11–20 of 113 posts
>Get in contact with current employees at the company. It is important that you send more than one email. I've gotten dozens of emails asking for meetings and referrals. The only time I actually respond to these is after the second email. Please, no. Go through the proper channels like everyone else. If you have a referral - great. Otherwise, DON'T spam current employees you randomly find on linkedin or whatever. I g…
Right now we're in a weird place - if you have a network, you're pretty well off. If your network isn't hiring, or you are early in your career, it's brutal trying to get through the noise.
The truth is that proof of work matters. But the big problem is that proof of work is easy to fake right now. It takes being creative. I get a few emails a month right now. Honestly, I think this isn't going to work at this point - some go to my personal and some go to my professional emails. But what might work?
Look at people who are writing blogs. Is there something interesting on their blog? Is that worth engaging them on first? (I mean, don't waste their time if you aren't interested or if you're going to submarine it the second or third email - someone will feel used - but showing a dual purpose of the email might not be the worst thing and even if they don't have a position or influence on the position, you might have a good conversation.
Are you involved on bluesky/twitter/threads? Are you getting positive engagement? Are you finding ways to make community? It may not get the formal referral but it might make the social referral and give you 30 extra seconds with the resume and a reason to say yes.
> If the company is When the people you're interviewing with are 'already senior' (e.g. direct reports to the CEO), you can sometimes make your case worse rather than better, because it feels like you're going over their head. So rather than size... - If the interviewer(s) in question feel like you're trying to circumvent them, you're probably making your case worse. - The kind of CEO that tends to meddle in things b…
> Instead of applying broadly, identify 5-10 specific opportunities you genuinely want. Do that. >Get in contact with current employees at the company. It is important that you send more than one email. Don't do that. >I've gotten dozens of emails asking for meetings and referrals. I've never gotten one in my entire career, and I was hiring manager in multiple companies/roles. >If the company is Don't never ever EVER…
> Don't do that. > Don't never ever EVER do that. Why not? Is the world really going to implode because someone wants a job so badly that they slip a message into some random CEO’s inbox, an inbox that’s probably already flooded with irrelevant emails from strangers asking irrelevant things? Don’t ever convince yourself that someone is so important you can’t email them. That’s a self-defeating mindset. Send the email…
> Instead of applying broadly, identify 5-10 specific opportunities you genuinely want. Do that. >Get in contact with current employees at the company. It is important that you send more than one email. Don't do that. >I've gotten dozens of emails asking for meetings and referrals. I've never gotten one in my entire career, and I was hiring manager in multiple companies/roles. >If the company is Don't never ever EVER…
Heck my CEO asks me all the time that people are messaging him and if i think they are interesting enough to hire.
> Instead of applying broadly, identify 5-10 specific opportunities you genuinely want. Do that. >Get in contact with current employees at the company. It is important that you send more than one email. Don't do that. >I've gotten dozens of emails asking for meetings and referrals. I've never gotten one in my entire career, and I was hiring manager in multiple companies/roles. >If the company is Don't never ever EVER…
> Don't do that. > Don't never ever EVER do that. Why not? Is the world really going to implode because someone wants a job so badly that they slip a message into some random CEO’s inbox, an inbox that’s probably already flooded with irrelevant emails from strangers asking irrelevant things? Don’t ever convince yourself that someone is so important you can’t email them. That’s a self-defeating mindset. Send the email…
At any rate, the downside of this is as follows.
The goal of having Human Resources, talent acquisition, recruiters, and other similar roles is to let hiring managers (and everyone above them, up and including the CEO) concentrate on doing their job and only assist the aforementioned roles in hiring. Of course hiring manager is ultimately responsible for hiring a good candidate but they are not expected to do things like posting job descriptions, initial screening, background checks, referral checks, employment history verification, dealing with legal stuff like NDAs etc etc, that's the job of HR/recruiters. Candidates reaching out to hiring managers (and especially higher ups) are not treated nicely by the HR as these candidates are attempting to take HR out of the picture.
HR are people and want to keep their job and get paid, and you circumventing them might be perceived as a threat to that.
That IN ADDITION to a disruption you will be causing hiring manager (or especially CEO) cause now they need to decide what to do with your email. Even though they have HR/recruiters to handle these things.
A typical result of such a "reach out" will likely be forwarding this email to HR and subsequent rejecting/blacklisting the candidate.
Edit: some clarifications
I think the author is saying “don’t spray and pray”. Seems like good advice.
This seems to vary based on what stage of your career you are in. Early career when I realized trying the 1000th way to make myself seem better than all the other college graduates with the same qualifications I gave up targetting and just sprayed and prayed and got jobs that way through pure lottery luck of ending up randomly on the pile at a moment when the company was too exhausted because they lost their preferre…
> Instead of applying broadly, identify 5-10 specific opportunities you genuinely want. Do that. >Get in contact with current employees at the company. It is important that you send more than one email. Don't do that. >I've gotten dozens of emails asking for meetings and referrals. I've never gotten one in my entire career, and I was hiring manager in multiple companies/roles. >If the company is Don't never ever EVER…
Oh, I get them all the time. Usually from junior engineers. I don't hold it against them - it's good advice. So, what's your trick to avoid getting skipped because a contract recruiter or internal recruiter is going through resumes at 6 a minute and looking for keywords nowhere near the job profile? What's your trick to get through the noise? Right now, it's brutal from junior to staff, and if your network isn't hiri…
Ideally write the hiring manager and not HR. And, write something that makes it hard to not want to talk to you.
1: Minimal hygiene is writing something that shows you read the vacancy (if any). Don't: "I'm interested in the role, CV attached". do: "You want onsite in Amsterdam, I'm living in Milan but already planning to move to Amsterdam for reason X".
2: Stand out from the average applicant. Someone recently applied with a personal website that was a kinda-functioning OS (with some apps). Someone else applied with a YouTube channel hacking an ESP32 into their coffee machine. Someone applied with a tool on their GitHub profile, super well written, in our target language, doing interesting things on the database we're working with, etc., etc. how could I _not_ talk these applicants? All of these are soft signals that show affinity for their work as engineers. Don't: generic application letter combined with 3+ pages resume with too much detail.
3: if invited: get curious (but not overly opinionated/combative) about their stack. Candidates we've been most excited about have come in asking questions on how we're setup, and why we've made certain choices. Don't: expect the interviewer to ask all the questions, or bring only a prepared question that misses the mark.
4: Its a people process, if that's your challenge, work on that. Maybe you share a hobby with the interviewer, maybe you've both solved similar problems in earlier jobs, maybe you both like Haskell, maybe something else to connect over. Connection matters to most hiring managers.
Or even better. Build yourself a startup.