Ask HN: I have been unable to land a job in two years, does anybody

I wouldn&#x27;t hire someone presenting themselves like this. My immediate energy is &quot;disagreeable and difficult&quot; and it fails the vibes test.<p>I know that&#x27;s stupid but it&#x27;s also real.<p>Use something simple like linktree and go way deeper on your blogposts if you want to use that. When I&#x27;m in a hiring manager role, I&#x27;m looking for works that express depth and competency.<p>Really, if I can find say, 100 or so lines of competently written code, I&#x27;m interested. As far as what that means, take <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;js1k.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;js1k.com&#x2F;</a> and click on any of them and go to the demo details. I just picked a random one: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;js1k.com&#x2F;2019-x&#x2F;details&#x2F;4167" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;js1k.com&#x2F;2019-x&#x2F;details&#x2F;4167</a> ... I see that code and I think &quot;well this person seems to know what they&#x27;re doing, it&#x27;s worth a phone call&quot;.<p>Or let&#x27;s take <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;allrgb.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;allrgb.com&#x2F;</a> ... any one of them take pretty decent understanding and coding to do (here&#x27;s a random one: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;allrgb.com&#x2F;random-triangles" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;allrgb.com&#x2F;random-triangles</a>) Make one, do a writeup on it, release the code and present that.<p>Another tactic: Any large software project. Let&#x27;s take Libreoffice. Bugs from the last 7 days: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bugs.documentfoundation.org&#x2F;buglist.cgi?chfield=%5BBug%20creation%5D&amp;chfieldfrom=7d" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bugs.documentfoundation.org&#x2F;buglist.cgi?chfield=%5BB...</a> ... or the 1000 open tickets on wireshark: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gitlab.com&#x2F;wireshark&#x2F;wireshark&#x2F;-&#x2F;issues" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gitlab.com&#x2F;wireshark&#x2F;wireshark&#x2F;-&#x2F;issues</a> start fixing them. There&#x27;s plenty of work to do.<p>If your work is good, the jobs will actually come to you. Most companies are <i>desperate</i> for good, motivated, easy to work with engineers.

&gt; Also, I have been noticing that Spring have become synonym of Java (Most of the time when I apply for a Java Developer job they ask about Spring), I can grasp it on the job.<p>If you are applying for a senior Java role in a Spring shop, they&#x27;ll be expecting you to already know Spring. The easiest way is to write some projects in Spring!<p>That is it, right there. If you can show off a nice professional website written in Spring (try to find a designer buddy who is also out of work and needs a portfolio piece!), and a link to the GH repo for the same site, you&#x27;ll possibly skip a large portion of the interview process, or at least be put in the front of the line.

I am the founder of Rezi - a really well liked resume builder. If you want, I&#x27;d be happy to provide you with a fully upgraded account for free. It&#x27;s not much, but at least you&#x27;ll feel confident about your resume

Tips, thoughts [as a hiring manager]:<p>1. Build a professional CV. The current one (CV_Late2022.pdf), with a black background, bright colored links, no useful information, it&#x27;s off-putting and looks amateurish. I found your &quot;real&quot; one (CV_Mid2022_Frozen.pdf), not sure why it&#x27;s an additional click away. Take the &quot;frozen&quot; one, and turn it into a good-looking professional one. Just put something like &quot;2022-present Career break&quot; at the end.<p>2. You probably should do lots of practice interviews [in english]. Get feedback on how you&#x27;re doing. If you want to get a job, this is probably the highest leverage activity (other than fixing the CV), _not_ messing around with functional programming and Blender.<p>3. Pick some open source projects and try to contribute. If&#x2F;once you&#x27;re successful, put it on your CV.<p>Less important:<p>4. Make a showcase site that looks good. The website as-is looks like something on Geocities from the 90s, amateurish like the CV. Only show things that tell a good story. Also know that the showcase site is not that important, eg. recruiters don&#x27;t look at it, hiring managers _maybe_ will see it.<p>5. You always mention the ACM membership, but it doesn&#x27;t mean anything. It&#x27;s just a membership, not a qualification&#x2F;accomplishment.<p>6. Consider not having a big picture of yourself everywhere. Are you trying to get hired based on your looks, or your competence?<p>-<p>Note on asthetics, since some people mention it in comments:<p>A. I personally strongly believe that asthetics matter, because asthetics are a big part of Engineering in general, Software Engineering in particular.<p>B. If the person can&#x27;t follow some sort of reasonable cultural style guide in your 1-page CV, will they follow coding style guides at work?<p>C. Eg. if somebody doesn&#x27;t bother to align paragraphs, leaves commas hanging, uses inconsistent spacing, has typos, etc, ON THEIR 1-PAGE CV, THE MOST IMPORTANT DOCUMENT FOR GETTING A JOB, then.. Will they indent their code? Will they follow style guidelines? Will they use good names without typos for variables and functions and classes? Will they write good comments and commit messages?<p>D. Having reviewed 1000s of CVs and done 100s of interviews, the above correlations exist. And picking CVs and interviews are about looking for signals.<p>-<p>Obviously I&#x27;m just one hiring manager in about a pool of a million (or more), my opinion is not universal, no reason to get too worked up about it!

