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Ask HN: How have your recent job application experiences been?

43 pointsby v1lover 4 years ago
How did you discover the role? Did you apply through the careers site or a job board? Have you even heard back? What level of experience do you have?<p>Just curious how the year has started for people looking for a new role.

17 comments

throwaway1995v2over 4 years ago
No very good, I&#x27;m starting to believe that the so-called &quot;shortage of developers&quot; is just companies who have a terrible and frankly broken interview process, over-optimized to detect red flags no matter how small they are(I had been rejected for so many small things like &quot;I didn&#x27;t talk enough with the interviewers&quot;, &quot;Your solution is good but you forgot this small edge case that we didn&#x27;t mention &quot;, &quot;Your code was fine and it does solve the problem but we wanted to see you going the extra&quot;)<p>leetcode problems are silly but company us them as filters because they don&#x27;t know any better but on the &quot;Brightside&quot; only take 1 o 2 hours of your life.<p>take-home challenges are worse because they require more hours to completed and sometimes companies just ghost or reject you without giving you any feedback.<p>By far the best way to skip all that nonsense has been with referrals, I believe its because if the new guy underperformed they can just blame the one who referred him
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vlodover 4 years ago
Had one today (at a large company) and the interviewer looked&#x2F;sounded disgusted when I said I had a React app connected to a lone node server connected to the database. (MVP prototype).<p>They didn&#x27;t understand why anyone would design a system like that and asked if I had the choice again, would I build it the same way. Their correct answer was micro-services up the wazoo.<p>I tried to explain that startups don&#x27;t have budget or desire for massive infrastructure or are generally only interested in building a prototype to validate product market fit. Wasting money on ivory tower systems was a waste.<p>At no time did they ask if the system supported the workload or even how many users we had. Nope straight to build massively complex infra.<p>I&#x27;ve forgotten that a lot of s&#x2F;w engineers who work in the real world&#x2F;large companies, don&#x27;t have any idea some of the pg mantras we all chant.<p>Major red flag. Pass. :&#x2F;
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superbcarrotover 4 years ago
Pretty tough so far. Discovery - mostly through job boards. I&#x27;m also struggling with some career direction questions and getting a response or scheduling an interview just makes me more anxious instead of helping. Seriously considering putting off the job search for a time when I feel better or I have a better idea about what I want to do.<p>I&#x27;ve also never personally experienced the tech trope of being in high demand, getting multiple great offers or amazing salary&#x2F;perks. It seems a lot more uphill than the exepriences that other people share online.
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qchrisover 4 years ago
Start-up idea I don&#x27;t want to do, but would pay for money for: Applicant Tracking System, but for applicants. Employers pay for posting per usual, but applicants also pay $N&#x2F;mo. An applicant can submit a small number of applications per week, but get information of where their application is in the process, including if they&#x27;ve been passed over. Employers are forced to use some sort of tiered system for progressing applicants through the process, or won&#x27;t be allowed on the platform, and same with &quot;posting a role just to see who applies&quot;.<p>Really, it just monetizes some equalization of the power&#x2F;information assymmetry between applicant and employer. I know I would have paid easily over $100&#x2F;mo during my last job search to know wtf was happening with each of my applications, even if it was just getting turned down. The black hole is such a waste of resources.<p>Or, at least, something like that.
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kylebenzleover 4 years ago
I did a Phd in life sciences at Ohio State about three years ago, found it difficult to find a job in my field where I was living (Columbus Ohio), so spent $17k and 6 months doing an online data science course with New York Data Science Academy.<p>I have applied to around 100 positions, had three interviews and countless form rejection letters.<p>I am stuck working remotely or in the city I am in now so understand its been hard but I am just about to the point where I think I will not have a real &quot;career&quot; in my lifetime. I fluctuate between blaming my poor choice in going into the life sciences and the &quot;economy&quot; in general. Between unemployment, food stamps and living at my parents things are going pretty well but have basically given up on finding a meaningful job.
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mettamageover 4 years ago
