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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?

#421

Post by Johnny555 »

fnbr wrote: post #395
ma2rten wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't necessarily agree regarding FAANG. Once someone gets an interview it doesn't matter much what their previous work experience is.

I agree. If OP can consistently get interviews at FAANGs, then that’s all that’s needed for the job.

But what did he interview for? There's a big difference between getting a customer support interview at Google and getting an engineering interview. He doesn't really say what he interviewed for.

Or for that matter, what kind of job he's looking for and what his skills are other than QA @ EA (was he writing automation, or doing gameplay testing?), an 18 year old developer (intern?) at IBM, and customer service at Amazon. And maybe that's part of the problem -- hiring managers don't know what he wants to do. (which is easier to get away with at a small company since you'll do a bit of everything, but larger companies are generally looking for someone to fill a specific role)

If he's consistently getting first interviews but not getting past that, then maybe his resume sounds better than his actual skill level.

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

#422

Post by lkm93 »

hn8788 wrote: post #76
wildermuthn wrote: post #33

You’re young, inexperienced, and uneducated? College and good internships will improve upon all of that. If you can’t afford college, you’ll need to join the military (I recommend the Air Force if you want to take it easy, or the Marines if you don’t) and slave for four years. But it seems to me that your biggest stumbling block may be that you are shooting for the moon without realizing it.

Military is definitely an overlooked option. If sign up for an intel or cyber job, you'll probably have a 9-5 job after boot camp, get trainining, certifications, tuition assistance to finish a degree, veterans preference on jobs once you get out, and probably a security clearance. Even as a Marine it wasn't bad; the non-intel Marines used to joke that we were civilians in uniform. It can also help iron out some pers…

See, but intelligent people will consider you a parasite for assisting in US imperialism.

Maybe we could recommend a path that does not include indiscriminant murder overseas?

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

#423

Post by deviation »

> "I haven't lasted anywhere longer than 2 months. I contribute a lot and then quit after I feel like I'm not getting appropriate compensation."

After two months in my latest gig I was still learning names of people in the org, being onboarded to project and trying to piece together the codebase. Seems like you need to learn some lessons in humility.

Occam's razor is a principal that applies here. You are getting turned down because you are simply not an attractive enough applicant. If you want to improve your chances- you need to put more energy into what you've already mentioned.

I know some people who have put 150 hours of their time into leetcode problems alone before their interview for an entry-level position at Google.

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

#424

Post by topkai22 »

asidiali wrote: post #132

1) you sound very intelligent and capable even though you don't have much to prove it apparently 2) I get a weird vibe from the way you write/speak 3) I've been cold rejected from almost every one of those companies you listed, and I'm a senior engineer with a decade of experience making SV money and doing just fine. Look for smaller companies that people haven't heard of, there are thousands. It took me years of wor…

On #5- Make sure to actually drive to completion. It doesn't have to be perfect or what you originally envisioned, but it does need to run without too much error in a way someone else can use/understand. A lot of abandoned useless github repos isn't nearly as useful as a few cool demonstrable tools/sites.

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

#425

Post by snakedoctor »

holografix wrote: post #165

I read a bit of the responses here: some sadly very judgemental but I have also read OP’s responses. I think seeing a therapist is a great idea given your difficult upbringing. However try to see someone who will help you improve on your professional presentation skills. Unfortunately this stuff matters a lot during interviews. I mean someone who will candidly give you feedback on how you dress, communicate, your per…

I have some former co-workers, and some senior executive folks that could write letter of recommendations vouching that I'm competent etc. I used to have long hair which I've cut. I think that I dress farily ok. I have a brooks brother suit, levi jeans, some decent t-shirts etc.

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

#426

Post by serial_dev »

xpe wrote: post #160
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…

Spoofing your number does seem shady. However, saying someone is a creep is not very helpful. There is a big difference between how one is perceived and what a person -is-. The most helpful advice I've seen here is: get direct feedback from a candid friend. This HN feedback offers a range of opinions, but -please- don't dwell on it. Find a way to have people you know help you ... practice interviews, talking out loud…

I think saying like it is actually good, the post actually asks for honest feedback.

Well, there it is. It's better to give honest feedback so that the OP can fix these issues and realize how his behavior makes people feel.

The first step into fixing things is realizing the problem.

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

#427

Post by jcranmer »

WalterBright wrote: post #346
snakedoctor wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be argumentative. But yes, I did attend college. Send me a email, and I'll send you an email from my college email address (Hasn't been deactivited yet). I can send you my college transcript if that helps.. Well, I did get hired by IBM as a programmer so... I've contributed to a GNU open source project.. So I feel that I am qualifed for a entry level developer/SecEng/Security Analyst role. I went above my boss…

Gentle tip: writing "shouldn't of" instead "shouldn't have" is one of those critical writing misteaks one should never make when communicating with educated people. Some others worth special effort to do correctly: 1. their there they're 2. its it's 3. your you're A couple other writing tips: 1. don't terminate sentences with .. or ... 2. "bosses" is plural, I think you meant "boss's" for the possessive I know it sou…

> writing "shouldn't of" instead "shouldn't have"

For me personally, this is the #1 bugbear of writing mistakes. I'm willing to tolerate most of the other failures (especially when they're exceptionally rare), especially because several of them can crop up when you decide to change the sentence between initial mental conception and committing to paper or keyboard.

> I know it sounds elitist, and it is, but with these kinds of mistakes their going to relegate you to the "not one of us" bin when looking for a well paying job.

It's not so much the "not one of us" bin as it is a sense of "you clearly can't put in the effort, so why should we?" It's for similar reasons that you are advised to dress up for interviews.

