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Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter

alexchesser.medium.com

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Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter

#611

Post by ZhangSWEFAANG »

notdonspaulding wrote: post #183
ehnto wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just trying to articulate what I see as a difference between a purpose built career network and a network of actual friends from work. There is a difference between those two types of networks not captured when you call them both a "Professional network".

Not to beat a dead horse, but the reason you keep getting these kinds of replies is because it seems like you have an idea about a second type of Professional Network that is different than what you described as your network of friends. Everybody's just trying to say that the real Professional Network is exactly the network of your friends, and if there is another kind of "purpose built career network" that people ar…

This is exactly what I was trying to describe. People on HN are so much smarter than me lol. I used the word "informal", and you expressively described what I was intending to communicate.

Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter

#612

Post by mizzao »

teakettle42 wrote: post #540
mizzao wrote: post #518

Alternate approach: build a relationship with the 99th percentile super-recruiter that basically all the startups that know what they are doing in your area use to hire, and go to him for a job. In NYC, this is that dude: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnkeenan/ I send all my friends to him when looking for jobs. He also doesn't lie to you and since he has a technical background, will rarely place anyone in a bad fit.…

Reminds me of NYC’s absolutely horrific apartment broker model. No thank you. Why would I want to give a recruiter a large cut of my potential compensation for no real value? If someone is making seven figures doing that, there’s a problem. If I want a job at a company, I can apply for it myself.

I hate apartment brokers as much as you do, I assure you.

I don't know what to say other than there is significant value in (1) getting a direct connection to someone who is running hiring from a reputable source and (2) having your recruiter actually understand you well enough to directly recommend you to jobs that are a good fit (some of which aren't even publicly listed anywhere) and saving you a ton of time.

You are aware that pretty much no one looks at folks that are "applying on the website", right?

Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter

#613

Post by devilbunny »

Johnny555 wrote: post #597
tjoff wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not saying that your neighbor would call you, but that the emergency services would call you on your neighbours behalf (and it will not be from a number you recognize).

I've never heard of that happening, but yeah, if the neighbor calls 911, and then EMS calls me for some reason, I'm not going to answer since 99% of the time it's a spammer. If they leave a voicemail, I'll get a transcript.

I have lost track of how many times I have told people: just because you hear a phone ringing on your end, doesn't mean it's ringing on my end. (Verizon US, and yes, you as a caller will hear ringing while my phone sits silent.) Leave a voicemail. It can be short, it can be almost devoid of meaning, but if you send it, I will at least know that you called. If you don't? No record at all. I was out of range, you left nothing to be tracked by...

Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter

#614

Post by devilbunny »

dkersten wrote: post #508
tjoff wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Additionally, if a neighbor is having an emergency they (emergency services) might call you to see if you are home and able to help.

I don’t know anyone that isn’t my parents age that has a landline anymore so this scenario already wouldn’t work with my friends, family or neighbours. My phone isn’t directly tied to my address in any way that might be useful for emergency services.

A true landline, very few people. But setting up a cheap VOIP line is not very expensive on a month-to-month basis, and it's useful to have a phone number that you can give to any person or business that can't bother you at work. We have poor cell service at my house, so the VOIP line is my preference for most calls at home.

Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter

#615

Post by schwartzworld »

bitcharmer wrote: post #602
cortesoft wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it bother you so much when people say you have privilege? Your privilege is that your passion and hobby is in high demand... most people don't have that. They have hobbies like fishing or golf or gardening, and those things aren't in high demand. If you had been born 200 years ago, your passion might also have been something that wasn't in high demand. I don't see how that concept upsets you. No one is sayin…

I don't think you read my comments. If anything it looks like you just skimmed through them. I explicitly said my success is a function of passion, hard work and LUCK . I have no problem admitting that part of my success is luck. However equalling luck with privilege makes absolutely no sense. In your dictionary if I play poker and get a lucky hand I am now privileged. What an utter nonsense. And for the record I hav…

> In your dictionary if I play poker and get a lucky hand I am now privileged.

Reductio ad absurdum. A poker hand is dealt randomly, as are circumstances of birth and other factors, sure. But the next poker hand we are all on equal footing.

However the analogy is a good one if you extend it. If you win a big poker hand early in the game, gameplay changes once you're the chip lead. Your definition of what a good hand is changes. You are able to take chances and play hands that someone else couldn't. Once you have a stack of chips, you can win hands with those chips regardless of what cards are dealt. Sure, it's not a guarantee and you still have to play the rest of the game well.

Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter

#616

Post by fecak »

nameisname wrote: post #569
fecak wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article's methods are actually quite good. You should ignore most of the recruiter contacts - if the recruiter approaches you for a job that is clearly not a fit for your background, I'd dismiss that person as either not respectful of your time or incompetent, and both are good reasons to ignore that person down the road. If you're getting a fair amount of incoming traffic, you're already optimized for discovery,…

One thing that's contradictory to what you've said that's caused me to ignore recruiters is that they misrepresent the opportunity even when the criteria doesn't match up. I've dealt with a few that I've told "this doesn't fit my criteria" and they're very insistent that the company is looking for people, not skills, and I should interview anyway. Ultimately this is a lie and I'll end up wasting everyone's time. I've…

I don't think that is contradictory at all to what I wrote. I agree, many recruiters will try to send you out to every client and every job they have just to maximize their chances of a fee. Those recruiters should be avoided.

If you've gone on 30 interviews and never landed one job, that might be something you need to also consider and look inward. Going 0-for-30 is pretty unusual, unless you were accepting interviews for jobs you were clearly unqualified for.

Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter

#617

Post by bitcharmer »

cortesoft wrote: post #609
bitcharmer wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you read my comments. If anything it looks like you just skimmed through them. I explicitly said my success is a function of passion, hard work and LUCK . I have no problem admitting that part of my success is luck. However equalling luck with privilege makes absolutely no sense. In your dictionary if I play poker and get a lucky hand I am now privileged. What an utter nonsense. And for the record I hav…

If you get a lucky hand in poker, then yes, I would say you were privileged... for that specific hand. Of course it doesn't matter much if you have privilege for one hand, and that privilege will change relatively fairly between everyone during a session of poker. This is different though. This is more like playing a game of poker where a single hand lasts your whole life, and you keep reaping the benefits of your lu…

Inheriting million dollars is luck not privilege. This discussion doesn't make any sense whatsoever as you decided to cling to a made-up instead of vocabulary definition of privilege [0].

The same is happening to other words these days. For example some people modified the term racism so that according to their definition you can't possibly be racist towards white people. Which is obviously idiotic, but at least it allows these people to push their sick racist agendas.

Like I said, there is nothing to be achieved here when you're using your own definitions of words.

[0] https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english-thesaur...

Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter

#618

Post by maerF0x0 »

teakettle42 wrote: post #540
mizzao wrote: post #518

Alternate approach: build a relationship with the 99th percentile super-recruiter that basically all the startups that know what they are doing in your area use to hire, and go to him for a job. In NYC, this is that dude: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnkeenan/ I send all my friends to him when looking for jobs. He also doesn't lie to you and since he has a technical background, will rarely place anyone in a bad fit.…

Reminds me of NYC’s absolutely horrific apartment broker model. No thank you. Why would I want to give a recruiter a large cut of my potential compensation for no real value? If someone is making seven figures doing that, there’s a problem. If I want a job at a company, I can apply for it myself.

> If someone is making seven figures doing that

How can you state that without knowing the value they provide?

Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter

#619

Post by cortesoft »

bitcharmer wrote: post #617
cortesoft wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you get a lucky hand in poker, then yes, I would say you were privileged... for that specific hand. Of course it doesn't matter much if you have privilege for one hand, and that privilege will change relatively fairly between everyone during a session of poker. This is different though. This is more like playing a game of poker where a single hand lasts your whole life, and you keep reaping the benefits of your lu…

Inheriting million dollars is luck not privilege. This discussion doesn't make any sense whatsoever as you decided to cling to a made-up instead of vocabulary definition of privilege [0]. The same is happening to other words these days. For example some people modified the term racism so that according to their definition you can't possibly be racist towards white people. Which is obviously idiotic, but at least it a…

Ok, look at number 2 definition:

"the power and advantages that come with great wealth or high social class"

Well, your luck gets you a lot of wealth, which is having privilege

Re: Career advice nobody gave me: Never ignore a recruiter

#620

Post by bitcharmer »

cortesoft wrote: post #610
Papirola wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is important to accept and understand that a lot of your success in life is due to things outside of your control. That's a generalization and takes away from people's agency. for luck to play a part in your life, you need to show up and work.

Sure, but lots of people show up and work hard but only make minimum wage. The privilege is that your hard work earns a lot more money than someone else's hard work.

I love this twisted thinking.

When my peers were partying and having a great time I was spending nights at the computer learning stuff.

I made this sacrifice willingly. Years later I'm reaping the benefits of that sacrifice which I think I earned and is fair but still some people who don't like others to be successfull will call me privileged like it was all magically bestowed upon me.

We all had the same start. I choose a different path that cost me a lot.

And you have the nerve to call me privileged. Wow.

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