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Thanks for Submitting Your Résumé to This Black Hole

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Re: Thanks for Submitting Your Résumé to This Black Hole

#161

Post by crispyambulance »

speeder wrote: post #103
enraged_camel wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would be surprised. With a few months of investment attending local meetups, you can meet a lot of people. If you take the extra step and, say, volunteer for speaking engagements, you can establish yourself as an authority in your area of expertise fairly quickly. You won't become a DHH overnight, but you'll still be miles ahead of those who still play the resume game.

What to do if you don't have resources to do that? (Example: me. No friends, negative net worth, zero income, no car, no bicycle, no bus money, most clothes have holes in them)

Then you might have to shotgun your resume into online applications but don't be disappointed if you get hardly any response, even the best most qualified candidates get frustrated by doing that.

Re: Thanks for Submitting Your Résumé to This Black Hole

#162

Post by empath75 »

ryandrake wrote: post #114

Whenever this subject comes up, predictably the answer here is always Blah blah blah network network network. For a demographic always looking for the scalable solution to a problem, HN seems pretty attached to the least scalable option. The numbers just don't make sense to me. Let's generously assume that you meet and have excellent working relationships with 100 people at each of the 4 jobs you've had. Of those 400…

Networking at work gets you promotions within a company. I've gotten two promotions and a 40% pay increase in the past three years, and I think a lot of it is from hanging out with people at work functions and talking to lots of people on slack.

The actual jobs I've gotten from networking were either family connections or people I met going to raves when I was younger, or people I talk to online about tech stuff.

Re: Thanks for Submitting Your Résumé to This Black Hole

#163

Post by empath75 »

jkaljundi wrote: post #148
ryandrake wrote: post #114

Whenever this subject comes up, predictably the answer here is always Blah blah blah network network network. For a demographic always looking for the scalable solution to a problem, HN seems pretty attached to the least scalable option. The numbers just don't make sense to me. Let's generously assume that you meet and have excellent working relationships with 100 people at each of the 4 jobs you've had. Of those 400…

Wonder if there's also a technological new service that could change all this?

Have none of you people heard of linkedin?

Re: Thanks for Submitting Your Résumé to This Black Hole

#164

Post by lazyasciiart »

briandear wrote: post #135
pacaro wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true, but embedded within it contains a huge challenge for the industry. Hiring through people's networks and referrals has potential to really harm diversity. Hiring is an expensive process by any measure. But whenever we find a shortcut we have to be mindful of unintended consequences

If you're filing the position with a high quality candidate, I'm not sure how diversity is relevant.

You might not be sure, but high quality candidates who aren't already in the heterogenous pool you are hiring from can probably come up with something.

Re: Thanks for Submitting Your Résumé to This Black Hole

#165

Post by empath75 »

speeder wrote: post #103
enraged_camel wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would be surprised. With a few months of investment attending local meetups, you can meet a lot of people. If you take the extra step and, say, volunteer for speaking engagements, you can establish yourself as an authority in your area of expertise fairly quickly. You won't become a DHH overnight, but you'll still be miles ahead of those who still play the resume game.

What to do if you don't have resources to do that? (Example: me. No friends, negative net worth, zero income, no car, no bicycle, no bus money, most clothes have holes in them)

Get a job at a temp agency and start networking from within whatever shitty placement they give you. I literally started my career in a mail room working with developmentally disabled people and ex convicts. Now I'm a senior software engineer.

Re: Thanks for Submitting Your Résumé to This Black Hole

#166

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

nougatine wrote: post #138
TuringNYC wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insider perspective here: At a past employer, a Fortune 100 public company, the best roles were already slotted by senior execs for liked insiders and/or friends&family in the community. The job posting was just a formality, the end result was known well in advance of any job posting. Submissions to these job postings just languished because there was no one pressuring HR to sift through them, and it was well known i…

That's asinine. Because of some internal policy, you guarantee to waste people's time. It's already an asymmetric process, but behaviour like this makes it even more lopsided and plain wasteful.

You've hit the nail on the head. I appreciate the situation with companies. The "black hole" exists because they can't possibly deal humanly with every inquiry. To me, the question is: Why is the situation so asymmetric? Why is job hunting such a "seller's market?" Why do companies get hundreds, or thousands, of applications for one open position? It's like everyone who does similar work is continually submitting their application every time a position opens up within driving distance. If unemployment figures are as low as the government says, what's driving the deluge of applications? Is it simply "grass is greener" mentality?

Re: Thanks for Submitting Your Résumé to This Black Hole

#167

Post by ungerik »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #166
nougatine wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's asinine. Because of some internal policy, you guarantee to waste people's time. It's already an asymmetric process, but behaviour like this makes it even more lopsided and plain wasteful.

You've hit the nail on the head. I appreciate the situation with companies. The "black hole" exists because they can't possibly deal humanly with every inquiry. To me, the question is: Why is the situation so asymmetric? Why is job hunting such a "seller's market?" Why do companies get hundreds, or thousands, of applications for one open position? It's like everyone who does similar work is continually submitting the…

You send out 100 applications to get a job, the company gets 100 applications per job. Where is the asymmetry?

Re: Thanks for Submitting Your Résumé to This Black Hole

#168

Post by erikb »

curun1r wrote: post #137
ryandrake wrote: post #114

Whenever this subject comes up, predictably the answer here is always Blah blah blah network network network. For a demographic always looking for the scalable solution to a problem, HN seems pretty attached to the least scalable option. The numbers just don't make sense to me. Let's generously assume that you meet and have excellent working relationships with 100 people at each of the 4 jobs you've had. Of those 400…

Meh...working in the opposite direction, I just took two companies that, off the top of my head, would seem like attractive places to work (Stripe and AirBnB). Both have listed openings of the somewhat rare position that I'd be looking for (Engineering Manager). I went to LinkedIn and searched for each company and looked at just recruiting profiles. I found 12 and 8 mutual contacts, respectively, that I could easily…

What do you understand as "Engineering Manager"? In software an engineer that upgraded to managing other engineers seems to be common practice.

Re: Thanks for Submitting Your Résumé to This Black Hole

#169

Post by wott »

I've had a recruiter writing me to thank me for my application, but unfortunately blah blah résumé blah blah position blah blah. The thing is I had never applied to anything at her company nor sent her a résumé, I had just asked her a question once. Which she had never answered...

Re: Thanks for Submitting Your Résumé to This Black Hole

#170

Post by halomru »

throw_away_777 wrote: post #79
chrisper wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>For a few candidates who were unlikely to be a fit, I'd reject them, and say why I didn't think it'd a match. I read that a lot of people don't do this because they are afraid of $RANDOM lawsuit.

I always assume this is just an excuse - they don't give you a reason because there is no reason for them to give you a reason. If there was some benefit for them to giving you a reason they would not fear the lawsuits. Maybe some people from Europe can talk about whether companies give them reasons, I suspect even in Europe companies don't tell applicants why they didn't hire them.

>I suspect even in Europe companies don't tell applicants why they didn't hire them.

They usually don't. The same reasons apply. In Europe there's less fear about random lawsuits, but there are so many rules about hiring that it's just a minefield with lots of material for very legitimate lawsuits. You didn't get the impression that the applicant is a good culture fit? You better hope his name didn't sound Turkish, or that quickly sounds like unlawful discrimination.

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