Thanks for Submitting Your Résumé to This Black Hole
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Let's generously assume that you meet and have excellent working relationships with 100 people at each of the 4 jobs you've had. Of those 400 people, say, conservatively, 50% think so highly of you that they'd be willing to stick their neck out help you with your next job search. Out of those 200 people, 50% are no longer working for that company. Out of those 100 people, let's optimistically assume you actively kept in touch with all of them over the years. Now, maybe 50% are working for a company where you'd actually like to apply. Out of those 50 companies, 20% actually have a job opening that fits your background. Out of those 10, maybe 2 actually know and can put you in touch with the hiring manager for that opening. And your success chance through the interview pipeline has got to be worse than 50%.
Tweak my numbers up or down a little, but I think it's a pipe dream for most workers: You have to have an enormous address book full of high-power contacts in order to end up at the end of the funnel with one or two who are both willing and able to successfully help you get a job. And once you've exhausted that network (all it takes is to blow a few interviews), then what?
Granted, I make the effort to network, especially with people who I have enough of a working relationship with that they'd recommend me. But it seems just based on my quick sanity check, that networking could easily work well enough to find a job should I decide I need one. And that's not even counting the 4-5 unsolicited contacts per month that come in from recruiters that I was referred to them by someone I know.
Sample size of 1 and perhaps I distinguish myself more than others, but I can say with certainty that the effort I've put into networking means I won't have problems getting an interview in the current market. If the market tanks, the story might be different.
But management is also a discipline apart from the work being done by the team. I made a ton of mistakes early in my time as a manager. I was also fortunate enough to work for a company that had a management training program that was hugely helpful. And I'm also fortunate to have a parent that teaches interpersonal dynamics in a business school, so I've had a lot of exposure to the theory behind the practice. I feel this has made me a lot better manager now than I was when I first started, despite the fact that my actual abilities to write code have suffered somewhat from lack of practice.
But I think your math is off.
- you need powerful people
- you need to know people well
- you need to know them IRL
- you need to know them if they know you
- one person can only help you get a job at one place
- the person must be in your line of work
However my experience has been rather:
- anybody has the potential to bring you an opportunity. They have friends, family and colleagues, and they talk. My first internship was from the cousin of a friend of my mother needing somebody. 3 layers of indirection.
- superficial relationships (met once in a meetup, sport club, whatever) do carry opportunity. When people are looking for a worker, they prefer somebody they know, but will rarely find it and settle for anybody they can assess.
- IRC channels, forum and social networks are all doors to get jobs. Even MMORPG, MOBA or RTS. Actually they are filled with geeks, they all work in companies having some need for a recruitment or the other. And they are having fun with you.
- Even if you don't know somebody, if the person knows your work, it's a start. Github is a great personal showcase. I personally don't send my resume first, but my link to my stackoverflow account because it's quite famous in the Python community.
- people can talk about you to somebody working at another company who heard someone needed somebody, etc. Actually it often works that way: informal networking is the way humans connect the best. This is something I learned in Africa where it's the way of life, it's a lost art in our countries, were we do it reluctantly if we have no way around it.
- I'm currently working for a transport facility. Because my flat mate, not an IT person at all, works for one of their contractor, and he knows the project manager for one stuff where they needed something to be coded and he hooked us up. How ? We played laser tag 2 years ago, and so they know me and we just had diner to seal the deal. It's that stupid. And it worked. I delivered the software and they were happy.
I'm with you, but I think I see where others are coming from. I had job referrals before, and it can work. The dynamics of this are complicated, but the bottom line seems to be that networking works when it works, but not always or for everyone or in every job market. The reality is that lots of jobs get filled every day with a process very much like the one caricaturised in the piece.
Job-Worker matching as it's done today is haphazard, weird, biased... and almost certainly extremely inefficient.
But... I don't know that we have better examples matchmaking processes at scale. Do we? University selection? Dating? What's the scalable alternative?
What I'm saying is that it doesn't seem reliable or scalable. Looking at my own network, the one's I've kept up with[1], which I think is pretty average, there are only a handful of people who actually work at a company I'd one day be interested in joining. I know I would easily exhaust the whole pool in a single job search (ask me how I know this). I'm not going to rely on that. To sum up the reliability aspect: I can't foresee a point in my career when I'll ever be able to say "I can rely entirely on my network for my next job search." If you can, congratulations, that's an enviable position.
