Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2014)

Sailthru is the leading provider of personalized marketing communications technology. We automatically aggregate and analyze disparate user data sets for leading enterprise companies to create holistic, highly personalized customer experiences that lead to bigger revenue opportunities.

Our mission is to transform the way companies build and maintain relationships with consumers with a user first mentality. We are focused on the individual and are committed to solving a common marketing problem: impersonal user experiences that lead to decreased engagement. At Sailthru, we believe that every user is unique.

As an engineer at Sailthr you’d be able to tackle complex challenges of scaling architecture, dive into leading edge technologies, and have strategic impact on architectural features in the product roadmap. You'd also be joining a passionate team of engineers, including our CTO who codes alongside the team. Here are our open dev roles:

NEW YORK (HQ): Engineer - NYC - http://jobvite.com/m?3p1klgwQ

Engineer - NYC - http://jobvite.com/m?3f1klgwG

Engineer - NYC - http://jobvite.com/m?3u7klgw1

Senior Engineer - NYC - http://jobvite.com/m?3E3klgw7

Mobile Engineer (Android) - NY - http://jobvite.com/m?3m1klgwN

Frontend Engineer NY - http://jobvite.com/m?3b4klgwF

Senior Systems Admin - NY - http://jobvite.com/m?3u7klgw1

System Admin - NY - http://jobvite.com/m?3o7klgwV

LOS ANGELES: Senior Engineer - LA - http://jobvite.com/m?3H2klgw9

Mobile Engineer (Android) - LA - http://jobvite.com/m?3O2klgwg

LONDON: Mobile Engineer (Android) | London - http://jobvite.com/m?3O2klgwg

Senior Engineer | London - http://jobvite.com/m?3n3klgwQ

Implementation Engineer - London - http://jobvite.com/m?3nRekgwx

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Please note that if you're not a developer, we are also hiring for many other roles, especially Sales: http://jobvite.com/m?3jDmlgwo

> You're not using the technologies that are in demand, you're not writing detailed work histories, and you're not putting key words into your resume, please tell me you do not wonder why you're not being head hunted.

I'm not sure if you are saying this with or without having looked at my information, so I will write the response assuming you have not.

I use what my employers require me to use, plus whatever else I can get away with that is appropriate for the task at hand. I also experiment with new languages in my free time, though I stopped listing those on my resume and LinkedIn profile on the advice that I should only be listing items I was willing to be tested on. If I find something that is better for a task that needs doing, I use it. As for my work history, I have a detailed history, but I tried to control the amount of detail in each entry to avoid making it too long.

> Everything starts off as a flavor of the week, Ruby on Rails was just a flavor of the week type deal and then it became huge. Same with Node now and with other stacks before that.

Absolutely, though most fade away into relative obscurity at some point. The point I was trying to make there is that I frequently see statements about fundamentals being important and specific technologies not being important because technologies can be learned quickly by a competent developer. Yet the laundry lists of technology requirements seems to grow monthly. I'm going to learn new stacks because they are interesting and potentially useful to me, not to pad my resume.

Overall, maybe it was a good thing I shoved my foot in my mouth above. It drove me to think critically about my overall presentation to the outside world. I usually approach it with too much emotional attachment.

I'd recommend listing them, especially if you are interested in jobs that use them. If you are suffering from a deluge of recruiters, by all means, do what you need to do to slow down the flow - but it doesn't seem like that's your problem.

Here's the thing - the people who are going to be interviewing you and ascertaining your technical capabilities are not the same ones looking for you on the internet (LinkedIn and beyond). Don't let a non-technical person say no to you (or worse, never see your profile to begin with).

Put the keyword up, there's no need to be deceptive about it. "Hi, you look like a good fit at our company because of X" "I've used X in my spare time but never professionally, if that's alright with you let's continue the conversation" - you'd be surprised at how many companies are willing to keep talking. The demand is intense.

There's nothing untoward or dishonest happening here. You're listing out the things that you know, you're not lying about anything, you're being entirely upfront - the only extra consideration is writing in such a way that someone searching for you would see you in a search result. Name-drop languages, frameworks, libraries, as appropriate, because those are the primary levers recruiters know to pull when searching.

> "I have a detailed history, but I tried to control the amount of detail in each entry to avoid making it too long."

I'd suggest expanding. We're way past the days where recruiting happened via a pile of resumes on someone's desk, and a long one would make it straight into the rubbish bin without a glance. By the time human eyes hits your profile page it's already gone through a search filter and likely other recruitment filters - it's okay to be a bit verbose since interest is already there. Especially if this verbosity increases your odds of making it past a search filter.

> "I'm going to learn new stacks because they are interesting and potentially useful to me, not to pad my resume."

Right, and my suggestion isn't to pad your resume with useless filler. That does nobody any good - recruiters end up looking at profiles that have nothing to do with the jobs they're looking to fill. The idea is to think about the jobs you want (and are qualified for), think about what their recruiters are searching for, and making sure your profile gets hit when they search for said things.

The goal isn't to appear in more search results in general, it's to appear in more search results relevant to the jobs you're looking to find.