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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?

#211

Post by TheMog »

nitwit005 wrote: post #193
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…

Do you have any data to suggest your approach works better than random selection? A lot of hiring managers seem to admit to not bothering to read cover letters. I diligently entered cover letter and resume information into a spreadsheet when hiring, and to be perfectly honest, the only correlation I could find between cover letter + resume and interview results was resume length.

Data, as in carefully curated and collected? No, I don't. I admire your approach but I've never taken it this far.

What I have is interviewing lots and lots of people over a couple of decades, first contributing to hiring decisions and eventually making them myself. As developers you see patterns emerge and you start making use of them. For a halfway efficient review process you have to make a first pass over the resume submissions and whittle the pile down to a manageable size quickly, making use of patterns spotted in the past.

In that respect, my experience tells me that "no cover email at all" = "shotgunned resume to every job listing" = "not a good fit". That might not always be the case, but it's an 80/20 rule. Yes, I'll potentially overlook a couple of qualified candidates, but I'm probably already doing this after work instead of spending time with my family because I've decided to essentially circumvent the HR department.

Part of the cover letter conundrum is that if you come in through the front door (ie, the official job listing curated by HR), your resume is likely landing in some HR system and the hiring manager might not even see it. In that case, it's a total waste of effort.

If you're coming in through the "back door", say, via a post here on Hacker News, there is a good chance that your first contact is the actual hiring manager. She or he will probably at least skim your cover email.

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

#213

Post by TheMog »

clarry wrote: post #207
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…

What if I don't love writing web apps in RoR and just want a friggin job? I shouldn't send you a resume at all? Would it be appropriate for me to just lie about it? What if the all the people who tell how they love writing web apps in RoR are just bullshitting you in the hopes that you really believe it? What if they're mostly just very excited newbies who haven't yet had the time to figure out that maybe it's not so…

Depends if you're a world class bullshitter or not :).

You've pretty much hit the nail on the head about the filters - they have some arbitrariness to them, and most people outside (and, if my experience is anything to go by, inside) HR use filters that work for them based on experience in the past. I'm not saying they are fair and unbiased (they aren't), but they work for that particular person.

I for example would perfectly OK with you emailing me (if I were hiring, which I'm not) a cover email that says something like "I have the skills you're looking for, I like the area your company is in, and I'm looking for a job that allows me to bring my dog to work and have a work/life balance". That's again specific to the hiring manager tho', I'd take refreshing honesty over someone trying to visibly BS me any day.

What a lot of people don't immediately see is that if a company is hiring, they're not looking to hire your resume - they're hiring a person (which a specific skill set) that they're going to spend 8-10h/day with. A cover email can convey more about you personally than a list of past accomplishments.

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

#214

Post by maxaf »

TheMog wrote: post #126
freework wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

You get 100+ resumes through a "Who's Hiring?" post?! I get two-three in a good month, but more often than not I get nothing at all. That said, I have hired one person through HN back in 2011, if memory serves me right, so this hasn't been all for naught.

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

#215

Post by biztos »

cgore wrote: post #142
cableshaft wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is interesting. Why not do another in-person half-day?

It's been forever since I was involved in on-site interviewing but it used to be pretty standard to have more than one (but usually not more than two) rounds of in-person interactions.

The point being:

A) avoid "having a bad day" bias on both sides

B) not decide too quickly on the "maybe" candidates

C) get more senior people in to convince the outstanding ones

Any strong "don't hire" reactions could cut this short of course but it seems like a good idea to give it a little more time for a serious candidate.

Is that not done anymore, or are you trying to make your hiring decisions faster than other companies?

(And in either case, do you have any insight as to why?)

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

#216

Post by greendragon »

Nexialist wrote: post #48

Earlier this year I spent roughly three months job hunting exclusively through cold-emails based on Who's Hiring posts (I'm in the London area). I applied for 10 positions (and got my 10th - at a fairly large media company) Some numbers of reasons that I felt I didn't get through the hiring process at the positions I applied for: * Company changed their mind hiring for the position - 3 cases * Didn't get through due…

Were there any hints you noticed in retrospect that the insufficient experience or a bad hiring test results were probable? If I could somehow predict those experiences up front I think it would save myself and them time and anxiety by stopping short. The best I have on the experience bit is just being very honest up front with how familiar with that Brand I am rather than trying to skate by and stretch the truth e.g. "I can do C with classes so I know C++!"

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

#217

Post by samatman »

AustinBGibbons wrote: post #71

I am a software engineer at Periscope Data ( https://www.periscopedata.com ), and discovered the company through a Who's Hiring thread, and we have hired at least two other software engineers through HN Who's Hiring since then as well. I was searching for "scala" and they had the word "scalable" :-)

Try looking for Lua jobs. Turns out a lot of people want to evaluate hires...

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

#218

Post by Pica_soO »

danesparza wrote: post #132
freework wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"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." If you're a programmer and you're approaching problems this way, I most likely don't want to hire you. Strike a balance between automation and giving a personal touch where it's necessary.

Automated personal touch, mmh.. i can do procedural Rts units, i can do that.

Dear Sir and Madam, i always greatly admired the spaghettis growing in your yard. The idea of adding to was asthma taking and diamond. Now finding myself, in need and desire to accomplish, a similar feet, ladder jump several feet deep up, i hereby apply for your post which i will embrace with great pressure on passion fruit and tail end.

RegEx full Regards

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

#219

Post by vic-traill »

TheMog wrote: post #126
freework wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

Honestly I'd go for number one, if I had to pick one.

Number two strikes me as trite enough to earn negative points, particularly the use of 'love'.

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

#220

Post by Retric »

Grae wrote: post #143
Kalium wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most of the best people I know have very little interest in getting another job. So, I suspect funnels tend to remove the top and bottom.

PS: I had someone insist on the opposite process where they only looked at people who HR rejected, their team was awesome if a little odd.

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