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Comment by pizzathyme | Hacker News Reader

> "You’ve spent several months sending out scores of carefully tailored resumes and cover letters for jobs you know you are fully qualified for and would excel at."

People should not do this. It is causing so much suffering. In my 6 jobs in my career from college internship to startups to Big Tech, I have never gotten a job from sending an application into a site. It's always been through (somehow) tracking down a person to speak to over phone or coffee, and get a referral.

A form is not going to a hire you, a person is. You need to ignore the form and talk to a person.

I wish I could put this on a billboard everywhere. It seems like many people are suffering from thousands of applications, and it makes me sad.

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As other posters have said, this only really works if you have a network. Zeroth-order referrals (i.e. they call you) work best, first-order referrals (i.e. you know someone at the company) work decently well, and second-order referrals (you know someone who knows someone to refer you) are a guided shot in the dark.

People who have networks all know this. The issue is that a shocking number of people don't have any network at all. These tend to be the sorts of people who are either actively antisocial at work (the "coworkers aren't your friends" type) or job hop so frequently that they don't spend enough time at any single job to develop any meaningful professional, let alone personal connections.

or you are working for small companies with people who have no (useful) connections. i worked with one for 10 years. not a single referral. a few connections from the university. nothing. they all work in small companies that are not hiring or simply have no pull to provide a meaningful reference.

looking back, the best options i got was from active networking in tech and business communities. actually, all of my jobs and clients come through that. except the most current one, which is from reconnecting to an old client, but there too the initial connection and the reconnection happened through a tech community.

And juniors. I’m in a masters program right now and everyone’s got a network, it just happens to be filled with poor starving grad students instead of FAANG super stars :)

Give it time. Networks are a garden that grow over time, and moreso if you cater to them. Some of those starving grad students will be VPs in 10 years.

That doesn't help them get a job this decade.

Speaking of networks, hey Joe! Clark from Belly. Hope you're doing well!

I job hop frequently, and have a large zeroth-order network because I did good work at each one.

When I am in a hiring role, I am not flipping through memories of good times with former coworkers that I had deep and meaningful time with -- I'm thinking back to who was the verb who got ish done and will make my project a success.

Unless you are a hermit, everyone has a network, even if it's small. Everyone has a few friends, a brother/sister/dad/mom/cousin, a few people in their town they know. All of those people know someone else, and that's your initial pool of job opportunities to look at.

This might not get you into your dream company. But it can get you a next job to grow from.

For one of my jobs I had no contacts in the industry so I emailed someone at the company who went to my school, mentioned we both went there, and could they meet for coffee. I then drove 2 hours to meet him. We discussed what was happening at his company, are there opportunities, and he referred me.

Yeah, it's not exactly that simple.. I worked ~15 years at an EDA company as a SW developer, got laid off in my 50s. I had a couple of people I connected with, but both of them had already retired and moved on by the time that happened.

I moved here (the Valley) because I met my wife online. Reached out to anyone I was vaguely connected to at the time. Got a few "send me your resume", none of them were a good fit.

All the interviews I got (some good, some bad) were either from headhunters, or through LinkedIn applications. In the end, a random, "don't know this company, but they want software people" ad on LinkedIn resulted in the GREAT job I've had for 1.5 years now (about a year after getting laid off) - way better pay, better work-life balance, etc.

So applying online CAN work.

Referrals by hiring managers who I have previously worked with and want to hire me aren’t even getting me a phone screen from their recruiters.

The majority of employment in tech is with large, corporate firms, and unless you are in the executive tier they all have implemented a massive amount of process to prevent bias in hiring which means that even networking has low impact on getting a job, beyond letting you know the positions even exist

Yea, whenever someone says "Just network, bro!" they never actually fully connect the dots between networking and walking into the office on your first day of work:

Step 1: Just have coffee with a hiring manager

Step 2: Hiring manager says go check out job #41102, and submit your resume. Good luck, bro!

Step 3: [???]

Step 4: You've got an interview to ace!

Nobody ever explains the [???]. They just assume that by magic, your online submission rises to the top of the stack of 1,699 other online submissions, avoids all of HR's filters, gets to the right person in the right department on the right team, that person has the authority to pick you out of the pile, and so on... There's a lot still out of your control in this process. It's not just Networking --> Job.

The ATS systems everyone outsourced to a few years ago are a big part of this problem.

My take too

HN has a lot of rich douchebags for which this is the case. Small circle = higher trust.

The rest of us have to figure out how best to rot in a low trust world created by these douchebags.

I got my dream job by applying on their website. As a hiring manager, also interviewed many people who got theirs at other companies' websites. Networking is better but website applications used to work alright. This could have changed with AI resumes.

I know this is just anecdotal but just want to say I got my current job just applying to a job from a linkedin email. I admit I was surprised how easily and smoothly it all went actually...

This isn't true and is horrible advice.

Use the paths available to you to get a job. Exhaust them all. If you know someone that works there and THEY track you down, yes this is good advice, great way to get a job.

This might work if you already have a network, but otherwise good luck getting through to people on the phone. HR will answer the generic questions, but tell you to apply online. Cold "calling" people on LinkedIn is a shot in the dark. Some people don't mind you doing it, most will ignore you.

You can start building a network by reaching out to alumni, former colleagues, open-source contributors for projects you're contributing to [1], etc.

Hardly ideal, but it's a start.

[1] And if you're not contributing to an open-source project, please do it, it's a great way to learn stuff, improve your CV, network and of course give back.

I find this kind of advice underspecified. The people struggling the most to find work are juniors: what projects are big enough that the applicant would a) know and care about them and b) get a benefit out of the network but also c) have fruit low enough for a solo junior to reach?