Sorry to hear about that. It&#x27;s painful continuing to get rejected after investing time and effort into a companies recruitment process.<p>I&#x27;ve typically had pretty good success landing jobs and a lot of the time, it doesn&#x27;t come down to the technical skills, but what I like to call &#x27;the vibe check&#x27;.<p>Obviously, having the right experience is important, but I typically focus on a few things that might be missed:<p>- Analysing the business and understanding their brand and culture so you can speak their language during the interview - Showing interest in their broader business goals - When explaining technical challenges you&#x27;ve faced, describing how you took those learnings away and applied them to a problem you faced in the future<p>Not hard tips, but after doing this I definitely got more job offers.<p>(p.s. If the resume is lacking, just pay a professional to make one for you).

If Spring is popular, and you want a Java job, you should learn Spring. Not knowing Spring puts you at a disadvantage compared to other candidates. I wouldn&#x27;t waste time learning Scala or Haskell, those aren&#x27;t very popular in the industry — focus on something that can land you a job, check what languages and frameworks are the most popular in Mexican companies and learn those.

I wish you luck. Hopefully constructive critisism follows.<p>&gt; Sometimes I pass the interviews but companies goes with other candidates. I have failed some interviews too (Unable to solve the problem on the given amount of minutes by the interviewer).<p>Reminder: during interview, you are checked not only for technical excellence. How you communicate and deal with difficult questions matters a lot. (Maybe even more)<p>Also as others have mentioned, if it’s spring position, knowing spring is mandatory. (2 years seems like a plenty of times to make something with spring)<p>Last but not least, your linked web page has link to CV, after opening it it became clear to me that you are looking for junior position, only couple of entries about training. (Then eventually I noticed the link to PDF; please understand how this confusion on my side is not beneficial to you; also nitpick regarding PDF, it lists “completed trainig required by the company”. It does not seem relevant to next employer unless its clear what the training was about)

I also cannot offer you a concrete job or anything, but maybe some advice as someone who is quite often looking at CVs as a &quot;subject matter expert&quot;.<p>There are a couple of things I noticed when looking at your website and CV. You seem to have many interests and ideas. Maybe too many. This might be ok on a personal level, however on a professional level this is only good if you can actually follow through on those interests. Otherwise it might give the impression of a lack of focus more than anything else.<p>For example, you mention Swift as area of expertise and an iOS Developer nanodegree. Yet I don&#x27;t see a single iOS app you made. You mention Cloud Developer using Azure, yet I don&#x27;t see any demo or portfolio projects.<p>On the CV of 2022, you mention AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (Coming soon). But I don&#x27;t see this certification.<p>Now, don&#x27;t get me wrong - I don&#x27;t think you need to <i>have</i> all of this. But then there is no use in mentioning it. Show what you <i>actually</i> have.<p>In your blog, you mention something like this: &quot;Explain the protected access modifier in Java, probably using Blender&quot;<p>This could actually be very interesting and something unique! But don&#x27;t talk about it beforehand - do it, then show it!<p>Don&#x27;t put your TODO list on the Internet. Put your DONE list on the Internet.<p>Hope this has some value :)

I looked around and ended up on your resume, the older one with work experience listed. It seems like you ought to be able to find <i>something</i> based on that history alone, even without digging into the newer stuff.<p>I don&#x27;t think your current website and current resume show off your employment history at all, and if you&#x27;re applying to places with the new ultra minimalist resume I could see that being an issue. It might also be worthwhile to update your links and listed emails on your resume, website, and github so that they all point to your current website and contact info.<p>My friends and I have been part of the layoffs - SWE and SRE work. Everyone is job hunting and hiring seems to be way down. I know my most recent company had a hiring freeze for the last year and a half across most business units, but they still had job postings the entire time. That might be very common. And it seems like most places want the exact right applicant for their tech stack. Unfortunately this is the nature of remote work - there probably <i>is</i> someone with exactly the right expertise applying.<p>It&#x27;s rough out there, but keep at it. Good luck!

