45 ms·
Ask HN: Ever been hired through a “who's hiring” post?
How many people here have ACTUALLY gotten a job through the monthly post?
Provide what information you can (company, job title, post (if it's still alive)).
- duiker101 10y agoI got an interview wit a company that I really wanted to work with. I didn't even apply with them originally so I was very pleased to have them contact me from an Ask HN thread. I didn't end up getting the job but I have no doubt that I could have.
- sotojuan 10y agoYes. Capsule (http://capsulecares.com/ http://capsulecares.com/). Interned while in school, contracted for a month after graduation (couldn't work full time at the time), and now joining as a full time employee. They posted in the last Who's Hiring and it was similar to the one I replied to.
- jbot29 10y agoGot a contract, it took awhile for a response but found it on HN.
- lwakefield 10y agoI was reached out to by almost every single company that I approached (NYC) and finally ended up accepting an offer. If I can make a recommendation, go for the companies that supply personal email addresses. If they don't supply them, go find them.
- joekrill 10y agoI was actually very surprised at the amount of folks that simply didn't respond _at all_ -- meaning not even an _acknowledgement_. The folks that I did hear back from were great, though. Nothing ever actually worked out in my case, though.
- giis 10y agoIn my experience for remote-position, at-least I received ack. mails like "time-zone issues are there" etc and like 20% never sent ack. at all. Strangely most often those company appear almost every-month with same job posting, I wonder whats going on.
- phd514 10y agoMy theory is that the no-cost HN posting allows some of these companies to keep posting perpetual openings in hopes of finding that elusive 100x developer that's willing to work for less than market rate. I can't say that bothers me too much, though. It's not that hard to see who has the same open req month after month and avoid those companies.
- johnward 10y agoI always hear "we're looking for remote but not in your area". Most remote posts don't actually seem to be truly remote. I'm in the US eastern timezone, shrugs. To your second point, they are probably fishing for good devs that will work for lower than market rate. They don't actually have a job but are hoping to find a unicorn.
- sulam 10y agoThere are tax implications for having an employee in some states, regardless of what the person is paid. For instance I've been told that it would cost us several million dollars to hire someone remote who lives in New York. That developer would have to be really amazing to make it worthwhile to hire them!
- mobiuscog 10y agoThat seems to happen everywhere these days - I've sent out several applications recently (non-HN) and had absolutely nothing back, not even an acknowledgement. It says a lot for the professionalism of a company when they can't even auto-respond a receipt, although a personal rejection would always be nice - if you can't be bothered to say you're not interested, why should I be bothered to apply ?
- johnward 10y agoI take the time to filter out jobs that I know I would be good at and then write a cover letter and customize my resume for the job, only to not hear any acknowledgement at all. I'm about to just blast my resume out with no filter and see what happens.
- mysterydip 10y agoAnd I think that's the crux of the issue. When I was laid off, I hit the job boards. I started out being careful with my choices, doing custom cover letters, etc., but after no response from many, I started "shotgunning" and hoping something would stick. But that's what everyone else is doing: one-click apply to job/send your resume, and then HR gets overwhelmed, and determines not to send individual responses, which continues the spiral. I had one job I finally got a rejection from a week after I had started someplace else. As much as I may have liked any one position, I had mouths tl feed. No point in waiting 3 weeks for a simple response.
- johnward 10y agoI think you nailed it. Then the recruiters start doing the same thing on the other end. I have 10 years of experience ands till get entry level help desk positions in my inbox.
- linker3000 10y agoDitto + I get electronic engineering stuff, which was my career path/company role until I switched to systems and networks in about 1989.
- ohyoutravel 10y agoEven worse is when their application process is "different" and they ask that you write code addressing some specific problem to submit with your resume. I'm not talking something simple, but a well thought out problem that requires a few hundred lines. I get that they're trying to be different and evaluate candidates on metrics other than just resume, but to send that kind of thing in (which takes a week of effort outside of your real job) and receive no acknowledgement or response to a follow up a couple weeks later is lame.
- xapata 10y agoIs it possible they didn't expect the problem to require a few hundred lines?
