7 ms·

Looking for work is a full time job

50 points by Dallas_B 2y ago

Dallas_B 2y ago
For anyone currently stuck in the grind of endlessly applying for jobs, I completely understand your frustration. I’ve been job hunting for the past three months, and it’s been painfully repetitive and time-consuming. Applying via LinkedIn often feels like throwing your resume into a sea of 1,000+ other applicants, even with daily alerts turned on. What worked better for me was following founders, recruiters, and other key connections. I’d wait for them to post about roles in their network and apply directly. This strategy landed me a few interviews. To make this process less manual, I built a tracker that highlights posts from people sharing roles with their private networks. It’s free, so feel free to check it out if you’re in the job market. I’m also testing video-based applications, which let you track who’s viewing your resume and profile. This feature is paid to help cover server cost. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated and hopefully this helps you land a role!
- verdverm 2y ago
  Having a project you are trying to turn into a business is often a red flag. A company considering hiring you wonders if you will jump ship as soon as you have the opportunity to go full time on your own project
  - Dallas_B 2y ago
    Thanks, not really trying to do that, more built it out of frustration. I've heard this can be an advantage in an interview to essentially sell 'look what I built in my down time' etc - Who knows.
    - verdverm 2y ago
      Totally, it's good to have projects or a portfolio, it's not so much to have marketing & payment pages or look like it's an early startup
      - rgbrgb 2y ago
        it cuts both ways! it is hard to find engineers who are self-motivated to think about product, customers, and conversion. this project gives the candidate strong credibility there. I have also been burnt with employees leaving to start their own thing, but that's more the exception compared to engineers who don't deliver much value because they're not actually interested in building stuff or only interested in the programming part of building stuff.
        verdverm 2y ago
        We programmers certainly come in a lot of varieties!
- sunjieming 2y ago
  We're seeing a flood of fake AI generated job applications basically DDOSing our hiring funnel. Not sure how widespread it is but it has become enormously frustrating to sift the complete garbage from the good resumes. I'm sure a lot of good people have been accidentally filtered out It's rough out there right now. Also, not even sure what the benefit or angle is for spamming fake job applications. State actors trying to sabotage? Edit: We can tell that some of the applications are fake because we have people fail background screenings and often the attached LinkedIn profile is using AI generated images and job histories that don't add up.
  - Dallas_B 2y ago
    Its crazy at the moment, you can use bots to just automatically apply. Also the ease of Quick Apply on LinkedIn makes it so simple to just apply and not really consider if your right for the role. I suppose it feels like your making progress but your right it is spamming, I was 100% guilty of this for the first few weeks thinking it would be easy and quick to land a few interviews and offers!
  - sz4kerto 2y ago
    Exactly. LLMs make it worse for both the employers and the job seekers. Receiving hundreds of applications per day is extremely difficult to handle for a small company, especially that it's extremely apparent that around 1% reads the job description at all.
  - surfingdino 2y ago
    The reason you are getting spammed is because a) agencies are trying to secure an interview before they have a candidate; b) they are trying to convince you to use their offshore teams. Ask around inside your company if any offers from offshore providers have been submitted/talks are being conducted. DDoS-ing hiring funnels is a way to convince you that "no good people are available".
    - hyperadvanced 2y ago
      Clever tactic, info overload them, then sell the solution
- WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
