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Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

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Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#111

Post by pcthrowaway »

honkycat wrote: post #88

Your writing is not strong, i can tell you did not attend college. Written communication is important in tech. Your applying to those companies with 0 experience or college degree is unrealistic. The entry level is extremely competitive and you have nothing to make you interesting to hire. They get thousands of applications for those jobs. You are still young, plenty of time to learn, but I recommend taking a step ba…

> i can tell you did not attend college.

I minored in English, and OP writes better than most of the English majors I was in writing workshops with.

edit: To elaborate, this was at a local university in a U.S. city where 70% of the population were native English speakers. None of the people in my writing workshops were ESL.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#112

Post by Covzire »

ritchiea wrote: post #72
brundolf wrote: post #15

Have you tried talking with a recruiting agency? I notice you've mostly applied at household-name companies, many of which are very competitive. The majority of the tech jobs out there are not at companies you've ever heard of. Recruiters (third-party, not in-house) are motivated to find you something that's a good fit because they get commission (from the company) based on you getting hired. They'll coach you, help…

This is great advice. I would add: don't wait for them to coach you, tell them what your strengths are and how you've had trouble finding a job at big tech companies. Let them know you're open to smaller and lesser known tech companies and that you want to be coached to help you with the interviews. Because you're striking out at the interview stage and you know you can perform better. EDIT: based on the first reply…

Personally I wouldn't volunteer to tell them which or how many big tech companies rejected my resume. I'm afraid that nine times out of ten it would create undue prejudice in the interviewer/recruiter.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#113

Post by hbt »

klyrs wrote: post #42

Brutally candid advice? You sound like a creep. Am I reading it right here, you spoofed your number to talk to executives? In the best case, they'll assume you're a pen-tester; but more likely, you're blacklisted from those companies now. I wish there was, like, short and simple advice that I could give you to not be a creep. I just tried to google that, and I'm not finding a good clear resource. Like most social ski…

you call him a creep, I would call him a go getter.

it is immensely frustrating to deal with automated systems, resume keyword matchers, no contact within a company and being ghosted after taking the time to write a proposal and cover letter that is a fit for the job description.

so what, he called an executive and got around their spam filter?

my advice

treat job hunting like a sales process.

you're successful based on the number of interviews you get.

figure out during the interview what's their decision making process.

read more books on sales and learn to handle rejection.

stop pursuing status jobs, at least until you have one with a good income.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#114

Post by dcolkitt »

snakedoctor wrote: post #89
kryogen1c wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I'm seeing a therapist. I had an abusive childhood. Not that it justifies anything. I was also homeschooled since the 6th grade, so I didn't really have any IRL friends etc. I hope that I'm not a sociopath... I might be on the high functioning autisim scale. I've never been tested so I don't know.

A lot of decorum and etiquette is just practicing enough to learn unwritten rules. Maybe it would help have more casual social interaction.

Might be tough in the age of covid, but there's lots of socializing and networking opportunities outside traditional interviewing. Meetups could be good, because you'd practice in the context of technical discussions and presenting your skillset, which is sorta like interviewing.

My second piece of advice would be to read How to Win Friends and Influence People. It formally codifies a lot of the unspoken rules that charismatic people take for granted.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#115

Post by georgeecollins »

honkycat wrote: post #88

Your writing is not strong, i can tell you did not attend college. Written communication is important in tech. Your applying to those companies with 0 experience or college degree is unrealistic. The entry level is extremely competitive and you have nothing to make you interesting to hire. They get thousands of applications for those jobs. You are still young, plenty of time to learn, but I recommend taking a step ba…

I agree but I would cut the OP some slack on the writing for a forum post. I know I have dashed off things here that could use some proof reading. But the gist of what you are saying makes sense to me.

Going back to college seems like a good idea as a general direction.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#116

Post by mattzito »

Here's my overall suggestions, some of which are overlaps with other people's advice:

- Find a local programming or software or security group, get some contacts. Have people mock interview you as though you are applying for a job at their organization. Have them be brutally candid. My guess is that you come across as some combination of arrogant and disjointed, just from the writing and the patchwork of roles. See if someone will tell you that (or something else!) to your face.

- You need to build a narrative. I also do not have a college degree, and in the early days of my career it was very challenging to get people to talk to me. The key is to have a very clear story about why you are the best at X and/or Y and how past work funnels into this role you are applying for.

- Companies like google, facebook, etc. have so many candidates that they are totally willing to pass on perfectly qualified people that don't fit the mold of who they want to hire. They see it as a feature, not a bug, but it is not in your favor. Look for smaller companies, maybe less senior roles, maybe contract gigs, anything to build that narrative and give you some resume items.

- You should be networking, with those people from the first bullet point. If you develop a local reputation as someone who is smart and just has a funny resume, you are a lot more likely to get hired. By the same token, if you develop a local reputation as over-opinionated and hard to work with, you will know it and that is why you are having challenges.

