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Comment by sjtgraham | Hacker News Reader

As a founder I can tell you that candidates who enter the interview process with their own good ideas for answers to these questions are lot more attractive, i.e. anyone that has done even a modicum of their own research stands head and shoulders above their peers.

At the end of the day, if you don't know these basic things about a company, why have you applied for a job there?

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> At the end of the day, if you don't know these basic things about a company, why have you applied for a job there?

Because I need money, and you might be the 3XXth company I've applied to. Job hunting when there's something unappealing about yourself can be quite a pain, but rent is still due at the end of the month.

If you're applying to 300+ companies, something is wrong. When I've gone looking for work I've talked to maybe 5-10 companies at most. Specialization and a good network of contacts makes all the difference.

Can you expand on that? Every time I've looked for a new job I've had to use the "carpet bomb" approach with my resume to get anywhere. Any time I've been out of work historically, it's taken a minimum of 3 months to find a job.

I think the difference is having a network. A soft introduction, even from an acquaintance, is much more likely to get you an interview. It doesn't get you the job, you need to do well on the interview and appeal more than the other candidates, but you get the classic "foot in the door." Without that, it is a crap shoot. Another approach to the same thing is a professional middle-man, such as a recruiting agency.

Carpet bombing can get interviews, but it tends to waste a lot of time and be relatively ineffectual. Last time I looked at getting interviews, a number of the interesting job listings were behind absolutely horrific web sites that basically require mangling all the relevant content from a resume into a web form. Ask around between a few friends and former coworkers on Linkedin and it's pretty easy to get a resume into the hands of the hiring manager bypassing all the HR filtration garbage. From there it becomes an actual two way conversation to figure out if there's a good fit on both sides.

True, but I absolutely hate having to ask my network anything. I'd gladly help them, but I despise having to advertise what's going on in my life.

It's a 2 way street. If a job or contract that seems like a good fit for someone I know, then I pass it on to them. Over time it's mutually beneficial.

I guess it must also depend on location and level of experience. I haven't had to go out of my way to land a job in 20 years, but I get not everybody's circumstances are the same. FWIW I'm not at all specialized, pretty much a jack-of-all-trades type dev, and while I do have a good network of contacts, I didn't rely on them for finding the new role I'm moving into.

Location definitely matters. Certain types of work are more popular in some regions than others. The level of trust required for landing remote work jobs also strongly leans on having good references from one's network of mutual acquaintances.

These days it's usually the case that the company came to me, rather than me applying to them. I'll do full research before the final round but for an initial intro? I'll glance at your website, otherwise I'm there to hear your story and decide if I want to take the time to learn more. Lately early stage companies seem to expect you to have a fully formed motivation to work there before the first conversation which is just not the way this works, sorry.

I feel like most startups I’ve talked to in the past couple years realize this. They are surprised if I know anything about them at all during the initial convo

To be fair, these answers aren't always obvious when looking into a startup company, especially in the early stages. I'm not even sure many companies actually have firm answers to all of these. The founders may have lofty ideas, but often they aren't very public about them to avoid tipping their hand.

My two most recent jobs I was reached out to by a recruiter who could describe the general market the company is in but actually getting into detail and nuance required speaking with someone at the company.

OTOH well establish startups and businesses almost always have the answers to these questions front and center on their website. Some basic due diligence on a candidate's part is always welcome.

You're asking candidates to answer questions like "What problem is your company solving?". Maybe I'm misreading your comment, but if the founder is looking to hires to answer these questions, that sounds very concerning, and probably a place I'd avoid.

Enthusiasm is great, but the founders/current employees should have an understanding that far outstrips anything an outsider can provide (unless you're dealing with someone who already has deep knowledge of a well known domain, which is a bit of a different angle).

I may be mistaken, but I think you misunderstood the comment.

The questions are meant to be asked by the job candidate, not by the employer.

"candidates who enter the interview process with their own good ideas for answers to these questions". "Candidates ... their own good ideas for answers". Yes: the candidate asks these questions, but the commenter seemed to suggest that they also want candidates who have good answers ready for those questions.

That seems like a bit of a funny thing to expect from a candidate who doesn't necessarily know the domain, and certainly wouldn't be an authority on the company.

Ah, got it. I interpreted that as meaning that a candidate who did have such answers would really stand out.

I.e., those aren't considered basic qualifications for the job, but are awesome if a candidate is actually like that.

I would agree with that for dev positions. But when I was hiring PMs, these types of questions were actually a key part of the interview. The particulars of the answers mattered a lot less than the fact they did _some_ research, and formed a limited mental model of business from which we could discuss different scenarios, tradeoffs, pivots, features, etc ... Major bonus points for them basically turning the tables around and interviewing/grilling me on how we were going tackle "recent announcement from competitor" or "trend in market" and asking good followup questions to dig into how that could relate to what impact they could have.

> why have you applied for a job there

Because the company head-hunted me?

It's for the same reason your recruiters or engineering managers only take a 10 second glance at a resume and never look at the side projects in Github profiles for their potential candidates; ain't nobody got time for that.

In today market chances are that the candidate was cold called

Unfortunately LeetCode problems stop those creative engineers early in the process.

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