  > I’ve been job hunting for the past three months, and it’s been painfully repetitive and time-consuming. With full recognition of the challenge you're having, I'll append that the difficulty level ratchets up from there. The first thing my kids learned after high school is that ~100% of job portals silently discard applications from 1st-time job applicants. And from that point, the difficultly levels ratchets upward further for the most minor of criminal records. Past that there are any number of hidden, algorithmic blackmarks against applicants, from wrong zip codes to sub-stellar credit reports. Finally, there's one nearly unhireable class, people who interview poorly (ex:freeze up).
  - Dallas_B 2y ago
    Thanks for the heads up - Feels like I'm in for the long haul despite having some solid experience and half decent network behind me!
  - crtified 2y ago
    If tech companies get systemically hostile toward socially awkward people then that's a horrific own-goal.
- upghost 2y ago
  What kind of dystopian nightmare do we live in than LinkedIn is now basically required to get a job? We built this nightmare too. Darn it.
- codalan 2y ago
  Should this be under Show HN? https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html
xnx 2y ago
There's been a flood of third-party job boards on HN recently. As a job searcher, is there any reason to check any of these job boards in addition to Indeed?
- Dallas_B 2y ago
  From what I've seen I don't think there is a lot of 'exclusivity' of job posting on one platform or another, perhaps timing of jobs going live... I suggest setting up the daily alerts on LinkedIn with your role title, doing the same for Indeed as well. I check BuildIn as well every few days just for good measure as they claim to have good hiring rates for tech. Also see if there is any value in what I've built as well.
surfingdino 2y ago
FYI: It takes between 3-12 months to find a contract in the UK in the IT space now.
- graemep 2y ago
  In the UK. Freelance. A major client put their project on hold and (looking to fill gap) its been a long time since I saw so few opportunities for things I used to find it easy to get work in (e.g. Django, which can be boring but has always been solid bread and butter).
  - n_ary 2y ago
    Interestingly, since some of my colleagues are actually looking to jump ships, I lend them some networking. Last week when we were having a coffee, everyone had the same complaint, all the shiny tech are missing, the old tech are now all the rage. Basically last when I checked, anyone with TS(nest), Python(django/flask), Go(Echo) were swimming in offers. Now literally every job is Java(springboot) or Rails(RoR) and every job needs years of experience with every AWS(and some GCP) components. It is very strange, seems like the market is just suddenly very different. Even senior engineers are not well trusted with adapting new language or tools, while previously I actually onboarded several senior engineers to entirely new stack (e.g. TS -> Go, C++ -> TS, Zig -> Kotlin, frontend engineer with vanilla JS -> Java). The whole market is insane(or entirely irrational). Reference: Am in one of the EU countries where BMW originates.
    - graemep 2y ago
      That is interesting. Is Django shiny? I have been doing it for so long it feels like old tech to me. YMMV I suppose.
  - surfingdino 2y ago
    It started in 2019 with the introduction of IR35 legislation. HMRC scared the living daylights out of clients using contractors, they even went after the government contractors. That opened the market to umbrella companies and large consultancies who switched paperwork, lowered rates, then shipped roles offshore.
nickvec 2y ago
Is this just a disguised ad for ResumeVue?
- stavros 2y ago
  Nope, it's not disguised.
- class700 2y ago
  Yes
- Dallas_B 2y ago
  No its not. I created the post - See my comments and replies
ErikAugust 2y ago
The title of this post has sparked a good discussion here but it links directly to a job board? I was expecting an article.
- ljf 2y ago
  Indeed, the title given here doesn't seem to appear on the page at all, which makes this seem like clickbait. The title should be changed to 'Private jobs board' or similar. But then no one would click on it or upvote it. I assume a lot of people vote and comment without clicking the links on HN. Would have been better as a 'show hn' post - Dallas_b below is the op and also made the site but I don't think they make that very clear in their post.
  - Dallas_B 2y ago
    I started the thread - Not click bait at all. If you read my comment you can see what I built etc. But, yes its got some traction, seems people are pretty fired up (me included) about the state of the job market and just how hard it is to land a interview let alone a offer
