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How to get hired at a startup when you don't know anyone

shane.engineer

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Re: How to get hired at a startup when you don't know anyone

#101

Post by pravj »

justinclift wrote: post #90
pravj wrote: post #50

I was interested in working with the Data Science team of one of India's leading e-commerce startups. Later, I ended up doing a project[1] where I have collected and analysed the user order data from their order tracking portal. Now I feel that they won't take me back because I kind of played like a Black-Hat instead of a White-Hat by not notifying them about the little loophole that made it possible for me. Before t…

Heh Heh Heh It's kind of sad you sound surprised. :( If you were in their shoes, how would you have handled someone doing that? :)

Yeah, agree with you.

Although it was not that I stole some secret key or something.

It was just that there was data in public, and I used it for good.

Re: How to get hired at a startup when you don't know anyone

#102

Post by noobiemcfoob »

dominotw wrote: post #55
leeny wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former recruiter, I can't second this enough. Applying online is like shouting into a black hole. Pinging a real person with sincere, earnest content and talking to them like they're a person is so much better.

>Pinging a real person with sincere, earnest content and talking to them like they're a person is so much better. I was a bigtime Rdio fan. I loved their clean design, discoverability. I pinged a real person with big list of improvements and bugfixes that was I was collecting over many months. I told them I wanted to work for them and sent them my resume. They got back to me with "We have sent over your suggestions t…

Anyone with Python experience should know how easy it is to translate any other language experience into learning Python.

They would've been better off saying they just couldn't hire anyone at the time.

Re: How to get hired at a startup when you don't know anyone

#103

Post by namrog84 »

jpmw wrote: post #84
gravypod wrote: post #83

The largest thing that stops me from being able to apply for a job as a college student is that every job I am interested in, mainly back-end/low-level software development, say that they require a "MS in CS and 5 years of experience." These job postings are for entry level positions and internships, nothing higher. Is this something I should be worried about? Should I just apply to this kind of work anyway? How do I…

Having hired a bunch of people, including juniors out of school, I'll tell you this: apply, just apply. A job description and requirement is their picture of the ideal candidate, but they will hire the person that's the closest to that, and other things not mentioned in the offers like how you would fit culturally in the team, work with others, and so many other things. Just apply to what you want to do, what's the w…

I couldn't agree more.

In school there was a scholarship I was almost eligible for. I needed a 3.5 gpa but only had 3.2 so I didn't apply thinking I was disqualified. A few months later I found out someone with a 2.3 got it because lack of entries.

Then again later I entered a programming competition with a $5 entry fee. Only 2 people entered and we each won $100 and $75. A 3rd place prize of $50 went unclaimed. Anyone who entered and earned 0 correct would have gotten it. As second place dude didn't get any right.

If it's low effort or something you enjoy, always apply. It's almost always worth it. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

Re: How to get hired at a startup when you don't know anyone

#104

Post by kbeckmann »

Kalium wrote: post #100
johns wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's too bad. A cover letter is 100x more valuable than a resume.

Could you explain why you say that?

A good cover letter tells more about the person and not just the cold facts. What motivates the person, details about side projects etc.

Re: How to get hired at a startup when you don't know anyone

#105

Post by Kalium »

kbeckmann wrote: post #104
Kalium wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain why you say that?

A good cover letter tells more about the person and not just the cold facts. What motivates the person, details about side projects etc.

Those are valuable details, but I think that it makes the application largely about the applicant's ability to author prose. This is appropriate for a copywriter, but I find it of less certain value for a software engineer.

Re: How to get hired at a startup when you don't know anyone

#106

Post by LunaSea »

blairbeckwith wrote: post #58
vinceguidry wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naiveté is a useful quality in a candidate for the right company. It signals the potential for loyalty. Once you've had your idealism broken by corporate bullshit, there's no easy way to get it back.

I think this is definitely true. Initially I felt like my loyalty was a result of having no other options, but it's proven untrue. I've had offers from all over the place since I've grown within Shopify, and I have no desire to leave this place. It's been fulfilling, challenging, and it will always be the place that took a chance on me when there were very few logical reasons to do so.

