Ask HN: Why is applying for jobs such a pain? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why is applying for jobs such a pain?

18 pointsmalthaus19 comments

As someone neither in SV nor a programming wizard being constantly headhunted with good offers i wonder why applying for jobs is such a pain.

There are multiple job boards where you have to create email alerts. The same jobs are posted on multiple sites and reposted by recruiters. Some jobs don't even exist in reality or are just published for policy reasons. Some are never posted publicly as it would be a sign of weakness in certain roles to apply to job posts.

When you finally find something interesting and want to apply you have enter all your data in a custom form on a custom website and upload a PDF motivation letter.

Then you wait... and wait... no indication or transparency on status. After 3 months a standard rejection mail might come in after the position was removed or filled. Likely not with you because some intern or algorithm decided you don't fit the profile based on missing keywords.

I'm based in Europe, so maybe we suffer from increased bureaucracy here, but from what i hear it's not much different around the world.

Can someone explain why this is such a broken process? Why didn't LinkedIn fill this role? Why does every HR department re-invent the wheel?

I'm ranting but i'm also intrigued.

If this is solvable, anyone interested to work on a mobile-first lightweight solution?

Because hiring is akin to dating and therefore it suffers from the same problems:

1) It's mostly about subjective impressions and often weird ideas of what a suitable date/candidate must be. There are no official rule books or guidelines about how to proceed. It's not about hard skills and efficiency, it very much revolves around soft skills, presentation abilities and invisible chemistry.

2) More often than not both parties in dating/hiring aren't serious about conducting a transaction and getting to a serious business. It's about meeting new people, hanging out, checking the pulse of the job market but no more. Misrepresenting oneself, one's abilities/features and intentions is the norm with both dates/candidates(companies), which leads to a lot of frustration and bad feelings, keeping the success rate of activities in the both fields rather low.

Different industries, similar problems. And for the both of them no technological/software solution in sight.

P.S. See how "candi-date" is linguistically just a particular case or subset of "date". Just another validation of the point.

lol, so true.

I'm living polyamor for about 5 years now. This has forced me to really dive into this whole "how do relationships really work" thing. More fluctuation, more partners etc. I learned so much.

Suddendly, after a few years, I also found that "work" is like having "relationship".

Sad thing is, I found most parallels with monogamous relationships and not so much with polyamory.

Anyway, the biggest thing I learned was, that employers are like potential partners. They have some wishes about the job/relationship and these are (globally seen) completely arbitary.

Some partners pick by attractiveness, some by child-wish, some by long-term support. Some even just by sexual preferences. But most of them by stuff they heard somewhere. They don't even know what they really want and end up in years of relationships with people they don't really like.

Same goes with employers. They want you because you can solve some dumb puzzles or because you're cheap, or whatnot.

Point is, if you're not in a hurry to get a job and are not bound to a place (or can work remote) you will eventually meet someone who thinks it's okay to give your money for your work, haha.

> P.S.

I expect this is a joke, but even if this were true, I don't think it'd be a valid 'validation of the point.'

Incidentally, "candidate" is not a subset of "date." It's from Latin candidatus, "white-robed." Date is ultimately from Latin datus/dare, "to give."

It's not that much of a joke, more of a curiosity, if you choose to look at both words from a certain angle. I realize that their etymology might be different, but in the end of the day their spelling has become close and the concepts they denote have also developed certain commonalities.

The problem is you're waiting for an advert to be released before you apply to a job.

If a job is being advertised on a job board or by a recruiter that is a signal that they are out of options and struggling to hire.

Paid advertising is the last port of call when trying to find candidates. Good companies get sent speculative applications directly - even before there is an open post.

Jobs are then advertised internally, existing staff speak to their network and make direct recommendations as soon as it goes external.

If they have to, companies often advertise (for free) on industry specific sites to cut straight to those people with the right skills (like the Jobs page here).

If that fails then it makes its way down to the general pool of jobs. That opens companies up to a huge volume of applications which makes filtering the best candidates out a very difficult task so it frequently gets poorly automated.

