Ask HN: Finding it near impossible to get job interviews, help? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Finding it near impossible to get job interviews, help?

1 pointConstantineXVI1 comment

I'm a self-taught mid-20s dev; I landed my first proper developer job at a local (Louisville, KY) startup nearly 2 years ago, we went under fairly recently and besides a bit of freelancing, I've been out of work since. I've found it nearly impossible to hunt down openings locally, so my search has been aimed at the usual big cities. Trouble is, I've barely managed to get responses at all, much less interviews. I understand that being inexperienced and out of town doesn't help my case much; but what could I be doing to attract more interviews (and hopefully jobs)? Am I crazy for even trying for out-of-town at my exp. level? How should I be finding openings around here?

FWIW: this last job was a mix of devops, backend, and mobile; I consider myself fairly language and tech agnostic (we used Ruby, C#, and Java; I use Clojure where possible in my personal hacking)

I'm going to say what I always say in these sorts of circumstances ...

I don't know what you've sent in your resume, or your covering letter. I don't know what projects you've pointed them to, what work you've shown them. I don't know what companies you've tried to talk to, nor whether you've gone to an HR department, or directly to a reasonably senior technical person.

See, that's the point. I don't know what you've done, and you haven't displayed the initiative to tell us.

Companies need more than someone who's technically excellent. Or even just technical competent. They also need someone who will display initiative, someone who will solve problems. Someone who will ask for help the right way, and if they don't know what the right way is, will make the time and take the time to find out.

What do companies need? People who will create value. Showing that you can code is only part of that. If you just fire off a resume and covering letter then sit back and wait, what does that say about how you will work?

All this, of course, is just my opinion, but I think you should try to work out what companies need, then show that you can provide it. How you do that will depend on your skills, of which I have no knowledge.

So that's up to you.

Added in edit: Have you seen this? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4749296

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