Github is empty, only forked projects and courses.<p>This is like? Want me to build your house: I&#x27;ve taken a masonry course online.<p>Show me at least 4 walls that you&#x27;ve built and if your specialty is walls and these are your demo walls they better be state of the art, all best practices, explain why you used which technique for which wall.

I have a team at my company that is all Elixir. I&#x27;ll ask around and see if they&#x27;re hiring. We&#x27;re all remote and we got some folks in Mexico already. I&#x27;ll ping you on here if we have openings.

Instead of a full employment position, have you thought about freelancing for private clients, or building something and selling it?<p>We have such a reliance on hoping someone will give us a consistent, hourly rate rather than going it alone and doing something yourself. It&#x27;s not easy - but you stop relying on others.

I suggest you ignore tech companies. There are many non-tech companies in need of IT people (programmers, admin, dba, etc). A lot of them dont know how to do tech interviews or even know what to advertise to look for IT people they need. Go for this kind of companies. You get a chance to be their CTO and determine their IT operations. You likely need to work more IT fields and longer hours. But in return less bureucracy. The down is mostly they pay about half lesser than what you would get but living in area with lower cost of living.

Hi Caleb, sorry to read. Noticed that your one page CV might be the problem, the 10+ year two pager is much better.<p>You seem like an humble person, in todays age the job market is very aggressive, there are many self titled senior devs with 3 years of experience and a lot of people who aren’t honest about their experience. My suggestion is to work on your CV to represent you better!<p>Nothing wrong doing other things, it’s actually important! I used to work in Blender since early 2000’s, I had the original book and always been a fan of Ton Roosendaal. I’ve been developing since Pascal and Action Script, or LAMP days, and still pushing work with any technology I find revelant. And that doesn’t stop me from time to time, to do creative work. I’ve done 9 music videos, for a punk rock project (Portuguese) in the last year. Including 8 pixel art, stop motion and 2d&#x2F;traditional animation. I push a lot of work daily as a developer, including helping colleagues, mentoring people etc—literally product engineering&#x2F;full stack, write the spec, prototype, devops, backend, front end, design, if necessary motion graphics, etc and always document everything.<p>It’s all a matter of empathy, so make sure you work on that CV and Portfolio. Make sure it represents you better!<p>I haven’t updated my site for a very long time now but hope it inspires you <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;punkbit.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;punkbit.com</a><p>Good luck!

&gt; Also, I have been noticing that Spring have become synonym of Java (Most of the time when I apply for a Java Developer job they ask about Spring), I can grasp it on the job.<p>Saying you can learn it on the job is a meaningless statement if you have nothing to back it up with. They will not just take you on your word. You need to get ahead of their expectations and learn Spring.<p>&gt; I need to refresh some Algorithms knowledge, I have devoted sometime learning Scala for example, and a little bit of Haskell.<p>Brushing up on algorithms can&#x27;t hurt, but those languages have nothing to do with that. They will not help you with your goal of landing a job at all.<p>&gt; I firmly believe I can help with something in a Software oriented company, even data wrangling or any other task nobody else likes to do.<p>Don&#x27;t ever bring that line of thinking to any sort of an interview. Preferably don&#x27;t even think in that way at all. Coming off as a beggar is the worst thing you can do.<p>&gt; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;calebjosue.gigalixirapp.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;calebjosue.gigalixirapp.com&#x2F;</a><p>First impression: the design is straight from the early 2000&#x27;s. The first impression is all it takes, so you&#x27;re getting disqualified immediately by anyone who opens your website.<p>Make a proper modern project that showcases your skills. An e-commerce website is generally a good choice, a copy of Amazon basically. User authentication, payments, nice repo on github with CI, all the best pracices, etc. Spend ~3 months on it and link to it directly from your CV.

Saw somebody in a coffee shop today with their resume taped to the outside lid of their laptop.

