This article seems to have an assumption that companies have this huge pool of qualified candidates applying for jobs and you, as an applicant, just need to show that little extra initiative to beat out the other applicants. As someone who has reviewed mountains of resumes for a large company, this assumption doesn't match my experience.
In my experience there is this huge pool of unqualified applicants applying for every job no matter what the actual job requirements are. The applicants that got a call for an interview 1) looked at the technologies listed in the job requirements and 2) put their experience with these technologies on their resume.
Also important, once you get called in for an interview make sure you can answer the most basic questions about what is on your resume. If you put Linux experience on your resume make sure you can explain how to list the contents of a directory from the command line. If you put MySQL experience on your resume make sure you can explain how to get a count of the total number of rows in a table.
Are there really companies out there where the difference between getting an offer and not getting an offer is spending a few hours making a bespoke "please hire me" website?
> In my experience there is this huge pool of unqualified applicants applying for every job no matter what the actual job requirements are. The applicants that got a call for an interview 1) looked at the technologies listed in the job requirements and 2) put their experience with these technologies on their resume.
I think this is a result of the (frankly) BS practice employers have been using for years of inflating the qualifications required for positions. I can't count on one hand how many postings I've seen for mid-level developer roles that require 5+ years of experience writing Python, C++, C#, Java, and JavaScript; oh yeah, you've also got to know Angular and React, and "bonus" if you know Vue.
Even before I became a developer(I first tried to get into animation), the advice from older folks and career specialists was to "just apply to all the positions you want even if you don't meet all the qualifications", and I'd bet good money that a lot of people are still hearing this advice from various channels.
Now that everyone is just shotgun applying to everything, the advantage is largely gone. But because everyone is doing it, and individual must do so or they'll be drowned out in signal noise.
I don't want someone that's built a bloody todo list in Angular, React and Vue. I want someone that's generated revenue by building quality software in one of them.
I think one of the biggest technical advantages you can get over your competition is to hire good specialists. Almost everywhere I've worked (especially anywhere HR or non-tech people are involved in the hiring) has just hoovered up the "jack of all trades" types and I suspect their tech has suffered for it.
Jack-of-all-trades come in all shapes and forms; some are just average in many things, while some others are quite good in some areas, competent in some others and can also get up to speed in other parts if necessary. In small teams, these profiles are very useful.
Yes but nobody considers the cost/benefit of having that over a specialist with the same amount of experience.
What takes longer? A full-stack guy trying to figure out how to work around some obscure front-end quirk (like the restrictions on overflow-x/y resulting in unexpected computed values, or the fact you can't transition to or from computed heights?) or a front-end specialist learning some basic dev-ops, or how to change a few Django models?
"Building something" in a language/ecosystem should be easy for any competent dev. I've never touched Obj-C or Swift in my life, and if you asked me to go release an iPhone app on the app store in my spare time in 3 weeks I'd be 100% confident that I can do it; but if you asked me to go and take a job as a senior iOS dev straight after that, I wouldn't even be confident to put myself forward for it. I probably wouldn't even put iOS on my resume.
I think as a senior tech person involved in the hiring process, I should be doing a better job of identifying exactly what I need and finding the right person than just going on the hunt for 6 "good devs" and hoping everything falls into place.
I wanted to see if I could prove my theory with math: If you count every obscure technology, framework, format and tools out there you should get at least 1000 of them. Job ads require about 10 on average. So correct me if I'm wrong, I can use the Combinations formula nCr which say's we have around 2.6 * 10^26 combinations (really huge number) And even if there are hundred million developers in the word, it will be impossible to find a match. Now in practice there are some stacks that are more common, so it might probably be possible to find a developers who knows SQL+JS+PHP+HTML+CSS+Angular+Java+Git+C+Andorid SDK (I picked some very popular ones), now image how ridiculous hard (impossible) it would be to find a combination of skills that is not among the most popular. This is why hiring is broken. As an employer you should just concentrate one the most important skill, like the main language, say Java, or some soft skills, and just accept that your new hire needs to learn the rest of your stack while practicing it. Also remember that as a developer you learn new stuff every day, so if your applicants have experience in other stacks, that will only make it easier to learn your stack.
When I was at Apple, the resumes filtered by HR were a huge pool of unqualified candidates. Gems were among candidates rejected by HR. Wasn't easy getting that list.