To me, networking is like that great tool in your toolbox that _really works_ when it works. I think the network approach is most appropriate as a "fallback" when you are desperate for a job, would take anything, and can literally tap everyone you know in hopes of finding _something_.
1: That's another not-so-scalable aspect of networking: Maintenance. I would never out of the blue E-mail a former colleague with "Hey, I know I haven't talked to you even once in 20 years, but, HOW'S IT GOING?!? :) I noticed you work at a company I'm interested in [...]" Awkward! You have to actually keep up with everyone like you would a friend. I've seen people who can do it well, but jeez it must be positively exhausting staying in touch like that.
You need to realize that social life and networking goes well beyond your workplace.
Yes, the connection will be far weaker than any connection with a former colleague, but sometimes all you need is an inside connection to make your resume stand out just a bit more and to be that less of an unknown.
Weak connections actually being you into vastly different networks.
I go to events and conferences because I am genuinely interested in them, I go there to listen to insightful presentations and talk to fellow programmers about interesting things, the motivation is never to "get a job later", that would be sick. The "networking effect" comes much later when you become close enough to naturally tap on them for job opportunities without feeling awkward or anything.
In other words, you don't go for conferences to find job opportunities, that's not the end, but the natural effect of knowing a lot of awesome people with the same interest as you.
Heck, I dare to go one step further to say that the purpose of a full-time job for me is just to meet more awesome programmers.
You can pick a few meetups (or even just one) to focus on, or you can be on the lookout when you meet casual acquaintances (perhaps at other social events).
I wouldn't want to spend all my social time in work hunting mode, but a small regular investment can pay dividends (depending on how happy you are in your current position).
Another reason to do such activities is the opportunity to help others. I love when I am talking to others and find out about a position that isn't a fit for me, but may be great for someone else I know. Hooking up two acquaintances in a possibly mutual beneficial way is low energy (not too much work) and yet high impact (people remember who helped them get a job).
I discovered this can be as easy as clicking"like" on a LinkedIn in post: http://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/2180
It doesn't require you to risk anything to put in a referral. Maybe a referral + recommendation, but not just a referral.
Yet networking, in one form or another, is how many if not most people land their jobs. Perhaps a poll is in order here?
I suspect your definition of what constitutes "a network" is what makes the odds you calculate look like a search for extraterrestrial intelligence. It's nothing like that.
If we did a poll right here, I would wager that more people got their current position through a third party lead or inside contact than through submission to an online job application.
The actual jobs I've gotten from networking were either family connections or people I met going to raves when I was younger, or people I talk to online about tech stuff.
From the outside, you just don't know. Very unfortunate because it creates hope for people who, in some cases, don't have any chance.
I think that the reason it is so asymmetric is because the normal company runs on multiple employees, which means that if they can't find one more person right now business still continues.
But the normal person only has time for one job, which means if they can't find one, they go hungry (so to speak).
The desire for employment is asymmetric and therefore the power accrues to the party with less desire.
Well the company can only accept 1 person for the position, whereas you are most likely willing to accept a position at a number of different companies, so there's an inherent asymmetry there, no?
Ideally, the company should only push onerous application processes to applications once the list has been whittled down a bit, or only push them in cases where the results will actually be reviewed.
Of course then not actually looking at the applications is a violation of at least the spirit of the law. Sometimes also the letter.
Resume submission systems are never good. Always always opt to send directly to a real email address (like in the who's hiring HN threads).
Rather than going through this ordeal I'd prefer if they reject resume directly.
Come to think of it, I know of several examples(startups) where the company was actually failing and about to run out of money and they still advertised but couldn't possibly hire. In my opinion, that's purposefully wasting people's time.
ANd yes, it is a huge waste of time.
I'm not sure if this is laziness or what. But it does tell me that they don't care very much.
Step 1. Put in 300+ applications (200+ in Nor Cal Central Valley area, 178 in PHX area)
Step 2. Wait for responses and get a 2% response rate in Nor Cal/central valley, and a 17% response rate in PHX...with the exact same resume despite being top 25% of the class, extra curriculars, and having a decent econ degree)
Step 3. Of 90% of the places and recruiters that contact they will either A. Pay you substandard wages, B. Make it clear that you are replaceable and they don't actually care about workers or work/life balance, C. Ghost you after contacting and interviewing you or D. Some combo of the above.
