Interestingly, I got a job as a senior data scientist at Oracle via a "who's hiring" post, and I found out later that my hiring manager wasn't aware of it at the time. A contractor at an Oracle acquisition posted that the acquisition had open reqs, and I emailed him. He forwarded my info to a recruiter, who passed me along to the hiring manager. When talking with my manager later, we were both amused to discover that he thought I'd been approached by the recruiter, and didn't know about the HN thread.
Ask HN: Ever been hired through a “who's hiring” post?
251–260 of 289 posts
Re: Ask HN: Ever been hired through a “who's hiring” post?
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
That company likely has culture issues then? I've never even heard of anything like that before. I've heard people say that their HR doesn't understand them or what they do, but this is taking it to another level.
His theory was this. He like everyone else wants the top 5%. Some of those people graduated from standford and have a clean job history. Those people don't spend much time looking for work. While smaller in number, great people with odd backgrounds are likely to spend longer looking for work. So, if you actually want the best look for them in the rejection pile.
Clearly this is not going to scale, but it really depends more on other companies being defective not a poor culture at your company.
PS: I am more of the opinion that focusing on great people is a mistake. Most competent people can be great, when in a role and team that fits them.
Re: Ask HN: Ever been hired through a “who's hiring” post?
#253[raises hand]
SRE, not going to post the name of the company but its a distributed org and former YC alumni company. It's only been a few months but I am very happy there so far, and the process that resulted from reading their post here was one of the more enjoyable interviewing experiences I've had.
Re: Ask HN: Ever been hired through a “who's hiring” post?
#254Re: Ask HN: Ever been hired through a “who's hiring” post?
#255Earlier 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…
> I easily get 100+ resumes, and I don't have days to spend trawling through them It is your job to look through resume's. This is what you are paid to do. You claim to be a hiring manager. It is not my responsibility to convince you to do the job you are paid to do. My resume contains all the information you need to make the determination of whether I am qualified for the job, including "I love writing web apps in R…
> "I love writing web apps in Ruby on Rails with a ClojureScript front end" adds nothing to the application
I agree with this point. Writing that sort of sentence is meaningless fluff.
That being said, you need to think of things from the position of the people hiring you. The manager is going to give the tech lead a bunch of resumes and cover letters and ask them to read through them and make a short list of 5 (or whatever) to interview.
If they are looking to hire someone to build RoR web apps with a ClojureScript front end, then you make the tech lead's job easier if your resume and cover letter highlight your experience building RoR web apps with a ClojureScript front end - or if you don't have that, at least point out how your other experience means you can still solve their problem.
While it is possible that a generic resume contains all the information needed to make a determination of whether you are qualified for the job, you should be emphasizing the parts relevant to the current job so the person putting together a short list doesn't have to study your resume, instead, they can look at your application for 30 seconds and go:
Yep, yep, yep, wow this person has everything we're looking for, onto the short list they go.
Because here's the thing. The tech lead is usually a busy person and they've got better things to do than spend and hour or two sifting through resumes.
When I've had to do it, I'd take a quick first pass through all the resumes and put them in one of three piles: easy yes, easy no and maybe.
If all the relevant information is in your resume but I have to hunt around for it, then you'll likely end up on the maybe pile.
If I get through the stack of resumes and my easy yes pile has enough candidates, then the maybe pile doesn't get a further look, because I'm trying to minimize the time I have to spend looking at resumes.
Re: Ask HN: Ever been hired through a “who's hiring” post?
#256- Gotten a contract gig
- My current Job was found here
I'm a front-end engineer.
Re: Ask HN: Ever been hired through a “who's hiring” post?
#257Earlier 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…
As a job-hunter, I always write a well-researched cover letter, and I don't care if some employers ignore them. As a hiring manager, I love a good cover letter. So no, I don't see it the way you describe.
Seriously, also as a hiring manager I can't imagine not writing a personalized cover letter that's customized to the company I'm applying to. It's literally the first impression that a company has of you as a candidate, and I want them to think 1) I want to be hired 2) that I am thoughtful and prepared 3) that I am a great candidate for the role and company (which, if you cannot explain persuasively in the cover letter, is a bad sign).
Re: Ask HN: Ever been hired through a “who's hiring” post?
#258Earlier 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…
When was the last time you yourself actively looked for a new job? I've found there's a strong disconnect between hiring managers/recruiters who haven't been in the job market for several years and applicants actively looking for new employment. I've been on both sides recently and have to say I'm more sympathetic to the concerns of the job seekers voiced here than I am to the concerns of hiring managers.
It takes less than a minute to skim a resume and determine if a candidate has the requisite skills/experience to merit a phone screen. On the flip side, it takes at least an order of magnitude longer to research a company, figure out what the role is actually about, and tailor a cover letter. Meanwhile, my experience has been that hit rates for applications typically follow the 80/20 rule for most people (80% go to a black hole, 20% get a favorable call or email response), regardless of how much time is spent buttering up a profile vs. just sending a resume.
Unless you spend as much time as your applicants responding to their applications and telling them why they're not a good fit (which would be great), you're basically asking someone to work much harder than you for a less than even chance of getting a response back when they likely have better things to be doing.
Re: Ask HN: Ever been hired through a “who's hiring” post?
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
That company likely has culture issues then? I've never even heard of anything like that before. I've heard people say that their HR doesn't understand them or what they do, but this is taking it to another level.
His theory was this. He like everyone else wants the top 5%. Some of those people graduated from standford and have a clean job history. Those people don't spend much time looking for work. While smaller in number, great people with odd backgrounds are likely to spend longer looking for work. So, if you actually want the best look for them in the rejection pile. Clearly this is not going to scale, but it really depen…
Hah, this sounds like the Moneyball of hiring.
Re: Ask HN: Ever been hired through a “who's hiring” post?
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it possible they didn't expect the problem to require a few hundred lines?
Well, that's not the point. The point is they didn't acknowledge that I submitted anything at all, and didn't acknowledge me after a follow up email a couple weeks later. That is always annoying, but in especially poor taste when you ask the applicant to complete a coding challenge before submission.
I don't like nonresponsive folks either, but it's par for the course. Consider that before putting effort into a coding challenge or whatever they're asking of you.