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Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

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Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#321

Post by watwut »

windowshopping wrote: post #62

Two initial thoughts: 1. This author's writing is extremely, uncommonly good. Good enough to write a book and have it sell. "Competing with the past of the economy," "residual behaviour of a world that treated labour as sacred," "immigration without immigrants" -- there are many elegant turns of phrase here. This is a very skilled writer. 2. His resume is designed poorly. Have a look. I'm not surprised his job search…

Ad 2.): I finished college in a good economy and got a job with less then perfect resume. When we have been hiring in good economy, again, we hired people with bad resumes. We gave them a chance cause we needed people and everyone was hiring. They seemed ok during interview and turned out to be good employees.

My point is, this nitpicking about whether CV is too long or tiktok like is just result of a bed economy and companies having 20 applicants for one position. And if this guy perfectly hits random set of signals to get hired, it is just that someone else will be unemployed.

When you have 30 grands on 3 positions, the overall employment situation wont be solved by them writing better CV. That is just the game of musical chairs we are playing to get jobs.

Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#322

Post by pempem »

beej71 wrote: post #271
kjkjadksj wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people you know aren’t always in a position to hire you.

They are sometimes in a position to hire you. I'm not in the field any longer, but when I was (pre-LLM) every job I got save one was through my network. And it's 100x more important now.

I haven't found this to be the case as much. Posted a job, got 100 applications, at least 10 had referrals. 10 is manageable for me to sift through but not the win the applicant thought. More than that, I found a colleague had a whole google form process to farm out referrals.

Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#323

Post by wiz21c »

baq wrote: post #287
ericpauley wrote: post #176

My two cents: As someone who is actively hiring and looking at a lot of résumés from fresh grads (albeit looking for more systems programming experience), I would personally not move forward with an interview for this CV. Red flags for me: * Talks a big talk on AI but it’s inscrutable if any of it goes beyond “I installed PyTorch and ran example code/prompted an API” * Multiple projects but from demos it’s very uncle…

> These issues are very widespread. I’d say under 10% of junior résumés I look at give me confidence that they’d show up and know how to write real systems instead of just gluing things together. You’re looking for seniors with junior pay grades.

When I hire, I always look at personal github projects. They are a hint that the person loves coding and loves creating software. I'm not looking for 1000 stars projects, and I don't even look at the kind of project, just the fact that the candidate has done some work in his spare time.

If there's no github project, I ask the candidate what website, web communities he watches/participates in regularly. I check if they are related to programming or building software (bonus point if you read HN :-)).

Both are good signs that there is an interest in the job that goes beyond paycheck.

Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#324

Post by pempem »

harvey9 wrote: post #268
lisbbb wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has to be a way to limit the flood--someone has to pay a fee someplace.

Maybe only accept applications by post.

Ok - this obviously doesn't work everywhere but recently was flown to a city for an interview. Day long, full loop, 5 45 min interviews + 1 working session with a panel. Had dinner with the team the night before.

There's no way to cheat at that point. You either have what they need (yay btw) or its not a fit

Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#326

Post by pempem »

hansvm wrote: post #159
windowshopping wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but I don't see a separate resume on the site. Correct me if I missed it but my understanding is that he is using that CV as a resume.

Resumes are normally tailored for the role. The CV is the raw source you use to tailor them. It's a little strange to have a blanket "resume" available for public perusal.

It would be weirder for that blanket resume to be accompanied by posts about how much your wedding taught you about b2b saas sales with your photo, location, and a list of all the people you met through work and are willing to say you're connected to.

Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#327

Post by jjav »

ernst_klim wrote: post #312
lisbbb wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the point of applying for "hundreds of jobs." I think use the time to network with real people and forget about Indeed or whatever because those jobs are mostly fake anyways.

> I think use the time to network with real people It kinda doesn't work these days. One of the points of DEI was to eliminate the nepotism hiring (and it's kinda good if the hiring wasn't so broken), so these days referrals don't mean shit unless you're referred by someone high-ranked enough. I've literally seen people being autorejected after being referred by team-leads these days.

> I've literally seen people being autorejected after being referred by team-leads these days.

Yes. But not always. Getting an internal referral helps somewhere between not at all and a lot. And it is pretty random, nothing to do with you. Just a matter of timing and attention span and where other candidates are in the queue.

However, it never hurts. So overall, don't expect networking and referrals will get you the job, but do expect it to help every now and then. So it is worth spending some time on that.

Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#329

Post by jfewhfuehg »

tionate wrote: post #257
chis wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't really agree. I mean you scroll 1 paragraph down and it says he worked a Google Deepmind, that's really all I'd need to see. I think the market is just super hard for new grads. I've heard from people that had to apply to hundreds of companies and do 20+ interviews to get something. Totally agree that this guy could write books though. On some level I always wonder if it'll be better for society if the next g…

It mentions DeepMind but also says Research Ready, which is the program funded by DeepMind but run by unis for disadvantaged students. That said I have no idea how competitive this program is.

>disadvantaged students

That's what it says on paper but that's not reality. If you are asian you are suddenly not disadvantaged even if you are an immigrant. It is just legal racism.

The fact that employers even get to play games like this tells you a lot about our current situation ironically.

Re: Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break

#330

Post by jjav »

nradov wrote: post #171
gedy wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my limited world view and 35 year career, the big shift I see (which I view is a problem) is that companies seem to lean way more on young HR types to recruit and filter than in the past. I can’t speak for everyone, but to me it seems it used to be a lot more common for the skilled hiring manager to be responsible for looking for new hires.

That happened because online job sites made it so easy for candidates to apply that hiring managers could no longer personally keep up with the flood. It's a bad situation for both employers and candidates but there doesn't seem to be any practical alternative.

> That happened because online job sites made it so easy for candidates to apply that hiring managers could no longer personally keep up with the flood.

Yes, this is a big factor. As an actively hiring manager, there's nothing worse than when HR enables receiving resumes through linkedin apply. We got a flood of many thousands of resumes. While I feel a duty to review them all, it's just flat out impossible so I had to skip most of them without reading.

On my most recent hire I'm glad HR stopped that and required people to file through the company website. Volume was reduced to many hundreds, which is more tractable. I still wasn't able to review them all, but at least a much higher percentage, like 60% instead of 2%

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