Ask HN: How do you go about finding a job?

The older I get, the worse I find the experience. I&#x27;ve had so many poor experiences with recruiters over the years, I think I&#x27;m becoming allergic.<p>It&#x27;s getting harder to pierce through the BS layers with all that new meat on the market, and to make the matter worse, recruiters are even less skilled than they ever were and are often offshored now. It&#x27;s insane today.<p>When I&#x27;m on the hiring side, we can&#x27;t find candidates, and on the other side I can&#x27;t get through to the right people.<p>My advice is put out feelers with anyone you&#x27;ve had a good relationship with in the past, often via your old networks and ex-colleague, you&#x27;ll jump in front of the queue and avoid the pre-screening nonsense. They know what to expect from you and they would prefer to have a familiar face they can rely on in their internal struggles.<p>That&#x27;s how I&#x27;ve landed my last 2 jobs without an interview.<p>The flip-side is always to be helpful to other colleagues. At some point, everyone needs a hand - be that guy - that lends it freely. They&#x27;ll always look out for you in the future if you look out for them in the present. Become a knowledge source in the company and industry. Soak in as much as you can, become a reference, expose yourself to everyone&#x27;s job to some degree, providing it isn&#x27;t a dead zone of silos and the people feel right (not cagey). HTH.

Personally, I&#x27;m not interested in a FAANG or hot startup job. So not sure if my &quot;classic&quot; strategy works for those positions. I also got 15+ years experience(in my late 30s). I use the exact same approach today as I did 15 years ago. When I&#x27;m in job hunting mode I search through job postings every morning. If I find an opening that stands out I write the company a short email stating my interest and why I think I&#x27;d be a good fit (I normally got a template ready for this that I customize for each job), and then I submit the job application. I got a 100% success rate of landing a job within 2 months with this approach.<p>I&#x27;m quite selective about the jobs I apply to. I read job descriptions carefully to try and get a sense of the place. I know the kinds of environments I prefer to work in at this point.

I posted here the steps I&#x27;m following when looking for a job:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=36494126">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=36494126</a><p>And I would say I am pretty successful.

My recent experience as a L5-L6 eng: applied to 15 companies advertising on LinkedIn, plus 2 recruiters reaching out, got into the interviewing process for 7 companies. Plus ~3 potential opportunities from network but not for the sort of thing I was looking for. Got a few offers, although some were for a lower role than I was applying for.<p>I was mostly applying for companies with a strong product and solid revenue, ranging from ~50 to a few hundreds employees, with a few bigger outliers. No startup or faang.<p>It was much higher success rate than I was expecting given all I heard about the job market these days. All humility aside, could be that I just have an appealing resume.<p>Resume was generic, cover letter mostly generic, slightly tuned per company.<p>I’d say network is still the best way, just didn’t work for me for the sort of company I was looking for.

I have a decent CV (comp sci degree, awards etc) and over a decade of experience.<p>My strategy is quite simple - when I need a job I search for and apply for jobs I like the look of.<p>I might apply to a handful of companies. I tailor my CV for each one. Then I treat the interviews seriously, researching intensively and preparing as best I can, doing the problems they&#x27;re known to give, practicing answers to questions etc.<p>It&#x27;s pretty straightforward but requires a lot of work and means I have a high rate of passing through and getting offers.<p>My last interviewing experience was a few months back and I applied for 4 jobs, and got 2 offers. I didn&#x27;t get past CV stage with the other 2 companies. I&#x27;ve moved around a lot with at most 2 years at a company so that probably hurts my success rate. It&#x27;s always me quitting, I&#x27;ve never been fired or layed off.<p>I&#x27;ve gotten work via a friend before (side job), as well as through recruiters. I still get emails every now and then from recruiters that have me on their list. I even got a job via hackernews - Posting in an &quot;Open for work&quot; thread.

