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Dear HN "Who's Hiring" responders

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Re: Dear HN "Who's Hiring" responders

#31

Post by loceng »

raganwald wrote: post #25

I like this: tl;dr if it'll take the company more effort to reply to your email than you put into sending it, you're doing it wrong. I don't particularly care whether it is an employer's market or an employee's market. My rule of thumb is that if your email is going to jobs@foo.com, you can send anything you want. But if you are sending an email to a person by name, it is a matter of courtesy to write a personal note…

Agreed. It only makes sense at minimum to say why you're interested in the position.

Re: Dear HN "Who's Hiring" responders

#32

Post by swombat »

briholt wrote: post #8

I'd take the opposite approach: be glad when applicants send such poor cover letters because it immediately lets you know you should NOT waste your time on them. Some one who would send such a bad boilerplate cover letter is lazy for not sending an actual letter, technically inept for sending links to a private LinkedIn profile, and has a poor theory of mind regarding what an employer would like to see. This especial…

People who don't read the job ads for GrantTree, and therefore don't send a video, corrected text, etc, make my filtering job easier by automatically filtering themselves out. We don't even respond to those who don't bother to read the job spec. I think it's fair.

Sadly, when posting the spec to some of the worse job forums (e.g. Gumtree), almost all the applications are like that. Some do not even bother to write a note at all. They just attach their CV, and that's it. It's hard to believe that there are people out there who think that such an approach will get them any kind of decent job.

Re: Dear HN "Who's Hiring" responders

#33

Post by softbuilder »

jacques_chester wrote: post #14

I feel like, with a few word replacements, this post and all the replies could come from /r/OkCupid.

I came to roughly the same conclusion from the emails I received from my "How to Hire Me" post. People make all of the mistakes there that they make with online dating. From an abstract point of view it is the exact same problem.

Re: Dear HN "Who's Hiring" responders

#34

Post by jpdoctor »

> tl;dr if it'll take the company more effort to reply to your email than you put into sending it, you're doing it wrong.

No no no, they're doing it right.

All those lame responses? You think you're gonna get better behavior after hiring?

It's not a response so much as an organization intelligence test. You hire 'em, you get what you deserve.

Re: Dear HN "Who's Hiring" responders

#35

Post by swombat »

virmundi wrote: post #4

Can we make a trade? Who's Hiring posts will have a clause that says, "Sorry, but we're only looking for folks willing to relocate to X. Don't contact otherwise", in exchange you get better emails? Sounds fair to me.

Most of the posts specified a location, and mentioned whether remote workers were acceptable.

Re: Dear HN "Who's Hiring" responders

#36

Post by uzair88 »

To those who are applying for a biz dev role like this: do you honestly expect to get a job where you will be selling for your company (whether it be vision, product, etc.) when you cant even sell yourself to get a job?

Finding a job isnt a game of percentages. Or atleast finding the right job isnt (imho). Find the 2-3 jobs you really want and spend the time to make the recruiter believe you could actually sell for their company one day.

Re: Dear HN "Who's Hiring" responders

#37

Post by loceng »

virmundi wrote: post #4

Can we make a trade? Who's Hiring posts will have a clause that says, "Sorry, but we're only looking for folks willing to relocate to X. Don't contact otherwise", in exchange you get better emails? Sounds fair to me.

Some did, though yeah - that can mean effort you put ends up wasted unnecessarily.

Re: Dear HN "Who's Hiring" responders

#40

Post by ig1 »

niggler wrote: post #20
Udo wrote: post #13

I was absolutely with you until but it is a hirers' market which, even if it is (and that's debatable), is not the correct reason for anyone to behave differently. In this case, applicants should not be reading the actual postings because it's a hirers' market and hirers are now somehow considered royalty. Instead, applicants should be reading them because it's basic curtesy and not doing it ends up wasting everybody…

It is absolutely a hirers' market if the market is for a low-level coder. Many people, especially coming from an engineering background, have the requisite programming and computer science experience to do what you need. It's a hirees' market at the rockstar level, as always.

As someone who's recruited heavily at the entry level, you're mistaken. Even substantial number of computer science graduates lack the capability of basic coding (i.e. "here's the detailed specification of this function; go implement it"). There is substantially more demand than available talent.

SF, New York, London, Amsterdam, Berlin, etc. all have huge talent shortages. Even developer markets that were relatively soft in the past such as Poland and India are starting to become competitive as the war for talent becomes more global.

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