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All the jobs I failed to get

shkspr.mobi

91–100 of 180 posts

Re: All the jobs I failed to get

#91
I think that people need to be more open about failure.

Rejection isn't necessarily failure. I appreciate that the article is about objective self-evaluation and self-improvement, but that requires a good understanding of why you really didn't get the job. And it's possible the feedback you are getting is not the whole story.

Back in 2003 I was a young C++/C/Java developer with a couple of years of experience looking for a new job in a new town. I felt like I was talented and capable and was hungry to prove myself. It was a tougher market in those days so I was applying anywhere that posted a job that seemed like a fit. I got rejected time and time again and most of the time I didn't even get a rejection. I never even heard back at all. I was ignored. It was demoralizing.

I knew if I could just get an interview, I'd have a great shot at a good job. But I couldn't even get an interview. I felt like a failure.

I finally landed a C++ gig at a company I accidentally applied to twice (they gave me an interview because they thought I was resilient). It turned out to be a great experience. I got to tackle hard problems, learned a lot, and was promoted quickly. I was soon managing the team I was originally hired to write code for.

After a few years of that I was headhunted to work for a consulting firm that specialized in what later became DevOps (we were pushing CI/CD back in 2006 and automated virtualization for build and test in 2007). As part of that job, I ended up with a few gigs at companies that had rejected me only a few years before. Here I was telling them how to make software at 4 times the rate they could have hired me for full time just a few years earlier. I'd won!

But really, I learned most of these companies hadn't hired me for reasons that had nothing to do with me. I didn't know who I was competing with. I didn't know what specific traits they valued. I didn't understand the stresses and risk and pressure those hiring managers were under when they compared the PDF I submitted to the PDF someone else submitted.

For example, the company that hired me after I applied twice rejected me first because I was from out of town. They had so many bad experiences with hiring and firing that they didn't want to hire someone that had to move to take the job. They were actually being considerate of my risk, not just their own. They thought they were doing me a favor!

And in a few of companies I was now consulting for, I saw poor culture, poor talent, poor processes, and poor hiring practices. I saw HR people filtering out prospects because that person's resume didn't have everything on some magic, unadvertised checklist. I saw politics. I saw bias. I saw incompetence. Some of these places wouldn't have been able to spot talent if their lives depended on it.

Really, I wasn't the one that failed when I was rejected. They had failed by rejecting the wrong people. And I was fortunate they'd rejected me because it would have been an awful place to work. Rejection is God's protection, I've heard it said.

So rejection wasn't failure. It usually had nothing at all to do with what I really could do or couldn't do. If I failed, it was in allowing rejection to affect my self-worth.

After running my own business for almost a decade, I'm back in the software industry. I'm fortunate to have a good job thanks to people I worked with previously, but I'm hungry for bigger challenges and believe I have the skills and capability to meet them. Except now I have a 9-year "hole" in my resume that doesn't say Google/Microsoft/Facebook or AWS/Azure/Cloud or whatever else the cool kids are doing. From a hiring manager's perspective at those great jobs that attract lots of talented candidates, that means I'm a risk. But having been that hiring manager, having owned my own business, and having spent time in the trenches, I understand and sympathize. Rejection isn't personal and it's not always about me.

Re: All the jobs I failed to get

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I took great pride in informing her that a) I made more than their proposed offer and b) I’d never work for a company who couldn’t operate with basic human decency in their recruiting process. I used to work in tech recruiting. I guarantee you 100%, no one cares. As a candidate your only option is to move on or write a bad glassdoor if you are so inclined and move on.

Attitudes like yours are why tech recruiters are notoriously inconsiderate and difficult to work with. It’s not a good look and not something to be proud of.

There’s like 2 very discrete camps in recruiting in my experience, people who optimize for short vs long game basically. I’ve maintained a fantastic relationship with the best recruiter I met, and it’s definitely not like this, there’s some great people in the long game camp.

Re: All the jobs I failed to get

#93
post #83
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're in a certain industry, you're typically looking at the median in that industry and not the national median. USD $100k is ~4 year experience software engineer salary.

>USD $100k is ~4 year experience software engineer salary. Not in the UK, though.

Point still stands. UK software engineer median wages are above UK national median wages.

Re: All the jobs I failed to get

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for this. I recently graduated in May with a bachelors in CS and looking at LinkedIn has been very discouraging. I know it's unhealthy to compare yourself to others but it's hard, especially when you see a lot of other people having success. Before the pandemic I was banking on going to EYEO and SIGGRAPH to network with people in the creative technology space to break into it (my goal is to be a creative te…

> I was banking on going to EYEO and SIGGRAPH to network with people in the creative technology space to break into it The secret to networking is to "network" when you don't need anything. If you meet people in your (intended) field, get to know them, learn, learn, learn, and generally establish yourself - even a little - before you need it, you'll be 100x better off when you do. If you wait until you need it, you c…

I actually don’t see this is a negative thing, and prefer it sometimes so long as the expectations are mutual. If me and another person are on the same page about only being in touch when the other needs something, and it goes both ways, why waste time trying to facilitate a friendship for the sake of it? Often I find those “friendships” lack substance and just serve to fulfill a social norm that it’s bad to ask for things only when you need them. Perhaps what I’m suggesting is that so long as the social contract is agreed upon (usually implicitly) between parties, there’s nothing wrong with having transactional professional relationships.

