Ask HN: How do you look for a new job? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you look for a new job?

9 pointsdragosb915 comments

Do you look at job posting sites and which one? Do you use sites like Glassdoor or any other alternative? Do you ask friends about open positions at different companies?

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Generally, job sites are the least effective way. You'll end up running the resume lottery as well as the tech interview gauntlet. You can probably skip a couple of layers of interviews, drastically increasing your odds by knowing someone.

For my first job, I ran through generic job sites for 3 months with no luck and a lot of frustrating idiotic questions (one person rejected it because she couldn't open PDF and another rejected me in a phone interview for not knowing the company's address by heart).

I eventually just ran through all my Facebook friends asking for a job, and got one with an old family friend. Another two friends referred to me other job opportunities which I later turned down. And I basically just went through 15 people.

Find companies on job boards, find jobs on company sites. Glassdoor to check if it's relatively OK. Resume doesn't mean much because even with tailoring I got nothing. But if you do need to, use .docx files. Avoid PDF, it can't be parsed correctly (most of the time) because it's a print format, not a text format. Avoid using Monster at all costs. The number of emails I got for things I wasn't even remotely qualified for was insane.

I'd encourage a multi-pronged approach: * Job boards make it easy to find jobs, but it's a volume game * If you find a job or company you like, you can go the extra mile by cold emailing someone on the team for an informational interview -- you can learn a lot more about the job, the team, and get a leg up versus other candidates * You should definitely tell your friends you're looking and ask for referrals

Like @pradpk said, the quality of your resume and anything you apply with is key. Job search success is basically (Volume ) x (Conversion Rate).

First and foremost, you need to have a decent looking resume. Normally, I would search for jobs in sites (without enrolling) like google.com/jobs, stackoverflow.com/jobs and also update my LinkedIn profile. If I am dead serious, I would add my profile in any of the job sites like monster.com, indeed.com, dice.com etc..Hope it helps.

Look for the Senior Executive you can best help.

Hop on Linkedin. Sort individual profiles by Titles/Market/Industry/Key Word, etc..

Ex: CTO , VP Engineering, Manager E-Commerce

Then reach out to them direct.

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