I tried this way-back-when and ended up submitting fixes to projects that were open source but had no real path to accepting patches from people outside the cathedral.

From the top of my head: Firefox (https://codetribute.mozilla.org), LibreOffice, Gnome, ...

If you just graduated college or have no network, you can reach out to alumni and mention that connection. Or, you can ask personal friends/family for contacts (will probably be local companies, which may be a first step job).

Or you can reach out over social media. "Hi there, I follow you on X and am just getting started in the industry. Do you mind if I ask a few research questions?" A friend of mine just used this technique to land a role in an industry where he had no contacts.

If the situation is "good luck getting through to people on the phone", then that probably means this person is not a real friend of yours, they are a stranger, and you shouldn't try. You should be reaching out to people who actually know your name, or you have a mutual friend.

Reaching out to alumni works in some cultures, but in much of the world they will universally ignore you.

I always got my jobs applying via linkedin. It's true that I usually find the recruiter and send them a message as well saying "hey I applied to X position. let me know if my profile fits". Perhaps this extra message makes the difference? I have around 12 years of experience (5 jobs in total).

I don't really have a good network, since I have worked in different countries.

> It's always been through (somehow) tracking down a person to speak to over phone or coffee, and get a referral.

Just be careful contacting recruiters directly. I know of at least one F100 that will blacklist you for pestering their recruiters. If you think ai-generated resumes are overwhelming recruiters, you should see their LinkedIn inboxes.

> A form is not going to a hire you, a person is.

This is becoming less and less true.

> You need to ignore the form and talk to a person.

Unless you're lucky, this is no longer going to happen. Getting a job is now becoming much more about luck, circumstances, and who you already know, much like getting your first starring role in a movie -- not about your abilities.

No form is going to extend a job offer autonomously. At some point in the chain, there will be a boss, a person, who talks to you and thinks, "I want to work with this person", and decides to make the offer.

So the goal is to figure out how to get in touch with that hiring manager as the first step. Even if the form or HR "rejects" you, this person can step in say, "that's silly, I want to work with them. Send them through"

I think this charade of sending in resumes to forms is causing people so much pain. It feels like rejection and is not moving them closer to a job.

> No form is going to extend a job offer autonomously.

Just wait... some time-pressed startup is going to find a killer LLM prompt that filters in exactly the people they want, and then post something on the benefits of "vibe hiring". Complete with large, well-spaced text, colored with one accent color, and several graphs of hiring spending vs. income or something.

You heard it here first!

That startup is going to fold about two years in unless they're at least Series E or so.

Incompetent hiring will kill you, and hiring people that you and your team don't personally gel with is incompetent hiring.

So I see that as a self-solving problem.

> Getting a job is now becoming much more about luck, circumstances, and who you already know, much like getting your first starring role in a movie -- not about your abilities.

That's not a new thing. It's how it's always been.

> Getting a job is now becoming much more about luck, circumstances, and who you already know, much like getting your first starring role in a movie -- not about your abilities.

Getting a starring role in a movie has a lot to do with abilities, not just luck and who you know.

Many companies are looking for strong mission alignment, because when it's a buyer's job market, why not select someone who has intrinsic motivation for what you are doing? Are you passionate about the problem? That is a lot like auditioning for a starring role: do you understand the character you might be playing? Many jobs - especially desirable ones - use this sort of "mission alignment" as selection criterion.

The thing that's different in software is that because the equipment needed to demonstrate technical skills is so cheap (just a computer) and trust in representations of technical experience is so low, they can test for technical skills in a way that other industries can't.

I don't think that anyone asks a civil engineer to design a bridge or a surgeon to remove an appendix to get a job.

The abilities is the threshold requirement - which many people have - the rest is luck and connections.

You need luck to have a network now?

Kinda, yeah.

My first job in the industry was in a startup that went belly down. Most of us didn't get much opportunity to network.

Thankfully, I happened to contribute to two open-source projects. One of them was a (then) obscure language called Rust and another one was Firefox. Both contributions eventually turned into career-defining moments for which I'm still reaping benefits 15 years later.

Had I contributed to Vlang and Camino instead, my career would probably have been much less satisfying.

Vlang catching strays made my day.

Agreed. It's next to impossible to actually connect with people about non-work topics. Way too many possible landmines, unless you really, REALLY click about a couple of topics.

I've gotten 3/4 jobs by cold applying. 2 at pretty big/famous tech companies. The 1 that wasn't cold applying was through an agency.

Ridiculous. So 99% people wait in line for the pizza but you waltz up to the counter and say you know the owner? That's fucked up

Hardly an apt analogy. Hiring is asynchronous, there is no line? Sometimes I go to the bar and if the bartender knows me, they’ll give me a drink on the house. Is that messed up too?

I've gotten several jobs this way, including the best jobs of my career. It's insufferable the way so many commenters here assume their experience is representative of or applicable to others. It's like if main character syndrome was a web site comments section.

Can’t even tell if this is satire. If so, good one. If not, I have no words.

And of course it's the people that have a different experience than you that are insufferable, not the ones that share yours, right?

That's not anywhere close to my point, it's not their stance I have any issue with. it's their mindset that their own stance is universal:

> People should not do this.

> It is causing so much suffering.

> I have never gotten a job from sending an application into a site.

> A form is not going to a hire you, a person is. You need to ignore the form and talk to a person.

> I wish I could put this on a billboard everywhere.

My experience is opposite to this but I'm not selling it as absolute truth or even giving it as advice at all.

When was your experience? Because tech hiring has largely changed with the advent of the ATS SAAS in the last few years. So far filling out apps in those systems has been a complete waste of time.

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