    - ljf 2y ago
      Good luck finding work - you are clearly talented if you can make a site like this. Re the titling/clickbait comment - I was referring to the policy here that posts should follow the page title of the site you are linking to: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html But as you can see here in other comments, others note this too.
    - arp242 2y ago
      This really should have been "Show HN: I built a job board", or something along those lines.
    - ErikAugust 2y ago
      It’s a great title and idea for an article. Maybe start a blog for the board, and create that article? Signed, Non-expert in content marketing
kussenverboten 2y ago
LinkedIn has become a waste of time.
ezra0r 2y ago
[flagged]
nerdjon 2y ago
I will check out this tool later, but given the title of the post. I know this is something that my parents have told me before, but being on the market myself right now. It feels like there is really only so much time I can spend looking for a job. In the first week or 2 I am catching up on all of the jobs already up but after that only so many new jobs are posted. It feels like I can spend at most an hour or 2 a day actually applying. Sure add in calls/interviews. I say this currently being unemployed. At some point there is nothing else to look at. I am curious if people are really spending 40+ hours applying to jobs a week? I am finding I am spending most of my time brushing up on tech and working on side projects to keep my skills up.
donatj 2y ago
I still have nightmares about going back to the getting my foot in the door stage. I was fresh out of college, and over the next six months I sent hundreds of applications and did tens of interviews. This was 2006 so the landscape was a little different. I had less direct competition here, but outsourcing was in full swing. I had actually been advised by my high school's consoler not to go into programming because "all the jobs are going to India". One interview that had gone particularly well was a couple miles from where I now live. Everyone I spoke to seemed very enthusiastic and understood I was right out of college. They never called. Every single time I drive by I tell my wife that I am still waiting for them to call me back. I googled them a few years back and they had gone out of business. The private college I attended had a department dedicated to job placement, and they would check in with me every couple weeks after I graduated. They were sold as "working directly with employers to place students" but they never had anything like that for me. Honestly, their pushing was a big piece of why I didn't give up. I didn't want to lie to them and I didn't want to let them down.
- hansumfarang 2y ago
  Crazy, I got hired at the same time directly out of high school from my first job application. Just a casual interview with the startup founder (yes I had a code to show/a portfolio) and that was it. The only job placement help I got was the school counselor threatening that I'd be the "smartest guy in [my] gang" (in all fairness to her, I had been a smart guy in a gang). People and their life histories are incredibly different!
melvinroest 2y ago
I switched to becoming a data analyst. It's odd, I feel more appreciated too as I'm clearly the most technical person on the team. I help them with certain hard skills and they teach me certain soft skills (and certain domain specific hard skills), all the while I feel more closely connected to society since I'm working in a marketing department. For me, an ambiverted software engineer in Europe, it's definitely been a good move. What helped me getting the job is that I did 2 bachelor programs at uni, one in psychology, the other in computer science with a business minor. I feel that data analysis is a mix of psychology and computer science while the marketing department is the business part. The path to becoming a data analyst wasn't clear, I simply applied to job postings that I vibed with, I didn't really care about the role. If the job vacancy itself seemed fun, I applied. I didn't do that enough, in retrospect I should've done it a lot more. That'd be the advice I give myself: just read a lot of job vacancies and just trust your intuition about which one you vibe with (aka feel good about).

