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

I obtained my current position through a "Who's hiring" post, back from around the fall 2014 time frame.

I currently work as a full-time remote software developer for Rackspace's OnMetal product (https://www.rackspace.com/cloud/servers/onmetal), which can be succinctly described as a bare-metal cloud.

It's been an enjoyable position in many dimensions: interesting work, open-source focused development, a large degree of autonomy and flexibility, and highly competent teammates.

I believe the main reason I got a phone interview was due to the email I wrote in response to that post. It described my most recent professional experience in terms of how it challenged me to grow as a software developer, an overview of how it worked and what technologies I used to build it, and what value that work ultimately provided. That modicum of effort was well-rewarded.

Actually getting hired also depended on doing fairly well during the subsequent interview process, but that process wouldn't have happened without standing out somehow in that initial interaction.

tl;dr: Write a good cover letter!

> For the former, I haven't seen a resume handling service that doesn't have a "Cover Letter" text field, so if we can stipulate that those are common enough, why would an applicant leave it blank?

* Because it generally goes to /dev/null. Possibly literally.

* Because the time you need to get a cover letter ready and uploaded, the fucking session has expired and you need to restart the whole fucking process. Again.

I do write and send cover letters, and I hate all the online application systems with all my heart. It's awfully time consuming, nerve consuming (those web forms always suck donkey balls, the required fields are cryptic, and you need to re-type in a gazillion fields what you have already typeset in the CV you'll be required to attach anyway) and you (well, I) never get any answer past the automatic acknowledgement that I sent an application.

Throwaway from my main account.

I am a recent grad and I was looking for a job since May to Sept. I applied to a lot of places from the HN Who's hiring threads.

I thought I'd post my stats below:

Remote: I applied to around 25 of these posts - I got only ~3 replies.

* Coinbase: Had a hacker rank challenge that didn't work seem to work (and was disqualified)

* Hola Networks: Extremely slow & async (took almost a month)

  - Google Docs code test (2 questions - was not allowed to use an external editor or compile my code) and the contact refused to talk to me before I had complete this challenge.

Now for in-person local interviews (in and around Toronto):

I must have applied to over 50 companies posted in that timeframe. A few rejected at first reply (needed more experience although the posting itself didn't mention how much experience was needed), a few didn't bother replying and finally of those who did reply (~10):

* 1st interview stage: went to about 5 companies (rejected for culture fit, not enough experience, didn't do well at the white board [0]). Others made me use hacker rank or other similar tools.

* 2nd Stage: white boards (most went well apart from [0]). One hired an internal referral (and rejected me).

* 3rd Stage: Rejected because they had better candidates. One offered me a Job Offer (but not in my field at all - it was a call center support role - they why even interview my coding skills? :/)

Notes:

Overall, while I didn't have a lot of success at HN Who's hiring, the quality of interviews was much much better than from other places I had applied. If I were looking for a job again, I'd definitely use it as a source of Jobs.

[0] - It was at an American car manufacturer: First stage: phone call with coding questions over the phone (and verified against answers his paper) and 2nd stage: in person, they kept asking me THE EXACT DEFINITIONS of various stuff in Java (I explained what they were, and what they did but they were not the exact definition as in Wikipedia - WHICH THEY WERE VIEWING AS THEY WERE INTERVIEWING ME)

I think that's an overly cynical outlook on job hunting and not in line with what I've actually found on the hiring side. In general, I've found that people have specific areas of interest. Some people love social products, others love enterprise, others love hardware products they can mail to mom and pop, others love games, others love productivity tools, etc. The list is really endless.

Of course, people have different personal situations that might result in them ending up at a job that's not in one of their particular areas of interest, but it's overly dismissive to say "the only possible true answer is to get a job", when in fact many candidates could get jobs at tens or hundreds of companies and are very selective about where they end up. We recently hired a candidate who took a sizable pay cut to work with us. I'm sure he could've gotten a meaningfully higher offer to work elsewhere, but ultimately he actually just believed in the long term value of what we were building, and that's valuable for both parties.

It is true that some people don't really care at all, but that actually seems to be the minority in my experience. I've had candidates answer me in the past with "to be honest, I saw a job listing and applied" when I asked them why they want to work at our company. I appreciated their directness, but ultimately if that's how they feel, it probably wouldn't be a good fit for either of us.

When I read your writing and you say things like

    the purpose of the job does not make me sick

that makes me quite sad actually. You should aim much higher.

You need both.

Whatever experience you have, it won't get you through the door if you give less than a single sentence as a cover letter.

Whatever cover letter you have, it won't get you through the door if you have no experience in your resume.

Have some experiences + have a few sentences cover letter. That's the magic recipe. If you have any less than that, you're going with a disadvantage.