The worst one I've had is the same corporate recruiter lie to me multiple times over a part time job with no benefits, who brought me in for an interview that made it clear that they had no quality control, no work life balance, poor workplace communication, and expected workers to be treated like crap and be OK with it, oh and the best part is, that company was a major household brand that does $5bn in revenue annually.
So yeah, I've had recruiters treat me like crap, tell me I'm worthless, and companies string me along, while I'm trying to scrape by and eat...not that I've got a chip on my shoulder about the entitled attitudes that are represented by this comment on HN.
Suppose you're happy where you are now but an opportunity comes by which sounds good so you start talking to them. They're super flakey. Wouldn't you just say "screw it"?
For obvious rejections, I sent an auto generated email that looked like it could be from a human. If someone asked why they'd been rejected, I'd simply say the hiring manager chose to focus on more obvious matches for the position, and that was the end of it. Maybe 1 in 100 asked for feedback, but I didn't keep stats.
For a few candidates who were unlikely to be a fit, I'd reject them, and say why I didn't think it'd a match. Usually if I heard back, it was simply to say thank you for acknowledging them. For one position, I was recruiting a CTO. I rejected one Craigslist sourced applicant, and gave him reasons why he didn't fit the CEO's list of filtering bullet points. He responded with information that flipped him from a no to a yes, he got the interview, and eventually got the job!
The CEO was kind of cheap, and didn't want to pay a retained search firm. I was working on a part time contract at an hourly rate, so he asked me to take a crack at the CTO position. I tried filling the CTO role like I filled every other role, by starting with an ad on Craigslist, and it worked out.
I read that a lot of people don't do this because they are afraid of $RANDOM lawsuit.
First, if you don't push back on "young", you're asking for trouble right from the start. You gotta say, "I can't screen based on age, that's going to get both of us in trouble." The second a not-too-bright recruiter says, "I can't hire you, you're too old", everyone loses. So don't get yourself into a position where you're screening for young in the first place. It's fair to ask the hiring manager why they want a young person, and it may simply be that the job isn't something anyone with real experience would tolerate. Then you can describe the job in such a way that it highlights the requirements for someone at that level... "We work hard, day and night, to ship stuff as fast as possible, fueled by Mountain Dew and dreams of glorious stock options."
Once you've craft a job pitch that only someone who wants to work day and night would apply to, if a more experienced person applies to the job, you can reject them by focusing on the culture... "Hey, I don't think you'd be a fit here. Your skills look great, we'd love to have you, but do you really wanna work 70 hours a week? We're an adrenaline fueled sweat shop, and you've been at a cushy B2B SaaS company for a few years. If I'm wrong, let me know!"
Here's an extreme example. I rejected a candidate, and felt bad for him. I gave a specific reason why he'd never get the job. A few hours later, he showed up in the lobby of our office building, coked out of his mind (that's what it looked and felt like, but he was probably just intensely upset). He started demanding to see HR. Shit went from chill to super uncomfortable in 0 seconds flat. I walked up to him, suggested he leave, at which point he realized I'm twice his size, and he departed. Yikes!
I stopped giving invalid rejection explanations after that. It's just not worth it, and that's part of living in the world that sucks more than I'd like it to.
They usually don't. The same reasons apply. In Europe there's less fear about random lawsuits, but there are so many rules about hiring that it's just a minefield with lots of material for very legitimate lawsuits. You didn't get the impression that the applicant is a good culture fit? You better hope his name didn't sound Turkish, or that quickly sounds like unlawful discrimination.
Dear Applicant, We're sorry but we have decided not to go forward with your application at the present time. We will keep your CV on file for 6 months in case our needs change. Best of luck in your future endeavors.
Funny enough, after landing an even better gig, I randomly got contacted by one of their recruiters on LinkedIn asking if I would be interested in the opportunity they were still hiring for. No mention of the fact that I had already applied and never heard back.
One day I saw them complaining in a major magazine about not finding anyone, and I not only reapplied but wrote an almost angry email detailing past attempts.
They did their best this time, I talked to their team almost daily for almost 2 weeks setting all up... and then they complained I didn't had experience in that particular job title.
I explained that noone local had that experience, they were the first company in the country with that particular position open...
Then the HR guy apologized so much I felt sorry for him, and he explained it was company policy that the job required experience, and another policy required locals only...
So policy for the win?
