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Comment by akg_67 | Hacker News Reader

There are two routes to finding jobs.

First route is through personal contacts/network/referral/nepotism/cronyism. In this case, your strategy of customizing resume and application is an effective strategy as you know your application will be reviewed a relavant human.

The second route is through applying to job listings when you don't have any contact. With this route the chances of your application being reviewed by relevant human is extremely low. In this case, you are better of reaching out to as many opportunities as possible. Pre-application suitability filtering and application customization is waste of job applicant's time. Instead have an standard application and just apply to all positions in your area of interest. Any filtering by job hunter happens once an interested company has made contact.

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First route is essentially the only way of doing it, especially after you've been in the field for a bit. Either you're doing amazing work, and companies are after you, or you're a kid out of school. In between is ALL about who you know.

Really?

I thought there is a shortage on devs these days.

The last 2 years I only worked with companies I found online on some recruiting platforms.

I thought there is a shortage on devs these days.

No. It's difficult to evaluate and hire, and the process generally takes much longer than companies would like, for a whole bunch of reasons (some good, some bad).

Which people confuse with "a shortage of qualified devs".

That is an interesting perspective, but quite different than mine. But it could be there is both a shortage of devs and it is difficult to hire and eval etc.

Seattle is estimated to have over 15,000 dev openings. My last company wanted to hire several hundred on its own. All the people we wanted had multiple offers. There seemed to be more jobs than people, but to be fair, it could be because we were all missing a bunch of good people. But it was hard to even get people to apply, they were tired of companies bugging them to interview. It sure felt like there was a shortage devs, because they didn't even want to interview with us.

A shortage at the price companies are willing to pay, typically growing slower than inflation.

Software development salaries are definitely beating inflation, by at least 2x recently.

http://www.workbridgeassociates.com/posts/images/1835/3054/C...

I hire very good people without personal connections using postings here, recruiters, etc.

Any chance you're hiring at the moment?

We're always kind of hiring. Depends if you've got a PhD in stats or some machine learning heavy field, can code a bit and want to work in London.

I have a mentor who convinced me to go the computer engineering route. How do I convince him to grease the wheels so to speak and go the nepotism route to help me land a job out of college? It seems he does not want to do this, and I cannot seems to land a job.

A first job can be hard to land. Are you looking for jobs that you are qualified for? Play up any internships you had. Are you looking in areas that have jobs that are introductory? It's not nepotism unless he's your uncle or something, but it is normal and fine for your mentor to help you find a job.

Look for personal contacts that can help you get through the endless blitz of resumes. Look for a company recruiter on linked in or the web that hires people with your background, connect up with them, tell them you might be a good candidate. Respond quickly to their email. Look for user groups in your area, go to them. Ask your profs. Doesn't your college have a job counseling office, usually you can keep using it even after you graduate.

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