HR is a compliance function. By some strange fluke, it gets inserted in the hiring process in large companies.
I once worked the recruiting booth at a popular computer conference. HR told me to mark all the resumes that looked good for our group with my manager's name and they'd send them on to him. A week after I got back, I asked him about it, and he said they didn't send him a single resume. WTF did I waste my time (and the company's time) doing at the show then?
> HR is a compliance function. By some strange fluke, it gets inserted in the hiring process in large companies.
Someone's got to do it and if it's not HR then it's generally a recruitment company. For the price of hiring 4 devs through a recruiter the company could afford a full time HR person (ignoring stupid accounting tricks).
But if the HR person does a bad enough job, then the hiring manager ends up having to do it themselves, on top of fighting with the HR department to let them do it themselves, so you end up with a negative net value added.
We built a sourcing department to source candidates. A “recruiter” is a salesperson incented to close deals, not someone you want in the hiring process.
and this is why people overstate their skills on their resumes, because they are trying to get their resume into the hands of someone that will actually read it
> Are there really companies out there where the difference between getting an offer and not getting an offer is spending a few hours making a bespoke "please hire me" website?
No, but it can jedi mind trick your way past HR screeners. And that's the only thing that it can do.
If your only way into a company you want to work for is "through the front door" and you aren't a perfect on-paper candidate for them (same role at a direct competitor) then it could be worth your time doing this...
I did this once while applying to a fully remote company and it got me the interview (hey, it's hard to compete against hundreds of applications per day) but did not end up with an offer.
I've had some people cold call me via Linked In because they were looking for a job. Mostly just new college grads. It does give them a little boost for taking a initiative but beyond that they will need to go through the usual resume review, phone screen and in office interview.
Reeeeeeeally depends. In my experience, most people who would do the early interviews/ determine candidacy for an interview probably don't have the time or desire to check out bespoke websites or other "deviations". The look at a summary of the position applied for and a summary of the qualifications and determine to go forward with an interview. In all likelihood, your interviewer probably won't look at your website either. But it's a good talking point, and if the interview is anywhere other than one FaGooNetZon etc, then being able to talk about it in an interview might win you points. So it wouldn't say it is _bad_, just that it will probably be ignored 80% of the time.
Maybe if you're applying for a bank or it doesn't fit the role.
I was trying to get a support engineer role that would have had me demoing to clients, so I whiteboard-animated and filmed my pitch for why I was a perfect fit for the company. It went over.
It seems like a high-variance strategy. Most of the time it would be a demerit, but that doesn't matter if most of the time you will not get past the HR screens regardless.
The tech hiring market is like a disfunctional dating pool. Lots of companies complaining they can’t find good talent, and lots of talent complaining they can’t find good companies. Is it too high standards on both sides or on one side? Is it a broken matchmaking system?
I think about this a lot. Here's a little brain dump:
Too many people are playing a numbers game, which creates a lot of noise. The noise makes it easy to miss good connections.
Inexperienced people (on both sides) are looking for the wrong things and just like it is w/ love, a lot of us need to learn the hard way. Wanting to date the most popular guy/girl in school is the equivalent of wanting to work at a "company everyone knows."
A few years later, we want to meet someone who is "ambitious, interesting, and has a good sense of humor," which is maybe like wanting to work at a company in an industry you can get behind. It's less superficial, and we have some direction here, but it's still too vague. (A lot of people are drawn to health and education not because they're truly passionate about either, but simply because it'll be easier find purpose/meaning.)
After a heartbreak or two, we finally figure out what our deal breakers are. Examples: I can't date anyone who cares a lot about fashion. I'm very attracted to people who dress well, but it turns out prioritizing it means attention and money is spent in ways I can't get on board w/. Similarly, I can't work anywhere that has a lot of mandatory meetings. Counter intuitive because I'm very extroverted and social, but meetings destroy my productivity. I would have never known these things 10 years ago.
Resumes and "dating profiles" don't give us a full picture. What we really want to know is: "Are we truly compatible? Are our goals and values truly aligned?" Those things take time, introspection, and research. However, it feels like job searching/sourcing/recruiting is going in the complete opposite direction (ie. "let's email 1k engineers every day, maybe 1% will respond").
This creates the noise that makes it hard for people who've figured out what they are looking for to find it.
I think this is part of what the advice is trying to say.
The noise looks like noise. It's the guys who say "Sup babe?" to every girl on dating-app-de-jour.