50 points by Dallas_B 2y ago

For anyone currently stuck in the grind of endlessly applying for jobs, I completely understand your frustration. I’ve been job hunting for the past three months, and it’s been painfully repetitive and time-consuming. Applying via LinkedIn often feels like throwing your resume into a sea of 1,000+ other applicants, even with daily alerts turned on. What worked better for me was following founders, recruiters, and other key connections. I’d wait for them to post about roles in their network and apply directly. This strategy landed me a few interviews. To make this process less manual, I built a tracker that highlights posts from people sharing roles with their private networks. It’s free, so feel free to check it out if you’re in the job market. I’m also testing video-based applications, which let you track who’s viewing your resume and profile. This feature is paid to help cover server cost. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated and hopefully this helps you land a role!

verdverm 2y ago
Having a project you are trying to turn into a business is often a red flag. A company considering hiring you wonders if you will jump ship as soon as you have the opportunity to go full time on your own project
- Dallas_B 2y ago
  Thanks, not really trying to do that, more built it out of frustration. I've heard this can be an advantage in an interview to essentially sell 'look what I built in my down time' etc - Who knows.
  - verdverm 2y ago
    Totally, it's good to have projects or a portfolio, it's not so much to have marketing & payment pages or look like it's an early startup
    - rgbrgb 2y ago
      it cuts both ways! it is hard to find engineers who are self-motivated to think about product, customers, and conversion. this project gives the candidate strong credibility there. I have also been burnt with employees leaving to start their own thing, but that's more the exception compared to engineers who don't deliver much value because they're not actually interested in building stuff or only interested in the programming part of building stuff.
      - verdverm 2y ago
        We programmers certainly come in a lot of varieties!
sunjieming 2y ago
We're seeing a flood of fake AI generated job applications basically DDOSing our hiring funnel. Not sure how widespread it is but it has become enormously frustrating to sift the complete garbage from the good resumes. I'm sure a lot of good people have been accidentally filtered out It's rough out there right now. Also, not even sure what the benefit or angle is for spamming fake job applications. State actors trying to sabotage? Edit: We can tell that some of the applications are fake because we have people fail background screenings and often the attached LinkedIn profile is using AI generated images and job histories that don't add up.
- Dallas_B 2y ago
  Its crazy at the moment, you can use bots to just automatically apply. Also the ease of Quick Apply on LinkedIn makes it so simple to just apply and not really consider if your right for the role. I suppose it feels like your making progress but your right it is spamming, I was 100% guilty of this for the first few weeks thinking it would be easy and quick to land a few interviews and offers!
- sz4kerto 2y ago
  Exactly. LLMs make it worse for both the employers and the job seekers. Receiving hundreds of applications per day is extremely difficult to handle for a small company, especially that it's extremely apparent that around 1% reads the job description at all.
- surfingdino 2y ago
  The reason you are getting spammed is because a) agencies are trying to secure an interview before they have a candidate; b) they are trying to convince you to use their offshore teams. Ask around inside your company if any offers from offshore providers have been submitted/talks are being conducted. DDoS-ing hiring funnels is a way to convince you that "no good people are available".
  - hyperadvanced 2y ago
    Clever tactic, info overload them, then sell the solution
WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
> I’ve been job hunting for the past three months, and it’s been painfully repetitive and time-consuming. With full recognition of the challenge you're having, I'll append that the difficulty level ratchets up from there. The first thing my kids learned after high school is that ~100% of job portals silently discard applications from 1st-time job applicants. And from that point, the difficultly levels ratchets upward further for the most minor of criminal records. Past that there are any number of hidden, algorithmic blackmarks against applicants, from wrong zip codes to sub-stellar credit reports. Finally, there's one nearly unhireable class, people who interview poorly (ex:freeze up).
- Dallas_B 2y ago
  Thanks for the heads up - Feels like I'm in for the long haul despite having some solid experience and half decent network behind me!
- crtified 2y ago
  If tech companies get systemically hostile toward socially awkward people then that's a horrific own-goal.
upghost 2y ago
What kind of dystopian nightmare do we live in than LinkedIn is now basically required to get a job? We built this nightmare too. Darn it.
codalan 2y ago
Should this be under Show HN? https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html

xnx 2y ago

There's been a flood of third-party job boards on HN recently. As a job searcher, is there any reason to check any of these job boards in addition to Indeed?

Dallas_B 2y ago
From what I've seen I don't think there is a lot of 'exclusivity' of job posting on one platform or another, perhaps timing of jobs going live... I suggest setting up the daily alerts on LinkedIn with your role title, doing the same for Indeed as well. I check BuildIn as well every few days just for good measure as they claim to have good hiring rates for tech. Also see if there is any value in what I've built as well.

surfingdino 2y ago

FYI: It takes between 3-12 months to find a contract in the UK in the IT space now.

graemep 2y ago
In the UK. Freelance. A major client put their project on hold and (looking to fill gap) its been a long time since I saw so few opportunities for things I used to find it easy to get work in (e.g. Django, which can be boring but has always been solid bread and butter).
- n_ary 2y ago
  Interestingly, since some of my colleagues are actually looking to jump ships, I lend them some networking. Last week when we were having a coffee, everyone had the same complaint, all the shiny tech are missing, the old tech are now all the rage. Basically last when I checked, anyone with TS(nest), Python(django/flask), Go(Echo) were swimming in offers. Now literally every job is Java(springboot) or Rails(RoR) and every job needs years of experience with every AWS(and some GCP) components. It is very strange, seems like the market is just suddenly very different. Even senior engineers are not well trusted with adapting new language or tools, while previously I actually onboarded several senior engineers to entirely new stack (e.g. TS -> Go, C++ -> TS, Zig -> Kotlin, frontend engineer with vanilla JS -> Java). The whole market is insane(or entirely irrational). Reference: Am in one of the EU countries where BMW originates.
  - graemep 2y ago
    That is interesting. Is Django shiny? I have been doing it for so long it feels like old tech to me. YMMV I suppose.
- surfingdino 2y ago
  It started in 2019 with the introduction of IR35 legislation. HMRC scared the living daylights out of clients using contractors, they even went after the government contractors. That opened the market to umbrella companies and large consultancies who switched paperwork, lowered rates, then shipped roles offshore.