If you do send a rejection letter, at least make sure it has proper grammar and spelling, and please send it within, idk, 6 months?
I have gotten some amazing rejection letters, but only after an interview. These are well-thought out, globally applicable to all rejections, and directly show why I wasn't a good fit. In sum, they were impossible to argue with. I've only received a handful of these, but they were worth keeping around for inspiration.
However, let's switch modes.
Please suggest your solution for the problem of receiving 1,874 resumes for a job posting and, 42 days later, finding your likely candidate on the 244th candidate you reviewed.
I feel like such an automated approach is roundly criticized by HN on a regular basis.
I guess my point is that when you're dealing with this, there are no popular solutions.
Un-networked job seekers need thick skin.
If the job is in fact unimportant, stop pretending like its the bloody presidency and accept candidates who can be trained into it immediately.
This is completely unfair. GP is not an HR professional by any indication. If your accountant says your website looks ugly, do you hire them as your designer?
Anything else is just complaining.
I don't need to know the minutia of a specific field before I can criticize and suggest alternatives.
An accountant does not need to know node before offering comments on site usability, feel, performance. Nobody is hiring them to execute a redesign. They're asking them for an idea on how to improve.
When you get a successful candidate automatically inform everyone else still in the running that the position has been filled.
What's the hard part?
I've had a great deal of success just reaching out to people on LinkedIn who've worked on cool stuff in areas I find interesting, message them to see if they're keen to meet for a coffee/beer/etc. Meetups are fun too. A good number of people are happy to just chat for 30min, and you might get a few pointers on where to look for what you want. The worst case outcome is that you meet someone new, and talk about things you find mutually interesting for a little while.
Only one person's story ofc, but I'm happy! Face to face stuff is so much more valuable than submitting online forms, and tech meetups are stimulating, fun, and pretty common in cities.
If you have nothing interesting to say you ought to find something- if you're unemployed you must have a lot of time on your hands.
With luck, one of them will be in a company or organization you want to apply to.
Hiring is an expensive process by any measure. But whenever we find a shortcut we have to be mindful of unintended consequences
Edit: I guess "black holed" isn't the right term since I did get an interview but you know what I mean
Basically, you are talking, you both like each other and then suddenly you don't hear from the other person.
I had a few companies ghost me and it was annoying.
I don't entirely mind if I apply and just never hear back, I just get to laugh at them when they email me two months later asking for interview.
If someone does it to me I tend to lose some respect, but that's possibly because I'm an outsider. Maybe Californians expect that but I usually hope for the respect of a direct no. (Shrug.)
If you want to make the HR person extremely angry then feign interest and you've ruined their whole H1B process. Its kinda funny to do. Sometimes they'll slam the phone down or sound like they're about to cry. If they're made of sterner stuff you'll get requirements like an in person interview at 4am or an interview within the hour in person (for a job 100 miles away).
It is terrible for the others in the lineup since they have 1. wasted a day 2. have hope for something where this is no hope 3. possibly hold off on other opportunities waiting for an opportunity that doesn't exist.
E.g. Hi X, Thanks for taking the time to interview me, blah blah blah, ... next steps?
I probably spent 7 hours on application paperwork for my current job. Complete with detailed personal history that had to be 100% accurate going back 10 years.
I had 3 other offers expire before I got my offer from my current employer. Then once I accepted it was another month before I knew if I passed the background checks. That wanted me to start a few days after I finally knew without giving proper notice to my current employer too!
Thankfully this only had one 3 hour casual interview and it was more a waiting game than endless hours poured into interviews for a job I might not get. I knew this would be a better choice than the other offers and I'm glad I did what I did.
Anyway, I spent several weeks asking them over and over when my start date was supposed to be, because eventually my soon-to-be employer's contract with GD was going to expire and I also wanted to give my current employer notice.
After a couple of months of this, I got fed up on a Friday and wrote an email telling them that I'm rescinding my offer and they went crazy and then kept calling me through the weekend and telling me I could start on Monday begging me to start...telling me I should just walk away from my current employer with no notice.
Walked away from that situation and never looked back. Glad I did it. My background check cost them nearly $500 and I imagine it hurt their relationship with General Dynamics. First clue should have been the fact their entire HR department was offshored.
Also some of the background checks can cost quite a bit more than $500. The preliminary ones are fast but the thorough federal one I'm undergoing now takes around 6 months.