Standing out from the noise isn't hard. But it does mean at least writing a cover letter for each job app that shows you've done more than just copy/paste your generic details and cv into every role on $jobSite's new listing page this morning before you left for work.
Saying "Hey, I see you like live music, wanna go see $coolBand next Thursday? Oh, and I really like your hair in your 3rd pic :-)" isn't gonna "win you the girl", but it's going to be much less likely it be insta-deleted than "Sup babe?" sent to everyone.
> Resumes and "dating profiles" don't give us a full picture. What we really want to know is: "Are we truly compatible? Are our goals and values truly aligned?" Those things take time, introspection, and research. However, it feels like job searching/sourcing/recruiting is going in the complete opposite direction (ie. "let's email 1k engineers every day, maybe 1% will respond").
100% agree on this point. But it’s a hard problem to solve. How do you go about finding the best candidates? Just like in the dating world, the best candidates are already taken.
I don't know that you need the "dysfunctional" qualification to that statement.
It probably suffers from the usual problem: people want to work at a place that is too good for them (whatever that actually means) and companies want to hire people that are too good for them (again, whatever that means).
And it gets deeper too. From both ends. Nobody knows what they're doing here...
Most mediocre devs overestimate their abilities - while many of the truely top devs severely under estimate themselves.
The recruitment process/chain at many companies severely overestimates their desirability as an employer ("If selected, you'll be given the privilege of working at this traditional corporate bank, working on 6 year old Windows desktop development machines, under overpaid architecture astronauts who's suits cost more than your weekly take-home, on strictly waterfall projects. But we'll still expect you to be in the office at 9am for the mandatory "Agile Standup"!!!)
It is probably a combination of a) the standards being too high on the employers' side and b) the opportunity not actually being there... Employers are only willing to hire people that are a 'perfect fit' presumably because they can wait which would suggest that there isn't much pressure to fill the position. They often wait longer to fill a position than it would take to train/bring someone up to speed on their tech stack.
People who apply to jobs they dont fill requirements for on average get better jobs - because many times it works. This is one of probable reasons between male and female career differences - women tend to apply where they dont fill all requirements less and consequently men who dont match them get more jobs.
As is now, rational behavior is to apply even if you are unqualified and hope it works, unfortunately.
The only thing that really does stand out is when you get a CV that says the person has done all the things that your org wants to do. (Yes that's bad for recent grads.)
Hired a couple of people recently, and guess what. They tick all the boxes. Worked for firms that did low latency cpp, wrote apps that did what we wanted ours to do, and using the tools that we wanted.
From the other side I got an offer a few months back, and same deal. I ended up not taking it, but it was just "have you written xyz kind of code for another firm?" And the questions were all geared towards that. And since I ticked all the boxes, everything went forward.
If your CVs don't contain that unicorn who's done the exact thing that you need, you have a lot of awkward conversations. Is Minotaur close enough? What about this other language, it's pretty similar, right? Maybe the OS isn't such a big deal for this project. They'll get used to finance, it's not that different from...
That's how it was for the company I currently work at. My interview was basically me demoing my side projects, and my projects happened to be related to audio(I currently work at a radio station) and one of them happened to be doing the same kind of dynamic preroll insertion with audio streams that they do. I essentially was hired on that basis.
A lot of relatively fixed-function peripherals tend towards hardware, but the industry is moving away from pure speed (alternative interpretation: pure speed people failed) and for many strategies software can be more than fast enough and the flexibility benefits are worth it. That's not to say there aren't pure hardware strategies, but most of them operate in tandem with latency-sensitive software strategies as well.
Standing out from the applicant pool is best done by knowing someone within the organization. You can create targeted websites or individualized plans for improvement of the business, but in my experience, many companies simply give preference to recommendations from current employees. Does HR really have the expertise to go through all these personalized, technical solutions? Probably not, but if they are told by a current engineer that you have the skills and personality, they will fast track you into an interview. No wonder companies give referral bonuses - they'd much rather do that than wade through a sea of resumes, with hard to replicate and verify information.
What undeniably would stand out, and speak for itself is a large portfolio of open-source contributions to widely-used projects.
No personal projects. No libraries no-one-else uses. Real 1K+ stars projects in the niche/ecosystem you are targeting (Elixir? React Native?).
