Comment by davidfischer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by davidfischer | Hacker News Reader

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While the definition of senior engineer is a bit squishy, I agree completely that as some one gets more senior they increasingly choose the company rather than the other way around.

I'm soft-launching a product to help companies recruit and I've done about a dozen customer development interviews with hiring managers (5 person companies through FAANGs) in the last two weeks. One thing I heard constantly was that referrals are their best source of candidates and that for roles with 7+ years of relevant experience they actually don't believe good candidates will come in by just randomly applying on their website/LinkedIn/etc. I had an engineering manager tell me "a senior engineer actively searching for a job is a negative signal of candidate quality" as opposed to going through somebody in their network or connecting with somebody at the company first. I had another manager tell me for the senior roles he's hiring for he only considers candidates explicitly sourced by his internal recruiter who searches LinkedIn for the specific skillset or people who are referrals for the specific job. This isn't some CTO level position; this is just a role for a ~10 years of experience individual contributor. Applications from the website go straight to the trash can. The implication was people with those skills aren't looking for jobs.

Whew, that is a hard thing for me to read, it actually really bummed me out (apologies if this comment winked in and out of existence...wanted this to not be one giant blob).

(Bear with me, gonna anxiety dump a bit here ;) feel free to skip to the end where I have a pertinent question...=) )

Background: I've worked as a high-level contributor both at the management and engineering levels for the last decade of my career. Decently respected software dev/leader/whatever, lots of big and small projects and teams, all successfully delivered. People like working with me! I've had friends ask me to come work with them. And I like my friends. They are great people.

However, I'm also known to be really picky about the things that I want to be doing with my time and my career. I'm really protective of it overall, so when I have the opportunities to "do things" with friends or whatnot I have generally said no, for a variety of reasons. They are great people and wonderful developers (legitimately wonderful, brilliant human beings) but in many cases they work for environments or domain spaces that wouldn't really be "my thing". Sometimes I've just pursued my own stuff for a while, since I have had that ability...but what you're saying above sounds like that has been hurting me.

At the end of December, I was in a work situation where the entirety of the technical team was laid off, including myself. I figured at the time, given my general "level" and experience I'd be all right when applying for work.

While I haven't applied to lots of jobs since then, I did apply to a few that seemed like a great personal fit on paper, and that I knew based on my experience I should probably at least get an initial interview.

No dice. 0% response rate. I was shocked! I mean, it's been a while since I've been doing the interview dance, but 0? So I had my CV looked over by people ranging from C-level guys to other software devs of varying levels and no one could figure out why I wasn't at least getting into initial discussions. "It's not you, it has to be them", I got told. But really after a few of these things happening, you stop thinking that "it's them". That can't be, right?

I made a comment to one person that I felt far more desirable to companies when I had much less experience/professional success than after I had more significant accomplishments under my belt.

I hate mysteries - and I hate the not knowing. It's one thing for me to go through an interview process and not be a fit, if such a thing were to happen; it's another for me to never even get to the interview process and not understand why!

So while reading the above is kind of dejecting, thank you for writing it...I guess it provides some illumination for me on what might be going on.

Now rather than hop into my shower and softly weep - do any of your engineering manager friends spoken about above have any advice for people who may have that experience but just happen to be picky about what they want to do, don't want to move themselves to the USA, and don't always jump at referral from friend X?

Sorry to bum you out. That's not my goal.

As one becomes more senior the hiring manager expects a candidate to do their due diligence and ask some questions beforehand rather than hopping right into the application process. For a referral, that has already happened somewhat as the candidate already presumably talked to the the referrer about working at that company. You don't have to be a referral but a hiring manager expects you to do this due diligence. You don't necessarily need to go through a friend and you don't have to work with your friends. However, having an acquaintance at the company even in a different team is a massive help.

Think of it from the company's perspective for a second. They don't want somebody who just "wants a job". Money is always a factor but if somebody takes a job solely for money then they'll jump ship the moment somebody offers more. Companies want somebody interested in their space who wants to work there. You mentioned that you purposefully pursued some roles that looked like they'd be good fit for you. That's smart! Make sure the hiring manager knows it. By just clicking apply on the website, that may not be communicated clearly.

Here's two concrete pieces of advice:

- Before going in the front door and applying for roles, reach out to the hiring manager and ask them some more details about the role and what working for the company/team is like. If you know somebody at the company who can put you in touch (even if it isn't the same team), that's better, but even if you don't that's ok. They will talk to you and if they don't you probably don't want to work there anyway. LinkedIn is useful for this.

- If you're applying for a local job, try to meet the hiring manager or somebody else at the company in person if possible. Don't stalk them but to give you an example, I know that a CEO for a local security startup runs the local OWASP meetup and I told a person interested in working in security to go to the meetup and talk to him if she was serious about working there. I've been a hiring manager before and I looked way more closely at any candidate I talked to in person. Don't sound desperate but show them that you're interested and serious enough to go out of your way to talk to them. I had a couple candidates who I didn't know reach out to me via Meetup.com for roles posted to the company website and I had no problem meeting them for coffee.

On a related tangent, I help organize a local meetup and I get asked the question "how do I land my first dev job" a lot. I've helped half a dozen people land their 1st or 2nd tech job. Assuming they already have tech talent, I essentially offer them the above advice. It works at that level but it works for senior roles too! As a hiring manager, you want to talk to qualified people about your open role.

Good luck!

Edit: formatting only

A couple things to add:

- The #2 source of candidates was almost universally meetups in my customer development interviews. Meeting people in person works! You don't have to be a referral although it does help.

- It's pretty easy at a small company to figure out who the hiring manager is and contact them via LinkedIn/Meetup/etc. At a big company, this can be hard or impossible but you are much more likely to know somebody at a big company who can put you in touch. Absolute worst case, reach out to the big company recruiter on LinkedIn asking for some details on a specific role and they might put you in touch directly or they'll get your questions answered some way. The recruiter 100% will talk to you. They are paid good money to find qualified people like you.

- While I said earlier it isn't a numbers game and you should only apply to roles/companies where you're a fit, to some degree it is a numbers game. Sometimes jobs are posted to a company website and the role isn't really available. Maybe they already have a candidate in mind. If you apply to ~3-4 jobs and don't hear anything, that isn't super uncommon. However, most people feel obligated to actually give you a direct answer if you contacted them directly.

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