I passed a similar one a few years ago which cost the employer more than 30k and took more than a year to compete.
(OP has mentioned in another thread that this was not a secret clearance, but very similar.)
Finances are, in fact, one of the things that are scrutinized very carefully. Susceptibility to bribes is a major indicator of security risk.
They validate your references and ask references for other references. Takes a lot of time.
I don't want to hear some euphemistic email detailing how I was a very strong candidate but among a large qualified pool of applicants or how the team was impressed with my resume but unable to move forward at this time... just tell me I didn't get the job already and cut out all the flowery soup.
Amen to that. Recently I submitted five applications and four of them ended up as duds. What really annoys me is that I had to chase the recruiters to find out for myself that either the job is too senior or they forgot to take down the advert. The best one so far is when a recruiter claimed they never received my application when I got a confirmation email earlier.
Please guys, don't be lazy! Don't play games! Don't make me look desperate, geez.
As far as I am concerned, a rejection wastes both of our time. Unless they want an interview, why bother communicating any further?
These days too I notice that recruiters have become more mechanical and not very interested in finding out more about you as a person. It's like they forgot that they've got two clients, the organisation and the applicant.
Sigh. To be honest I've never had this experience before so it's a bit demoralising. But hey let's keep carrying on.
Anyway I'm hardly an expert, but this attitude and process has helped me.
1) Selectively applying only for positions in companies where you truly care about the specifics of the role and the overall purpose of the company, because you want a specialised role and/or professional progression.
2) Indiscriminately applying for anything which vaguely seems like you might be able to do, even if it's not a good match and you care little about it.
I've not done a huge amount of interviewing, but last time I did so it was painfully obvious which categories the CVs fell into. All the (2) applicants were immediately rejected on the grounds of not meeting the required job criteria or were ranked much lower than the (1) candidates for not having relevant experience in the area or zero demonstrated interest in the area or specific position either on paper or in the interview.
You must tailor both the CV and cover letter to make a good impression. That's the careers advice I was given, and it's good advice. Not taking the time to do so makes it much more likely your application will be rejected outright, or be ranked below better applications. If your application doesn't demonstrate any clear interest or specific aptitude for the position, it's going to naturally make you appear less desirable than candidates with the same skills which do. The CV is selling you to the people reading it, and if no effort is made to market your skills and experience for the position on offer, then you're selling yourself short.
Last time I had to apply for a job, I spent a lot of time looking over job listings, and submitted four applications to four places, all tailored bar one. I got four interviews and three job offers. The hours spent tailoring each application paid off in terms of the response. And I got a job in a field I cared about, rather than something random. The one I didn't get an offer for was with Google, and that was mostly untailored because they weren't hiring for a specific role; I wouldn't have accepted an offer in any event, so no loss for that one!
I like my current job and I can't even remember what the job description said. Anyway maybe your technique works for your area and your skillset - but I'd fall flat on my face if I tried it here.
In the past, I have trawled through sites like Monster, Reed and other big generic sites, and generally been unsatisfied. I've had my share of generic and fairly boring positions from this route. You essentially have to take the best of all the rubbish that's on offer in an area that's practical to be. You're right that the descriptions are rubbish and next to useless, and I think in most cases this route should be avoided if at all possible.
But if you decide up front exactly which field you really want to work in, and then proactively look for companies working in that area which are hiring, or might be hiring, you can get something you really want and raise the chances of being hired as well. Particularly if you proactively reach out to groups which you want to work with; several people on my current team got hired after working for groups in other organisations doing related stuff--just being known helps, and being known to be doing good stuff helps even more.
FWIW, 2/3 jobs I've found on job hunt boards have been pretty good. I'm much more interested in what the team are like and the environment than I am the specific problem domain.
You are probably right that networking is better though. I read somewhere that the time to start networking is not when you want a job - that comes across as being needy. I'm trying to do it more now, at a time where I'm comfortable in my role. I'm hoping it works both ways - I'll also find talented people I'll be able to recommend to employers or work with.
With some companies I was exchanging email, providing all the info, and then suddenly I never received any further reply.
I think that it's good for the company to filter out candidates, but something must change, as candidates we expect at least a rejection email, especially when your life depends on it.
Keep staying positive and know there is an opportunity out there for you. Don't get discouraged!
