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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?

#261

Post by ktRolster »

greendragon wrote: post #182
ktRolster wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Company 1 wanted me for a remote position, but wanted to pay me about half my market rate. Is it possible to get anywhere close to a Silicon Valley salary on a remote position?

The Seattle area seems to have equivalent or better salaries locally or when the remote company is in SF. Might just be my limited view though. I know a guy in my company who relocated to France and took a lower pay, but I suspect if he had stayed in the US it wouldn't have gone down much if at all. There are a few others who transition into a mostly-work-from-home person, then full-time-work-from-home except occasio…

for a cheap cabin with fiber somewhere nice

Where on earth is that? lol

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

#262

Post by ryandrake »

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…

I agree 100% with you except that the ratio is probably more like 100:1 rather than 20:1. Between all the arbitrary filters, employer inaction/black-holing, and networking-nepotism, your odds of cold-applying with a resume are really, REALLY small. When you're at that point it's a numbers game. Spray and pray as many resumes as you can.

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

#263

Post by lmilcin »

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…

Those who send tens or hundreds applications without trying to do any work or without any ability to perform the job are disproportionately represented in the total volume of applications you get. The best way to handle this is to screen them out by requiring just a little work. Writing a few original words pertaining to the offer is one way.

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

#264

Post by ryandrake »

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…

I don't think it's cynical at all. Unless you're one of those rare, elite, top-0.1% talents, who can literally pick and choose among offers from his favorite companies, the deck is very much stacked in the employer's favor--you often have to settle for what you get.

"I'd like to be able to pay my rent this month, but gosh I don't have a passion about this company's area of interest so I think I'll pass on this job" -- said nobody ever.

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

#265

Post by ryandrake »

johnward wrote: post #45
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 ?

I take the time to filter out jobs that I know I would be good at and then write a cover letter and customize my resume for the job, only to not hear any acknowledgement at all. I'm about to just blast my resume out with no filter and see what happens.

I've gotten very cynical and hardened to this over the years. I remember meticulously researching companies and preparing detailed cover letters showing exactly why I'm a great fit for that job, spending hours reviewing and tweaking them until finally sending them off, only to be "black-holed" by the company. After 40-50 or so of these you just start spraying and praying.

Hiring managers & HR: Tired of getting "spray and pray" resumes? STOP DOING THIS.

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

#266

Post by ryandrake »

giis wrote: post #21
joekrill wrote: post #6

I was actually very surprised at the amount of folks that simply didn't respond _at all_ -- meaning not even an _acknowledgement_. The folks that I did hear back from were great, though. Nothing ever actually worked out in my case, though.

In my experience for remote-position, at-least I received ack. mails like "time-zone issues are there" etc and like 20% never sent ack. at all. Strangely most often those company appear almost every-month with same job posting, I wonder whats going on.

I'm actually working on a fun project that sorts through months of "Who's Hiring?" posts looking for companies posting identical or nearly-identical postings month after month. It'll be called "Who's Not Hiring?" Look for it once I get some free time :-)

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

#267

Post by mobiuscog »

aaronchall wrote: post #141
mobiuscog wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? I…

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

Because I'm not a performing animal.

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

#269

Post by clarry »

estreeper wrote: post #222
clarry wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? I shouldn't send you a resume at all? Probably not. If someone is doing something they don't like, they tend to stop doing it so well as time goes on. While it may work out for a while, people usually need to care at some level about what they're doing to do a good job. Not everyone, sure, but I wouldn't take the chance. There is also a lot m…

You could very well be working around professionals who take pride in doing their job well despite hating (or just not particularly liking) it. It might even look like they love the job.

Maybe it's not so common in SV startups that insist on hiring lovers. But in other industries it might be more of a rule than an exception.

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

#270

Post by emilburzo »

ryandrake wrote: post #266
giis wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience for remote-position, at-least I received ack. mails like "time-zone issues are there" etc and like 20% never sent ack. at all. Strangely most often those company appear almost every-month with same job posting, I wonder whats going on.

I'm actually working on a fun project that sorts through months of "Who's Hiring?" posts looking for companies posting identical or nearly-identical postings month after month. It'll be called "Who's Not Hiring?" Look for it once I get some free time :-)

That sounds like fun.

If you haven't done that part yet, I actually wrote a scraper[1] in Java for the "Who's Hiring?" threads when I built a job searcher[2].

Not the prettiest, but it's pretty fast.

[1] https://github.com/hnjobs/parser

[2] https://hnjobs.emilburzo.com/

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