Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

531–540 of 875 posts

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

#531

Post by RGamma »

kryogen1c wrote: post #81
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…

[flagged]

OP seems fine to me. It's the social norms/environment that seem pathological here.

Who would have thought that if you interact with robots (read: computers) long enough you turn into one yourself, dear Americans...

It's a clown show. I do not envy OP.

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

#532

Post by kamaal »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #211

As a hiring manager, the things that stand out to me in your post: - You said you quit a job at EA, quit a job at IBM, dropped out of college your freshman year. You may have valid reasons for leaving each of these, but you have to see this from the manager's perspective: You had 3 different great opportunities that all came to a dead end at the beginning of your career. You need an alternate narrative. - You talk ab…

>>You said you quit a job at EA, quit a job at IBM, dropped out of college your freshman year. You may have valid reasons for leaving each of these, but you have to see this from the manager's perspective: You had 3 different great opportunities that all came to a dead end at the beginning of your career. You need an alternate narrative.

Things like this are very important. Job hopping is a giant red flag for lots of companies.

Nobody wants to hire an employee whose replacement they have to hire under an year.

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

#533

Post by pvaldes »

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…

Calling yourself "snakedoctor" don't helps to build trust and reinforces the history that you are not totally reliable at all times. Anything that directly would remind to snakes or snake oil is a poor choice if the goal is to impress people, make contacts and be hired

(in my stupid opinion, I could be wrong).

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

#534

Post by khazhoux »

Adding to other observations here:

You got meetings with SVPs at Dell, Cisco, etc. Those are *really high positions* that you reached out to directly. They have hundreds of people under them, possibly over a thousand. They have problems upon problems to deal with. They won't have any time for a single new hire, let alone someone who is still at the early stage of their career.

People who've worked in plum tech jobs for 20 years still think twice before reaching out to an SVP directly.

Set your sights lower.

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

#535

Post by kbutler »

bmdavi3 wrote: post #415
srinivgp wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear people say this so much and it's so incredibly not true for me but I dunno if I'm different, they're all full of it, or both.

Serious question. Which parts of it aren't true for you? Have you found that making extra effort to be interested in the other person's ideas / topics / interests, listening carefully, etc. isn't well received? Or is "nobody wants to hear what you have to say" not true, because you do care what other people have to say, for example? (Obviously that's great if so) Or something else? I ask because I started making that…

For me, it's inaccurate in that I don't really like to talk about myself - especially ad hoc. And some friends really are interested in what's going on in my life (and I need to push myself to share more).

I find are two types of people - talkers and non-talkers. There is significant but not complete overlap with introverts and extroverts, but some introverts are talkers if they can get someone who will actually listen - others won't really talk regardless, and really prefer to let the other person carry the conversation (or companionable silence, or end the conversation).

Conversation skills differ depending on the pairing - but everyone appreciates someone who listens to understand, not just waits while thinking about what they will say next.

Talker with another talker - listen, ask occasional questions, and give the other person lots of chances to talk. Reduce how much you share.

Talker with a non-talker: Also listen, ask occasional questions, but don't expect too much response - but keep trying to draw out more & find things the other person wants to talk about. Be willing to carry more than your half of the conversation, but that comes naturally, so be careful not to dominate.

Non-talker with a talker: The talkers will love you if you listen! Be attentive, follow along, give verbal and non-verbal acknowledgements and reactions, ask questions, push yourself to share more and "hold up your end of the conversation".

Non-talker with another non-talker. This is rough. You have to pretend you're a talker and carry more than half the conversation. Share more. Work harder to get questions and listen, consider, and ask follow-up questions. It can be really helpful to have questions and topics prepared in advance (good conversation doesn't have to be extemporaneous).

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

#536

Post by hjorthjort »

Do you have anywhere you can do interview practice? Somewhere you can get honest feedback? It's possible you are sending of bad vibes. Impossible to say from just reading your post. But if you for some reason can't get a break despite an impressive track record and go-getter attitude, it's worth evaluating whether it's a personality deficit. If the person across the table feels uncomfortable with your, that can be a dealbreaker.

