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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?

#751

Post by macksd »

jldl805 wrote: post #708
p0sixlang wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who do you recruit for? I'm soon to be a new grad, looking for a job, and if you reject me.. you could literally berate me for things I didn't actually do and I wouldn't find it appropriate or productive to argue with you about it. Let's set up an interview, you can record my reaction to the rejection and send it to those who argue for reference on how not to be a moron.

I don't recruit new grads so it would never happen. Similar to OP's post, it's almost always a situation where it's painfully obvious to everyone else involved why the person isn't getting hired, but it would be awkward or a waste of time to try to tell the person. It's also virtually always social skill related... if you weren't up to the task technically, you wouldn't have been asked to interview. The in person int…

For what it's worth, that's definitely not my experience. I've interviewed or phone-screened at least 200 people over the last few years, and yes, there's been a handful of rejections where the major concern was social skills: abrasive, over-confident, poor communication or lacking the appearance of motivation. But I've had far more people who simply couldn't perform well enough on the technical problem or who had obviously over-stated their qualifications and knowledge on their resume. I actually distinctly remember several interviews lately where I really liked the candidate as a person and had a very enjoyable chat with them, but I just didn't think they would do the job well.

There are a lot of flaws in the way interviews are done in our industry that make it more subjective than it should be, but I still wouldn't consider the latter set of problems to be social skill related.

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

#752

Post by ryandrake »

procombo wrote: post #587
WalterBright wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you get feedback that doesn't make much sense, it's likely not the real reason. Just like if a date rejects you, they'll give some silly fake reason why.

Sometimes the reason they give you is just the one that pushed you over the edge. At Amazon being "insufficiently succinct" is a greater err than one might think.

> insufficiently succinct

I like that one. I've done interviews where the answer should be at most a summary sentence, and 2-3 supporting points. I know the candidate knows the answer, it's a warmup question! Then what do I get? Word salad. A gigantic run-on sentence where the candidate talks and talks and talks and this, and that, and also, and furthermore... lasting 5 minutes or until I politely interrupt with, "OK let's move on to the next question."

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

#753

Post by ep103 »

ma2rten wrote: post #711
kyawzazaw wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was asked about my previous internship work experience from my resume by Point72, Salesforce, Google, Addepar, Okta, Iterable, Visa, Veritas from my resume during my interviews.

I work at Google (the only FAANG company in your list). We would ask about it, but it's not a significant deciding factor. It might be a deciding factor if you get an interview at all, which team you are interviewing with and for which level. Those decisions are made by recruiters, not interviewers or hiring committees.

And a recruiter is not really looking at your resume as anything other than a wordlist with which to shotgun applicants that might earn him/her commission into the process. And then the engineering team just jumps to leetcode. What's so easy to go missing here is the step where the person is interviewed, as a person, by someone who is not a recruiter or equivalent HR screener, and is technically skilled enough to understand the resume. Ya know, in a word, a good manager.

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

#754

Post by [deleted] »

exdsq wrote: post #653
benhurmarcel wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really dislike the suggestion that someone who didn't attend college is therefore unable to write. That's not what he said. He suggested that someone who doesn't write well probably didn't attend college.

> Your writing is not strong, i can tell you did not attend college. Maybe you're right but this is how I read it. Alice's writing is not strong -> Alice did not attend college. therefore Bob's writing is strong -> Bob did attend college.

[deleted]

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

#755

Post by ryandrake »

snakedoctor wrote: post #121
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…

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…

There's a pretty good behavioral / soft skills interview question hanging out in your post:

"Think of a scenario where you find a security vulnerability [or crasher bug, or whatever], and you don't think it is being taken as seriously as it should be. How would you handle this situaton?"

There are a lot of good ways to approach this, but "escalate it to the SVP" is rarely one of them.

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

#757

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

snakedoctor wrote: post #110
void_mint wrote: post #18

Have you tried asking any of the jobs that rejected you're getting rejected? Honestly, just a guess, you're probably giving off bad interpersonal vibes/people don't really like talking to you. Half of interviewing is just being very personable/being able to talk comfortably with other people. Generally in this space (this space meaning those interested in tech/startups/etc) sometimes people struggle in this area but…

I've tried asking companies for feedback. Some respond, and some don't. I think that most don't due to legal reasons. I did move to Austin when I received a lump sum of money, and hanged with some people IRL. Some would ratify that I'm awkward lol. But there was a lot of good vibes while I was in Austin. Now that I'm back where I grew up I find that I'm more depressed, and surly. State goverment here is more Laissez-…

> I knew some folks that Wired articles were written about etc.

This is a red flag right here. You put this in a list of evidence you’re capable and not delusional? You were near semi-notable people.

A lot of your accomplishments read that way. You were near something cool. You dropped out of a good school. You got a (self described as) low paying job at 18 at IBM. Someone really accomplished there complimented you once. You knew people who had things written about them. You were in a program someone who works at armonk was in. Someone else fixed something quickly after you flagged it. None of this is about you, it’s all about other people.

The very fact that these are what you’re listing as positives (or at least as things relevant to you) is a red flag. Do you have any “I accomplished/completed...” accomplishments? You say you’ve been doing VR since you were 8, have you finished anything worth mentioning in all that time?

I agree with another commenter that your ego and expectations could be a problem. If you got one of the jobs you quit before, would you still quit it?

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

#758

Post by goodpoint »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #612
endymi0n wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sorry, but I think you're reading way too much in the OP. Their account is compatible with their biggest issue being "extremelly high intelligence" coupled with a lack of empathy, but it's also compatible with ordinary intelligence coupled with some bad choices- and the chances are that the latter is the right explanation ("extremely high intelligence" should only be the case very, very rarely, by definition [1]). I…

Please slow down with the "intelligence" narrative. Cognitive abilities are complex and multi-faceted. There's logical-mathematical and much more.

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

#759

Post by lumost »

ma2rten wrote: post #388
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…

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

Given this persons experience level and their predilection to "spoofing" phone numbers and related activity - it's entirely plausible that they lied on the resume to get the interview. Or embellished enough detail on their roles to make them pass the resume screening.

If this is the case the gap in skill required to pass a FAANG interview may be too great to overcome in a reasonable timeframe.

Hustle culture pushes the unqualified person changing their life by taking a big risk. But most of the "success" examples are people moving into high turnover, metric driven, entry level positions such as investment advisors performing cold calls, entry level b2b sales etc.

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

#760

Post by goodpoint »

cercatrova wrote: post #471
WalterBright wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The irony of correcting others when you yourself have several writing mistakes.

There's no irony. Everybody makes mistakes.
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