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Comment by Havoc | Hacker News Reader

Is this for some sort of low end secretarial job where industry does not matter? Or are these fake applications just to test this?

idk these shotgun job searches always blow my mind. 250? Think I’ve applied to maybe 8 jobs in my life

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>Think I’ve applied to maybe 8 jobs in my life

Someone has life on easy mode.

I'm not sure how the number of jobs someone has applied to relates to how easy or difficult life is.

Is that your experience?

Speaking of IT specifically, the folks I know who have applied to lots of job did that either because they apply for the wrong jobs for their skills, or because they job-hop to get raises more often (which is totally fine, of course, but feels like a self-inflicted difficulty level increase in the game of life).

The folks not in IT that I know (mostly family, so I know them very well) have a not-easy-at-all life mode (in fact, they often rely on financial support from me and other family members) yet they don't apply to many jobs.

There's a very specific case I have in mind of a close relative who works in the tourist industry (in a kitchen) and despite several attempts from me to encourage her to apply to jobs in other industries (because her line of work sucks terribly bad compared with IT, not just the pay, also the long, unpredictable work hours, unpredictable free days, work accidents, the probability of which increase with the long hours, to the point that she ends up in the ER at least once a year due to a very nasty cut or burn) doesn't do that because her work/life balance leaves her exhausted enough that she can't think of spending the time and energy to apply for another job. So here's a person in her early 30s who's probably applied to, max, 5 jobs in her life, and most definitely does not have life on easy mode.

Just a more networking & recruiter driven approach.

I’d call it efficient rather than easy.

Or is going it on hard mode where an app follows hundreds of hours of networking and outreach before actually applying.

Hundreds of hours of networking? what?

Who does that and why? Are we talking about political jobs? or nepotism?

I’ve done that for every job I’ve gotten in the past 20 years.

I’m not sure if everyone does it this way, but I identify an org. Then I look for people who work in that org or near it and find authentic ways to connect with them to learn about the position. And I just work toward a hiring manager until I’m able to spend time with them and demonstrate value.

And then eventually, if it’s a match, they have a position that I apply to and usually their decision is made before I apply.

This seems pretty common in how I hire as well as it’s really useful to be able to meet and identify people who will be a good fit. It’s much harder to sort through tons of applicants.

Hundreds of hours of networking is an average of 1 (actively networking) hour per week over 5 years. I.e. every couple of weeks go to a short event or get together for the afternoon. It's not something you do for 2 months straight after losing your job. I mean, you could... but it's significantly less effective that way.

If you do this sanely you get more out of the event than just networking as well. Generally it's a great way to learn about new or different things you may not see at your company.

Not typically hundreds of hours networking for a single position, but it's difficult to overstate the value of that network when you're looking for a job. Anything at all you can do to skip the HR resume filter will put you in a much better spot than 95% of other applicants. All of my major career advancements have come because of a combination of what I know and who I know. I can't see myself ever applying for a role using the HR provided application mechanisms. Any future job will be a referral, just like the last few have been.

Not necessarily. I am in the same case as OP. Basically I am a specialist with a PhD in a niche topic. There are at most a handful job postings per year that fit my profile perfectly, but then I have virtually no competition. If you have a generic profile ("frontend developer"), you get hundreds of opportunities per day, but are alao in competition with hundreds of similar applicants.

My position is comfortable, but if interest in my particular combination of skills decreases, things could get quite difficult.

Not all of us are looking to jump jobs every 18 months to Moore's law our salary. Most of us want to focus on the important things like friends and family and hobbies and aren't playing a high score game with our finances.

Or is very young. I hadn't applied to a lot of jobs when I got my first job. For the second, though, I spent a year unemployed in the middle of the dotcom crisis and must have applied to hundreds.

These days I don't apply to anything but recruiters come to me. That's definitely easy mode, but it's not where I started.

>For the second, though, I spent a year unemployed in the middle of the dotcom crisis and must have applied to hundreds.

I remember in one of his interviews Larry Page said that after the dot-com bubble, Google was getting hundreds of job applications every week or something like that. I know I was shocked when I heard that because it turns out majority of people just want a safe job not necessarily the highest paid job.

Author mentions applying to engineering roles

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