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

#537

Post by arp242 »

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'll beg to differ; honest feedback was asked ("even if it's brutally candid") and the previous posted gave their honest impression. Other people have their own impressions of course which may differ, bit this is theirs and IMHO this is just valid as any other.

Sometimes you need to be brutally honest to be kind. I'm not a huge fan of harsh lessons and such in general, but there is a time and place for them, and this is probably one of them.

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

#538

Post by atoav »

geocrasher wrote: post #204
snakedoctor wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I think hiring managers think that I'm a quitter. I definitely think that I was whining too much about the Amazon role. Beggers can't be choosers. However, the no health insurance thing rubbed me the wrong way. I felt like it was a dead end job. I wish that I would've stayed with it though. I probably would've been promoted by now. I need to stay with a job and rack up some years of experience for sure. Like I…

> felt like that I should've got promoted after reporting those issues, especially since I found them within my frist two weeks. Dude. What are you thinking? You get hired in a CS role and you're raising red flags about security issues and expecting more than a pat on the back? I've been a supervisor. Trainer. CS agent. Let me tell you what I see: A guy comes in with tons of supposed experience but gets a CS job. All…

I think while this might be a hard read for OP, it might be the reality check they need.

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

#539

Post by netmonk »

endymi0n wrote: post #512
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #211

As a hiring manager, the things that stand out to me in your post: - You said you quit a job at EA, quit a job at IBM, dropped out of college your freshman year. You may have valid reasons for leaving each of these, but you have to see this from the manager's perspective: You had 3 different great opportunities that all came to a dead end at the beginning of your career. You need an alternate narrative. - You talk ab…

That's spot on from the advice. I'll add that OP — Your biggest issue seems to be extremely high intelligence, paired with a lack of empathy and social functioning, which created a self-expectation of massive grandiosity. But you keep failing to deliver on it because you can't get your highly powered brain on the streets, leading in self-pity and depression. Not good, but salvageable. How do I know? My life story rea…

I worked in 6 companies, in the first 3 years of my working life. I had a very difficult relationship with university in the late 90, where teachers were calling me to fix their linux, while they were still teaching me useless stuff. Newsgroup, IRC, RFC were my main source of knowledge. Im mostly self taugh. With great difficulties and many years after i got a bachelor degree, while i was also working and quitting jobs when realising my manager were as stupid as my univ teacher. Back in my 20, things were simple and clear, you want security: run openbsd lame bastard. And stop calling me at 3am to fix an hacking job, while in fact it's just your bangalore team powering on an old server with same network IP than your fucking main website server.

Around 25, i was really disgusted by computer and IT Job, even tryed to recycle into soft medecine.

At this exact time, the best things in my life occured: My (first) girl friend cheated on me after 2 years of love story. It forces me to consider that maybe im not always right. I had a wonderfull journey into psychology, pick up artist technics, self-improvement, and started to practice Systema (Russian Martial Art) where indeed i learn empathy. Im mean, i didnt learn it, i was over sensitive and over empathic. I was the too good to be happy, and my angry burst were just expression of my frustration accumulated by peoples abusing me.

Instability was coming from that. Quitting was an easy solution, escaping stupidity and predator instead of facing them was my main strategy.

With training and helps from great peoples, i improved my social skills. I learn how to say NO. Around 31, i was desperate with my job interview, my professionnal experience was expressing instability and induced fear to potential recruiters.

I had to makeup my resume. And i got the opportunity to work as a lvl3 support team. This was the way i came back into business. With my improved self, i spend 3 years (the first time i worked that long in a position) taking care of big problem in a critical application.

This was an honey moon, first time ever peoples were thanking me for saving their ass and cleaning their shit (we talk hundreds of million in electronic payment industry). Im still friend with this specific manager who was able to see potential in me, 12 years after.

I started a consulting company. Im 42, married, father of three. Im happy.

Just remember: Humans are not computer.

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

#540

Post by drblast »

Joining the military might be an option for you if you're not ideologically opposed to it. Try air force, then navy. Not marines or army.

If you're halfway intelligent with technical skills you will find something to do for four years, then you'll have better options when you get out.

Probably better than being homeless.

Post reply on HN