The market is tough now, but warming up. I&#x27;ve been land positions through LI and job listings on company sites in the past, but this time (a couple months back) my network was the key. If you have experience at smaller startups were you can tap into your VCs I would highly recommend you do that. Some VCs have people that lead hiring for their portfolio companies, other don&#x27;t but they are always trusted advisors and often the first to hear that the company has&#x2F;is thinking about hiring. If you worked for larger companies you can still capitalize on their VCs - go to local events and get to know the relevant partners based on your function IRL and Linkedin.<p>Beyond that, I would recommend you scan your personal network for people that could refer you to companies you&#x27;d like to work for and have relevant job listings - being that most companies have referral fees there is not reason for your contacts not to refer you for a relevant position.<p>This might all be stuff you know, but I really want to emphasize that the networking is key in today&#x27;s hiring market, which is flooded by talent.<p>I hope I helped. Stick in there, something will come around sooner than later.

I only go through job listings directly (though some listings may say email this person with your resume and I&#x27;m including that), and the response rate has always been low for me. I&#x27;m pretty strict with requirements and the kind of work I&#x27;m looking for. To cover the past 5 years or so:<p>In 2019, I submitted 400+ applications and had only 4 or 5 responses which eventually converted into 1 job. I hear the market was hot then.<p>In 2021, I submitted around 40 applications with 3 responses where I had 2 interviews, and 1 job offer (through HN whoishiring!) that I accepted; stopping the process with the 3rd company at that point.<p>Now I&#x27;ve been looking for 2 months, and have so far sent around 15 or so applications with 1 interview that I did not pass.<p>I understand that networking and referrals are basically key nowadays, but I won&#x27;t do that based on my values - I think it&#x27;s unfair to be prioritized based on who you know over skills - this is a hill I will die on (or at least leave my profession over).<p>Furthermore, I do have a solid work profile (open source, personal site, blog with mostly technical posts, etc.) but am not willing to associate my real life identity. Not because it&#x27;s inappropriate, but because I value privacy.

Can&#x27;t speak for myself since I haven&#x27;t had to search for a job since the market went downhill, but my wife started exactly at the same time. Her experience has been dreadful, looking for a junior dev position fully remote nowadays feels like hunting for unicorns.<p>So her approach was to basically search through every job board available online (following my advice since I found my last job outside of linkedin). But keeping up with tens of open tabs in chrome is exhausting and very time consuming.<p>That actually got me an idea to basically automate the search part and webscrape every tab she had open and send a notification when new jobs get posted, this way you only get to see a clean feed with jobs from all sources.<p>That&#x27;s how <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;first2apply.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;first2apply.com&#x2F;</a> was born and now she&#x27;s only using that. Haven&#x27;t found that fully remote junior role yet tho :&#x2F;

hiding under a rock with some bourbon until one of my industry friends drags me out kicking and screaming. in all seriousness this industry is very much a word of mouth back door room career, and if you actually try to fight on the job boards you are fighting for positions that were already turned down by top talent against recruiter firms that get a percentage of your salary. i don&#x27;t work unless it&#x27;s for a friend and there&#x27;s equity. not everyone has that luxury and jobs have to be posted publicly even if the candidate was already internally chosen, so it&#x27;s really rigged. i guess it&#x27;s just old fashioned git gud scrub mentality which is very toxic but what can i do about it? i wouldn&#x27;t trust a single person on linkedin if i was in a hiring position so it&#x27;s really a losing game for everyone.

I&#x27;ve basically given up at this point, but the only interview I&#x27;ve got was after directly responding to someone&#x27;s LinkedIn post and then sending them a connection request. It didn&#x27;t go anywhere after that though.<p>In previous years it was nearly as bleak, and eventually just lucked out, either posting on HN or maybe applying on LinkedIn. But.. that was in the before times, now it&#x27;s fair for me to ignore the overwhelming majority of recruiters, especially if they&#x27;re based out of India. They&#x27;re all just copy&#x2F;pasting the same shit job and working as a tertiary resume hocker, might not even know he name of the company or anything about it.

