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Comment by PragmaticPulp | Hacker News Reader

Every time I've posted a remote job listing, I've been buried by a flood of low-effort applications. Remote work has been a hot topic for a long time now. To be blunt, there are a lot of people out there looking for cushy remote jobs where they can fade into the background and do as little work as possible. I've had a lot of negative experiences with digital nomads and "4 hour workweek" followers. One person even tried to keep their old job and the new remote position so they could get two paychecks (He couldn't keep up, didn't last long).

Instead, our remote hiring has been via outbound recruiting only. The bar for selecting these candidates is much higher, and we're also prepared to offer higher compensation to secure those candidates.

Candidates who have a proven track record of delivering quality work in a remote working positions are (or were) hard to come by. They definitely command a premium in the market.

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You can only do so many high-effort applications and get completely ignored before realizing it's not worth the effort

That's a good point. I've seen low-effort applications, but they pale in comparison to low-effort job listings, not to mention the "low effort" HR wall.

On my last hunt, one application for a position that'd have been a perfect match got bounced because the HR person felt that I didn't seem enthusiastic enough. (She did deliver the bad news with a happy smiley, though.)

The application spam hurts both candidates and companies.

Unfortunately the only way that would change is if the entire application funnel got overhauled to stop using paper resumes as the point of entry.

You can't reasonably spend time vetting hundreds of resumes for quality candidates. And as a candidate you can't spend hundreds of hours perfectly an online application to stand out.

You end up having to game the system as a candidate. Tailoring your resume and technical interviewing skills to get in the door, but neither of those skills are reflected of your ability to deliver business value.

Outbound and reference based recruiting is probably better from a company POV, but that takes investment of time and money, and often gets offloaded to hr or recruiters who are not technically adept and are more worried about getting high conversion rates over actual job performance. From the candidate side, it means you get better opportunities based on your social connections than your technical skills, which can also lead to programmers who can talk their way into a job but can't FizzBuzz.

References from current employees seem to yield the best job-performance to applicant ratio, but can remove strong candidates without the "right connections" from the funnel.

Temp-to-hire is a nice compromise, but presents its own variety of issues.

In general that's probably true. For the specific incident I mentioned, there are probably only a hundred or so people on the market world-wide at any given moment that have a clearly matching resume. Not caring to notice that at the HR level is truly "low effort".

I have not seen it a clearly as you describe, but at GitLab we've seen a bit of the same.

The digital nomads that move to a new room weekly tend to have a hard time focussing on work. People that move every couple of months or that have a camper tend to do better.

We've found amazing people inbound and most of our current team applied for the job themselves. But there is a lot of noise and we had to decline more than 99% of applicants. We've recently switched to sourcing (outbound recruiting) focussed model https://www.businessinsider.com/gitlab-hire-critical-roles-r...

> The digital nomads that move to a new room weekly tend to have a hard time focussing on work. People that move every couple of months or that have a camper tend to do better.

My experience has been similar.

Honestly, I don't care what people do in their off hours, where they live, or how often they move around. The real problems come from mismatched priorities. Many of the self-described digital nomads are looking to travel, socialize, and essentially vacation all day while putting in just enough work to collect a paycheck. This creates perverse incentives to sandbag, exaggerate effort, pawn off work on coworkers, stretch deadlines, cut corners, and other behaviors that bring the whole team down.

Digital nomads are easy to single out, but the same pattern can apply to people who want remote jobs so they can focus on their side hustle, or who try to be full-time caregivers for small children during the day. In theory, it shouldn't matter if people can get their work done. In practice, it becomes a game of minimizing their work. Ultimately, it's the rest of the team that suffers, which is why I'm very careful to only hire people who can make the job their top priority during working hours.

Meh, I feel like it's probably healthy to minimize work, not dishonestly, but especially if the alternative is going into the office and not being productive for those hours anyway.

> Meh, I feel like it's probably healthy to minimize work

That’s missing the point. I don’t expect people to do work for the sake of doing work. We’re trying to get something done.

The problem comes when individuals on the team try to minimize their own workload at any cost, which inevitably creates more work for other team members. They either find ways to shift difficult tasks to other people on the team, or they cut corners and saddle the team with technical debt.