- ohyoutravel 10y agoWell, that's not the point. The point is they didn't acknowledge that I submitted anything at all, and didn't acknowledge me after a follow up email a couple weeks later. That is always annoying, but in especially poor taste when you ask the applicant to complete a coding challenge before submission.
- xapata 10y agoI don't like nonresponsive folks either, but it's par for the course. Consider that before putting effort into a coding challenge or whatever they're asking of you.
- amingilani 10y agoI was recently stupid enough to have had taken a task involving Spring Boot. I literally had to learn Java in a week make a web application using it in a week. The recruiter knew my inexperience with the technology but have it as "a challenge to observe my performance in an unfamiliar setting." It made that rejection much worse. Particularly when I had my code judged for a framework I'd only used for a week.
- rezashirazian 10y agoYou have to realize that "We're hiring" is not always what it seems. Many company advertise that they are "hiring" to form a narrative of growth and perceived success for investors, customers and the industry in general.
- framebit 10y agoI've been on the job market in several industries before finding my way to software engineering. I can tell you that non-acknowledgement is absolutely the norm in pretty much any other industry, particularly in the case of online applications. Imagine firing off 100 applications through online portals, personal emails, responding to posts, going in person, etc and never, _ever_ hearing even a robo-response. It is soul-crushing. I felt like I was screaming into the void. Even though I've been in this industry awhile, the _luxury_ of being sought after in the job market still shocks me. Every time a recruiter reaches out to me on LinkedIn, even when they're clearly spamming, it is still mind-blowing. Every time I get a casual job offer from friends or acquaintances who are hiring on their teams, I'm flabbergasted. Back in the day, I would've been thrilled to hear even a "thanks but no thanks."
- antisthenes 10y agoIt's like the difference between being an attractive person vs non-attractive.
- cobookman 10y agoMy team ended up hiring a candidate found through the Who's Hiring post. I found the resumes I got to be better than those I get from HR on average.
- eli_gottlieb 10y agoI believe I answered Leaflabs' ad here in March 2015. I was put through the interview process and still work here as a Member of Technical Staff.
- djent 10y agoI've only ever gotten blanket spam from posting in "Who wants to be hired?"
- dewyatt 10y agoTry our blanket today! It is best blanket, used by astronaut!!
- rocgf 10y agoYep, my current job is with a company I found via "who's hiring". (I'm in the UK, outside London, if it matters)
- mobiuscog 10y agoThis is good to hear.
- soulnothing 10y agoWhen I was searching. I went through the listings and sent out a number of messages. Not bulk, but carefully looked at each company. Gauged my interest and figured out why I wanted to work there. Nary a response. I thought it was because I was a lurker, and didn't post before that point.
- phd514 10y agoDid you mention your HN handle in your application? I don't do that but I still get a pretty high response rate.
- soulnothing 10y agoAt the time I hadn't started commenting :). So didn't have a HN account to mention.
- manish_gill 10y agoYep. Sent an email a couple months back from a WhoIsHiring thread. Got hired after about 7 rounds. By a company 15 mins away from my house. :)
- kraftman 10y ago7 rounds?? Does that mean you go in on 7 seperate occasions?
- BhavdeepSethi 10y agoSeems like the standard 2 phone screens + 5 onsite interviews.
- cableshaft 10y ago5 onsite interviews? Since when is that 'standard'? Unless you mean one day with talking to 5 different people. I wouldn't consider that to be 5 separate 'rounds', though.
- ChemicalWarfare 10y ago+1. I actually went through this once (sort of - 5 phone interviews) but that is in no way standard. My story was - getting interviewed by progressively more senior folks with positive feedback on the spot from whoever I was talking to. So then finally after 4 rounds of technical interview calls I get to talk to the hiring manager who is telling me something along the lines of "the feedback has been awesome BUT we didn't expect to find someone this fast and now need to wait till the next hiring cycle".
- cgore 10y agoWe do the following: 1. look at resume 2. recruiter phone screen, just basic are you a human who knows how to answer the phone, usually 15-30 minutes 3. tech phone screen, 45 minutes 4. half-day in-person set of interviews, some tech and some not And then make a decision, although we'll filter out at each step.
- haraball 10y agoYep. Got hired by a German startup as a senior software developer, worked there remotely 3 years and quit last year. Our tech team grew from 3 to 10ish, and I think most were hired through a "who's hiring" post.
