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Comment by delbronski | Hacker News Reader

Personally, I'm not interested in a FAANG or hot startup job. So not sure if my "classic" strategy works for those positions. I also got 15+ years experience(in my late 30s). I use the exact same approach today as I did 15 years ago. When I'm in job hunting mode I search through job postings every morning. If I find an opening that stands out I write the company a short email stating my interest and why I think I'd be a good fit (I normally got a template ready for this that I customize for each job), and then I submit the job application. I got a 100% success rate of landing a job within 2 months with this approach.

I'm quite selective about the jobs I apply to. I read job descriptions carefully to try and get a sense of the place. I know the kinds of environments I prefer to work in at this point.

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Can I pick your brain more on this?

I've been doing the same approach for a month and have not been getting good results.

Same age, same strategy, same results. The "searching and applying" time cost every morning is usually 1-2 hours the first few days, but ends up taking 20-30 minutes after you've tweaked the signal-to-noise ratio effectively with adjustments to your bookmarked "newest" job postings with filters applied.

You'll also have at the ready your "copy paste" document for those fields the application portals tend to screw up at scraping from your resume after upload. You will undoubtedly run across postings mentioning products or technology that you have not personally used. I take those opportunities to watch a quick YT video in my second monitor on the topic to gain a nugget of understanding while I continue my search.

I often walk away each morning having learned a little something new, and it doesn't feel like such a grind.

This YT video thing sounds very familiar. I do the same thing whenever I run into a job application in an industry/niche market I never heard of. It does makes the whole process less of a grind for me.

Where do you even find the emails addresses? Or are you saying you add that to the application notes or whatever?

That is crazy! Is it true that behind your 100% success rate, your portfolio looks great?

I don't really have a portfolio. There is nothing impressive in my Github. I don't have my own website/blog. I do have a good track record in my previous companies and plenty of old colleagues willing to give a good reference if needed.

Where do you look for job postings? I figure this is very dependent on location.

True, dxuh. I'm in Asia, I won't get many replies from companies outside my country, for sure. So I can't afford to get picky.

Yeah, I think that's a very valid point. I've worked half my career in the US and the other half in Northern Europe.

and perhaps industry/domain. Though these days it feels like all parts of tech are extending the interview process. It was already too long to begin with but it feels like every person in the company needs to slowly schedule an hour to talk every week for 3 months straight before considering you as a candidate.

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