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Comment by thurn | Hacker News Reader

I was looking for a job in the Bay Area in September (similar situation, non-US citizen). I never used a "job search" site, though, I just researched companies I was interested in and applied through their sites. This worked out fine... most places replied quite quickly to my application. I don't really see any advantage to using a site like Monster.com. If I haven't heard of a company, I probably don't want to work there.

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This is sound advice, forget the big job boards, write companies directly. People love hearing a sincere email about why you want to work at their company. Set yourself apart by doing a little research and it will pay off big time.

Besides, many good jobs are not even listed on the big job boards.

I just concluded a job search, and found that writing sincere emails did indeed establish a positive rapport, but 1) job-seeking engineers are already universally adored and 2) the recipient of the email will need to be herded, because their primary job is not making sure you get hired.

Recruiters, guys. Do you know there is a whole class of people that will work full-time to bring you whatever jobs you want? Why am I the only one mentioning them in this thread?

Why am I the only one mentioning them in this thread?

Because most recruiters are ignorant incompetents, or at least most of the interactions that potential recruitess have are with ignorant incompetents. If you want a longer, more involved version of this look at Peroni's comment history, (formerly KoZeN).

http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Peroni

Recruiters mainly make the HR and/or management folks happy not necessarily the IT guys you'll working with. If you're a good candidate, they only do lots of work for you because they can land a better bonus.

This is all great advice. It's nice to hear some feedback from IT guys who have recently been job hunting in the Bay Area.

For all you guys targeting startups, do you have a recommended location for finding them? There are plenty of amazing startups around that I have never heard of. I feel like I just don't have the time to keep up or am unaware of some magic resource that some of you must have.

I am mostly curious about companies specific to the bay area but a larger scope would certainly be welcome.

If you are involved in the startup scene (attend meetups, read HN, have other friends involved in startups, etc) you soon know what startups are around.

If the Internet is just "Facebook" + "Google" to you then, sure you're missing out but by just posting to HN I'm guessing that isn't your world.

If you mean super early startups (and be mindful that there are plenty of reasons not to be the first employee at an unfunded/newly funded startup) then Angel List is probably the "magic resource" you are aspiring for.

Pro-tip: check out Crunchbase (http://www.crunchbase.com), and look through all the recently funded companies (http://www.crunchbase.com/funding-rounds?page=1). These are startups that are pretty much all hiring-- one of the primary reasons startups raise money is to ramp up their team and scale growth.

Tech meetups are a goldmine if you're interested in startups. Maybe you won't find employees from the startup itself there but if you interested in say, erlang, and go to an erlang meetup you can very easily ask people there if they've heard of any interesting erlang startups. You'll probably find some people who will say something along the lines of oh yeah, I recently heard about company x who's doing y, it sounds pretty interesting actually.

Then you can do some research on company x and try to get in touch with someone there.

Great advice guys. Thanks a million.

I've been doing the same and it works quite well if you are targeting startups. I've had a 50% response rate so far.

Would second this. I'm from Scotland and moved here in October for a job. Got a very good response from targeting startup companies directly.

A 50% response rate is promising. Perhaps the most infuriating aspect of job hunting thus far is the lack of feedback from job applications. Espcially on the big job search sites. As a result of the comments from you guys I am definitely going to change tack. It seems like targeting startups here in the area is the way to go.

You can get an even higher response rate by looking at the monthly "Who's Hiring" threads on HN. When I graduated from college, everybody back home was telling me that getting a job in this economy would be a terrible, several-month-long ordeal. It actually turned out to be pretty quick and straightforward, and I'm very happy with the results.

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