I don't think I'm saying anything new here. The mechanization of such work has been happening for a while now and the smart move is to start planning for that inevitability. Anything that requires basic pattern matching and procedures is pretty much gone. My retirement account I think is currently managed by a "robo advisor". Hiring humans to do such mechanical tasks will start getting more and more expensive relative to tweaking some parameters in some neural network coupled maybe with some domain specific policy/optimization framework.
Personally I don't think this is such a bad state of affairs. Why should societal optimization tasks be handled with heroic human effort when we can just do it with math?
In the future I imagine your question about the river pollution is almost nonsensical. That is if we manage to actually get there. Going by current news about the future of earth's ecology we might not actually make it much further. Gotta admit though heroic human optimizations seemed like they got us pretty far but the lag time in reacting to things is a bit too long when humans are in the loop. So the sooner they are out of that critical loop the better.
Speaking of which: http://www.sciencealert.com/photos-reveal-more-than-200-brig...
Some more examples:
* Is it okay to jaywalk with children across a busy street?
* Is it fair to give the bigger piece of chicken to the boy, rather than the girl, because "he's a boy"?
* Which is better-tasting, peaches or plums?
(I'm not arguing for moral relativism. There are some moral questions where everyone agrees on the answer.)
Instead, use your professional networks and friends. Reach out to actual human beings. Find any way you can to bypass the bullshit online job application systems and HR departments.
When people (or programs) go through a stack of resumes, it's all about finding reasons to eliminate as many as possible as quickly as possible using the flimsiest of criteria. Of course it's going to create hard feelings but what should one expect when putting oneself into a giant horde of applicants?
Having a good professional network is not something you can just "turn on" at will.
But yeah, you MUST invest in building up professional contacts as soon as you start working, if you don't you're just making your career development intractably hard.
Of course it takes years to develop and requires maintenance. You gotta start somewhere, for folks in school that means finding an internship or even a work-study assignment. It could mean taking a less than hot-shit job.
Beyond that, let me just add my voice to the multitude shouting, "Holy shit, yes, and it's terrible!"
I actually refused to send my current job a resume. The conversation went like this:
Can you send them a resume?
No- here's my LinkedIn.
But can you send them a resume?
No- here's my LinkedIn.
OK, can you come in for an interview?
Interview.
A month passes.
Can you come in for another interview?
Interview.
Hired.
That's a double-edged sword. On one hand I have to be pretty careful not to burn bridges or hop jobs, cause if I want to stay around here I'll run out of both quickly. On the other hand established developers around here all know each other, pretty much, so the network effect is very, very strong.
And that even means easy intros to people who work remotely for interesting companies elsewhere (which seems to be more and more a thing.) Just in the last month I've met people, through my local network, who work for places like Trello, Circle, etc.
The Circle guy in particular- well, he came up to introduce himself after a talk I gave, and some of what he's doing for Circle is very much up my alley, so if I wanted a different job or a remote job (I don't at the moment) I might hit him up.
With all these companies having massive HR departments, I also don't understand how a resume goes unread or un-responded to when it takes maybe 10 minutes max to go through a resume thoroughly.
Try it for yourself: set up a timer, open your resume. How quickly can you figure out how much experience you have, do the job titles match more or less the position, any description that lists similar stacks to the one your group uses? 10 seconds.
I wrote "thoroughly" meaning reading the whole thing, and possibly looking at their links, or doing some small research about something on their resume.
My experience with hiring in the past is that startups that do it completely internally with no HR or recruiter support are likely to get overwhelmed and drop the ball. Recruiters drive the process along but they are motivated to put any ass in the seat and are not usually completely trustworthy from either the job seeker or the client side. A marketplace solution like Hired, Vettery, etc makes the process lot more transparent and has a rhythm that helps keep hiring managers on task.
Of course I'm a programmer and I'm in NYC and what works for me, here doesn't work for everybody, everywhere.
It might not be a solution for jobs and company types described in this thread, but in many industries, company types and countries the lack of candidates is a much bigger problem than too many candidates.
Such a service exists. It's called Retained Search, an old-school, high-touch, high-feel service reserved for executive level, mission-critical roles. It's also expensive, 25-33% of first year target compensation. Naturally, companies are incentivized to use cheaper approaches first.
There are a few rules.
Never apply to a job that uses Taleo, SAP or any other "application" interface. A real job requires to send or upload a resume and an _OPTIONAL_ cover letter. Ignore everything else.
