#143

Post by Grae »

Kalium wrote: post #135
TheMog wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it works both ways. You might send out 20 resumes. As a hiring manager - especially when using a "no filter" approach like posting on here (keep in mind that IME people posting jobs on Hacker News are more likely doing "guerilla hiring" and circumvent their HR departments) - I easily get 100+ resumes, and I don't have days to spend trawling through them. I think it was rands of randsinrepose who mentioned befor…

It's possible that how much effort a candidate puts into demonstrating token emotional attachment to a job posting is not a great predictor of job performance.

Correct. It's also possible that, as a candidate, demonstrating token emotional attachment to a job posting positively correlates with advancing through the candidate funnel.

Your strategy is yours to choose.

Re: Ask HN: Ever been hired through a “who's hiring” post?

#145

Post by codingdave »

freework wrote: post #89
TheMog wrote: post #80

A post from "the other side of the table" :). The previous company I worked at, I hired two people through who's hiring posts. We pretty much tried it out for about six months as we didn't have much luck through the more traditional channels our division's HR department used. So yes, there are real positions being filled through these posts. That said, just because it's on Hacker News and this is an informal place do…

You have to see it from th job hunter's perspective. It is very common to send out 20 resume's and maybe get a single response or two. It is very time consuming to write a custom multi-paragraph cover letter with every application. Eventually all job hunters learn that you get the same response rate when you write one sentence cover letters as you do when you put a lot of effort into them. Why spend so much effort wh…

That doesn't match my experience. In my experience, I get above a 50% response rate when I send out resumes with cover letters that I put effort into.

Re: Ask HN: Ever been hired through a “who's hiring” post?

#146

Post by JetSpiegel »

Kalium wrote: post #135
TheMog wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it works both ways. You might send out 20 resumes. As a hiring manager - especially when using a "no filter" approach like posting on here (keep in mind that IME people posting jobs on Hacker News are more likely doing "guerilla hiring" and circumvent their HR departments) - I easily get 100+ resumes, and I don't have days to spend trawling through them. I think it was rands of randsinrepose who mentioned befor…

It's possible that how much effort a candidate puts into demonstrating token emotional attachment to a job posting is not a great predictor of job performance.

That what the interview is for. This is just a pre filter.

Re: Ask HN: Ever been hired through a “who's hiring” post?

#147

Post by pjlegato »

trifarious wrote: post #68
mobiuscog wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems to happen everywhere these days - I've sent out several applications recently (non-HN) and had absolutely nothing back, not even an acknowledgement. It says a lot for the professionalism of a company when they can't even auto-respond a receipt, although a personal rejection would always be nice - if you can't be bothered to say you're not interested, why should I be bothered to apply ?

Founder here. I used to reply to every applicant individually because I couldn't believe someone wanted to work for my startup. But then that got to be burdensome so I set up a reply template, but even then people would reply to the template and continue the conversation. Then my co-founder pointed out that spending lots of time replying to everyone wasn't a good use of my time. Point is it's nothing personal. If you…

You don't have to continue replying after sending them the "sorry, not interested" template reply. Sending them that is infinitely better than just ghosting people, which is grossly rude and unprofessional.

Re: Ask HN: Ever been hired through a “who's hiring” post?

#149

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

TheMog wrote: post #80

A post from "the other side of the table" :). The previous company I worked at, I hired two people through who's hiring posts. We pretty much tried it out for about six months as we didn't have much luck through the more traditional channels our division's HR department used. So yes, there are real positions being filled through these posts. That said, just because it's on Hacker News and this is an informal place do…

>A post from "the other side of the table" :)

You're describing what worked for you. You don't know what works for other companies that are hiring.

You don't know the percentage of companies that look for the same things you do, the percentage that use an automated resume filter that simply ignores cover letters, the percentage that do something entirely weird and unexpected, the percentage that believe the cover letter is much less relevant than an active Github profile - and so on.

I wish employers would stop making this basic mistake. If you want a cover email, ask for one. Don't assume that you have an industry-standard application process (you don't - no one does), that applicants who don't match your unspoken requirements are bad (they may or may not be - you have no more information than anyone else does), that your special hiring process quirk gives you a deeper insight into applicant quality than any of the tens of other possible hiring quirks (it doesn't), or that your company is special enough to ignore all of the above (it isn't.)

If you want to articulate that you're looking for personalities with enhanced conscientiousness as an explicit hiring goal, that's one thing, especially if you're willing to trade off other qualities in the Big Five.

But randomly picking an action and assuming it gives you hire/fire information with no further context doesn't seem usefully rigorous.

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