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Comment by bad_interivewee | Hacker News Reader

how does one simply “get hired” while being mid career with no professional sw experience? asking for a friend.

Look for a company where software is not their main focus. Get hired there by showing them some projects on GitHub. Don't have projects on GitHub? You can make those be there right now for free.

You will also need to interview there. Your username indicates that you suck at interviewing. I hate to break it to you, but interviewing is a skill that can be learned. With. Practice. You can either interview at places or try a site like interviewing.io You can get better at interviewing, trust me.

Once you get hired to the not-so-software company, use that experience as a stepping stone to get hired somewhere better. Repeat until you find a place you like

I’ll add, remote work means you could literally practice this in your bed. I’ve been on both ends of an interview now sitting in bed in my PJs and let me tell you I have never felt more royal in my life!

i don't have any public facing repos, so i'll clean some up and try to emphasize that a bit more.

in terms of interviewing, no opportunities so no experience. in the past ive had to apply to roughly 80 jobs to get one interview. recruiters on linkedin are a little better at ~30 conversations per interview but its plain exhausting, takes a ton of time, they demand replies instantly or ghost, but really its overwhelmingly likely they'll ghost me anyways.

its been a while since the last round of attempts so ill give your suggestions a shot in a few weeks. thanks

Spend less time applying and more time truly polishing up one or two repos/side projects. Cleaning up a few repos is the bare minimum here.

Having something that stands out on the resume will go a long way for you. A nice looking GitHub profile with some pinned repos with activity and a nice readme is what I would recommend.

You can also find an existing project and contribute to it. What's your GitHub username? I can follow you

Practice algorithms and read about software design in your spare time. Apply to tons of companies, be prepared to be rejected from almost all of them, and to be asked questions that you have no intelligent answer to. Remember what they asked you, learn the problems you got wrong, and repeat. It may be brutal and embarrassing at times but if you keep at it you will eventually get a job. The only thing I can say about maintaining any sense of morale is to take some pride in the fact that you’re pushing yourself, and that tons of people have had the same shitty interviewing experience but gotten through it and realized it was 1000% worth the pain.

the leetcode/algo question stuff is mentioned here on HN alot but I've never gotten to the point where a test was actually offered to me. will start practicing though and hopefully an opportunity pops up.

If you're not getting calls, it's your resume that is bad. That either means the format, or the content. Seems to me the only change to the content that you can make is working on and advertising well written open source personal projects that your interviewers can see, or contributing to large open source projects.

This is correct.

Your resume should be exactly 1 page long, and have something that stands out (company worked for, open source contributions, volunteer work.. anything that makes it be different).

If you have worked for decades, write "over 10 years experience" :)

Bullet points are good, long sentences are bad.

Listing tech/languages is a good idea if you can list a lot of real stuff. No one cares if you used ms word.

It should be 1 page!!! Don't cheat via small fonts. People can look at your linkedin if they need to know all that crap.

In that case, you might want to have a friend/acquaintance with a job like what you want to review your resume and give you feedback on that and a first round-style interview. If you don’t know anyone who can, read over resumes on linkedin, and pay close attention to the language used, and to the extent that it’s relevant to your work try to mirror it. Try to be direct and confident about what you know/don’t know during the interview, and try to at least learn how to talk about technologies that touch what you’re more expert in.

incorporate your software company

list a couple clients if you can

point out that you’ve been working for that (your) software company for several years as a senior software engineer

pass bullshit brainteaser problems

viola

Ha! I copy-pasted your response from last weeks thread above. What a great response. Ima try it in the new year myself. Already incorporated llc. Building my static site this week and off to the leet races I go.

ive had a corp for a while but never called myself "senior engineer". maybe ill give that a shot.

As a Tech Director, I don’t like this. We’re not fooled by this kind of thing. I’d rather see someone dedicated to learning and growing, but that’s just me maybe.

As a tech director, you get to evaluate that holistically because the recruiter called them back at all, when they otherwise would have been bounced before your discretion came into play

not trying to “fool” anyone, trying to get an opportunity. ive had to apply to hundreds of places to get a handful of replies.

been learning and growing for 3 decades starting on a IIe but highlighting that part hasn’t worked so why not experiment with my approach?

List additional clients when work for previous clients is done.

Web agencies would be a good start.

Expanding on the above… I work at such a place and our bar for recruitment is a lot lower than that of more snooty companies principally focused on software. If you can demonstrate potential then it will be relatively easy to get in. From there, you will start working on projects larger than what you are used to, that _won't be_ "the next $FAMOUS_THING" while still offering plenty of learning opportunities.

a few years ago i did manage to get a pm/ba type role at a small-medium size agency. giant mess of a place (norm for that industry i guess) but it was a meat grinder - all about billable hours (which were hard to come by since every project was undersold and over budget), which meant I worked 50+ hours every week with no salary increase or bonus. burnt out and left when it was obvious there was no opportunity there. although to your point the place was a revolving door and SO many hires were gone after 3-6 months, so perhaps ill look for places like that.

No two web agencies are alike. I've known the kind you describe and I hated them but I've known—and currently work at—much more comfortable places. Apply and see how it goes.

If you classify yourself as mid career then by definition you need to have professional experience (and consulting, freelance development, volunteering etc. all count). Otherwise look for entry level roles.

Mid 30s, a couple corporate experiences (non sw) and the rest “freelance”. Usually raises suspicion (lack of continuity) or gets discounted as not meaningful/relevant. Do entry levels consider anyone other than new-grads? Haven’t gotten a reply from any in the past.

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