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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?

#241

Post by bogomipz »

Mz wrote: post #180
bogomipz wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't think people would be upset if I did that? I wish there were a good forum to do so. Because like you mentioned people could potentially avoid a similar experience.

I agree that you probably should not post the names publicly. But it might be appropriate to email the forum moderator a link to your above story and a link to each of the three postings in question as an "FYI" and leave it up to them as to how they wish to handle it. They might well be interested in hearing that specific companies are abusing the privilege to post free job postings once a month.

Thats not a bad suggestion. Thanks. I wish there was an alternative to glassdoor where people could get this type f information out there, both good and bad. I am kind of put off by the whole look, feel and experience of glassdoor. Its a great idea though.

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

#242

Post by user5994461 »

mikebabineau wrote: post #117

Speaking from the other side, I've hired 10 people from HN over the past 5 years, 2 within the last 6 months. These have included some of my best hires. Currently, I see about 30 HN applicants per month. We interview roughly 30%. The rest are unqualified, demonstrated no understanding of or interest in what we do, and/or were spamming their resume. These get interviews: * Strong candidates who did their homework (thi…

What do you mean by "strong" "borderline" and "homework"?

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

#244

Post by imron »

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…

> What if I don't love writing web apps in RoR and just want a friggin job?

You don't need to say you love writing web apps in RoR, but you should at least say that you are good at writing web apps in RoR (if that's the position being hired). If you have real world examples you can point to of things you have built as well as approximate site load/scale stats, even better.

You don't need to love the work, but you do need to be able to solve the problems the business is facing. In my experience, the better you are able to convey that, the better your likelihood of getting an interview and then a job.

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

#245

Post by imron »

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…

> 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

I've never found that. In fact I've found just the opposite.

I've always tailored cover letters and CVs to highlight the points mentioned in the job description and why I can solve them, and I've always had a high rate of applications to interviews and then jobs.

It makes the job of the person sorting through CVs that much easier.

I've been on both sides of the table, and if you have 100+ CVs to go through, the short cover letter+CV that covers most of the issues raised in the job description will almost always make it to the short list for interviews.

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

#246

Post by user5994461 »

mattmanser wrote: post #103
throwawayfdsj wrote: post #23

At my place of work we no longer post in Who's Hiring threads because we found the quality of engineers applying to be relatively poor. Based in London.

Without context, what does this mean? It could simply reflect the quality of your advert rather than the medium. For example, on yesterday's Who's Hiring I saw a London advert for a full stack dev with 4-5 years experience for £38k-£44k[1]. That's a very low salary for London. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12846786

Honestly, all London companies who posted salary range are quite unimpressive...

The ones around £40k are not even trying to recruit.

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

#247

Post by imron »

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.

You don't need to demonstrate emotional attachment.

You do need to demonstrate that you can solve the problems of the potential employer.

People advertising for a job have a business problem to solve. If you can demonstrate that not only can you solve that problem but that you have solved similar problems for other businesses before, then you stand a greater chance of making it through to an interview.

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

#248

Post by SkyMarshal »

vecter wrote: post #238
wott wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tell me [...] why you want to work here. This part always makes me laugh. The only possible true answer is usually "to get a job", and not much more. The applicant generally does not and cannot know about the company, nor about the job at that point. The only info about the company is some bullshit in the job posting; and on the company website, some info intended for clients , i.e. in advertising format, and a bit…

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 diffe…

OP's answer may be a bit cynical, especially compared to a highly qualified candidate with a pick of many offers, but one thing he said does ring true:

"...the rest remains to be discovered. During the interview process, for example."

In my experience as both employee and employer, the interview is a discovery process for both sides. Prior to interviews, the candidate should have some hypothesis about why they want to work for you based on an extrapolation of publicly available information, and it's worth following up with them after the interview process to see if their hypothesis has been confirmed with more concrete information. If it's still vague, then there may be a problem.

Works in reverse for the company too, of course.

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

#249

Post by noescape »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #230
jaz46 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the guy from RethinkDB who found and hired Jeroen! I will say it's pretty rare, but when searching for a very particular skill set "Who wants to be hired" can totally work for finding new to mid-level devs.

Why are you looking for "a very particular skill set" in "new-level" devs?

And, what is this particular skill set?

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

#250

Post by fencepost »

noescape wrote: post #249
thaumasiotes wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you looking for "a very particular skill set" in "new-level" devs?

And, what is this particular skill set?

Well, at the time something in the list of "C++ (Boost, STL), Python, SQL (PostgreSQL, SQLite), git" caught his eye.

Since it was RethinkDB I suspect the combination of C++ (which RethinkDB is written in), Python (one of the 4 languages for which there are/were "official" libraries), experience with 2 different DBMSs and an interest in "a challenge as a backend enginer to further hone my C++ skills" were probably all factors.

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