- Don't get discouraged about stuff like the manual labor job - they're pattern matching as much as a big company like Google does. They look at your resume and say, "Man, this guy is all over the place, he is going to be more of a hassle than he is worth" and go hire the 19 year old who just wants a paycheck

- Think about consulting, either directly with a company or freelancing on fiverr, etc. Is it exciting? No. Can it pay the bills? Yes. Can it build towards this narrative that you came up with a few steps before? Yes, potentially.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#117

Post by dbt00 »

snakedoctor wrote: post #77
BeetleB wrote: post #54

So far none of the replies has mentioned this, and it may be unpopular in HN, but: Seriously consider going back to school and finishing a degree. Although it's "known" that you don't really need a degree for a SW role, there are plenty of well established old school companies that will not consider you at all unless you have a degree. On the flip side, you'll get jobs more easily. A lot of interviewers who choose to…

I've thought about it. Community College, Deep Springs etc. I think autodidacticism is a better way to learn vs academic path. Though I didn't want to finish high school but I did.. So, it might be just one of those things that I'll have to suck up and just do. I disliked that I would have to take 2 years of core curriculum stuff before even being allowed to take major related courses. I had to reach out to instructo…

This was touched on above in slightly different terms, but I'm going to echo it because I see it in the answers here. You were raised differently by your parents. You are missing some basic social skills to interact with other people in a normal way, and unless you are exceptionally brilliant (which most of us aren't) people aren't going to give you a pass on those things because quite frankly it'll make it brutally painful to work with you because literally no instruction or direction can be taken for granted.

At this point in your life the best thing you can do is go to school, try to get some help from your parents or financial aid to focus on your studies, and absolutely do not try to carve your own way through the curriculum. Do the things they put in front of you. Show that you can take on tasks that are boring but necessary and get them done. Embrace the grind. And make some friends! Learning how to interact normally with your peers is a necessary skill that homeschooling rarely helps with.

Personally, I'm a college dropout. I was a mediocre student in high school and a worse one in college because I took time off in between, and was overly impressed with my own ability and didn't put in the work. It took me years to dig out of that hole professionally, but it's possible. And I would never have done it without the social skills and connections I made going to a major university, even if I didn't finish.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#118

Post by toast0 »

snakedoctor wrote: post #77
BeetleB wrote: post #54

So far none of the replies has mentioned this, and it may be unpopular in HN, but: Seriously consider going back to school and finishing a degree. Although it's "known" that you don't really need a degree for a SW role, there are plenty of well established old school companies that will not consider you at all unless you have a degree. On the flip side, you'll get jobs more easily. A lot of interviewers who choose to…

I've thought about it. Community College, Deep Springs etc. I think autodidacticism is a better way to learn vs academic path. Though I didn't want to finish high school but I did.. So, it might be just one of those things that I'll have to suck up and just do. I disliked that I would have to take 2 years of core curriculum stuff before even being allowed to take major related courses. I had to reach out to instructo…

Part of what a 4 year college degree shows is that you can stick with something for four years. Combined with some of your other responses, I think it might be a good thing to have under your belt.

Also, depending on the college scene, you might have more opportunities to socialize with lots of people which you may have missed with your home schooling.

Depending on where you live, community college varies from amazingly affordable to right around the same as a state university. Check on student aid as well.

Sometimes you have to jump through the hoops to show you can.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#119

Post by geofft »

memling wrote: post #85
geofft wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Overqualified" in concert with your employment record of very short stints means they're worried you won't be happy at the job and you'll leave for something else. Which, bluntly, they're right to be worried about. Hiring a person has a pretty high fixed cost for the company (in time spent setting things up, doing their end of the paperwork, making time to show you the ropes, etc.), and it's only worthwhile if it's…

> For instance, if they ask you why you left Amazon, you'd better not be saying "I found an important problem and I didn't get recognition for it." Tell them you had a personal emergency or something. Can I push on that a little? Lying is a Bad Move. There are, however, ways to finesse the conversation if it comes to that. But there's literally no reason you can't just come out and say, "I wasn't getting benefits, an…

I dunno, OP seems to have realized (according to other comments) that it was a bad move, and "I randomly decided to give up a job that in retrospect I could have put up with" does sort of seem like a personal emergency. :) To be clear I'm definitely not saying that you should make up a story "I had to take care of my grandma" or whatever.

I don't advocate lying (and as a personal quirk I'm very unlikely to tell an outright lie). But it's going to be very difficult to explain why you left all of those jobs in a way that doesn't scare an employer. If you can drive the conversation to roughly "it was a bad time in my life," that seems a) basically true b) personal enough that it'd be unprofessional for the interviewer to probe for details c) unlikely to make the interviewer fear that it will be an ongoing problem.

I guess the real advice here is, come up with an answer for this very foreseeable question, which you can say with a straight face and without getting yourself into more trouble.

Re: Ask HN: How can a unhireable person get a job?

#120

Post by hinkley »

hbt wrote: post #113
klyrs wrote: post #42

Brutally candid advice? You sound like a creep. Am I reading it right here, you spoofed your number to talk to executives? In the best case, they'll assume you're a pen-tester; but more likely, you're blacklisted from those companies now. I wish there was, like, short and simple advice that I could give you to not be a creep. I just tried to google that, and I'm not finding a good clear resource. Like most social ski…

you call him a creep, I would call him a go getter. it is immensely frustrating to deal with automated systems, resume keyword matchers, no contact within a company and being ghosted after taking the time to write a proposal and cover letter that is a fit for the job description. so what, he called an executive and got around their spam filter? my advice treat job hunting like a sales process. you're successful based…

> you call him a creep, I would call him a go getter.

I've not had terribly good luck with people who use the term 'go getter.' Quite a few of them have been creeps. Smooth and slick, definitely, but at the end of the day, manipulative people who I avoid making eye contact with at public events, hoping that they don't remember me. Creeps.

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