Show HN: I built a bot to automatically apply to jobs
github.com
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No one does. He meant that some people get spammed daily with interview offers, which are no less annoying when the jobs aren't interesting.
Spray and fire might work if you don't actually care about your job, but this really seems like spam to me.
That's not to say I endorse this spray and pray approach - just that the cover letter isn't really the issue for me.
His spray and pray method is no worse than the dozens of mismatched, unqualified resumes that get submitted to any job I post anyway.
The CV also mattered, but in the end, both are just a vehicle to get an interview.
Infact I was just thinking about automating the process yesterday, which is why this post sparked my interest.
Also, the time frame seems really strange. After 12 applications in a month, I would expect at least 1 interview. If you are doing this consistently then a reasonable target would be to expect to be hired in about 3 months. So with a year of this, if you haven't been hired, then I think something has gone wrong.
I wonder if you are experiencing problems with having a high rate of rejection, which might actually be made worse with automation.
I've given this advice before, but I'll try to keep it short this time. Job searching is a full time job. Even if you are currently employed, it really makes sense to prioritise some of your personal time to work on it as if it were a part time job.
Your CV is really important. If you are not getting interviews with 10-20% of your applications, then I would focus on it first. Go to the library and read a few books on writing a resume. It helped me dramatically when I was first starting out. Take your CV to friends in the industry and ask for feedback.
Also, if you are lucky enough to be in a big vibrant city, you should prioritise going to meet ups as often as you can. Print personal business cards with a link to your online CV. Get stuck in and talk to people. It doesn't come easily to some, but you get better with practice. Get in the habit of giving your card to people. If they mention that they are hiring, make sure to get their contact details and follow up with an email later.
These days I think it is almost imperative if you are a programmer to have a portfolio. Many people put a link to their github account. Often when I look I find a collection of half-hearted Rails projects 90% of which is generated code. A portfolio should be organized. It should highlight your skills.
Even a single project can be your portfolio. The automation project here would make a fantastic portfolio project for a junior-intermediate programmer. Personally, I would interview them on the strength of the initiative alone. Build at least one interesting and useful project. Or build many katas and explain why you think they are good katas. Or write lots of blog posts. Organize them into a website and make it easy to find the bits that show your good points. In the past, my portfolio has outright given me jobs.
Getting your CV in order and getting a good portfolio together is a huge job. It can take a month of full time work to get something worth presenting. But it's worth it. After you get it started, you should try to spend some time on your portfolio every week to keep it fresh and interesting. That way it gets stronger over time.
Finally interviews. These are skills. I will give you a good tip. Nobody interviews someone that they think they aren't going to hire. It makes no sense. So in a way, the job is already yours by the time you get to the interview. Your job is to confirm their suspicion that you have the skills for the job and that you will fit well into their team.
Honestly, a good rate is about 1-2 offers per 3 interviews. That seems very high, but like I said, the job is already yours if you get to the interview. If you are having trouble getting the offers, again visit your library and read books on job interviews (there are lots of them). Go and practice with friends in the industry and get feedback.
One small tip I'll leave you with is that it is just as important that you interview the company than the company interviews you. Usually I find that with 3 interviews, in 1 we both realize that it is not a good fit. In another only one of us realizes it is not a good fit. In the last, there is an offer that is accepted.
Anyway, I failed to keep this short (again). I really should write a blog post (or several) about it. I hope it helps you (or someone else who stumbles across it). After saying all that, a cover letter is quite important. But I hope you can see that it is the icing on the cake. Compared to everything else you need to do, it takes almost no time.
After such high rejection I'm pretty sure something is wrong with me. One issue is that I'm consultant and the product is basically only implemented by my company. The thing that I'm the best at is not valuable on the market. I have other general web development skills. One of the products I implement is RoR based. I end up writing a decent amount of ruby/html/css/js widgets that integrate with the product.
I'm targeting Front-end Dev and RoR jobs because those are the parts of my day that I actually enjoy. I also target software consulting roles because I have that background. With development jobs I find that I'm not a "real developer". With consulting roles they generally want experience with their specific application or industry. I basically only got my current job because they were looking for warm bodies. I ended up doing great and we got acquired but I'm not thrilled with the new employer.
I find it hard to qualify for junior dev roles and if I do it's usually such a drastic pay cut that I can't really consider it. I'm almost to the point that I would be will to take a cut though. I'm probably going to end up stuck where I am until a layoff then forced to take something at lower pay.
In my experience, that has never worked out though to be fair I don't even think I can find 100 jobs to apply that I like. I preferred to focus on a few (10~) places and really try to form a connection either through cover letter or Twitter/GitHub/email.
Most emails I receive from recruiters are extremely templated, and hardly ever mention specific projects or jobs that I might have done. I would feel perfectly comfortable using spray-and-forget with these kinds of companies.
Stack Overflow Jobs (our job board) also explicitly disallows this sort of behavior. If a first-touch e-mail doesn't list why the person in particular is being contacted, again, I think it's spam.
And here is the automated cover letter:
Dear Hiring Manager,
Hello, my name is Juan Ortiz. Nice to meet you!
I actually wrote a bot to automatically apply to your job because it looks like it's a #{fit} fit for my skills - my matching algorithm actually said there is #{percent}% chance you'd be interested in interviewing me.
You can check out the match profile I created for your job posting here: #{url_for_analysis} I'd really love the opportunity to interview at #{company_name} for the open #{job_title} position.
