Ask HN: How to Stand Out Amongst the Competition? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to Stand Out Amongst the Competition?

15 pointsjob_seeker20227 comments

Hello all! Using a pseudo-name to protect my identity.

How do you stand out in today's hiring market? One luxury I have right now is that I do have a job, but I feel shaky about the business and I do feel like layoffs are inevitable, if not this year early next year. I'm trying to get ahead of that and started interviewing at places. I am interviewing for Senior/Staff engineering roles, frontend focused, with 10+ years experience in this domain and I do alot of extracurricular learning. I've worked at several startups and a few established businesses, so I do have some understanding of the different work environments across the board too. I firmly believe my engineering skills are strong and I have a solid history (with references) to being able to deliver consistently, and above par.

However, now there is immense competition from developers from Twitter, Stripe, Lyft and other big names and I have had recruiters tell me things such as:

- There are people just laid off from Twitter that we are eyeing very closely as well

- There are people from Stripe with the background we are looking for too

- There is a lot of engineering talent we are actively recruiting from due to recent layoffs and we want to move fast as there is a lot of strong talent we are in contact with

Now I don't have the luxury of having had worked at a FAANG and can't lean into that "tier". I've managed to get some interviews in the door and scheduled, my biggest fear is that they will "halt" the pipeline whether I finish "first" or not for the "top tier" talent (not to diminish the talent from these places, lots of great engineers) and I'm already feeling like I'm discounted, and would only land a position if say, someone at Twitter or soon Meta or something actively rebuffs their offer, especially at these higher levels.

So the question is, how do I stand out so that it doesn't happen? How can I push the process along in such a way that I can "route around" this issue? Is there anything I can do beyond simply do my absolute best in every interview session (there is a total of 7 interviews at the places I'm looking at. Think Atlassian, Salesforce etc).

How can I do more to stand out from the crowd like this?

Sales guy here.

The way I sell against top tier names is to use attunement to my advantage. Sure the other company has a huge name - but they're not like you and will never be like you; instead they'll expect you to be like them. Are you ready for your organization to make a shift like that? What would that mean for you?

Us on the other hand - we're also a similar sized company, we also have do not have monopoly pricing power, we also don't have a war chest of money to invest in some flashing thing...and we've built a product for companies like us.

...

Think about that in the context of hiring. No one wants someone to say "well this is how we did it at Twitter/Facebook/Stripe" 10,000 times and undermine + slow down their entire process.

I would emphasize exactly what makes you different and how that experience translates to who you're interviewing with (that is, how you understand their problems better and can address them better) than a dev whose entire view is from a world of basically unlimited cash/growth/speculation. And how you are therefore a much less risky hire for their org.

gl

Succinctly:

* Ensure your public persona shows you actually like software development as a trade, via open source software development, etc. - show you have craftsmanship and care.

* Ensure you have been instrmental to at least 2 significant features for your previous role(s) - show you make businesses money.

* Ensure you know easy and intermediate algos. If you score below top ~70% on common software development screening tests, i.e. Triplebyte, you will struggle. (I'm not going to debate whether online code screening tests are ethical/effective, lots of talk there...)

* Ensure you haven't overly focused on one/two technology ecosystems in your career - you will struggle with success if you are a common dotnetter sludge or one of those "F#/haskell/lisp developers who suggest using some fancy tool every 3 weeks".

Those are the some of the first that come to mind.

What makes you think that those who've been laid off will have an advantage over you? If anything they'll likely face more scrutiny. The most recent rounds of layoffs have been messy but weren't conducted in a purely shotgun manner. An objectively bad performer at one of these companies isn't necessarily going to be even an adequate performer elsewhere.

Recruiters are trying to scare you because it's in their best interest to make you desperate.

Amiability goes farther than anything. You're not really competing with people on pedigree or skill, not once you're in the pipeline: you're competing on how well you bond with the interviewers.

I would call bullshit on them talking to laid off folks. If they had enough folks in the pipeline, they wouldn't be talking to you.

I'm in the same position as you, and you are better than me because I already get layoff. It seems like all the company wants talented developers to work for them and makes us feel talented developers are everywhere.

Top performers weren't the ones that were laid off. You haven't been laid off, so, use that to your advantage.

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