Never apply for a job that requires anything unusual (only non-smokers, hand written resume, time of birth for astrological evaluation, hard copy of application etc.). I am even skeptical about "motivational" letters. All these are signs that your future boss is nuts.
Be very open to create "sample" work, like a 10 page marketing plan or an "investment analysis of 5 companies". Just be very clear that this will be billed at your consulting rate too.
Remember the second most stupid people work in HR (with the most stupid people working in real estate). This does not mean the every HR person is an idiot - in fact I am sure there are brilliant people -, it is just a reflection of the entry requirements for these jobs.
I never really found a decent job after my PhD and I was desperate for years. The funny thing is: Now I get sometimes offered two jobs a day by just meeting people. I don't even engage in the conversation. They wouldn't be able to offer any salary that would make me even considering taking a job. And if I look at my former peer, never getting a job in the past may be the best thing that ever happened to me.
So, when I hire, I do so through through connections. I ask friends "Do you know anyone who can actually code who is looking for a job?"
And if it's just me, that's the end of it, but... let's say I'm hiring for a venture-backed firm, or for a department in a bank or something. In that case, I have a fiduciary duty to put a job ad out there, and I have to be able to show that I received a lot of resumes and "looked them over." By which I mean unceremoniously threw away. Who has the time to look over 1,000 resumes, most of which are complete bullshit?
I was going to hire my friend's friend anyway, but I had to solicit your resume along with many others to provide some cover. I threw your resume away without glancing past the education section (if you had gone to an Ivy I might have looked twice.) Capisce?
To quote from Wiki (I know): "[t]he distinguishing or overriding duty of a fiduciary is the obligation of undivided loyalty" and I'd argue that taking on capital imposes just such an obligation, such that trying to hire the people most likely to maximize your investors return is indeed a fiduciary duty, one that implies other duties.
As usual, the night before the interview I printed out his resume and the resume was about 5 pages long. I was not too happy about long resume, especially I spotted inconsistent formatting issue there. That's sloppy. Later my manager said this could have been a mod version from the talent recruitment agency. I got on the E train and I kept shaking my head during my whole ride. This resume looked suspiciously fake and bad. 90% of the technology this candidate claimed to have experience with show up in pretty much all of his prior roles. How can Cassandra appear in a role in 2003? Facebook wasn't even a thing. That was just of the several lies I caught immediately.
But I am a fair interviewer. I wanted to discount this resume and I wanted to see his real time performance. I always ask my candidate at least one system design problem because system design question usually can tell me the depth of knowledge the candidate has. I don't know my algorithms very well, but I know a lot about how to piece systems together. I know how to draw diagrams and show people my thoughts. I want people who can talk, especially in an architect role; I don't want just a code monkey. I like to spend more time with candidates even if my manager thinks we are done I usually request extra time so I can squeeze every bit of his/her knowledge.
So I asked him the same question I was asked to answer during my interview with our SVP. This candidate went speechless despite my multiple attempts to rephrase the questions and multiple hints. The question is as simple as given a SQL database and multiple data files (of some format which we don't care), we want to prevent duplicate record. This question is awesome because you can load the files in single-threaded program, in multi-threaded, or distributed. Design a system which can satisfy all three conditions are common (it's essentially evolution of a system - you start with the most basic single process single machine processing all files sequentially, and then perhaps going fully distributed like launching EMR or multiple worker nodes, or using S3 events and lambda function if we move the files to S3). If queue wasn't available, we can do checksum and lock file. Not perfect solution; we can trade time with integrity and accuracy.
Anyway, he failed the interview. I never bothered to check on his credentials but if he did graduate with a PhD, I am disappointed.
My 2 cents to all the juniors looking for job: please do not lie on your resume. Be concise and list what you actually know. If you did some C programming but you do not use C or no longer familiar with C, please do not put C on the resume. Rate your familiarity with tools, only list the ones you have good grip on. If you don't really know how to answer a question (e.g. do you know what content security policy is?) you can say "I don't know" and then ask the interview if he/she can give you a brief overview of what CSP is, and see if you can bring up related web security topics. But if you are just unsure or can't remember everything about CSP, start with "I don't quite remember, but I learned about CSP when I blah blah blah and I remember blah blah" that sort of response will get you somewhere, at least you are talking. Talk. Don't sit there and remain speechless.