I know the popular framing is to think of workers vs. big evil corporations, but in reality most of these people end up hurting their coworkers far more than the company by selfishly minimizing their own workloads.

> if the alternative is going into the office and not being productive for those hours anyway

In a properly functioning team, that should never happen. I can’t think of any time in my professional career where our work backlog has literally gone to zero. A properly managed roadmap and backlog means there should always be something to work on.

I don’t expect employees to work extra hours to chip away at the backlog, but if someone finishes their assigned tasks early then they need to step up and help the team or work on the next tasks in the backlog.

If someone is constantly running out of work and finding themselves spending unproductive hours at the office, their team is likely oversized in the first place. Those people are either moved to another team or at the top of the list when it’s time for layoffs, sadly.

I think it's only sometimes healthy to take on more stuff after you've completed what you set out to that day. In my mind, the reward for productivity should not be more work. Fuck that. At the office or not, most of the time I'll try and get what I set out to do that day done, and then leave unless there's something pressing. Mostly though, if there was something pressing, then it would have been part of my goal for that day anyway.

You'd put someone on the chopping block for being too efficient? That doesn't sound sensible.

I like my work and I enjoy being effective but my job is never my top priority.

I think OP means during your work day. You don't want to be working with someone that is working remotely so that, during their work day, they can also look after a young child, or is focused on organizing and going for a long social lunch, or thinking where in this new city they are going to visit.

You want someone who, for the hours that they are working, main priority (unless there is an unlikely emergency) is getting their work done. (and responding on Hacker news)

I'm pretty sure that everyone is interested in minimizing work that they don't like.

I bet you do the same. I bet that if you had a skill that is highly valued, but you're not really into it, you'd do all in your power to minimize the work you put in... Be it in the office or remotely.

Fuck! I had a contract and had a new manager installed 2 months into a 3 month contract. I had to be in the office 9 to 5 every workday - no exceptions. I couldn't leave and I basically did nothing during that month.... While being in the office.

“People that move every couple of months or that have a camper tend to do better.“

I work remotely but I honestly can’t imagine such people being able to do sustained deep development work. It seems that lifestyle is more suitable for work that’s done in relatively small increments.

> relatively small increments.

As in - most software development these days.

I am interested in working as a software engineer at Gitlab, what do you feel is a good path to land a job at the company? I plan to start contributing meaningful changes to gitlab itself and have a couple of side projects to show. What else can I do to land a job and how do I get noticed since it's mostly outbound hiring going forward. Note : I don't use linkedin and don't plan to. Given my unique circumstances, any advice would be nice. Thanks.

Edit : Another question : since I am currently in my first job, whom do I give as references? I can't give my current manager as a reference for obvious reasons. Weird question : I contribute to OSS projects (and plan to contribute to gitlab), do you think I can give the OSS maintainers as references?

We don't accept inbound applications from outside the company anymore. We do have a talent community https://boards.greenhouse.io/gitlab/jobs/4700367002?gh_src=d...

Thanks for planning to contribute to GitLab. When your submission passed review consider messaging the reviewer and mention you're interested in working here. We do still accept references from team members.

There is no need for a LinkedIn profile.

If you're currently in your first job a reference can be a peer you trust there, a former teacher, or a manager from a side-job or hobby. OSS maintainers work work as well.

Hello! I'm Chantal, a Junior Technical Recruiter from GitLab. It definitely sounds like you've got a good plan so far. We love when folks contribute, and it's a way to get to know some GitLabbers.

Another way to stand out would be to make a nice cover letter if you have the time/resources. I can still recall several awesome cover letters I've read and know that it does make a difference!

I'd be happy to have a video call with you if you'd like to talk more about this topic. I was a Junior Backend Engineer with a non-traditional background, so I've gone through a similar experience!

I've been a digital nomad for 2 years and you learn pretty quickly how disruptive moving is. I Generally stay in a location for at least a month for that reason. Key is to do your research and identify areas with all the basicls ahead of your arrival (wifi cafe, supermarket, gym etc) so that you can establish a routine within a day. My motivations are a bit different from most nomads as I do this to avoid burnout. There's few things more inspiring to write code than spending spending your off hours swimming with sea turtles and exploring new neighborhoods.

"Outbound recruiting" is eminently practical, but still one of the most chilling phrases I've ever heard.