Go for breadth rather than depth. Demonstrate you can get 20 PRs merged to 20 different top-tier projects, adapting to their needs, standards, understanding their codebases of course. Interacting with them in a polite, optimal manner.
Mental exercise: think of one such contributor. Would you hire her? Of course you would, in a blink. No CV needed.
I know it's easier said than done, but executed well, it will be level-up whichever salary you were making previously.
(what to PR? Simply solve one of the many issues listed in a given project's tracker)
I almost completely disagree with you. At a company I worked at, we made the mistake of hiring someone who was a core contributor to a language you have very likely heard of and just as likely have worked with. It didn't work out. The skills required to be a professional software engineer writing business logic are not identical to those required to write excellent core, library or framework code. Different beasts, and both should have respect for one another.
Conflate them at your own peril. Our experience with trying to make things work with this candidate was not very successful, and it was one of the two (out of dozens) of hires we made that we had trouble with.
Candidates should find sane companies that test based on competence and not on glorified SAT like algo teasers. Companies should find sane candidate who are competent at doing the job they need done. Many parties in both camps flop at this search process.
As for the mentioned case, perhaps there was a mismatch in expectations.
Personally I have witnessed an ex-employer hiring a truly world-class framework contributor. Of course we didn't give him 'feature development' tasks. In fact he was out of our scrum process.
Instead, he was given high-profile bugs, code analysis/refactoring tasks, and was given the freedom to create some cool abstractions.
That's precisely my kind of dream job! True consultancy.
(and yes, you can get those kind of gigs investing much less beforehand... you'll just get fewer, lower-profile ones?)
Perhaps I didn't explain it as well as I could have, but there was no mismatch. The contributor knew what they were getting into, but it just didn't end up being as great a fit for both parties involved. To give more context: I think there is a lot more space for these kinds of hacker types to fit in at a larger company where their skills can truly add value. But at a small to mid sized tech company where that's not the primary business focus, it's not going to work out so well. On the other hand, if you as an engineer want to write business logic, these kind of companies are great places to be.
Why the hell would company not give such job to internal people? At least in my experience, these kind of jobs is what you can get after you worked in a company for a while and company trusts you.
Giving refactoring task to someone who is new strucks me as odd.
Also, why are not people doing feature development tasks not allowed to create abstractions where appropriate? Or high profile bugs etc? That is another odd thing. If I would be hired and it turned out I don't have that freedom and the interesting bugs, I would leave the company fast - especially if someone new would suddenly get these normally learn-a-lot tasks and freedoms.
I think you are not keeping in mind that these consultants aren't "someones", they are world-class experts. Often, team members know their names before they join the company (why? because FOSS contributions!).
Well I have seen it with my own eyes, so what can I say?
I specifically remember this guy who was really good debugging the 'undebuggable'. Perhaps more business-oriented bugs would indeed be assigned elsewhere, but more elusive stuff concerned with 'mechanisms', setup code, etc would be perfect for him.
I also have performed a similar role myself (just at a humbler team)
> Demonstrate you can get 20 PRs merged to 20 different top-tier projects, adapting to their needs...
This would be very impressive... but would also require _months_ of effort. I don't know any successful engineers who have that much time on their hands.
Neither is the notion of investing in one's skills beyond on-the-fly self-learning.
Some devs are able to save quite some money, or to work far less than 8h/d. I'd invite those to reinvest that time/money. Perhaps you can do it once every few years and ensure a truly remarkable career.
This might become more and more important as the market gets saturated with bootcampers, hustlers, or simply people who are junior today but will compete with you tomorrow.
It might not be uncommon in your neck of the woods, but where I exist this isn't common at all. Everyone has to work, and the luxury of being able to save "quite some money" (or work far less, which is more or less the same thing) definitely doesn't go to people who I'd call a "dev" (and not say, a consultant or upper management).
Not many, indeed. That's the reason why this approach makes you stand out - b/c it's not for everyone. I know a handful real cases of such FOSS work boosting one's hourly rate.
I'd take it as a matter of patience, habits and of course excellence.
Probably will execute this plan myself at some point.
If you consider the bottom tier of entry level people with weak or empty CVs, the difficulty from skill-set alone skyrockets before you factor in how privileged you'd have to be to do this for free in your spare time.
1.) I did not really seen employers to care about open source contributions all that much. It is a bit reassuring thing to have for people who did not work full-time, but for past full timer it did not seemed to matter much.
