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Comment by cwt137 | Hacker News Reader

My department just finished a cycle of hiring developers. We could tell which applicants mass applied to jobs and used a generic cover letter. They are probably was just playing the numbers game. Since they didn't care enough to at minimum change or add one or two sentences to make the cover letter unique to our job posting, they didn't get far in our hiring process.

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When evaluating a developer, do you care more about whether they're a good fit for the job, or whether they spent more time than necessary applying for your job?

I mean, how much time did you spend approaching each developer individually? Since you used an ad, I'm guessing zero. I'm not saying you should have tailored your ad to each person, but why do you care if they burn time for you, rather than evaluate them on what they can do for the company?

If someone can't be bothered to spend 10 minutes writing a cover letter for a job they want then I would consider them unqualified. I don't want to work with somebody who refuses to put in a bit of effort to get what they want.

I spend at least a few hours writing job posts. Why shouldn't I expect the same?

But you don't customize the job post to each applicant, right? So "the same" would be a developer spending a few hours writing a cover letter and resume that are sent to a bunch of potential employers without customization.

It is more common for the applicant to apply for the job so the job post has to be generic. Now if the company is recruiting someone unique they will approach them and tailor the opportunity to that person.

Also I don't think one has to spend a few hours to customize the resume. Make one for each industry you are considering and spend 5-10 minutes tweaking it for the employers you really care about.

We do for the most part. We might hire a number of people from the same position, but we typically write a post for each type of position or team.

Even at Microsoft this was often the case - of course there was a generic template, but you would put specifics to the role.

I don't understand this. I'm a developer, I create products. I'm not a professional writer. For me this means you value >>presentation<< more than my skills, despite I won't be a professional writer in your company...

I'm really not talking about something lengthy. But I get 100s of applications for every job post I publish. Most people who apply are frankly not qualified. If you are qualified, write a few sentences. "Hey, I saw your post for [...]. I thought this looked great for me because I have worked on [...] and I am super excited to learn more about [....]".

I am not asking for paragraphs, but show me you are interested. I honestly spend hours writing and reviewing the jobs I post and it takes probably 100+ hours total from a team to hire a person. We want to hire you, but you've got to help us. :)

I think hiring is completely broken. At least in IT. Developers don't understand HR people, and HR doesn't understand developers.

For me "Hey, I saw your post for [...]. I thought this looked great for me because I have worked on [...] and I am super excited to learn more about [....]" means absolutely nothing. Frankly, I do NOT know you or your company and in a job description there is nothing about the team, culture etc. But I have no other option just to make something up, because otherwise no one'll hire me.

Where I work, engineers hire engineers. You are right on some level that it is hard to know exactly what a company does, but for many jobs in software that isn't entirely true. Read the companies blog, look at their open source projects, use the product, and most importantly read the job posting. I really don't think you'll have to make something up if you really are a good fit for the role.

It's working really well when engineers hire engineers. I've no problem with that. They don't ask questions like "Why do you want to work for us" or "What are your strengths" or "Tell me about a situation where ...". Not every company has a blog, open source projects and many of them have no public products and are privately held. So, I can see the job description and the website. I don't know if you are an HR person or not. No offense. I'm not against them, but have very very very bad experience with them.

Op did spend a few hours: he wrote a script. By definition he did what a programmer should do: find a solution that is automizable, then make it work.

If that annoys some people, well, that is why you apply to more than one job.

Good point. And I would seriously consider an applicant that wrote such an application, but better than putting it in his resume would be to write a quick note. "Hey, I've been looking for a new role. As part of my process I wrote this app. See it here and let me know what you think." That would get somebody noticed.

Hiring managers don't look poorly on generic applications because we're prima donnas who want people to jump through hoops and waste time, we consider generic applications to be an indicator of a weak candidate.

If it's not immediately clear why, imagine that you're a fantastic developer who can get any job you want. How many jobs do you apply for per day? Would you use a web app that automates applying to jobs, even if it worked really well and were free?

You're not getting that many fantastic developers applying for your jobs. You're getting mostly average ones. Your process should be able to handle not throwing away qualified average candidates.

Candidates are judged relatively, not absolutely. Doesn't matter whether I'm hiring PhDs to write neural networks for $200K/yr or bootcamp grads to move fields around a form, a generic copy-paste application is a sign of a weak candidate. Doesn't mean I wouldn't hire them, either, but it does mean I won't call them unless I had no luck with the strong candidates.

I will take your reply-less downvotes as meaning, "I wish that what you said weren't true."

It is a little bit of both really but along a spectrum. If a person is really really good you don't care much about their resume. If they don't have relevant experience but spent some time on their resume it helps show interest. If you are fresh out of college, the second approach is probably all you have.

I understand that, but I don't see why interest should count for much. Out of two equal candidates, the interested one is probably better, but I don't know if interest is a good predictor of job performance... Maybe it is, though.

Interest is what gives someone the motivation to learn and improve themselves.

I'm a professional. I don't have to be interested in what your company does. If you pay me my asking rate, I will do a damn good job at producing exactly what you need. If I have to learn and improve myself to do that, I will.

How does this square with the "shortage of engineers" lament that tech employers have been repeating for years? If there are so few applicants, how is it that everyone is so picky?

There isn't a shortage of engineers, there's a shortage of highly-experienced engineers that won't need training. Companies would rather wait months to poach an employee trained by another company than take up the task of training entry-level employees themselves.

This is just my personal opinion being a recent college grad, but I feel like if companies were really so desperate for new engineers they wouldn't put multiple-years experience requirements on all of their entry-level job postings.

This goes both ways.

I get emails, LinkedIn messages from recruiters and I could tell which recruiters mass emailed to candidates and used a generic template. They are probably just playing the numbers game. Since they didn't care enough to at a minimum change or add one or two sentences to make the email unique to my skill set, they didn't get far in their recruiting efforts.

There is no need to write a formal cover letter to get a job.

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