It's not enough that you essentially have to know someone on the inside to get your resumé reviewed anywhere, now they're not even taking applications.

As a current seeker of a remote position, and based on the relatively small amount of responses I've been getting, I feel like I might be falling into that bucket of applications that appear low-effort. What indicates to you that an application is low-effort?

Not having a cover letter that directly speaks to what I am looking for, instead having a generic blurb or no blurb at all. That's one example.

I think the biggest tell would be a resume that isn't tailored to the specific job.

How does one tailor a resume to a specific job without bending the truth? I don't have experience with the exact stack listed but I bet I could get up to speed within a week or two given the chance.

edit: And what does tailoring to a specific job mean? Should I change my job titles to match? Do I just copy a bunch of keywords from it into my descriptions? I've never worked that specific job that is why I am applying

Remove irrelevant positions and focus on projects that match the target.

Assumedly during your career you have done multiple small projects on one topic or another, highlight the ones that interest the employer and the ones you feel particularly proud of, don't mention the others.

An interesting point. But employers should start giving out instructions on what they want to see.

I had a few employers tell me that my resume of 5 pages was not long enough and others that complained about too much information.

So... This provide only relevant information is as valuable as keeping quiet.

When you advertise a position, do you inform what form the CV should be in?

The hiring process is de facto a completely subjective system of both sides hoping the other would screw up to make their decision easier, while playing mind games.

I interviewed at Bridgewater on site, their interview was awesome and clear. More companies should be that clear and forthcoming as Bridgewater Associates.

If the position requirements describe certain things they want and you have done those things at certain jobs, basically say that you have done what they are asking for at those jobs. Things like "work on multitier web application" or other items that are not stack specific but that you have done. Include text closely matching those descriptions at jobs where you've done it.

If you don't have the experience I don't know how you'd craft it to be honest except for perhaps being descriptive in the cover letter about how you don't match everything but what you are able to offer and why you may be excited to work in the specific role at the company.

It's just you focus more on the parts that are relevant for the job.

Unless you're fresh out of school, you likely have more experience than what can fit on a CV. However most of it is at best tangentially relevant.

So you reduce/remove the parts that do not apply, and go into more details on the parts that apply.

Of course, if all the jobs you apply are pretty similar (say front end with React), then you won't change much between each CV.

While you can definitely tailor your resume, it's as much about not applying for jobs you really aren't qualified for. When we tried to hire for a Postgresql role, we got tons of Excel and Access people that couldn't spell Postgresql. If the job is for an AWS expert, and you're a Rails developer whose AWS experience is using an S3 gem, don't apply.

Hello! I'm Chantal, a Junior Technical Recruiter from GitLab. Some other folks have provided great thoughts on this subject.

In general, I think you have to understand your audience. If you're applying for a job at a large company, or one that you know receives a ton of applications, you should find a way to stick out. Also, the recruiters likely won't have enough time to read through a 5 page resume. If you're applying to a smaller company, that long resume and cover letter might not be a bad idea. I asked my teammates to add tips about resume writing since I'm going to be helping out some bootcamp graduates soon. Maybe it will help: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/people-group/recruiting/-/issu...

Relatedly I wonder how much a high effort canidate vs a low effort canidate actually works out in a screening process despite whatever prejudices they may hold one way or another.

It reminds me of the recession bad old days where some companies were making a policy of hiring only the already employed and got essentially an exasperated facepalm from congress asking if they /really/ will have to ban hiring discrimination against the unemployed.

Ugh, so frustrating to hear this as a remote worker who is only remote because of family. Putting in a lot of effort into applications is not sustainable considering you will not even get a response from a surprising amount of companies, especially during covid where there are a lot of hiring freezes and a higher amount of job-seekers.

Interesting! Do you find most of your outbound hires through LinkedIn? Or what channels do you typically use to look for candidates? (referrals, GitHub, referrals, HN...?)

It took me a fair while to learn how to work productively while fully remote (thankfully it was on my own dime), and I feel like I've gotten the hang of it now. Bit annoying that the issue you're describing will make it harder to get remote work in the future.

This isn't a veiled hiring entreaty by the way, I'm happily employed, but this seems like something useful to know.

What constitutes a high vs low effort application?

How do you identify potential candidates for remote hiring in your your outbound recruiting efforts?

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