Hang in there tech is just caught up in something way bigger. I&#x27;m also in the same position but trying to get a non tech job and code for fun

I&#x27;ve never had problem during job search, maybe I just lucky but anyway let me share some insights based on the post:<p>* outside of technical tests, the chance for you to be hired is 100% lies on presentation and communication (soft) skills. Confidence is a must, don&#x27;t show any sign of desperation<p>* don&#x27;t mention any past companies or blame them explicitly, for anything hiring or work-experience related. Keep it vague, maybe just say that you&#x27;re unlucky or the market just isn&#x27;t aligned<p>* talk about your skills, achievements or portfolio more, less about your opinion. Don&#x27;t talk about weakness at all, and when asked prepare an answer that is positive, like &quot;sometimes I aim for higher quality that development took a little longer&quot;<p>* don&#x27;t mention lower rate &#x2F; cheap, that&#x27;ll be perceived as lower quality. Do a market research and specify a rate if asked. Or just mention that your rate is &quot;competitive&quot; rather than &quot;lower&quot;<p>Sure the post is different than interview, so those points above are more like general guidance.

&gt; I can grasp it on the job<p>Not if you ever get said job.<p>If that&#x27;s what&#x27;s in-demand, then spend time learning it with the time you have.

Just a few pointers:<p>- Where is your resume? If it is on your webpage I sure couldn&#x27;t find it. Make it more prominent.<p>- If you want to work in software development, you need to have demonstrable skill at doing so (at least to the junior level). Code more and show off what you have done.<p>- Try to reign in the overly verbose way you communicate in (i.e long rambling posts with too much unrelevant information). This may come off as harsh, but it can pay off knowing when and how to communicate to different groups of people. (Suggest checking out &#x27;bottom-line, up-front&#x27; or &#x27;BLUF&#x27;)<p>I agree with many of the other points already made by others so won&#x27;t duplicate them.<p>Good luck!

Unemployment sucks. I know what you are going through. Unemployment leads to depression. You can beat it though. Keep doing the projects that give you rewards. Don&#x27;t take any notice of persons that say you don&#x27;t have the vibe . You can&#x27;t possibly be expected to have goood energy all the time when you feel so rejected. You find your niche and concentrate on that. You will get good feedback in the long run when consistently produce amazing work! You can do it!

I don&#x27;t know you, but given your words I can&#x27;t really tell if your problem is your programming skills or algorithms. If I was hiring I&#x27;d look for these things<p>1. The person needs to be reliable, I need to be able to depend on them, they need to be able (within reason) to think for themselves and solve problems in a good, none-convoluted, well documented and future-proof way.<p>2. The person needs to be able to learn for themselves and master a topic. That doesn&#x27;t mean this is a school test, sometimes the solution is: &quot;Boss we would be stupid if we built this ourselves, there is this great open source project I found&quot;<p>3. The person needs to be able to communicate clearly and honestly.<p>Notice how most of these aren&#x27;t related to the programming at all? They are more about how you conduct yourself and what people can see in you.<p>My advice to you would be to work on one or two &quot;bigger&quot; projects to which you can point when you are sitting across in the interview. If you are clever and pursuing different topics is your driver, choose something where you can apply all of those skills. Maybe you find something that would involve Blender <i>and</i> Spring? Blender has a python API so you can remote control many things. The most important part is however that you get those projects to a good state.<p>The reason such projects are a good thing is because it would show me that you are able to organize yourself, you can get things done, you manage to combine your skills etc. and above all: Solving problems motivates you.<p>And even if you had those projects and you sit across and talk to me like all of that bores you I am not sure I&#x27;d give you a chance.

Hi, My team is hiring at amazon. i can refer you. If you can provide me your point of contact, i can message you directly.

You are missing knowledge (Spring, in your example). But you are saying that &quot;I can grasp in on the job&quot; ?<p>Given a two years gap, you should invest the time and effort in learning whatever it is the market is seeing demand in.<p>Consider the employer&#x27;s perspective. Given two equivalent candidates, where one of them know Spring, but the other needs a month or so to learn it. They&#x27;ll go with the one that already knows that.<p>That attitude of I can learn on the job is likely hurting your prospects.<p>The CV in the website is also <i>really</i> bare bones. Basically, nothing relevant there. The old one appears to at least show the employment history.<p>The website link from GitHub is erroring. The website you linked looks bad, Geocities bad.<p>The GitHub profile itself is really bare bones. The first non-forked repository I saw was <i>literally</i> hello world (hidden by many layers).

Spring&#x2F;JPA and other related APIs has lots of stuff to learn. It is like the modern Java EE. It will require at-least 50–60 hours to learn basic stuff and their history. Learning history like how XML configuration works might be required because some codebases might be still using it.<p>Otherwise, just learning spring boot, assuming some things happen &quot;by magic&quot; will take fewer hours.

i work at amazon and can refer you. Amazon has open roles in Mexico.