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

#428

Post by topkai22 »

perl4ever wrote: post #374

I suggest temping. When I needed to do that, I found only one agency out of like half a dozen in my area was any help. It was the same one that I got a job through almost 20 years ago. So it's important not to give up if some of them seem to be wasting your time. If you need good benefits, then a government job may be the way to go. I've never known anyone who got one directly, but there can be loopholes, and temping…

It is no guarentee, but temping/contractor work is how I got into Big Tech. I did a good enough job and impressed enough people the team was willing to pick me up full time.

However, I would warn the OP that the most important thing is to start building a portfolio of reliablity. Temping/contracting can be demeaning- you ABSOLUTELY are a second class citizen on the teams. You will be assigned the least strategic work, because if it was strategic they would have an FTE do it. The key thing is to push through and build up a basis of trust- you can do whatever is needed, when it is needed, even if its not what you wanted, and do so in a way that people enjoy being around you.

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

#429

Post by ep103 »

7sidedmarble wrote: post #420
ma2rten wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't necessarily agree regarding FAANG. Once someone gets an interview it doesn't matter much what their previous work experience is.

Not only does that make no sense in the context of hiring programmers, it doesn't make sense for hiring anyone. Nailing interviews is about impressing someone first and foremost. It's kind of hard to impress when you don't have prior experience to look to.

While I agree with you, my experience in hiring in this industry for the last few years has been to agree with the parent comment. Once you land an interview, I don't think any of my interviewers even looked at my resume, or cared what it might have said. Most companies, at that point, were 100% and solely interested in my ability to answer leetcode questions. The better companies asked more meaningful technical questions. None asked me about experience, career, projects, skills, etc. And yes, it is a bad hiring practice.

When I was a hiring manager, I specifically designed an interview process that procured me candidates that were great devs that didn't do well in leetcode style interviews, and as a result was able to hire a much better team than I should have been able to at my budget level. We did this, by doing no-brainer things like, actually reading the resumes.

But good hiring practices are hard to scale. Reading a resume or a person is difficult to teach. But a minimally competent leetcode style interview session can be run with some success by most engineers, so it scales. Which means it worked great for some quickly growing tech companies with large amounts of cash and little need to filter questionable resume lists (usually because their name brands guaranteed high level quality applicants). This then became a fad as every company copied the name brand engineering company without wondering if their hiring process had the same constraints as name-brand co, and is now what the industry thinks is 'the one true way.;

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

#430

Post by aeoleonn »

I'm a self taught dev, with only about 2 years of experience.

Personally, I do not apply to jobs. It feels like throwing my resume into a blackhole.

Instead, my strategy is: build an online presence --> I put my resume online in various job sites (see 3rd to last sentence in my post for examples), I have a web portfolio, which links to my github where I have an open source project I built (in modern frameworks: node, react, postgres) and I am on LinkedIn with over 500 connections.

I get jobs interview requests from recruiters via the strategy above.

* Do you have open source code on Github?

* Do you have a web portfolio showing personal/academic/work-skill related projects?

I worked 5 months in 2020-- mostly was on sabbatical. Yet was hired twice-- both times via recruiters who contacted me on LinkedIn.

In 2021, I've worked 2 months-- recently quit a job after realizing it wasn't the right role for me. And yet, I have spoken two recruiters (1 internal and 1 external recruiter) in the past two days. I usually get 1-3+ recruiters contacting me every week or two-- why? Because I market myself, and I decided to build trendy dev skills.

That is, I focused on learning specific skills which I saw were currently in demand: Javascript (node & react), AWS Cloud, SQL, among others.

Yet, I do not know algorithms. It's an area I need to study. So, I don't think I'd be able to land the interviews you've landed-- those top notch companies. If I did, I would surely fail.

By the way, those are difficult companies to pass interviews with. They all have tons of applicants.

* Did you send your resume to those companies/orgs you've listed on the first line of your post? Or were you contacted by their recruiters?

Recruiters contact software developers because they have a urgent need to fill a role.

Whereas, if you're applying to companies then you're throwing your resume into a stack of potentially dozens or even hundreds of very well qualified, well-studied applicants who in many cases studied for weeks or months for their interviews.

I don't do that-- Instead, I put my presence online via LinkedIn, A web portfolio, and profiles on job sites (Indeed, ZipRecruiter, DICE, etc. type sites-- the ones that let you setup a resume on their site so it can be indexed by recruiters).

It sounds like it may be a problem of your strategy.

Market yourself, if you're not marketing yourself.

___________

By the way-- Homelessness is not necessarily that bad as long as you're resourceful: asking around to find A. a property camp on B. local resources such as food banks & community centers.

I've spent a year of my life living out of a tent in my pursuit of software dev skills so I could study (and not pay bills) rather than work full time.

For example, I set up a tarp tent in woods on the outskirts of Portland, OR, and would go to a community center for showers. Every day I'd go to a cafe to apply to jobs (this was back before I worked as a professional dev-- was still working in marketing). And sure, my car was broken into while I was camping there, but hey-- all replaceable stuff.

Prior to that, I lived in a tent for 4 months on someone's property east of Austin, TX. How'd I find a person's property to camp on? I asked around in my social network & also to strangers at parties-- "Hey, I am looking for a property to camp on where I'd have access to a shower, bathroom, and kitchen, do you know of anyone?" --> repeated dozens of times until I found someone who knew someone.

In Juneau, Alaska, I spent 8 weeks living in a tarp tent while working at a fish smokehouse during the morning & early evening, and then studying programming in the late afternoon & sometimes evening at a cafe or library. Food? Breakfast &. lunch: smokehouse's employee breakroom microwave. Dinner: Camping stove. Showers? Public Pool's locker room.

Was it always comfortable and easy? Hell no. Did it make me work hard to accomplish my goal of building skills? Hell yes.

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