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Comment by chasd00 | Hacker News Reader

Ftfa “I have been looking for over a year now. 25 years in IT. Sent out more than 900 applications. …”

Just some advice to those starting a career. You need to build a professional network. After 25 years a new job should be a phone call or cup of coffee away. You should never even have to think about applications after two decades in the industry.

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> After 25 years a new job should be a phone call or cup of coffee away. You should never even have to think about applications after two decades in the industry.

Oh really? What I've seen is the leaders/power brokers you once knew are retired, fired, or even passed away. And the leaders at many companies aren't keen to hire people with more years of experience than they have.

24 yoe

true, people you knew for 20+ years tend to disappear. some even as you finish working for them.

That may be true for a small company, but any org with a standardized interview process will still likely put you through the whole interview loop. Best you'll get out of your call/coffee is a referral, and many places don't even place much weight on referrals either.

Every org has an internal referral process, and referrals get to the front of the queue. This is true both at a no name startup and Google.

I think there are some rules around hiring for public cos in the US too -- even if you they like you over coffee, they've still got to post the position and interview other candidates too (that's been my experience semi-recently anyway, but it's possible that some of those rules are imposed by the industries that some of those companies serve, hard to tell). Some large private companies have also clamped down on that to avoid nepotism in the form of a manager bulk hiring all of their team from another role without interviewing anyone else.

A referral from a trusted internal employee is what you leverage your network for. After that, you still go through interviews but you're at the head of the pack and already have a relationship internally through the person who referred you. All that should be left is process to check the boxes in the HR system and salary negotiation. There could always be exceptions like failing a background check or like getting too abrasive in social media and HR thinking you could present reputational risk etc.

Very easy for certain types of people. Very difficult for others.

The Venn diagram of the people who would recommend me and I would want to work with and the companies I would want to work for is very small at best.

Why is that?

I'd recommend soul searching if this is the case. You might be a prima donna.

I know an engineer that worked with a manager. The big corp closed the location and few years later the manager got same role at another big corp and wanted to have the same good engineer. HR didn’t like that engineer and manager wasn’t able to hire. Network does not work.

You should still apply if you're interested in jobs at the high end of salary distribition.

Even better, leverage your network. LinkedIn is a good mine for getting soft introductions. One of the biggest challenges is getting FaceTime with a hiring manager. if there’s a job you want, find someone who knows someone at that business and get 20 minutes with them.

Once you have an internal advocate the entire process is much smoother.

Agreed. These aren't handed out via networking. You may not even realize that a higher tier of salary exists if you don't start looking for it.

"It's so easy guys!" - a neurotypical person with all the answers

I'm not sure how typical it is but, since grad school decades ago, every job (just a few) has been through sending out an email--including in the depths of dot-bomb. I doubt anyone ever actually looked at my resume.

Cliques and Cronies be damned

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