FWIW:<p>Every year I put in my resume at the lowest most junior software engineering role I can find at FAANG, but I never get passed the resume stage despite the fact that I have a bachelor&#x2F;master in computer science and 2 years of working experience (1 in teaching web dev, 1 in software engineering). I guess it must be that I&#x27;m in Europe&#x2F;European, it&#x27;s tougher there? I applied for European places too.<p>I also applied to non-FAANG companies with its own issues (e.g. companies not replying or sending 40 hour code challenges), but it just hurts that I <i>never</i> got a test even by the companies I always wanted to work at when I was still at uni.<p>Because of that, I lost the whole &quot;you&#x27;re a new graduate!&quot; thing and it made me directionless. Before Covid I applied for jobs for 1 year and failed. Then I got a job, which was amazing and I was really grateful for. Unfortunately, the founders felt I was too entrepreneurial and didn&#x27;t stick enough to being just a programmer (note: I programmed 90% of the time) and had a big culture clash because of it, so I left. I can&#x27;t work at a place where I know that I don&#x27;t fit in the culture. Now I&#x27;m on the hunt again.<p>The whole process makes me feel inadequate while I know I&#x27;m not! I know a thing or two and have even way more to learn, that does <i>not</i> mean I&#x27;m inadequate. I was one of the most motivated students at uni, because I love an intellectual challenge and love working for a bright future. While I still cherish my love for intellectual challenges, I am not working for a bright future anymore. I don&#x27;t see one.
spirodonflover 4 years ago
I&#x27;m trying to help the programmer community by gathering up some data. If you have just a few minutes to fill out a form I&#x27;ve made I would appreciate it.<p>I&#x27;m going to take this data and come up with some solutions that benefits everybody with regards to interviewing and hiring. Everything I receive and put together I&#x27;ll post somewhere for everyone. I have about 24 people so far. I&#x27;d love to get to 40 even.<p>Everything is anonymous.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;forms.gle&#x2F;7oZjGpbq7LtmG1xc8" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;forms.gle&#x2F;7oZjGpbq7LtmG1xc8</a><p>_Note: I believe some of the questions are difficult to understand and I think there&#x27;s one repeat question. I&#x27;m cleaning it up. Even if you could just do the initial questions (a handful of them), it&#x27;s super helpful_
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Noumenon72over 4 years ago
Is this board only for Silicon Valley people? I was looking for a cleared job over Christmas on the east coast. Applying internally I got rejections, applying to jobs from recruiters I got interviews and offers about 60% of the time.<p>I found that five years of experience in &quot;programming&quot; didn&#x27;t qualify me for jobs that wanted three years of Angular, or Spring, or seven years total. I&#x27;ve still never had an interview with a programming test except my very first one that had FizzBuzz.
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bluefirebrandover 4 years ago
I was let go in the beginning of December so I&#x27;m currently highly motivated to find work. Not in desperate times yet but trying to look hard to find something so I don&#x27;t reach desperate.<p>My best opportunities so far have come via LinkedIn recruiters, believe it or not. One recruiter got me interviews with two companies before the end of December. I had a code challenge and second interview with one of them, so pretty far in the interview process.<p>Otherwise looking at job boards like Indeed and LinkedIn listings. Some good opportunities there but I feel like applying is almost a waste of time. I almost never hear back. LinkedIn has a feature where it emails you if your application was even looked at, and I rarely get those emails. I got one outright rejection but otherwise just ignored.<p>I&#x27;ve also been targetting companies in related work to my previous experience or companies I would be interested in working for but none seem to be hiring.<p>I don&#x27;t think there&#x27;s any single silver bullet answer to job hunting, just have to try every avenue you can to dig up opportunities.<p>I wish I was better at networking.
the_resistenceover 4 years ago
My clients have been facing job searches 2-3x longer than in past years (mid-level managers, social media, even HR staffers. That&#x27;s after having had the resume and LinkedIn Profile enhanced to a competitive level.
kaladin_1over 4 years ago
I&#x27;ve even following up one for some months. We had to halt everything for the Christmas holiday.<p>They gave me a technical interview recently which I felt I aced. Only for me to go read the question again I realised that what I felt was just supposed to manipulate an object could actually be a file that they meant.<p>I&#x27;m yet to hear from them, it&#x27;s been almost 2wks now. But ever since that realisation my confidence has gone done like crazy.<p>ATM want to focus on building projects with minimal Algo tests on the side. Gets tiresome solving Leetcode all the time.
theshadowknowsover 4 years ago
I keep getting amazing applicants but vastly overqualified for the roles for which I am hiring :(<p>good luck out there, guys.
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polka_haunts_usover 4 years ago
I&#x27;ve really only just started recently (Full stack dev, small company, looking for 2nd job), maybe like 15 total apps so far. I have 2 rejects and whole lot of dead silence. I am in one popular company&#x27;s pipeline though via a linkedin recruiter.
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aprdmover 4 years ago
Not trying to find a job but a lot of recruiters message in Linkedin periodically!<p>Amazon keeps sending emails to do their automated tests... nothing different.
PenguinCoderover 4 years ago
15 applications out since Jan 01 (trying to average 1 application a day)<p>4 interviews with different companies<p>6 total rejection emails<p>0 job offers<p>---<p>Email in profile...
newbalanceover 4 years ago
Recruiters on LinkedIn. Put some work into making your profile clean and concise along with good recommendations from past jobs.<p>Recruiters will sell you to the client, and help during rate negotiations. Good luck!
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mandeepjover 4 years ago
A friend of mine was rejected recently because the application architecture that he shared did not have much complexity :-)<p>Me: Why they unnecessarily need it to complex?