nickvec 2y ago

Is this just a disguised ad for ResumeVue?

stavros 2y ago
Nope, it's not disguised.
class700 2y ago
Yes
Dallas_B 2y ago
No its not. I created the post - See my comments and replies

ErikAugust 2y ago

The title of this post has sparked a good discussion here but it links directly to a job board? I was expecting an article.

ljf 2y ago
Indeed, the title given here doesn't seem to appear on the page at all, which makes this seem like clickbait. The title should be changed to 'Private jobs board' or similar. But then no one would click on it or upvote it. I assume a lot of people vote and comment without clicking the links on HN. Would have been better as a 'show hn' post - Dallas_b below is the op and also made the site but I don't think they make that very clear in their post.
- Dallas_B 2y ago
  I started the thread - Not click bait at all. If you read my comment you can see what I built etc. But, yes its got some traction, seems people are pretty fired up (me included) about the state of the job market and just how hard it is to land a interview let alone a offer
  - ljf 2y ago
    Good luck finding work - you are clearly talented if you can make a site like this. Re the titling/clickbait comment - I was referring to the policy here that posts should follow the page title of the site you are linking to: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html But as you can see here in other comments, others note this too.
  - arp242 2y ago
    This really should have been "Show HN: I built a job board", or something along those lines.
  - ErikAugust 2y ago
    It’s a great title and idea for an article. Maybe start a blog for the board, and create that article? Signed, Non-expert in content marketing

kussenverboten 2y ago

LinkedIn has become a waste of time.

ezra0r 2y ago

[flagged]

nerdjon 2y ago

I will check out this tool later, but given the title of the post. I know this is something that my parents have told me before, but being on the market myself right now. It feels like there is really only so much time I can spend looking for a job. In the first week or 2 I am catching up on all of the jobs already up but after that only so many new jobs are posted. It feels like I can spend at most an hour or 2 a day actually applying. Sure add in calls/interviews. I say this currently being unemployed. At some point there is nothing else to look at. I am curious if people are really spending 40+ hours applying to jobs a week? I am finding I am spending most of my time brushing up on tech and working on side projects to keep my skills up.

donatj 2y ago

I still have nightmares about going back to the getting my foot in the door stage. I was fresh out of college, and over the next six months I sent hundreds of applications and did tens of interviews. This was 2006 so the landscape was a little different. I had less direct competition here, but outsourcing was in full swing. I had actually been advised by my high school's consoler not to go into programming because "all the jobs are going to India". One interview that had gone particularly well was a couple miles from where I now live. Everyone I spoke to seemed very enthusiastic and understood I was right out of college. They never called. Every single time I drive by I tell my wife that I am still waiting for them to call me back. I googled them a few years back and they had gone out of business. The private college I attended had a department dedicated to job placement, and they would check in with me every couple weeks after I graduated. They were sold as "working directly with employers to place students" but they never had anything like that for me. Honestly, their pushing was a big piece of why I didn't give up. I didn't want to lie to them and I didn't want to let them down.

hansumfarang 2y ago
Crazy, I got hired at the same time directly out of high school from my first job application. Just a casual interview with the startup founder (yes I had a code to show/a portfolio) and that was it. The only job placement help I got was the school counselor threatening that I'd be the "smartest guy in [my] gang" (in all fairness to her, I had been a smart guy in a gang). People and their life histories are incredibly different!

melvinroest 2y ago

I switched to becoming a data analyst. It's odd, I feel more appreciated too as I'm clearly the most technical person on the team. I help them with certain hard skills and they teach me certain soft skills (and certain domain specific hard skills), all the while I feel more closely connected to society since I'm working in a marketing department. For me, an ambiverted software engineer in Europe, it's definitely been a good move. What helped me getting the job is that I did 2 bachelor programs at uni, one in psychology, the other in computer science with a business minor. I feel that data analysis is a mix of psychology and computer science while the marketing department is the business part. The path to becoming a data analyst wasn't clear, I simply applied to job postings that I vibed with, I didn't really care about the role. If the job vacancy itself seemed fun, I applied. I didn't do that enough, in retrospect I should've done it a lot more. That'd be the advice I give myself: just read a lot of job vacancies and just trust your intuition about which one you vibe with (aka feel good about).