- autotune 10y agoNo, but I have had some fantastic companies reach out to me, just not the right position for one reason or another. http://angel.co http://angel.co ended up having the right fit though which I discovered through some other comment on HN.
- dorianm 10y agoYes <3 UseTrusted, Software Engineer Intern :)
- bostik 10y agoYup, came to Smarkets (https://smarkets.com/ https://smarkets.com/) 3 years ago via hiring thread. Before that got to a number of interviews through earlier ones. Some of our more recent engineers have come via the monthly thread too.
- phd514 10y agoI've gotten a pretty high response rate to my applications to HN Who's Hiring posts, but about half those companies end up ghosting me. I had good experiences (prompt, courteous, professional, etc.) with DigitalOcean and CrowdStrike though I did not receive an offer from either.
- erikb 10y agoIt sounds a little like you are disappointed about never having succeeded at finding a job via the monthly posts. Despite obvious reasons like lack of corresponding skills or lack of intention on the job poster's side this can have a lot of other reasons, though. Finding a good match and having the right ressources, department green lights, etc ready just at the time when you want to hire is also tough. Lots of things can go wrong. Hope you keep up trying!
- VeXocide 10y agoTwo years ago when the "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired?" thread appeared for the first time I wasn't quite happy where I was at, and posted my details. I was located in the Netherlands at the time and literally one of hundreds posting, thus I didn't have too high a hopes, but why not. A few local companies reached out, and I interviewed with one or two, but for whatever reason neither ended up working out. At that point I wrote it off and went on with life. Two months after the post someone from RethinkDB reached out explicitly mentioning it. It later turned out he had gone back through all the posts. After two phone interviews they flew me in, had a the hardest interview in my life to date, but ended up with an offer which I happily accepted. The rest is history as they say. I had a great time at RethinkDB until about two months ago when we unfortunately had to shut down.
- jaz46 10y agoI'm the guy from RethinkDB who found and hired Jeroen! I will say it's pretty rare, but when searching for a very particular skill set "Who wants to be hired" can totally work for finding new to mid-level devs.
- thaumasiotes 10y agoWhy are you looking for "a very particular skill set" in "new-level" devs?
- noescape 10y agoAnd, what is this particular skill set?
- fencepost 10y agoWell, at the time something in the list of "C++ (Boost, STL), Python, SQL (PostgreSQL, SQLite), git" caught his eye. Since it was RethinkDB I suspect the combination of C++ (which RethinkDB is written in), Python (one of the 4 languages for which there are/were "official" libraries), experience with 2 different DBMSs and an interest in "a challenge as a backend enginer to further hone my C++ skills" were probably all factors.
- ianvanness 10y agoWent through phone + video screen, in-person interview (they flew me down), and was finally hired several years back (May 2013 was the posting date, but I replied directly to an individual @apple.com email; can't find the original HN post) as a full time Sr Engineer at Apple through exactly this. I was living in Portland, OR at the time, so they paid for relocation too. Took a few weeks, but there was communication on both sides throughout.
- throwawayfdsj 10y agoAt my place of work we no longer post in Who's Hiring threads because we found the quality of engineers applying to be relatively poor. Based in London.
- om42 10y agoThat's interesting. Do you think its due to location, salary, or technical merit?
- sotojuan 10y agoA lot of people come to HN only for Who's Hiring and thus don't represent the average poster. While Who's Hiring not as bad as Indeed, it's still an open job listing so you're bound to get a lot of noise.
- pyb 10y agoWhere are you looking instead?
- mattmanser 10y agoWithout context, what does this mean? It could simply reflect the quality of your advert rather than the medium. For example, on yesterday's Who's Hiring I saw a London advert for a full stack dev with 4-5 years experience for £38k-£44k[1]. That's a very low salary for London. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12846786 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12846786
- user5994461 10y agoHonestly, all London companies who posted salary range are quite unimpressive... The ones around £40k are not even trying to recruit.
- eggie5 10y ago+1
- hamandcheese 10y agoI sent out around 9 emails yesterday, got back 3 responses (so far). Both responses came from ads that included real emails rather than jobs@ emails.