Start looking higher up the chain. Circumventing this process is actually part of the application.

Think about who you want to work for and apply before they are looking.

> Start looking higher up the chain. Circumventing this process is actually part of the application.

Any tips on doing this?

Pick a handful of companies you're curious or interested in. Look at what jobs they are currently hiring for on their own website and search to see what other sites their adverts are syndicated on. Learn about the culture, get to know current staff and their work through conference talks, social media, industry meetups etc.

See if it seems like somewhere you would like to work. Think about what problems they are solving and consider how you can help them.

Potentially improve your skills in areas or technologies you know they are after. Make something that is complementary to the product or service they deliver to put you on their radar.

Contact them directly to start a conversation, share what you can offer and learn when they might be hiring next for your kind of role, stay friendly and keep in touch.

You will be surprised how easy it is for things to progress based on being genuinely interested in working for a company.

> Why does every HR department re-invent the wheel?

HR must justify its importance and value by making things hard.

It's frequently observed that HR is the bottleneck in the process. If line managers (as they often do with smaller, more nimble companies) took on the actual responsibility for recruiting & hiring-- you would find process much more amenable. Avoid HR, focus your job search efforts on speaking with the senior executive(s) who you can help.

I'm a tech recruiter in Chicago. Due to a lot of the reasons you listed my advice for developers is to reach out to senior developer/leads/architects/managers/cto's at companies they are interested in working for.

I work with 85% of the bigger name tech companies in Chicago and they don't always have their roles posted online. Most of then have urgent roles with no roles posted online because they rarely get any good resumes from it and instead rely on recruiters.

Cold email/linkedin message someone at the company you may be interested in working for and I bet they would at least get back to you. At least you wont have to fill out a job application.

I'm convinced that most companies have the application processes they have because it gives them the candidates they want. The reason the application process at some companies is so one-sided, non-transparent and makes you jump through arbitrary and ever changing hoops is because that's a skill they value. Most likely, that's going to be a daily requirement of the job.

Startup companies want to think they're hiring the best and brightest, so they follow the interview practices of companies or people they think are the best and the brightest. People who can pass those interviews are the candidates they want because, in their minds at least, they're Google quality programmers.

If you're applying through a company's website / job portal, you've already lost the game.

You need to network and get your foot in the door through a personal reference.

Try angel list and hired.com (although I don't know if they service the EU).

If you work at a big company even if you have an internal reference they still make you do interviews and stuff.

> Try angel list and hired.com

how is this different than applying on a site?

Angel List is nice because salaries and equity are visible. Hired.com, you can specify what salary you want as well as other things to use as filters. On hired.com, companies contact you, instead of you having to apply. You have 24 hours to make an initial response. If you don't, the contact disappears.

thanks for clarifying, but how is this different than applying at bottom of the ladder since the jobs are posted externally already?

I don't know about mobile-first and I am not sure it really matters in the jobhunting space. But I'd suggest looking at StackOverflow Jobs for a developer oriented resource:

https://stackoverflow.com/jobs?t=c&r=home

What sort of work and where specifically are you in Europe? For instance if you are in London and have some skills from the last 10 years and work experience I would think getting contracts or permanent would be fairly straightforward.

If you can build up a contact network you'll have a greater chance of finding something interesting with people you like. This is where LinkedIn comes in handy.

Yes you may have to wait a long time if you are focussed on a particular company or work area.

So far it felt as i would choose my job. It was always easy and straight forward. I also have several friends that see it similar. I honestly have no idea what is broken, so i wouldn't be a help fixing it. If you dont like the hustle of doing this yourself, there are several agencies that do exactly that for you (usually even better). Europe too btw, Switzerland tho

job hunting is not fair game, you can't wait for the job to come on a newspaper or job website to apply for it. many times it happens that the job is posted for policy purposes but the hiring is already done in the background. this sounds unfair, but it is the truth. job is something that helps you get on with your life and places the food on your table. so its only common sense that people who are already in power of recruitment would give the job to someone they already know and call in the favor afterwards, instead of posting it publicly and hiring a complete stranger.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com