Hacker News Reader

Comment by donatj | Hacker News Reader

Talking to relatives who can't find jobs, "How many jobs did you apply for today?" and the reply is inevitably "well, none".

How are you expecting to find a job when you don't apply? I applied for five to ten jobs a day when I got out of trade school. I was unemployed so I certainly had the time. It took almost six months to get someone to take a chance on me.

The trick to getting a good job without a degree is to get someone, anyone, to take a chance on you. You will be underpaid until you prove yourself but it will cost you less than a degree in the long run.

View on HN

Applying to 5-10 jobs a day might be (partly) why it took you 6 months to get that job.

Unfortunately, tailoring your resume and cover letter to the job increases your chances of a response quite a bit, and that can easily take you two hours to research the position, the company, write a cover letter (or email), and adjust certain parts of your resume.

And if they insist on you manually entering your resume into their Taleo (or similar) software, that can easily take an hour.

And if they want code samples, finding (or making) something appropriate and cleaning it up could easily take 2-3 hours (or more).

And meanwhile, if you're lucky, recruiters could be calling to interrupt you at any time of day to have the 'getting to know you' conversation or pitch some new company they want to throw your resume at and probably not secure an interview for you.

And then at some point you need to actually find the series of jobs to apply to, and if you have any filter at all that can take a good solid 2-3 hours of browsing various job sites.

After doing 2, maybe 3 of those a day, I always got pretty drained and sick of doing it instead of going outside and enjoying the day, something you don't usually get to do when you're employed and working all day, so it's a rare opportunity to take advantage of it. Plus, job searching all day every day just drains the life force out of you (well, me at least).

I had four different resumes I sent out last time, each highlighting a different type of experience (I'm somewhat of a generalist, so I've got experience in many industries and with different tech), and I still made company-specific tweaks on top of that.

Not only do most applications take time, I've found that no-degree jobs take far longer to apply for than fancy "skilled" jobs like software work.

The full interview funnel is long in software, but the first step is something like "upload your resume to some sites". Decent low-education jobs, meanwhile, require proprietary sites and lengthy applications. It's not uncommon to be asked for 5-10 years of past residences and credit information. Verizon (for a floor job) put me through a 2 hour personality test (as an initial application), then never contacted me again.

I can't speak to people coming out of trade school, but the only no-degree jobs that you manage 5-10 applications per day for are the really crappy ones like fast food. Anything better than that has a swarm of applicants, so they're free to be as demanding and time-wasting as they want.

I can't really imagine doing 10 applications per day for the sort of job where many companies demand several hours work and none of it transfers to the next place.

I think the gist of the parent message was that: in order to get a job, one must apply for (at least) a job. So those people that complain about not being able to get one, but haven't applied for any seems like they just like complaining.

You're absolutely right about someone taking a chance. At 17 I basically walked into a woodworking shop, spoke with the owner and told him how passionate I was about working with my hands and showed him some things I had made. We talked hand-tools and he hired me to sweep the floors, deal with the scrap and sawdust and do the rough mill work.

I had no intention of going to college so I took my GED and quit school.

At 17 I was still living at home and, at that, age it was not odd or stressful to myself or my parents. I also didn't need much money so making minimum wage was not an issue. I didn't even own a car at first. I rode my bike everywhere and got rides with co-workers when the weather was really bad.

By the time I needed more money I had experience and was making more because of it. I was also attending community college at night because 2.5 years of working in a trade made me realize that college might be a good idea.

Another trick is to not waste too much time on school if you don't intend to go to college.

I've learned first-hand that these days software teams don't seem to take a chance and do not use the probationary period to see if someone is a good fit. You go through four or 6 interviews and then one of the 8 or so people you've interviewed with has a bad feeling about you and that seals the deal. It's like they don't have a probationary period and want to hire you unlimited, full-time from day one. Even the most impressive psychological bullshitter can and will be revealed as a bad fit in the first month, so why not take a chance on someone who seems capable and socially compatible while being down to earth (aka no bullshit artist). What I've learned is to not be totally honest in interviews and keep my concerns to myself when asked.

> You go through four or 6 interviews and then one of the 8 or so people you've interviewed with has a bad feeling about you and that seals the deal.

Then they get on Hacker News later that day and complain about how hard it is to find people and how hot the job market is right now.

