61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience • Hacker News Board

Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience

#331

Post by Izkata » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 10:18 PM UTC

vokep wrote: post #133

pagnol wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've similarly always struggled to make sense of these kinds of claims, because in my life so far I was offered a job every time I applied, so I'm wondering if I'm either living in an area where the job market is much less competitive or if I'm aiming too low. It's out of the question that I'm some kind of hotshot, on the contrary my CV is a mess and I dropped out ouf college.

I think its a mix of different perspectives. Theres people like you and myself who hear all this about applying to hundreds of jobs and it sounds absurd. For you it sounds like this is because you got lucky enough to not even need to look. Then theres those who apply to hundreds of jobs and then wonder why they don't get many responses. Something to note there is, how much attention is being paid to each listing. For…

I'm like you two - the second job I applied to out of college, I got an offer for. Still there 7 years later, and in that time the our tech interviewers have occasionally told stories or shared some of the more absurd programming tests (with names removed). This:

> If your hiring, you aren't swamped with great candidates but with resumes.

is exactly the case for us. 90%+ of them fail a test where each question is only slightly more difficult than FizzBuzz. Some of them don't even attempt to answer all the questions.

I have little doubt they're the ones sending 200+ resumes out, hoping someone bites.

Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience

#332

Post by eli_gottlieb » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 10:51 PM UTC

AstralStorm wrote: post #251

IncRnd wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to be able to convince an employer that your experience is valid, that you can work on their critical code base without destroying their customer base and income stream. If you can't demonstrate your experience through results that you've achieved, that's the same as having zero years of python experience.

Sure. Demonstrate experience how? Link them to patches accepted by open source projects? IRC conversations and emails? :) (now harder with all that slack thing) See people tend not to put patches on GitHub. (Some fork repos butit is harder for the recruiter to figure out the thing.) And there are only so many projects that are valuable at all. If you're expected to work on yet another worthless project (TM) then the…

>It gets even harder when you worked on a proprietary thing you cannot publish.

Which is, you know, the modal case.

Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience

#333

Post by meesterdude » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 11:16 PM UTC

briandear wrote: post #288

bartread wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair. But one of the things you end up realising is you can't come up with the perfect process that will please all applicants. One thing I should have mentioned as well is how I handle referrals, because it's quite different. I always skip the assessment or telescreen in favour of some sort of face to face: - Invite them in to the office, have coffee, find out more about them, let them meet some of the team, show th…

How about reading their resume and cover letter? Looking at a github link, checking out their LinkedIn. You know, actually do YOUR job rather than wasting every single applicants time. Maybe good engineers are self unselecting because your assembly line screening process turned them off. Look at the hiring process at Apple or Google for examples of how to do it well. Apply; respond to applications with a request for…

> Apply; respond to applications with a request for a phone screen or a rejection letter. Do the phone screen. Those that pass, do a technical interview via FaceTime, then those that pass that, send them to the final round. If you reject anyone during the process, notify them immediately.

nailed it. is that really so much to ask?

Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience

#334

Post by meesterdude » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 11:19 PM UTC

amorphid wrote: post #299

meesterdude wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW when i apply to a job and get sent back a coding exercise, without first even talking to me, that's usually a red flag for me and i do not proceed with them - although I do communicate that I prefer to have some kind of chat so i know there is a culture fit, before i potentially throw hours of my life away.

I also kind of agree. If I do something for you, it's nice if you do something for me. So if I put work in to thoughtfully apply, I'm kind of expecting you to do more work than flinging a coding exercise at me. As a recruiter, I saw companies spam every candidate with a coding exercise only to never review many applications w/ completed exercises.

> I saw companies spam every candidate with a coding exercise only to never review many applications w/ completed exercises.

this is my experience - and why i don't do them out the gate. Because there's a strong chance my work won't even be seen or reviewed - and i have had this happen enough times to know that i should just say no.

Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience

#335

Post by thomastjeffery » Thu, Mar 29, 2018, 11:26 PM UTC

amorphid wrote: post #147

jamestimmins wrote: post #27

The buried lede here seems to be "In real life, folks need to apply to 150-250 jobs to get a job". I'd be so, so interested to see the breakdown here, and what causes these types of numbers. Are there just enormous numbers of applicants for every job? Are people applying for jobs they aren't qualified for? How does this compare in tech vs the rest of the job market? The signal/noise ratio must be absurdly low if this…

I was a recruiter for 8 years, and maybe 1 in 100 applications turned into a hire. I suspect a big factor is the barrier to entry for applying has been lowered. Just fill out a quick form and click submit, so people will apply to any job that looks remotely relevant. An increase in applications makes sifting through those applications increasingly burdensome, and tools have not really made mentally parsing a resume e…

> Just fill out a quick form and click submit, so people will apply to any job that looks remotely relevant.

They all look the same.

There is now way to tell if a position is any more than remotely relevant, because job postings are all the same.

If you want a group (prospective employees) to sift itself (only apply to jobs they want or are qualified for), you should make a concerted effort to give them the information needed to do that. Unfortunately, no one really does.

Recruiting sucks, so let's focus on making it better, rather than just complaining about the userbase.

Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience

#336

Post by tuananh » Fri, Mar 30, 2018, 2:21 AM UTC

Aloha wrote: post #172

jmadsen wrote: post #166

It seems to me the whole problem amounts to companies deciding to redefine the word "entry", then acting all disappointed when no one else uses that definition. "Entry" means "to enter the workforce". It means you have pre-work experience such as a specific degree, speak a certain language, etc. If you advertise an "entry level web development" job and I just boot camped for that, I am qualified and will apply. If yo…

Entry Level ought to be 'willing to train', Junior, some experience, Senior, 8+ years of experience. Sadly title inflation is also a thing.

and here in my country, 2-3 years of exp get you senior title, no matter how good (or mediocre) you are. It's just sad.

Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience

#337

Post by all_blue_chucks » Fri, Mar 30, 2018, 2:38 AM UTC

rrich wrote: post #212

all_blue_chucks wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I work, if college kids do well in their internships they get offers before they even graduate.

"Where I work?" So what's the lesson, are you trying to project one? Don't end up homeless in CA when your internship goes south, because of?

My anecdote is no less valid, and has a larger sample size.

Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience

#338

Post by tuananh » Fri, Mar 30, 2018, 2:40 AM UTC

mlnj wrote: post #208

hysan wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recently (few weeks ago) saw a job that required 3+ years professional experience building React Native apps. Announced in early 2015...

Maybe they are looking for the select few who developed it.

then, they should directly contact with them :) there ain't many that fit the requirements

Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience

#339

Post by csense » Fri, Mar 30, 2018, 3:11 AM UTC

kushalc wrote: post #55

jamestimmins wrote: post #27

The buried lede here seems to be "In real life, folks need to apply to 150-250 jobs to get a job". I'd be so, so interested to see the breakdown here, and what causes these types of numbers. Are there just enormous numbers of applicants for every job? Are people applying for jobs they aren't qualified for? How does this compare in tech vs the rest of the job market? The signal/noise ratio must be absurdly low if this…

These numbers vary dramatically by location and specialty, e.g. a Marketing Assistant in Chicago has very different prospects (and expected # applications to job offer) vs. a Software Engineer in SF vs. an HR specialist in Ohio. We did an analysis on this awhile ago, specifically about # of days to get a job, but it also has some analysis about # of applications: https://talent.works/blog/2017/09/22/how-long-does-it-…

Amazing website, I'll have to keep talent.works in mind next time I'm looking for a job!

Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience

#340

Post by cutler » Fri, Mar 30, 2018, 3:53 AM UTC

fzeroracer wrote: post #191

cutler wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please elaborate? Honestly, I'm interested to hear how anyone with such a low level of technical skill managed to get anyone to believe they were anything more than a junior. It also interests me because recently I've had a number of recruiters try to convince me that I'm a senior just because I've been programming for a living for 12 years. I'm honest enough with myself to admit that although I've used sever…

The reason why they were able to seem like they were senior was because they had the work history. Even though their technical skills were lacking, the sheer amount of development history automatically made them a potential candidate worth interviewing. Once you have guaranteed interviews, from there it's just a matter of finding a company with the most lax interviews or one where you can fake it the easiest. At leas…

Most of them? This is getting more bizarre. Surely code tests would weed out anyone lacking decent technical skills? At one extreme we're told that a senior works on open source projects and knows the languages he/she uses inside out. At the other end we hear about seniors who can't even code? Is this really so common?