Ask HN: As an employer, what do you wish applicants did more often?

in all my experience in hiring at my company, the one thing i find that 99% of applicants fail to understand is that a company is hiring a person to fit a certain need that is being unmet. therefore, listing a long resume full of all the impressive things you have done, but are completely irrelevant to the position being offered, is a waste of space and time and will increase your chances of being overlooked. you really need to think about catering your resume to the job and leave as much else as you can as a footnote.

if you do manage to get to the interview process, ask about the job you are being interviewed for so you can get a better understanding. a job interview is a conversation, so it goes both ways. try to find out why they are looking for a new employee. for example, they may be looking for a system administrator to do sysadmin tasks, but if you ask further, they might tell you that they are in the process of trying to scale their systems, at which point you can talk about your past experience or what ways your might go about developing a scalable architecture. make yourself relevant.

all too often, candidates just come in and sit quietly, waiting for the interviewer to ask them question after question, trying to pull information out of them and then it simply becomes checklist of questions to tick off (while looking at your watch) before thanking the interviewee and showing them the way out.

I wonder if you are asking the correct question. Your frustration from the process seems to stem from not having received an offer yet. Would you not rather ask the question, what can applicants do to obtain an offer from prospective employers every time? You might want to keep the discussion focussed by providing a link to your stack overflow profile.

I don't think there's much in the way of guidelines or advice that would apply to all employers. Although you're probably focused on just getting a job (and understandably frustrated with that at this point), some employers just won't be a good match for you. So, adopt some of the methods that seem like they'd work with the kind of employers that you'd want to work for.

As for me: I hired recently for an open-ended contract position through Craigslist. The pay was pretty good, given the area I'm in. However, the vast majority of the applicants couldn't be bothered to tell me anything about themselves. Most of the responses were along the lines of, "Here's my resume". That was it, nothing else, and the resume just included their work history.

I'd like to know a little bit about the person applying. Just a paragraph would be fine. Don't limit it to your work experience; your hobbies and how you spend your free time tells me a lot about you.

Good luck. It's ugly out there right now.

Also, please accept that people don't read your resume, they've probably skimmed it and don't necessarily remember which resume you were. You are the one that should do the homework.

When I hire, I'm not looking for a person or a resource. I'm looking for a solution to my problem. Sometimes that problem is big, sometimes it's urgent. But there's always a problem needing to be solved. The more a candidate looks like a solution to my problem, the closer to the front of the pile he/she gets.

AFAIC, the most important thing for any candidate to do is to identify my problem(s) and present themselves as the solution. The problem could be:

- We just got a bunch of new business and need someone to do immediately to satisfy those customers.

- We just acquired another business and need to convert/integrate from technology to technology and need someone who knows both technologies (or either one) and has done that before.

- We have a new business problem and one possible solution is to build/enhance/maintain an app. Can you do that? Have you done that?

- We plan to grow x% over the next 24 months and we need people to do more of what we already do which is . Can you do that? Have you done that?

- We have a problem and frankly, we're not sure what to do. What would you suggest? Can you do that? Have you done that before?

You kinda get the picture. The tricky part for any candidate is the research. How do you find out what my problems are? Ask! Ask me. Ask someone else in the company. Ask anyone. The simple act of research shows that you're a serious candidate. The follow up with a solution to my problem puts you at the top of my list.

If you're right out of school or don't have a lot of experience, you should still do this. You may not have as long a resume as others, but you have every bit as much to offer to solve my problems. Maybe a smart person who works hard and knows how to deliver is just what I need. You must find that out and present yourself as such. Remember, it's about my problem, not yours.

This was I great question to ask here at hn. I've never seen it before. The fact that you thought enough to ask is a huge first step. It shows that you're thinking about me, not just yourself. Keep thinking like that and there's no telling how far you'll get. Thank you and good luck.