I&#x27;ve got unlimited access to my husbands iPhone and PC and also have his activities in check thanks to this dude who is a Russian Hacker by his name Hacker11tech I got introduced to from the UK who helped my friend boost her credit score. His assistance really meant a lot to me. I got access to my husband&#x27;s cell phone, WhatsApp calls, without his knowledge with just his cell phone number this badass did everything remotely, I don&#x27;t know. if it&#x27;s right to post his contact but I promised him referrals, alot of fake ass out here, also someone might need his help so help. I&#x27;m grateful to Hacker11tech. Email is hacker11tech @ gmail com Good work always speak for itself, you should contact him!

The past few times I&#x27;ve searched for a job I&#x27;ve literally opened Google and searched &quot;sysadmin, Helsinki&quot;. Sometimes that points me at specific linkedin posts, random recruitment sites, and other times individual company pages.<p>I read a bunch and apply to three at a time, based on how the adverts sound, or what I know of the companies. The last time round I found many posts and made a ranking of the options based on the fact that people I knew said &quot;Company XXX is awesome&quot;. Luckily I got an offer at the company at the head of my list.<p>Linked in I treat more as a meta&#x2F;comedy site, and I&#x27;ve never seriously used it. I have past working experience, but I never react to things and I&#x27;ve made three-four posts in the past ten years. So &quot;networking&quot; isn&#x27;t really something I handle explicitly, but I talk to people in local tech companies randomly in the pub, or via friends of friends, so I feel like I know the major companies, and the ones with good&#x2F;bad reputations for staff-treatment, and technologies.<p>TLDR; &quot;Networking via friends has lead to random comments over the years about companies, and using that I make a list of 10ish companies. I haven&#x27;t the concentration to deal with many overlapping applications so I apply to max three jobs at time. If one rejects me I apply to the next on my list and proceed until employed&quot;.

Don&#x27;t apply to only software companies. Get in at the ground, talk to higher ups immediately. Find out if they have some repetitive work and if you can save them time, then write them a script. They&#x27;ll be hooked. If it&#x27;s a small enough company, soon you&#x27;ll be managing their entire software infrastructure. 2&#x2F;2 with this approach.

I have still not been able to find one. I would be really grateful if anyone here can help me. Here is my profile: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.linkedin.com&#x2F;in&#x2F;annedeepa&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.linkedin.com&#x2F;in&#x2F;annedeepa&#x2F;</a><p>Thank you very much!

I staffed an entire team back in January just using HN (Who&#x27;s Hiring) and a very high-touch email strategy. I made a video introducing myself and my company, and I screened on comp in the first series of exchanges (based on the budget we could afford). I&#x27;ve been running with this team for 7 months now, and the folks I hand picked out of ~200 applicants have been truly fantastic. I know this is about finding a job and not hiring, but on the other side of it, I&#x27;ll say that with so many applicants, if I didn&#x27;t find something impressive in the portfolio, I didn&#x27;t bother going any further. You really have to make yourself stand out, and proof of work is a great way to do that (personal websites showing work, etc).

I&#x27;ve had to look for a few internships during my CS masters, the tip I always found most useful is to look up companies that look good in your area, search their website for a number, pick up the phone and call. I introduce myself and what I&#x27;m looking for, I know if they&#x27;re interested in under a minute, write down the contact, and move on to the next.<p>Using this improved my experience tenfold compared to: researching the recruiter, sending an email + cover letter, waiting for a response, having 2-3 email exchanges, etc... I don&#x27;t think I ever got a job&#x2F;internship by applying for a job opening. I did get lucky with linkedin maybe once, when a tech lead sent me a message directly.

I only have a very small set of companies I would ever want to work for which is a huge plus, because I just check their career pages. Small local security&#x2F;pentest companies. Worked twice so far. I&#x27;m just lucky tho and I know it.<p>What I think helps a bit is: I&#x27;m very personal in my emails and brutally honest, like I&#x27;ll tell them all the bad things explicitly in the first 5 sentences (bad education, dropout). No formal greeting &quot;Hey, my name is X and I...&quot;. I also do have some work public (code + vuln diclosures) which has helped.