Re: All the jobs I failed to get

#95

GoDaddy rejected me a year after I applied and only realized it when a recruiter was trying to input me into their system. I took great pride in informing her that a) I made more than their proposed offer and b) I’d never work for a company who couldn’t operate with basic human decency in their recruiting process. Because of that experience, I make it a point that every single candidate deserves a yes or no response…

> I took great pride in informing her that a) I made more than their proposed offer and b) I’d never work for a company who couldn’t operate with basic human decency in their recruiting process. I used to work in tech recruiting. I guarantee you 100%, no one cares. As a candidate your only option is to move on or write a bad glassdoor if you are so inclined and move on.

> I used to work in tech recruiting. I guarantee you 100%, no one cares.

Sounds correct. That's why professional tech recruiters are best avoided. Have never seen anything but empty talk and bad matches from them. On either side, recruiting or being recruited. Unfortunately the bigger the HR of a company, the more similarities to outside recruiters.

Re: All the jobs I failed to get

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I took great pride in informing her that a) I made more than their proposed offer and b) I’d never work for a company who couldn’t operate with basic human decency in their recruiting process. I used to work in tech recruiting. I guarantee you 100%, no one cares. As a candidate your only option is to move on or write a bad glassdoor if you are so inclined and move on.

Attitudes like yours are why tech recruiters are notoriously inconsiderate and difficult to work with. It’s not a good look and not something to be proud of.

> Attitudes like yours

Why the personal attacks?

I am merely telling you what goes on. Its not my personal policy or my personal preference. I hated being a recruiter and pivoted out of it.

Do you think FB engineers personally set the policy to ignore rumours against muslims in India from spreading on their platform.

Re: All the jobs I failed to get

#97
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I took great pride in informing her that a) I made more than their proposed offer and b) I’d never work for a company who couldn’t operate with basic human decency in their recruiting process. I used to work in tech recruiting. I guarantee you 100%, no one cares. As a candidate your only option is to move on or write a bad glassdoor if you are so inclined and move on.

> I used to work in tech recruiting. I guarantee you 100%, no one cares. Sounds correct. That's why professional tech recruiters are best avoided. Have never seen anything but empty talk and bad matches from them. On either side, recruiting or being recruited. Unfortunately the bigger the HR of a company, the more similarities to outside recruiters.

> That's why professional tech recruiters are best avoided.

I worked as a recruiter at a big tech company not a tech recruiting firm.

Recruiting is just a big numbers game, it is nothing personal. Its just the way it is.

Most people here hate white board, leetcode puzzles with passion but you cannot simply "best avoid" it if you want to get into a big tech company.

Do you really think making engineers with 2 decades of experience solve 'trapping rain water' in 30 mins is "basic human decency" ? Do you think they care if you write to them about that?

Re: All the jobs I failed to get

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for this. I recently graduated in May with a bachelors in CS and looking at LinkedIn has been very discouraging. I know it's unhealthy to compare yourself to others but it's hard, especially when you see a lot of other people having success. Before the pandemic I was banking on going to EYEO and SIGGRAPH to network with people in the creative technology space to break into it (my goal is to be a creative te…

> I was banking on going to EYEO and SIGGRAPH to network with people in the creative technology space to break into it The secret to networking is to "network" when you don't need anything. If you meet people in your (intended) field, get to know them, learn, learn, learn, and generally establish yourself - even a little - before you need it, you'll be 100x better off when you do. If you wait until you need it, you c…

> The secret to networking is to "network" when you don't need anything.

I can’t emphasise this enough. Over the past decade I have built up a small network of mostly former and current colleagues. We all have mutual respect for each other, so if an opportunity or need arose neither party would feel bad about reaching out or being reached out to. After all, a positive outcome will likely be mutual.

I used to think that networking involved going to conferences and shaking hands with strangers in hallways while exchanging business cards. This was terrifying because I knew I’d be bad at it.

I was pleasantly surprised at being wrong.

Re: All the jobs I failed to get

#99

GoDaddy rejected me a year after I applied and only realized it when a recruiter was trying to input me into their system. I took great pride in informing her that a) I made more than their proposed offer and b) I’d never work for a company who couldn’t operate with basic human decency in their recruiting process. Because of that experience, I make it a point that every single candidate deserves a yes or no response…

> I took great pride in informing her that a) I made more than their proposed offer and b) I’d never work for a company who couldn’t operate with basic human decency in their recruiting process. I used to work in tech recruiting. I guarantee you 100%, no one cares. As a candidate your only option is to move on or write a bad glassdoor if you are so inclined and move on.

Recruiters...ugh.

About 15 years ago I managed a software team and decided I wanted to consider new opportunities. I wasn't sure I was leaving, but I wanted to see what was out there. A recruiter saw my resume, called my workplace to speak to the hiring manager, and offered his services to help the company fill their soon-to-be-vacant development manager position.

The recruiter was happy to reveal that I was considering leaving until he realized I was the hiring manager he was talking to. He quickly hung up.

Re: All the jobs I failed to get

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I took great pride in informing her that a) I made more than their proposed offer and b) I’d never work for a company who couldn’t operate with basic human decency in their recruiting process. I used to work in tech recruiting. I guarantee you 100%, no one cares. As a candidate your only option is to move on or write a bad glassdoor if you are so inclined and move on.

I'm hiring now. I don't think no one cares. Our recruiter is processing 400 candidates at once and relying on a lot of new hiring managers to follow a process. It's a lot of work to keep up and stuff does fall through the cracks. And we're a tiny startup.

Agreed, "no one cares" was probably not the right way to put it. I should've said that its highly unlikely that someone will actually look at the feedback and take it seriously.
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