- om42 10y agoI did the same thing for the October thread and had a much better response rate for real emails versus applications/jobs@company. I ended applying to about 25, 15 direct emails, 5 HR emails (jobs@company), and 5 applications. Only about half of the direct emails got back, but the ones that did all ended up having interviews with (about 3/15 are in later stages of interviews or have an offer). 4/5 HR emails replied, only 2-3 were genuine and of that 1 got me an interview (ended up not being a good fit anyway). Of the 5 applications, I nearly got automated rejections within 24 hours :(. Even though the emails had lower response rates, they work much better in my experience. You get to talk to someone (usually an engineer or manager, sometimes a founder or exec) at the company. Wish you the best!
- busterarm 10y agoI got a couple of meetings and interviews from Who's Hiring posts but none of them resulted in offers. I'd still say it's my best and first channel for finding work beyond my network/relationships.
- nl 10y agoNo. But I did get flown to the US (from Australia) for an interview. It was for a DevRel position at a (quite successful) YC company. I've never done DevRel, but I did have a background in the field. Almost my communications was with the CTO.
- rahij 10y agoYep, I was hired as a software engineering intern from one of Scribd's Who is Hiring posts (also ended up interviewing at Stripe by contacting them from their post).
- blinkingled 10y agoThank you for asking this! I was thinking about what's the best way to ask something like this - I was too negative about the $subject to ask anything without offending people. I have been watching these for months now - for a long time just out of curiosity and recently because I'm starting to look for a new job. My own experience is that a single digit percentage of these jobs actually sound like there might be people who can interview for those if one had to check all tick marks on the skills and experience requirements faithfully! This to me is baffling and discouraging as I typically don't want to bother with jobs I can't check all boxes for even though I am fairly confident I could easily do those jobs! Anyone who was hired - can you comment on the delta between what the job posting asked for and what you actually had along with how closely what you actually did matched with what was asked for?
- CapnCrunchie 10y agoAt GitLab, we have this line at the bottom of our job postings: Avoid the confidence gap; you do not have to match all the listed requirements exactly to apply. We believe that while it would be nice to have someone that exactly checks all the boxes, we are willing to look at candidates that might not feel they are all the way there.
- blinkingled 10y agoYes, the occurrence of these was so slim that I do distinctly remember seeing that on the GitLab jobs page! Thank you for taking a realistic approach to hiring - I will see if I can find anything that excites me @GitLab!
- Yhippa 10y agoI'm impressed. This shows a lot of self-awareness. Makes me think that there's a big disconnect in hiring at companies where they're actually looking for people who check all the boxes and then complain about not filling positions.
- om42 10y agoThe way I approach the postings is I look for companies and positions I would be really interested in. Even if I don't meet the requirements, e.g. they want a senior engineer (I'll be a new grad), I'll apply anyways. The worst that could happen is I don't get a reply or a no, but sometimes they do reach back. Recently this led to some great conversations with senior engineers (good career advice and insights into the company) and them referring me internally to HR for when the company starts looking for new grads. There were a lot of no's and that can be attributed to me not being qualified for their positions due to lack of experience in certain fields/tech. For the ones I did get interviews with recently, I generally met about 80% of their requirements and maybe one or two of their reach requirements.
- philip1209 10y agoWe hired our designer through a who's hiring post earlier this year!
- achiang 10y agoI was hired 2 years ago by Angaza to be one of their early engineers. Found the role when I was idly trawling through the massive hiring thread one evening, mildly dissatisfied with my job at the time, but not really actively looking for a new job. The company's mission was exactly what I was looking for -- a chance to do good in the world with technology. I reached out via email, got a prompt response, and have been here since. We are still alive, still trying to lift people out of energy poverty, and still hiring. Our entry in the most recent thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12847949 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12847949
- kkamperschroer 10y agoI did a couple years ago. Attack Pattern (http://attackpattern.com/ http://attackpattern.com/). They are still alive and well, but I ultimately had to find a different job when I decided I wanted to go remote.