I have found 3 jobs (including my current one) by just writing blog posts. People read the blogposts and asked me to join their company.

as someone relatively junior and switching roles, it has been tough to find one after finishing school. wish my journey would been a success story for using hn for job search, but got no luck here. it might be the same for most non-NA talent.<p>tried finding vacancies on several job boards, and directly on companies&#x27; career sites. while (public) employment agencies are promoting using llm for writing cover letters and cv, i have been personalizing them the old-fashioned way. several a&#x2F;b tests later, i got nothing but automated rejection letters.<p>the only way i found success was from my personal connections. i suppose referrals do work out for people, but even that is not a silver bullet. maybe it is a skill issue to not find success the normal way, but in retrospect i found not much to do different the next time i need to find a job.

LinkedIn recruiters have been where&#x27;s it been for me in all but my first internship and my current job (referral from prior coworkers). Whether I see a post on LinkedIn or get a direct message from them, that&#x27;s how I got 5 of my 7 jobs.

I use Get TJ Alerts&#x27;s [1] search tool and search for jobs that have my preferred tech stack, have comp info and contact info. Then I send a personal email with a video intro.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gettjalerts.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gettjalerts.com&#x2F;</a>

&quot;Looking for work&quot; on LinkedIn and replied to one of the hundreds of messages.

I deleted my linkedin years ago: I found it utterly useless. i won&#x27;t lie, my social media game is as bad as they get but linkedin seems like the least effective option. I have not gotten the standard &quot;while your credentials and experience is very impressive blah-blah&quot; bollocks message from linkedin applications. So far it&#x27;s been either local job boards or angel.com.<p>Recruiters are a mixed bag. I&#x27;ve had wonderful and horrible experiences(and almost nothing in between). My current job - 10&#x2F;10. The one before - same - the guy was awesome and was the reason I took the offer(against my better judgment) and ultimately was the only person I liked in the company and the only one I miss. The job before that - uugh... I joined the company before the HR did and had it been the other way around, I would have turned the job down - she was absolutely unbearable. In the grand scheme of things I agree: HRs are atrociously insufferable.

I tinkered up a python script that scraps job posting site (hh.ru) and sends applications. It takes about 30-40 applications to get an interview invite, and 30-50 interviews to get an offer. based on several job-seeking periods. basically I just run a single command each day to send 200 applications (day limit on hh.ru) to filtered python vacancies and schedule interviews in google spreadsheet with those employers who wrote me. the script is disgustingly dirty even by my low standards of scripting, but it saves me several hours each day of job seeking. it feels like fishing.

It sucks. At this point, I&#x27;m focusing more on quantity rather than quality. I need a change.

you dont use linkedin premium to look at linkedin jobs. just ignore that whole section<p>just set to looking for work and respond tor recruiters<p>sign up to recruitment firms and let them send you roles<p>seek referrals from greedy employees looking for referral bonuses

Um generally just get a call on the Blower erry few days with some new opportunity. Spend my days working on backlog.<p>Might do some advertising this year. But mostly word of mouth goes harder than advertising or tendering for work. Legit have gotten consult for gov work bypassing tender just by word of mouth. Do your job well and the work will come. Also get out of conglomo megacorps. Doesnt matter how bright you shine you will still get lost in the sea of shit that they are. Making future work harder to find.<p>Remember, do a good enough job and other people will sell your services better than you can. Also register a company. Plenty of work where folks don&#x27;t want you for the whole season just a game or two. It&#x27;s easier to get thrown small bits and pieces as a contractor than having a company sign up to your services for a year. Get multiple companies throwing small bits and pieces.

Agree fully with recruiters being BS.<p>Google keyword alerts&#x2F;searches and&#x2F;or word of mouth, although the latter is less trustworthy. <i>Search</i>, goshdarnit!<p>Have also randomly contacted a few people in my LinkedIn network for advice at 2 times in my career, in order to get more knowledge about skills, industries, company landscapes, etc.