2.) Why would many shallow contributions be better then deeper involvement with one project? I don't get this one at all. Why would high-profile project be an advantage over less known one? Another thing I don't really see.
This sounds more like a dream of how it should work then reality I see around.
1) That's because average developers' FOSS contributions tend to be sparse and low-impact.
I have witnessed a number of companies throwing whatever money was needed to have language/framework/library authors working with them. I see no reason why the same principle shouldn't be more general.
2) Not necessarily shallow. You can create 1-2 big PRs per project (plus a few small ones), which amounts to 1 week of work per project.
The point of going for a variety of projects is that you demonstrate:
- proven skill/interest in a whole ecosystem (e.g. Elm)
- ability to read/maintain code (going for just one codebase is comparatively easier)
- ability to adapt to different standards and people
Lastly, high-profile projects have harder barriers-to-entry (therefore you demonstrate better skills), and are more likely to be known by the employer.
Parent said "Go for breadth rather than depth". I dont think multiple easy bug fixes are harder then deeper one. The reason most contributions are in sparse and low-impact is that it is easier and less time consuming.
Isn't ability to maintain code better proven by maintaining one codebase longer? Mostly because that is what maintennace is?
Sounds good and of course there's more than one approach to get comparable results.
Probably as a freelancer/consultant breadth is better than depth (proves you can solve whatever problem you may have with technology X), and vice versa for employees (depth shows commitment and an emphasis on maintainability).
This is good if used as one of many signals. If you rely too heavily on public projects you risk filtering out good people who, for example, are not permitted to work on open source in their free time due to their employment agreement.
The reality is that PDF resumes are dead. There are too many applicants for you to stand out that way if you don't already have some kind of "in" like knowing someone at the company.
So what can you do? You can create targeted websites like suggested in the article, but that takes a long time and likely isn't worth the effort. I've gotten ignored many times doing this.
Here's what has worked best:
1.Skip the resume even if the company insists on it.
2. Find the hiring manager's email (or anyone involved in hiring)
3. Send a well put together cover letter email selling your skills with concrete links to projects you can show. GitHub, Codepen, Blog links work very well here.
Why does this work? You're reaching an real human and have a higher chance of getting looked at for your skills instead of getting your resume scanned by a resume-reading machine. This works well when you don't already have connections with the company.
When writing a cover letter, should I make it about me and my skills, or "us" (the relationship with the company)?
For the last 3.5 years I've been doing automation, control, logging, and data science projects for a memory card manufacturer in Taiwan. Now I want to move to New Zealand (possibly Australia or Canada).
Although my parents are British, I've had more work experience in the relational culture of East Asia (China, Korea, Taiwan). I feel uneasy just bragging about myself on a cover letter/résumé, and instead prefer to write about how "we" could work together. I'm worried that individualist cultures might not understand that, though. Should I change my writing style?
I do not agree with parts of #3. There needs to be a different way. You cannot require developers to maintain github projects in there spare time. This truly will weed out amazing developers who have families, who prefer to have non dev hobbies, who volunteer a lot of their spare time, etc... You know, people who might actually be interesting to work with.
Plenty of people find coding fun but don't have github accounts or do much coding after work. This is especially true if your work is very interesting. You find that you have less itching to scratch so to speak. I love coding. But I don't feel I need to do any outside of work because I love the projects I get to do at work.
But yes, people who code all the time can be interesting. I just don't want the industry to demand we all do it.
I never apply for a job blind or through an applicant tracking system. I always use local recruiters that I've nurtured relationships with.
I also don't negotiate salary. I know my market and tell the recruiters up front how much I want to make. They don't waste my time submitting me to companies where I am above the salary range.
That's not how it works. The company pays the recruiters commission. It doesn't come out of your salary at least not for a full time job. I know market rates for my area. I can guarantee you I'm not underpaid by 20%.
For a contract job, where the company pays the recruiting agency and they pay you, yeah you can get a larger hourly rate by going straight to the company.
As a hiring manager, can confirm. I am selective about roles I open up to external recruiter submissions, but those that I do, I am entirely indifferent between candidate A who was sourced internally (no additional fee to me) and candidate B who was submitted by an external. If candidate B has any edge over candidate A, I'm not going to even think about the 20-33% of first year comp when making the decision.
I have heard of people being able to negotiate a one time hiring bonus if they didn’t go through a recruiter. I was also offered a $5000 bonus through a recruiter to try to persuade me to take a job.
