from Hacker News

Ask HN: How did you job hunt?

by phemartin on 11/18/21, 7:08 PM with 3 comments

I'm learning how people search for tech jobs. So, I want to know: What did you do the last time you looked for a job? - Did you go to LinkedIn? Indeed? Searched over niche job boards? Did someone refer you? Did a recruiter reach out to you?

How did you do it?

  • by trcarney on 11/19/21, 11:43 PM

    I recently was in a job search (early october). I used the following platforms.

    Hacker News - By far the best reply rate. I think I got an initial phone screen for about half the places I applied to.

    Work at a Startup - I like that it was easy to apply to numerous startups. I also liked that you could put in a statement about why you wanted to work at a company. This also had good reply rates

    LinkedIn - The first thing I do is set my LinkedIn to looking for work. You never know when a recruiter will reach out to you with a gem, yes you will have a million amazon recruiters but I think it is worth it. I also browse the positions listed on there. Ok reply rates

    Indeed - The lowest reply rate but they do have the most jobs available. They have also gotten much better with remote positions in recent times

    As for the job I found, I actually can't remember where I saw the opening. I think it was on here. The process was actually pretty good. The whole process from application to offer took just under one month. It consisted of an initial phone screen with their recruiter, a phone interview with the hiring manager, and two days of virtual on-sites (2-3 hours). For the technical portion of the interview, they give you the option to walk through a project you have already done or a take home assignment.

  • by the_only_law on 11/19/21, 1:07 AM

    Normally just browse LinkedIn for jobs I want, but can’t get and reply to recruiters on the platform for jobs I don’t want, but pay enough.
  • by readonthegoapp on 11/18/21, 10:42 PM

    holy shit - i'm in the shit right now. deep deep shit.

    my method is something like spray and pray, ping friends to see if their companies are hiring, target certain companies if they doing something interesting, put myself out there on HN and Linkedin, etc.

    fuck. me.

    6+ weeks now of going hard core, and nothing yet.

    i bail on quite a few possibilties, but i've also been bailed on quite a bit. like, 2 of 3 people on a video call are cool with me, but one hates my life. what? i'm def hate-able, but if you're so sure you hate me before we even get on the phone, why waste my time?

    some companies have pretty big processes. i talked to stripe recently. i was like what's your process like?

    they're like...

      1. one hour live coding session
      2. homework
      3. 4 or 5 one-on-ones
      4. something? might be nothing here.
      5. offer
      6. ref check
    
    only 'weird' thing about this interview was it was kind of surprising to me in that, how it started - this was just a screening call - felt good/sane - pleasant recruiter, good questions, etc. - but hearing about that process, i had to nope out.

    the live coding interview is a bit over the top, i think, but at least they have to waste their time too for that hour. but an hour? it takes you an hour to know if someone can code? you have to live code to know if somebody can code?

    this is for an advanced tech support role, so while it's not 'sustaining', presumably it'd be heavy w/ api and whatever tools/languages/environments, thus...the need to spend 60 minutes typing in front of someone. i think that's awkward and overkill, but if one of the purposes of interviewing is establishing fealty/submissiveness/desperation, then it makes good sense.

    then the homework. i just added this note to the top of my resume the other day, to help me weed out homework companies -- prob after stripe got my resume, unfortunately:

    No homework, please – happy to spend time on the phone with your tech screener. My AWS Cert is here. My side projects are here. My public github repositories are here; access to private repos and university transcript available upon request. Thank you.

    eh.

    my resume is trash, as i suspect a lot of wantrepreneur resumes are, but this job hunt thing is not so fun when you actually need a job.

    i still think there is some better hiring model out there that we haven't gotten to yet. unfortunatley, it's probably called "a real social safety net" -- so we don't have to worry about that happening in America anytime soon.