Yeah, I'm always amused when large corps complain about missing workforce and about needing 50.000 software developers in Germany. But if you went looking they either don't want developers but PhD's who've heard of C++ or much worse just cheap labor. The latest was Volkswagen making news right after the software scandal that they're planning to hire 38.000 developers. No idea what tasks they want to put that many developers on and I'm not sure if I should be scared or skeptical.

Modern cars often consist of millions of lines of programming. Especially electric cars.

Sure, but planning to hire 35k devs requires a better explanation than that. Even building a space station like DS9 wouldn't make use of 35k in any effective way. How would you coordinate and make use of the available workforce?

The last time I've read numbers a couple years ago, not even Microsoft had 35k software developers.

Speaking of, if you've watched last week's Silicon Valley episode and are in the valley, is it really true that recruiters send you gift baskets just to lure you to an interview?

I've never seen this, probably because recruiters aren't dumb and know that people will react just like Guilfoyle did.

I've certainly seen 'perks' for in-person interviews or acceptances, but I'd be shocked if people are opening with gifts before they get something in return.

Not a fruit basket, but I've been wined and dined by recruiters during the frothy 2011-2012 years. I did not take the job but the dinner was nice.

Contract to hire is a probationary period. The contracts usually last six months or so.

Do you mean as a contractor?

If so, how normal is it to go through an interview process for contracting? I got friends who told me they had to interview like for a regular position even though they're contracting, but I should say that those I've heard it from are contracting exclusively full-time for a single company. So how normal is it for 3 or 6 months contracting?

I am not sure. I've never interviewed for a contract to hire job. However among those I've worked with who were in such arrangements, the bar to hiring was lower.

Sure, and those of us that are decent and have fte with real benefits aren't going to take a 6 month contract in hopes that:

A. I'm a great fit for your after hours drinking club. B. The headcount still (or ever existed) for my fte position in 6 months.

If you want a lower threshold for being hired, you have to accept a higher risk of being fired. If are established in your career then by all means don't take a contract job. But they can be gateways to a first job for many people.

This may be true, but the advice does not necessarily mean it will take 6 months - I have a graduate degree from a prestigious school in STEM, and it took me 2 1/2 years to find a job, only after getting fed up with job searching and teaching myself programming. I treated job searching as a 9 to 5 job as well.

The market is very tough for those trying to enter in the first time in general.

> How are you expecting to find a job when you don't apply?

How are you going to apply to a job if there aren't any to apply to ?

That really depends on the market location doesn't it? I've moved states to find jobs in the past.

So have I, but even then, I expanded my search radius in discrete steps:

  - 0-30 minute commute and remote for stable companies
  - 30-60 minute commute and remote for promising start-ups
  - less than 2 hour commute and remote for anybody
  - moving to a previously white-listed US metropolitan area
  - moving anywhere at all within the continental US
  - freelancing gigs
  - live on the government dole
  - emigrate to a Commonwealth country
  - emigrate to another Anglophone country
  - emigrate to a completely foreign culture
  - turn to a life of white-collar crime
  - "out, damned spot"
  - wage bloody revolution against the corporation whores
  - sell humanity out to the lizard people

So far, I haven't ever had to progress past step 5. I'd be a little worried about folks stuck on step 7, as that's just before the slippery slope starts.

Why would you prefer to live on government welfare instead of moving to another country?

I can see people not wanting to if they are "settled" in an area - either by property or family - but I would think doing something productive in another country would be better than doing nothing.

{S}He probably had to pay rent and or eat, or go to the doctor, or pay for internet to send out job applications. We don't stop being expensive because we are not working.

The standard of living/quality of live for the poor in the USA is better than being poor in other countries. People on the dole often have nicer shoes and accessories than I do (talk about financial priorities out of whack, but I digress)! Depending on the situation you're better off on the dole than working a low-wage job. However, In other countries being poor means no welfare, no shoes, no plumbing, no food, and no Louis Vuitton purses.

I wouldn't be "doing nothing". The dole isn't always about sitting on ass and cashing checks. It's just that the things I would be doing would probably not be sufficiently remunerative to maintain a lifestyle that includes clean beds and showers.

There's always jobs. For one, until the entire United States is a bulging mass of skyscrapers and hydroponics towers, there's always something you could buy, develop, and flip or hold.

This is true on an individual level, but I'm really wary about the sleight of hand where personal advice is used as a cure for societal problems.