I welcome employees who know/can articulate their value and negotiate in good faith to take home in salary roughly 1/4 to 2/5 of the value they create for our company every year.
That doesn’t extend to paying cash bonuses because our in-house team found them nor to pay cash in lieu of relocation benefits just because they already live here.
To answer GP’s question where candidate A had a slight edge but wanted 20-30% more, first I probably wouldn’t know that at decision time (it’s not like I’m shopping cars where I can go pretty far down the negotiation path with two Honda dealers and one Toyota dealer or an Amazon purchase where I can use camelcamelcamel or something; these are human beings contemplating upending their lives in some way). Second, talent is the key element of this game. Candidate A has a (perceived) edge and I’m going to pursue that candidate first, realizing that the pay is capped by some proper fraction of the business value they can create. Where it’s a software IC role, I will likely pursue both A and B individually, intending to hire both.
Where it’s a one-off role (I’m not going to hire two CISOs or two tribe leads for one tribe), I pursue A first. If I hear “I want more salary/shares because you’re not paying a recruiter”, that’s a terrifically strong signal that maybe they’re not going to create as much business value as I thought because they’re prone to thinking shallowly or outright wrongly about what matters to the business. “I want more money because of my X, Y, and Z talents/skills/ability/dedication/other options”? Great, I’m interested; let’s talk about that.
I agree, I've never asked for hiring bonus from an employer because I didn't go through a recruiter - I've never had that opportunity and I wouldn't anyway. It feels tacky. I might ask for a slightly higher salary thinking they have more wiggle room because they didn't go through a recruiter, but I wouldn't mention that as a rationale.
I've never been in a position to ask for the highest salary in the range. Any job for which I would be able to ask for top dollar would imply that I meet all of the qualifications perfectly. That would mean that I won't have the opportunity to grow and after two years, my resume and skill set won't look any better than when I first started. I've always aimed for jobs that are a slight stretch, meaning I have all of the "must haves" but not many of the "nice to haves".
That gives me the opportunity to be exposed to new to me technologies.
This is an interesting discussion. I don't believe collaborative and competitive are actually at odds with each other, think professional sports teams as the most obvious example. Yes, you absolutely want collaborative players who will maximize the potential of the team, but you sure as hell want them to be competitive too.
I'm personally a very competitive person, and I love being part of a team that wins. The collaborative vs competitive mindset feels like a false dichotomy to me.
I think what OP is referring to is collaborating with your teammates, and competing against your company's competition. I've met far too many people whose mindset is that of competing against their teammates. It's the equivalent of a basketball player who never ever passes the ball.
Good point. I'm also extremely competitive, but I like competing on teams more than I do as an individual. However, I've worked w/ people who are competitive with their peers/colleagues/coworkers. These are people that I would not hire. I think this is what Leah and @shanev are describing?
Lot of great insights there I think. I especially like Leah's "When an engineer is a fan of the product, they stand out." That is something I look for in candidates, passion for the work they will be doing.
That is something I look for in candidates, passion for the work they will be doing.
How do you differentiate passion for the work they'll be doing from a complete willingness and competency to do the job because they've got to put food on the table?
I'm not passionate about programming (and certainly not passionate about freight logistics), I just happen to be very good at it, I like my coworkers..oh and it pays the rent and tuition.
I like looking for passion for problem solving. The problems just usually require using programming as a tool. I'd like to believe the product is also solving a real problem.
The metaphor I like to use is, I'm looking for a carpenter that likes building structures, not a carpenter that likes using hammers.
But that's just what I'm looking for, and what I believe many engineering-centric orgs are looking for. There are definitely companies out there that just want another assembly robot in their software factory assembly line and plenty of people happy to take that role.
Seems like a lot of the answers boil down to "build a portfolio". I don't think the people that have the time to build that portfolio have a lot to worry about. Sure, they may not get to work at that one company they want to work at but they're pretty much guaranteed some type of employment.
What about the people that don't have that time though? The people that may have spent time in evening classes learning how to program. How do they stand out?
Other than Leah Culver's line "I also personally look for engineers with a collaborative attitude rather than a competitive one", I wouldn't say any of this is good advice.
I'm not really clear on what position she was applying for, but given that the article is engineering focused, the fact that the whole page is just a massive mosaic of image tiles would be an instant deal-breaker for me.
