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How (not) to apply for a software job

benhoyt.com

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Re: How (not) to apply for a software job

#161

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

voidnap wrote: post #157
yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, in the last several years, the impact of a good cover letter on getting an employment offer has diminished tremendously to the point that expect it of applicants isn't not respectful of their time. Do you have anything to substantiate this claim? I'm an employer and I read and respond to dozens of applications when I have an open position. Usually when I receive an excellent application, the cover letter is r…

> Do you have anything to substantiate this claim? No, it's my personal experience. It's an observation supported by people I know who have gotten a similar sense at their jobs. One director level friend, with insight into how they do hiring, explained that it has a lot to do with how HR filter things. (As someone else said in this thread.) Some HR departments will sanitize information to reduce bias, like a photo of…

I can't really argue against that, and I certainly agree that it's going to be different with different employers.

Genuinely, I'm sorry you've had shitty experiences in the past. I've had a whole bunch too. I will say however that in the times in my career when I did apply for jobs, most of my successful applications [I believe] came as a result of a short, to-the-point, personalised cover letter.

Re: How (not) to apply for a software job

#162

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

vlod wrote: post #158
yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. If you can explain in a little more detail how you get the job done and what qualifies your assessment of the relative efficiency, then you probably have the basis of a decent cover letter.

Oh come on, 95% of jobs are CRUDs: - data is in the database - get data from the database using ORM solution - pull stuff from Backend (from Frontend), using REST/Graphql - display it in a nice way using whatever the du-jour styling solution they picked. This isn't rocket science. Do I really have to make some BS about why I'm "excited" about this company or industry in the cover letter. Look at the number of applica…

Respectfully, I disagree.

Re: How (not) to apply for a software job

#164

Post by voidnap »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #161
voidnap wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you have anything to substantiate this claim? No, it's my personal experience. It's an observation supported by people I know who have gotten a similar sense at their jobs. One director level friend, with insight into how they do hiring, explained that it has a lot to do with how HR filter things. (As someone else said in this thread.) Some HR departments will sanitize information to reduce bias, like a photo of…

I can't really argue against that, and I certainly agree that it's going to be different with different employers. Genuinely, I'm sorry you've had shitty experiences in the past. I've had a whole bunch too. I will say however that in the times in my career when I did apply for jobs, most of my successful applications [I believe] came as a result of a short, to-the-point, personalised cover letter.

I 100% agree. In the past, I've written good cover letters and they've been crucial to getting job offers. Hiring/tech culture has changed where cover letters are largely meaningless. And wish that weren't the case.

And I don't think writing a cover letter is going to harm your chances at a job. Or if it does, you might not want to work for a company that penalizes them anyway. But the attitude of "well I don't want to work for a company that doesn't read my cover letter" isn't really viable as an applicant as it rules out a lot of opportunities for work.

The whole situation is so silly too because a nice cover letter can make rejection emails nicer, like "we enjoyed your cover letter and your joke about the thing, but ...". I'd like to think that makes it easier for employers to send rejection emails because they can say something that sounds genuinely positive and personal instead of cookie cutter fake encouragement; "I'm sure you'll land on your feet!" So it makes their job better and probably would help avoid getting hate mail from people acting poorly. It's a win all around. But it's just a race to the bottom at this point.

Anyway sorry for the rant. Thanks for the replies. I agree with you 100% and wish cover letters were more meaningful but for every one of you that reads them there are nine who don't. So I'd just ask, don't be surprised if people don't write cover letters anymore.

I mean half these companies, especially the "always hiring" ones aren't even trying to fill positions, they're just signaling growth to investors. Sending anything to them is a waste of time.

Re: How (not) to apply for a software job

#166

Post by [deleted] »

fmajid wrote: post #130
siva7 wrote: post #117

I applied twice at Canonical. Got both times an automated mail where they proudly pronounced how superior and more human their interview process is and that i will definitely receive a follow-up. Both times i've been ghosted. So therefore let me give some advice to the blog author: Before (or instead of) giving out generic advice to job candidates, try to be a bit more humble about the (broken) reality at Canonical.

I've been through the hiring process at Canonical 6 months ago (wringer would be a more accurate term), all the way to 4 interviews with Mark Shuttleworth and an offer for a Director level position. I ended up passing because I didn't want to manage in a 100% remote distributed culture, and to be perfectly honest with myself a senior IC position was more suited to my personality than a managerial one. I think their p…

[deleted]

Re: How (not) to apply for a software job

#167

Post by sheepshear »

vlod wrote: post #160
sheepshear wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We toss out anything that looks written by AI.

So you review every single resume? Or do you most realistically toss out anything after say 200?

We manually comb through the reject pile looking for applications showing signs of AI so we can reject them twice.

Re: How (not) to apply for a software job

#169

Post by gampleman »

foldr wrote: post #125
gampleman wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did anyone ever get hired by answering the question of "Why do you want to work for us?" with "Because I need a pay check"? Because that's realistically like 80% of the motivation for most job/candidate pairings. In my case the remainder is usually like 15% "and it doesn't require selling my immortal soul to the devil" and 5% "your tech/problem is vaguely interesting". Given the above, I feel like a typical cover let…

A cover letter is also supposed to explain why the company should want you to work for them . But this question isn't usually posed explicitly, which I guess is confusing for some people. Also, almost no-one is motivated so purely by money that they are equally interested in all jobs that pay the same. You can probably think of some reason why you would want to work at company X as opposed to any other number of othe…

I don’t think the reason of “I already applied to all the better sounding ones, but they all ghosted me” is gonna win too many points either.

It really depends on the market. Sometimes there are great looking companies that you really would like to support because they somehow seem awesome to you. But you don’t always have that luxury.

> A cover letter is also supposed to explain why the company should want you to work for them.

For the generic cover letter that’s a reasonable thing to focus on. I’ve seen plenty of application forms that specifically ask the “why do you want to work for us” question (or even worse: “why do you want to work for us rather than our competitors?” which is even harder to answer, especially if it’s a tiny startup you’ve first heard of by reading their job post on LinkedIn).

Re: How (not) to apply for a software job

#170

Post by foldr »

gampleman wrote: post #169
foldr wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A cover letter is also supposed to explain why the company should want you to work for them . But this question isn't usually posed explicitly, which I guess is confusing for some people. Also, almost no-one is motivated so purely by money that they are equally interested in all jobs that pay the same. You can probably think of some reason why you would want to work at company X as opposed to any other number of othe…

I don’t think the reason of “I already applied to all the better sounding ones, but they all ghosted me” is gonna win too many points either. It really depends on the market. Sometimes there are great looking companies that you really would like to support because they somehow seem awesome to you. But you don’t always have that luxury. > A cover letter is also supposed to explain why the company should want you to wo…

>I don’t think the reason of “I already applied to all the better sounding ones, but they all ghosted me” is gonna win too many points either.

Not if you word it like that.

>I’ve seen plenty of application forms that specifically ask the “why do you want to work for us” question

That's what I'm saying. That's the formal question posed, but you can easily answer it by explaining why you'd be good at the role. "I want to work at X because I believe that I could make a significant contribution to Y given my Z skills".

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