If you truly have the skills and are just looking for an opportunity to prove yourself, you should try solving some bounties on algora.io. There&#x27;s multiple benefits to this, as you can earn some money, build skills, and be recognized for a job well done.

Not sure if this is helpful but definitely have a look at your English writing and maybe look at doing some courses or just plain talking to fluent and &quot;snobbish&quot; English speakers. I can&#x27;t put a finger on it but there is something <i>off</i> about the way you write English atm.<p>Also, wtf does Steve Jobs have to do with this? It&#x27;s non-sensical and out of place. I hope you don&#x27;t go off on such tangents in your interviews.

I `Tell HN` you rock!!!<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=40260862">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=40260862</a>

Maybe you expressed some incorrect political views online. I suggest you use a fake name&#x2F;identity when applying for jobs. Also, be sure to say that you&#x27;re fully vaccinated if they ask. Never reveal your vax status or say that you&#x27;re fully boosted. In my last job, I got baited by the CTO into revealing my vax status (after he said that he didn&#x27;t want the vaccine himself but his wife made him do it)... Could tell it made him very uncomfortable that I wasn&#x27;t vaxxed. I was fired a few weeks later for a phony reason in spite of exceeding expectations.<p>I haven&#x27;t been able to find a job in over a year in spite of a stellar resume. Also I write a fair bit online anonymously.<p>Most of these tech people are control freaks so they probably snoop in on their employees with all kinds of special tools using text analysis.

Two take home projects, in two years? Hmmmmmm.

As someone who recently for a software developer, I&#x27;ve been reading websites and resumes, and let me offer my two cents, for what it&#x27;s worth.<p>I also want to mention that aside from hiring for my team, I&#x27;ve also previously worked with paid interns from Google Summer of Code, both in the mentorship and the selection process.<p>I&#x27;m not someone in a large company, so that made the process of hiring somewhat more open, but if someone send me your website or sent me your CV, I must admit that I don&#x27;t think I would take it very seriously.<p>There are generally three things that I look for in a candidate:<p>1. Is this candidate already familiar with what I need them to do, or would this be a stretch of their skills?<p>Having the exact experience I need, with the exact tools, etc. is nice but not always necessary or the deciding factor.<p>2. Does this candidate have credentials that demonstrate their ability to do the job. This might be experience, a degree, of contributing to a FLOSS project in a notable way.<p>3. Do I think this person will be someone I want to work with?<p>This is very &quot;fluffy&quot; but demonstrations of both professionalism, and also good communication are key here, as well as harder to measure things like attitude.<p>Your resume links to a much better resume. The first resume on your website lacks anything &quot;interesting&quot; and if someone sent it, I&#x27;d simply pass.<p>The frozen resume is better, but still quite challenged. Drop the huge logos; they don&#x27;t impress and they feel &quot;scammy&quot; to me.<p>I also think that there&#x27;s some challenges with your English. For example &quot;Backed by 10+ years of experience in the Software Industry.&quot; is off. It&#x27;s not quite gramatically correct, or to be more precise, this gives off scammy vibes. :(<p>It&#x27;s not a problem in isolation to have people whose native language isn&#x27;t English, if you&#x27;re aiming at an English speaking audience, your resume should be better- spelling, grammar and &quot;culture&quot;-wise.<p>Then in some of these jobs, describe what you did in a way that&#x27;s more compelling. For example &quot;Software Development internal to this State institution.&quot;<p>That tells me nothing about the work. Even if it&#x27;s something boring, you could say &quot;Developed a web based application to manage employee payroll.&quot;<p>My experience has been that when presented with a lack of detail, it equates to a lack of knowledge or participation, which is why I pass over such resumes.<p>I agree with other posters and suggest you get some coaching in this, both in the resume and perhaps in the interview process.

good luck man &lt;3

it’s sad that your website is faster than the personal sites of most people i know who’ve gotten jobs as web developers<p>reflect on what you want, it’s definitely not a programming skill issue

minor nits:<p>1&#x2F; For coding interviews, you should be solving 4-6 leetcode problems per day which should take about 5-6 hours). The remaining 3 hours of bandwidth should be spent learning system design.<p>2&#x2F; If the jobs are you applying for learn Spring, go build a few apps on your own in Spring. Your github profile doesn&#x27;t have much coding activity.<p>3&#x2F; your profile photos in github and your website aren&#x27;t centered.<p>4&#x2F; I would remove the donate button on your website. it doesn&#x27;t signal that you&#x27;re a successful programmer. If you truly need to have a donation button, write more explaining why people should donate to you.