I mean, I get the whole 'not everyone designs', but anyone wanting to work at that level should at least know 'text-as-images = bad'.
It's impossible to get past HR screening unless you're an CV expert. They look at things like paper texture, inc, font, formatting, spelling etc, because that's what they are good at. They don't know anything about C++ or Haskel. You need to get around HR and talk directly to someone that can actually tell if you are qualified or not. The best bet is if you have someone on the inside that can voice for you. Or get their attention somehow so that they reach out to you.
HR tries to match the stacks, eg they need someone that knows SQL+JSON+Java+JavaScript+Andoird+Linux+Git+WinAPI+HTML+CSS, but then they get an application who has C++,Haskel,OOP,FP,C,Linux,Sysadmin,DBA,SQL they will throw it away because it doesn't match.
Now I did some math and with 1000 techs, in stacks of 10, you would get 2.6 * 10^26 combinations. So it's impossible to find a candidate that will match!
It is talking about expressing shared values (trough open source and mentoring) value (personal accomplishment) and warm fuzzies (being a fan of the company, product, etc.)
As to how to do that; learn it or hire someone. As you likely only have your hours to sell I'd say the case for outsourcing becomes compelling.
Most employers are not actually all that interested in what _you want_, but in what _you can provide them_. If necessary, they will pay for that. A great many applicants that come by our company have as motivation "to develop myself" and similar. That won't get many employers excited. If you come by and tell us: "I have a great idea to make/save you X euro/month (and are credible)", that would make employers much more likely to hire you.
Imagine if a grocer told you: I want you to buy this cucumber because it would make me feel great about my sales skills. Would you buy the cucumber just to do the grocer a favor? Now compare that to a grocer who tells you: "These cucumbers are delicious, healthy and will make you feel great about yourself for eating healthy food." IMO, the second grocer is much more likely to sell a lot of cucumbers, because he focuses on what his customers want instead of what he himself wants. The same is true for selling your labor.
I know somebody who did the same, and he ended up being the boss of a plant. Not the CEO, but still a lot of responsibility. And not from the start, he worked on all factory machines first and slowly he was given more responsibilities. It all depends on what they are looking for. This company looked for a local to replace the expats. It was a match.
Likewise, most applicants are not interested in what _the company wants_, but in what _the company can provide them_. They are going to be working a minimum of 8 hours a day 5 days a week for your company. This is why the applicant pool is so awful. Companies don't care what candidates want, candidates don't care what companies want.
> Say you are actually interested in earning money for your work, a truly novel idea nowadays.
Last month I was ruled out at screening stage because I "focused too much on money" (that was the recruiter's feedback to me from the company's HR). They wanted to pay £35k for a developer who also can build statistical models. In London.
I don't mean saying that will help with your application, but that is probably on the list 'things you rarely hear during interviews'.
I also don't think good boy points help that much either, I'm subscribed to the idea we tend to hire people similar to us, effectively turning hiring into a numbers game without much influence over over that bias.
Indeed, once a technically challenged HR included a whole spreadsheet of applicants in her reply, which basically confirmed her company rejects applicants for arbitrarily stupid reasons, so one might as well focus on the money.
> Indeed, once a technically challenged HR included a whole spreadsheet of applicants in her reply, which basically confirmed her company rejects applicants for arbitrarily stupid reasons
Is this an imaginary situation, or did it actually happen? If the latter, link?
Indeed it happened. Won't share, it is full of personal information (it is not even in English), some of the reasons they list include talks weird, too confident, looked at the clock too many times, too many previous jobs etc.
Rejecting for too high expected salary was a non factor basically (also they strictly did not try to negotiate that), lacking technical skills were rarely mentioned too.
I know this isn't your point, but thought I'd share: for me being too confident is always an enormous red flag. Almost never makes sense rationally, unless you're talking about your tiny corner of super-specialization. And even then I'd like to see if you talk like that to the world's top expert in that area.
It's a reasonable response. Some companies simply can't afford to pay higher - if you don't have VC money, for instance.
It may well be that they can't afford someone who can build statistical models, but they can probably get someone more junior who's willing to learn. The new hire gets paid and gets experience, the company gets the job done. There are plenty of (experienced) people for whom money is not the prime motivator.
I would look at it a different way: if a company offers you a below-market rate, would you get paid a lot more if you can add significant value to the company in a year or two? Is the gamble of being underpaid in a small company worth it for you?
