Ask HN: How you even get an interview? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How you even get an interview?

30 pointsspeeder27 comments

So a lot of job hunting advice is what to do in interviews.

But what you do when you don't even get interviews?

Since I started university in 2008 I got interviewed, in total, even if I include recruitment agencies, about 8 or 9 times.

Meanwhile I sent hundreds of resumes, in multiple languages, formats, long ones, short ones, and so on. Only thing I never did was lie on the resume.

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What are the roles\job titles you are applying to? I just checked your LinkedIn. Your profile has Director of Online Marketing, CTO and Co-owner. There's a big disconnect between these roles. The bar is very high for these roles. I believe those could be the reasons behind the low callbacks

You don't say where you're located, so there may be cultural differences that make the following less relevant for you. Also you give very little detail to go on. However I'll give it a shot. My professional experience is mostly in the USA, and here, especially as a junior developer looking to break in, you have to be extremely persistent. View looking for work as your job. Spend at least 4 hours a day on it. Do some research on the companies you're applying to. Learn what they look for in their employees, and then structure your contact, be it a résumé or some other way into their pipeline, in a way that's likely to get you flagged for further review. Your job as a candidate is to present a compelling narrative for why a company wants to add you to its team. I don't want to get into a discussion about the merits of "passion," but one of the main ways for a junior candidate to distinguish himself is by showing a high level of engagement. One thing not to do is compete too much on price. If you devalue yourself, other people will too.

Also, the pandemic makes it difficult, but look for opportunities to network with people in positions like the one you want to be in. Those are the people you should ask to take a look at your résumé or CV if you're looking for feedback. Employee referrals are one of the best ways to get noticed.

The incorrect grammar in your title and post leads me to believe it may be prevalent in your resume/ cover letters as well. Either try and learn the correct grammar for these things or have someone else look over your resume to correct for that.

Sadly one of the best methods is to go to a headhunter.

Last time I seriously looked, I had the similar problem. If I had one interview per 50 resumes I would be surprised. That said I had one occasion where the HR person from a company called me, 'I found your resume on xyxxy, you would be perfect for this job'. I responded, 'I agree that is why I applied for the job'. Never a follow up. The HR person was looking to 'FIND' someone, not follow up on someone who had already applied.

Several times when I have run into this, I find recruiters somehow are able to convince companies to hire people they normally would not on their own.

Recruiters will get your resume past the 'AI resume analysis machine' which will filter out most people.

I do not like recruiters, because most, not all, do not have the morals I would expect.

Do you have experience? What have you been doing since 2008?

People who have problems getting interviews are often expecting too much. In my experience it really helps to work for almost nothing for a year or so just to get some professional experience and from there employers will take you far more seriously. If you don't have much experience you're unlikely to get noticed over someone with a year or two experience.

Really you should have been looking for odd jobs at university when you don't have dependencies and a lifestyle to afford. But it's not too late, I'm sure there are small business / individuals who would love you to build a software tool or a website for them for free or a little thank you cash. If you can do this on evenings and weekends for a bit you'll be able to fill out your CV with experince and demonstrate you're able to deliver.

Another thing I've found employers like is having a few lines about some personal project. Do you have any interesting (hopefully related) tech projects you've been working on or contributing too? These are also great to talk about in the interview to show your passions.

Generally employers are looking for someone with a track record and a passion for what they do. If you can show those two things you should have no problem getting an interview. The interview itself will then mostly just be expanding on the experience outlined on your CV and assessing if you're going to be a good fit culturally.

If you aren’t getting interviews, have someone review your resume.

Your resume most probably getting stuck in automation hell where machines are filtering the resume looking for certain phrases and keywords. I will suggest that you review job descriptions for the type of jobs you are interested in, make a list of keywords from JDs. Include those keywords in your resume, and include details, from past jobs, experiences, training, online classes, expanding on those keywords in your resume.

Also, do A/B testing, apply for same job with different resumes, using different email address, phone number, and variation of your name, and see which one results in response back. This way, you will be able to refine your resume to better match for the jobs you are interested in.

Actually, I have been thinking about creating a service to help defeat job filtering automation being used by companies, basically feed the service job descriptions for type of jobs you are interested in, it spits out keywords that appear important, you create statements including those keywords and expanding on those keywords. Service automatically picks the appropriate statements and spits out a resume matching the job description of a particular job of interest.

Some CV tips from a bit of time hiring:

Make sure that page one is a clear table of skills, your CV will be fed into a CRM/ATS that recruiters use to search from - "C# AND Jira AND Javascript", for instance.