Sure, your unemployed nephew could hustle hard enough to find a decent job, but that's not true for everyone's unemployed nephew all at once. Criticizing people for not finding jobs or starting companies doesn't fix structural issues - it's not going to solve Spain's 25% unemployment.

If your goal is a job, there is one. It might pay minimum wage but it's there. I'm a high school drop out from two drug addicted parents that both currently live with their parents. Last time I earned minimum wage I was 15, I got a job in a kitchen washing dishes and worked my way up to sous chef over 8 years and as many restaurants. Then I taught myself some networking and PC troubleshooting and got a job in IT, then another. Now I'm working on a portfolio together and I'm going to take a stab at becoming a web developer. It is exceedingly rare in a relatively populated area that there are 'no jobs', just ones you'd prefer not to do.

This is anecdotal advice to say the least...

> but it will cost you less than a degree in the long run.

This isn't true, people with degrees definitely make a lot more on average.

I'm not pro-degree, since I don't think it's good for even half of the college grads, and the debt is an awful burden for many.

But the numbers are there regarding the salary. On average, it is worth it.

Do degrees cause higher earnings or are they merely correlated with higher earnings? The best students get into the best colleges. Do the best colleges add as much to the equation as the premium they charge, or are they riding the coattails of the best students?

The post (and overall numbers) don't depend on the best students or the best colleges. In general, having a college degree has been positive financially for most students, over the course of their careers.

Part of the key is that degrees pay off over long periods of time in promotions and other career opportunities, so the advantage is not always apparent at age 17.

Colleges (even the poor ones) employ selection processes to ensure that only the best and most willing students be able to achieve completion at all. What the parent is suggesting is that those who are selected via those processes might also just happen to be the best suited for the business world, irrespective of their education.

For example, someone who has innate determination to receive a degree might also be determined to finish projects in the workplace, leading to better job opportunities over someone who is less innately determined. While someone with high determination and no degree may do just as well as any college graduate, since they are lumped into the group of people with low determination, we pass them off as outliers instead of looking at the most important features.

The correlation is clear, but that does not mean there is causation.

Degrees cause higher earnings. Part of that effect is accumulated human capital in the form of the thing learned and new networks, but part of the degree is just signaling.

There's a drastic difference between earnings for unfinished and finished college degree and in general this effect is dubbed as sheepskin effect.

Here's a Wikipedia starter on the effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_(economics)#Spence_...

> There's a drastic difference between earnings for unfinished and finished college degree

Is that really signalling, or is it that the reasons for not finishing a degree (not willing to put in the hard work, for instance) bleed into the workplace? The degree may play no part at all.

Interestingly, a GED does not statistically elevate ones earning position like a traditionally acquired high school diploma. It has been suggested by researchers that the reasons for not completing high school the traditional way are what lead to lower earnings, and receiving certification does not remove those existing traits. Why would college be different?

Additionally, the biggest statistical gains come from post-graduate studies. 49% of the top 1% of Americans have a post-graduate degrees. Further, there are more people with high school or less in the top 1% than there are with bachelor degree-only. This suggests to me that the gains from having a degree are skewed by supply managed professions (for example: doctors), where incomes are artificially high because the law prevents unconstrained competition. There, again, may be no advantage outside of those protected industries, and certainly not if you plan to stop at the bachelor level.

Pretty ridiculous to counter "Degree holders earn more" with "not in the 1%".

Care to elaborate? When they say college graduates earn more, at least for anything I've ever read, it is based on mean income. Due to the way mean is calculated, and incomes tending to follow the power law, the top 1% are going to be the ones who have the largest representation of that higher average income.

As such, degree holders may simply earn more because they are overly represented in supply managed industries with artificial incomes, like the aforementioned doctor.

From your link, the results section states, "Spence discovered that even if education did not contribute anything to an employee's productivity, it could still have value to both the employer and employee. If the appropriate cost/benefit structure exists (or is created), "good" employees will buy more education in order to signal their higher productivity."

The second sentence flips the causality you describe around. Employees who are already productive buy education to certify their productivity. The education does not necessarily lead to higher productivity. The employer wants productive employees, not certified employees. Certified employees are just a proxy for productive employees. Another proxy, such as aptitude tests or GitHub repositories, could function just as well. These "cost/benefit structures" may very well be more appropriate than formal education because they are less costly in time and money.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com