How is the response "you're too focused on money" when trying to get a job to make money a reasonable one?
> There are plenty of (experienced) people for whom money is not the prime motivator.
There really aren't. This is a myth of the highest order. There might be some, but certainly not many. If they have families or debt, that number basically goes down to zero. And for the record, £35k in London for a software engineer is a laugh-out-loud joke; a bus driver's starting salary is £25k.
This seems to have provoked a rather angry reaction.
The company have stated what they're willing to pay, if that doesn't meet your expectation then look elsewhere. It's not a personal slight. On the flip side there are plenty of jobs which will pay more, and plenty (no doubt) which pay less. You can laugh at the job adverts and get angry when they won't pay you what you think your market rate is, but does it really matter? If you're that good, then you'll find a job which pays you what aspire to.
Note that the OP indicates they were rejected at a screening stage, which implies that there was no wasted time on interviews. I have no idea what the job is/was beyond that it involved statistics. The OP provided no details, although a followup post suggests it's not a small company. I used that as an example of a situation where you might see this sort of salary, and some logical justification for it (the morals are debateable). If it's a big corp then obviously you might expect different standards of pay.
I would give you academia as the obvious counter-example to your second argument. There are thousands of talented people, globally, earning peanuts compared to what they could in industry because they enjoy the work they do. I'll admit some compared to the hundreds of thousands of hungry developers, but it's not insignificant. Starting postdoc salary in London is around £35k for instance, with annual progression up the national spine point scale.
Academia is one field which has historically had excellent benefits for staff including regular travel, very flexible working hours and freedom to work as independently as you want. You also tend to get more holiday than industry e.g. 30 days is standard. That's a pretty good tradeoff to some folks.
Is it a laugh out loud joke? Public sector employees don't earn much more than that initially. To take a fanciful example, SIS/MI6 are currently advertising a software engineering role with a range starting at £32k.
Wrong. This is a naive thought which is thoroughly divorced from the market reality. There's no free lunch, and no qualified candidate below market rate -- if you don't pay in one form, you will pay in another form. Companies which do not allocate budget properly to hire competent employees pay for it with their bottom line.
If someone wants me to not be focussed on the money, they had either be paying so much I don't have to think about my bills, or they had better give me so much power that I can spend every day working on my own projects.
Offer anything else and I'm going to be thinking about how I can pay my bills by doing work on your projects to the detriment of my own.
I completely agree that good software engineers are able to provide value significantly above the standard salary ranges for the profession. That said, I’m pretty pragmatic about it — I don’t want “a job”, but I respect that there is a price for which I would do the work. In the past, I’ve been direct and honest that the price is about $2M/yr + significant equity. Sends a message, and gets the wrong recruiters off your back. :)
But — if you are applying for jobs for which there are common salary ranges, you are signalling that you’re likely willing to work for something in that general range.
I think part of the larger situation is that the leaders of many small businesses (including many startups) don’t know how to effectively apply good engineers.
Effective managers are in short supply compared to the number of founders running startups with no experience. I suppose this is because if you’re an effective manager, why would you lower your comp by working at a startup instead of at a larger established business that can properly compensate you for your valuable skill set (while anyone with some combination of an idea and some cash can be a founder).
I have a foolproof technique that everyone is welcome to use: I don't apply for positions that I know will pay less than what I think I'm worth. Otherwise, if the interviews go well and I'm happy with them and they're happy with me and they want to move forward and make me offer, and the offer seems to low, I ask them to increases it. If they don't, I don't take the position. If they do: voila, mission accomplished! Crazy, I know, but this one crazy trick really seems to do it.
The author is a woman, so a reasonable explanation is many of her co-founder acquaintances are also woman and, as such, were more likely to respond to the author's inquiry.
In my experience there is this huge pool of unqualified applicants applying for every job no matter what the actual job requirements are. The applicants that got a call for an interview 1) looked at the technologies listed in the job requirements and 2) put their experience with these technologies on their resume.
Also important, once you get called in for an interview make sure you can answer the most basic questions about what is on your resume. If you put Linux experience on your resume make sure you can explain how to list the contents of a directory from the command line. If you put MySQL experience on your resume make sure you can explain how to get a count of the total number of rows in a table.
Are there really companies out there where the difference between getting an offer and not getting an offer is spending a few hours making a bespoke "please hire me" website?