I&#x27;ve given up... can&#x27;t do work anymore

&gt; but I&#x27;m curious what the HN community&#x27;s experience has been recently.<p>TL;DR: Dreadful for me. Games was never stable, but these days it&#x27;s imploding in real time and my calls slowed to a trickle. Crazy how much changed in 2 years. The worst part isn&#x27;t the rejections but the disrespect.<p>For reference, I had 7 YOE when I was laid off in 2022, and it took maybe 40-50 apps leading into 6-7 interviews and I accepted my first choice while I was 5+ interviews deep into 2 others. 3 months or so of seaching.<p>Studio shuttered in 2023, took a break, started looking in September of 2023. Boy, it felt like finding my first job all over again. Hell, it&#x27;s worse than that; I at least lucked out into my first FTE after 3-4 months. It&#x27;s been over 9 months and I felt like I experienced every bad glassdoor review in the book short of outright scams:<p>- See an interesting role and it&#x27;s closed after an hour.<p>- Try to contact recruiters or old colleagues to express interest. Sometimes I get a response from the recruiter for my resume, send it, then never heard from again. Not even a &quot;sorry we&#x27;re looking for someone with more experience&#x2F;more experience in X&quot;.<p>- Interview one or two stages in and then a hiring freeze occurs. Or better yet, layoff announcements. Especially wary now when interviewing towards the end of a fiscal quarter.<p>- given some project that &quot;only takes 2-3 hours&quot;. ends up taking more like 8-10 hours (even when I optimistically estimated the project scope to be 4-5 hours), turn it in.... and no response. This is how I got my first job back in the day but I will absolutely never do a project without talking to a human anymore. (fwiw, no. I highly doubt this was anything worthy of spec work to use professionally. Some were basically college math + comp sci quizzes. Some were basically filling in a template).<p>- Get referrals. Higher rates, but I&#x27;m shocked how many lead to no responses. my referrals almost always lead to at least an exploratory call. Here it&#x27;s gone from 95% response rate to 40%. still better than cold applying but crazy how even people vouching for you on the inside may lead to nothing (not even a generic rejection. Some referrals had to prod the manager and get some response).<p>- Get an invitation to a recruiter call who reached out for me. I setup a call and confirm on email. No Show. Never responds back again. This has happened twice now. One of them delayed a call a week, then another week, and 10 minutes after the 2nd delay just deleted the call. Never heard back from them again.<p>- get a recruiter call, express interest, then say the role is filled... all within 24 hours.<p>- Go through 5 rounds of interviews, get good vibes from the team, expect good news (or at least &quot;we went with the other candidate&quot;) and then... nothing. Ghosted after 6-8 weeks of interview. This happened <i>Twice</i>. What the heck? When did I enter the Ghost Zone? This is crazy.<p>I lost count long ago, but I must be well past 400 applications at this point. My current part time role came from a complete blind message on LinkedIn, so I&#x27;m not exactly going to say LinkedIn is useless or obsolete. I&#x27;ve tried half a dozen other websites and LinkedIn is only second to applying directly on the company website.<p>It&#x27;s just weird times. My rates were never as stellar as many stories you read here (the 2022 experience was still ~16-20% response rate) so I&#x27;m used to that. But the real kicker is just how little respect there is these days. I&#x27;m more than burned out from trying to curate my resume and make a homely cover letter talking about their projects, what I liked, and what I can help with. I lose hairs every time I am lead to a workday application knowing I need to re-enter 99% the same stuff but under a &quot;new account&quot;.<p>The only solace is knowing I&#x27;m not alone. Most of my close friends got hit or barely dodged layoffs. I think at this point almost all of them bounced back (except one that was laid off 2 months ago or so during the Activision layoffs), but I am treading water.<p>funny side note: got one more rejection (this one actually came from a HN Hiring post) as I wrote this comment. Fine enough (it&#x27;s 2AM right now, so I&#x27;m guessing this wasn&#x27;t a US company). I just can&#x27;t believe I&#x27;m in a situation where a personal feeling rejection is one of my better experiences this year.