That's awesome, but please be careful. I was in the same situation as you but I was 19, hired as the first engineer (second employee) in a company of 5 people and I quit after almost 3 years.

Even though it's still fresh, when I look back, I really think I should've quit earlier.

When I joined I wanted to reward the company by showing that I was a hard worker but this resulted in just increasing the expectations without any return. Loyalty and overtime was almost expected of me after a while without any return besides the usual, low startup salary.

I hope it's different for you than it was for me. Just remember that it should be a two-way street and your loyalty should be rewarded.

Re: How to get hired at a startup when you don't know anyone

#107

Post by jes5199 »

I got my first real startup job by submitting a bunch of bugfix patches to their open source offering. It was relatively easy - they had a public bug tracker, and I just picked the things I thought I could figure out, and after one weekend, I had a job offer.

I was there for two years, and I never saw another candidate try to do that. We kept doing technical interviews that gave mixed signals - plenty of people got turned down because we didn't have an effective way of measuring their abilities. If they had gone through the code review process, they would have had a much better chance of getting the job. (In hindsight, I'm not sure why we didn't include "submit a bugfix to our open source project" as part of a standard interview process)

Re: How to get hired at a startup when you don't know anyone

#108

Post by bduerst »

ryandrake wrote: post #86
patio11 wrote: post #36

An intermediate step between "send in a resume and cover letter that no one reads" and "send in an unsolicited blow-their-minds project", which may well bounce off the same spam or attention filter which bounces a resume, is "convince one person in the company that they want you to apply there." This is much, much less difficult than engineers think it is. People with hiring authority are on the same Internet you are…

Time to do such research is not always a luxury a job applicant has. The hypothetical job candidate would, I'm sure, love to be able to get to know the intimate details of the 30 companies they need to apply to right now (because their savings dries up in 3 months and they have a family to feed), but that takes a lot of time. Maybe you didn't happen to have watched Bob's presentation at $CONFERENCE. Chances are, you…

>Time to do such research is not always a luxury a job applicant has.

I think their point is that applicants should focus more on quality, not quantity. Rather than focus on 30 companies, focus on six, and spend time trying to impress them rather than just throwing your application into the numbers grinder.

Re: How to get hired at a startup when you don't know anyone

#109

Post by ryandrake »

patio11 wrote: post #98
ryandrake wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time to do such research is not always a luxury a job applicant has. The hypothetical job candidate would, I'm sure, love to be able to get to know the intimate details of the 30 companies they need to apply to right now (because their savings dries up in 3 months and they have a family to feed), but that takes a lot of time. Maybe you didn't happen to have watched Bob's presentation at $CONFERENCE. Chances are, you…

If unsolicited apps are 1/10th as effective as solicited ones (generous!) then you only have to research 4 companies to outdo 30 shots in the dark. You can find e.g. the name of the CTO of Fog Creek. It's FizzBuzz-level difficulty or less. You can find e.g. any published work of Thomas Ptacek to bond over. You didn't have to run into him at Black Hat, or even know that he has spoken at Black Hat, to find a video of h…

I don't think we're talking about unsolicited vs. solicited applications. Surely a candidates odds are substantially better when the company initiates contact.

I'm talking about official vs. unofficial channels: does it makes sense to have an official (job site / resumes) channel that pretty much funnels into the trash, along side an unofficial one (where the real hiring happens) that rewards insider connections, friends of friends, cyber-stalking, cold-calling, and/or exhaustive research into companies? Is that the best we can do?

Also not arguing that the unofficial channel is ineffective. Clearly that's where all the hiring is going on, but is this the way it _should_ be?

Re: How to get hired at a startup when you don't know anyone

#110

Post by personjerry »

jes5199 wrote: post #107

I got my first real startup job by submitting a bunch of bugfix patches to their open source offering. It was relatively easy - they had a public bug tracker, and I just picked the things I thought I could figure out, and after one weekend, I had a job offer. I was there for two years, and I never saw another candidate try to do that. We kept doing technical interviews that gave mixed signals - plenty of people got t…

"submit a bugfix to our open source project" might be looked down upon as trying to get people to work for you for free
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