Core skills, Web, Mobile, DevOps, for example, should all be rows within that table. Don't forget soft skills... Did you manage a team or delegate work at any time? Add it.

Make sure you've got your ZIP/postcode right at the top, otherwise you're invisible to systems that use a geographic search.

Having public code examples (GitHub, BitBucket et al.) help get your foot in the door. If you've got a portfolio, stick a link on there.

And I know what you're getting at with lying on your CV, but you need to believe you're the best candidate and consider how your modest CV looks, confidence goes a long way.

Olá! Unfortunately there's a lot of unemployment, be aware of that...

Nowadays most companies look for javascript developers. Or mostly web Devs. There are people with 3 years of experience, no CS background, making good money on nodejs and react.

I think you are talented, the arcade machine you've built is great :)

"Coding, Art, Woodwork, Paint, Decals, Electronics, Teaser Video and Music; Tech: C++, Lua", nice!

Check other people's CV and portfolios, maybe that'll help to get an idea?

Your CV must say straight away that you are a developer. The technologies you have worked with. What you are looking for. Your availability. Need to show experience in the area and relevant job titles.

The general rule of thumb from what I've heard is that if you're not getting responses from submissions either something is wrong with your resume, there's some red flag the first stage of hiring found or you may be under-qualified for positions you've applied to. Of course it is a large black box process so it's hard to say the exact cause of each failed submission.

Taking a look at your personal site I think the portfolio section could be enhanced to make it more appealing and FYI it looks like your blog has been partially overwritten by spam.

Have you considered posting a link to your resume in this question so people can look at it, and provide suggested improvements? Assuming it does not violate the HN rules of course.

This. People can't give specific actionable advice without knowing a little bit about your situation. The generic advice have very less chance of working for anyone.

> Meanwhile I sent hundreds of resumes, in multiple languages, formats, long ones, short ones, and so on.

That is the problem! Do not send hundreds of resumes. Instead identify what you will like to work on. Do some research to find out what companies work in that area. What they look for in a candidate(go through their career section on the website). Try to build skills in that area. Then start applying. It is not a fire-and-forget type of process. You need to prepare for a job, a job that you will like to do.

Yes, but be careful you can get burnt after a few rejections. Having a long prep period before applying, then getting ignored or automatically rejected can have even a bigger impact on your moral.

At least with the shotgun approach to sending CVs you're more distant and not as invested.

If someone is low on experience, mass resume sending is exactly what works.

If someone has a few jobs under their belt though and is stalling out, I would suggest finding a recruiter.

I'm currently struggling with this as well. I'm trying to transition into tech from a non-tech role so it feels like my resume gets put in the trash heap first.

I've been in tech professionally for 3 years and I feel like the same.

I've transitioned fully into tech from a former career outside it. The key for non-traditional backgrounds is to raise as few questions as possible in the early stages. Hiring managers and recruitment staff almost always get far more resumes than they can reasonably review. Anything that causes them to have questions is going to send your resume straight to the bottom of the bin. Have someone go through your resume and ruthlessly highlight every area where you might appear "non-traditional". Sometimes that can be addressed by changing the job description to emphasize software aspects. Other times it's by linking open source work first. The key is to save those questions for the verbal conversations where your interpersonal connection with the interviewer will make it less likely that they stereotype you as incompetent simply because you're different.

Thanks for the advice, that's a really good way of framing things.

Are you talking to people in your industry and network?

Are you targeting specific companies where you have advantages? For example: you know the tech, the domain or people at the company?

Have you been going to meetups?

Have you been talking to recruiters?

I have 20 years of experience but have had no luck in submitting resumes online. Spray and pray doesn't work for me. Talking to people about their problems, on the other hand, has led me to a number of jobs.

HTH.

"Only thing I never did was lie on the resume." And you don't have to. You may want to speak to someone who can professionally advice on the appearance on your CV. The same things can be expressed in many ways. Also, you may need to pepper your CV with keywords,so I'd go past recruitment software filters.

Talk to a recruiter from an independent company. They are salesmen and will at the very least get you a phone screen. They will also help you with your resume if needed since it’s in their interest.

How do you find recruiters like this? How do you make that contact?

What region are you in? Make an Ask HN asking for people to forward their annoying recruiter emails to you that are in your area. Then just email those people and be straight up.

> But what you do when you don't even get interviews?

Have you had anyone review your resume. I’ve always heard that if you aren’t even getting interviews, it’s very likely the resume.

The devil is in the details.

I would say post a sample of a cover letter. Perhaps post a link to your resume in the format presented when applying.

Referrals. Someone needs to vouch for you.

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