Thanks again. You can reach me at #{phone_number} if you'd like to chat.
P.S. if you're interested in how my bot is actually handling applications for me, you can check out the source code that applied on github: #{link_to_github}.A bare-minimum cover letter would to me include _reasons_, e.g. "I've been teaching myself Rust in my off-time and migrating over from a mobile engineer to working in Rust full time really excites me."
Of course anyone reading that would be skeptical, but I wonder if a high number would have a subconscious effect on them regardless.
Said it so many times before, it's shit like this that puts you way ahead of the crowd when it comes to interviewing.
Also in many companies the hiring manager isn't the person initially reading applications. And the person who is might not be technical and might have more of an HR background.
I have yet to participate in an interview that focused on the quality of the employer-employee match, where I have not spewed nonsense in order to "pass the test". I remember an article that laid out how this can be viewed as a positive process; that it tests whether the candidate is capable of handling awkward situations diplomatically (or something to that effect). That we as a society consider being completely fake to be a good thing blows my mind.
---
Question: Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
Given Answer: I'd like to work up from my existing position as a senior developer to a team lead position, and possibly another step up or two from there.
Real Answer: I love the work I do as a developer, and do not wish to climb the corporate ladder. I figure this might change as I get older, but for now I am happy with what I do.
---
Question: Why would you be a better fit compared to another candidate?
Given Answer: The job listing mentioned X, and I have a lot of experience with X. The listing also mentioned Y, and I am very interested in gaining more experience with Y. I like element Z of your culture.
Real Answer: I match most or all of the requirements you mentioned in your listing. Every candidate you interviewed probably does. Just hire someone and see whether it works out for you.
---
Question: Why did you leave your last job?
Given Answer: No opportunity to advance, or accomplished the tasks the employer had primarily hired me for.
Real Answer: Boss was incompetent, HR introduced unacceptable policies, or management put a stop to salary increases / bonuses that have been around for years.
But most companies aren't so, and candidates expect recruiters to tell you what it is they're looking for.
When trading salary for equity, it's not just about being excited about the idea, it's also about being excited about the founders ability to turn that idea in to a product, business and eventually an IPO or M&A.
Interesting to know that there are exceptions to the rule, but on the whole the cover letter isn't something I'd optimize for. I just don't think it's used that much.
The cover letter is your chance to explain Why you want to apply and Why you'd be a good fit.
The resume explains Who you are (professionally).
The Why is just as (and sometimes more) important than the Who.
The gap in your chances between "I know someone in the company" and "I don't know someone in the company" is so huge that I can't/couldn't imagine a cover letter making a big difference if you don't already know somebody. So my recommendations have normally been around networking or canvasing friends-of-friends to know somebody and then go that route.
That said, I have to admit it's been a long time since I've had to do a cold round of applications so I totally accept I've underestimated.
A Cover Letter / CV / "Inside Source" isn't (usually) going to get you the job. It's just going to get your foot in the door.
For the record, whether or not I spend time tailoring depends on how I judge the company I am applying to. I tailor heavily for companies that are small-ish, that I find through sources like HN, or where I am directly emailing a human. I spend very little time tailoring if I have to go through Taleo/ICIMS/whatever or if my resume is going to a jobs@ email for a big company.
If a potential employer can't be bothered to even look at my github then why would I try to write a cover letter? Trying goes both ways.
Otherwise, the resume gets thrown in the "spam" bin.
You do realize that your company is (most probably) nothing special and skilled people can be indifferent to being employed by you particularly? The whole premise that a candidate wants to work for you falls apart.
Even more so if it was your company (or a head hunter on your behalf) that made the first move. Something along the lines of "I don't know yet why would I want to work for you. It was you who asked me to apply."
So you basically want candidates to duplicate what they already said (should have said) in e-mail with application? What for?
> Just put in enough to show me that you're not applying to every single posting because you're so desperately unemployable.
And how employability has anything to do with competence? Competence can be estimated from CV (if it was sensibly prepared) enough to invite for interview.
Again, what do you expect in the cover letter?
If you send an email with your CV attached that says something about why you're applying, then that email is the cover letter.
> Again, what do you expect in the cover letter?
It's just a sample of your business writing. I want you to write a simple, professional-sounding email explaining who you are and why you're interested because I want to know if you can write a simple, professional-sounding email.
Here is an example of a page that gets link in my automated cover letter to an employer: http://job-diana.herokuapp.com/users/jobs/07c5807d0d927dcd09...
I would also try to make sure you don't needlessly send multiple applications to the same company.
The next step in automatic job applications is something that customizes your resume, based on what the job ad is asking.
There's a startup in this.
https://github.com/TeamHG-Memex/autologin
This is a spider that can auto-login given a seed url.
I wonder how much harder it would be to make this just a sign-up tool as well?
I heard that comment spam is often farmed to places with low cost of labor, not necessarily automated.
If we put up with it that direction, why not put up with bulk solicitation the other way?
Well you just discounted a potentially great employee. They implemented a solution to help apply for jobs. The application process can be absolutely draining - especially when you're 25 applications deep with zero response.
What's the harm in reaching out to the candidate? If they aren't interested, they'll decline the interview.
aside from that, a lot of descriptions don't tell me the full story and both parties have to go through the interview process first before they know they've gotten what they want.
I went to App Academy and got my current job by building a bot that logs into LinkedIn and applies to jobs.