- gcd 10y agoI have. I think only sent emails to one or two companies in that month, and this one had me an offer in a couple weeks if not shorter. Much preferred their interview process to others. And.. I'm still working there a year and a half later with no intention of leaving any time soon! The people are great and things are going quite well. http://gladly.com http://gladly.com
- memoryhole 10y agoSeveral years ago, the company I worked for hired an awesome C++ dev we found from a listing I posted to "Who's Hiring". It definitely works. He was one of the most resourceful and talented developers we had.
- amackera 10y agoApplied for software developer position at Top Hat (https://tophat.com https://tophat.com). Ended up getting hired as their 2nd employee. Worked there for 5 years, after being promoted to VP Engineering and eventually Chief Architect. Saw the company go from 6 people to 120 people. Incredible ride!
- yread 10y agoI was doing the hiring for Netherlands Cancer Insitute I got maybe 40 replies with some really solid candidates. We did ~15 interviews and made a couple of offers. But the people we liked had too high salary requirements (or mine is too low, haha). We've tried to persuade them not everything is about money to no avail. I will definitely post the salary range in the ad next time. Apart from that it was a really pleasant experience and handling the emails was an interesting break from what I usually do.
- antisthenes 10y ago> But the people we liked had too high salary requirements (or mine is too low, haha) Not everything is about liking the candidate. You don't have to like them for them to do a good job, because if you don't hire the ones with high salary requirements, you end up with no one.
- sshumaker 10y agoWe (Credit Karma) hired two engineers from September's posting. One so far from October's (5 candidates are still in pipeline, more new grads). We've hired front-end, data engineers, and eng lead roles. A bunch of full stack engineers are in the pipeline. I personally respond to every candidate that reaches out (scott.shumaker at credit karma dot com), so that helps ensure they don't get lost in our HR pipeline.
- buckhx 10y agoOn the company side, I've only gotten scripted applications which is a bit disheartening. Going to thumb through the "Who wants to be hired" post for November and see if I get any good leads in there.
- Nexialist 10y agoEarlier this year I spent roughly three months job hunting exclusively through cold-emails based on Who's Hiring posts (I'm in the London area). I applied for 10 positions (and got my 10th - at a fairly large media company) Some numbers of reasons that I felt I didn't get through the hiring process at the positions I applied for: * Company changed their mind hiring for the position - 3 cases * Didn't get through due to insufficient experience - 2 cases * Didn't get through due to for poor performance on the hiring test - 3 cases * No response received - 1 case These numbers are a bit flaky since in the end it's a combination of factors that results in a yes/no decision. But I tried to roughly divide them into what I felt was the main "deciding factor" of the interview process. For background, I'm a backend / "full stack" developer with 5 years experience (Most of the places that I got filtered out for experience reasons were because I didn't have enough of Brand X, etc)
- greendragon 10y agoWere there any hints you noticed in retrospect that the insufficient experience or a bad hiring test results were probable? If I could somehow predict those experiences up front I think it would save myself and them time and anxiety by stopping short. The best I have on the experience bit is just being very honest up front with how familiar with that Brand I am rather than trying to skate by and stretch the truth e.g. "I can do C with classes so I know C++!"
- user5994461 10y agoYes. Working since 1 year for one of the company regularly posting in the "Who's hiring".
- jordancsmith 10y agoI've been at PillPack (pillpack.com) for more than three years now and I found them by searching for "Cambridge" in the June 2014 post.
- dripton 10y agoI've gotten two solid leads leading to interviews through "Who's Hiring" posts, but didn't end up taking either job. Company 1 wanted me for a remote position, but wanted to pay me about half my market rate. This is a casualty of the salary dance -- everyone is so busy hiding their numbers that sometimes you get too far into the process before you realize there's no way to make the numbers line up. If they'd listed a salary range on the original post, or I'd given a salary range in the initial contact, it would have saved everyone time. Company 2 brought me in for an interview, then went silent for a month, then re-contacted me to resume the process after I'd already taken another job. They're a small security startup, and were really busy due to a security emergency that flared up while I was interviewing, and I slipped through the cracks. Understandable in that case, I guess, but good engineers are rarely on the job market for long, and if you're not able to focus, you will have a hard time hiring them. (Unforgivable in a larger company that has full-time recruiters and HR people, which doesn't mean it doesn't happen all the time.)
- ktRolster 10y agoCompany 1 wanted me for a remote position, but wanted to pay me about half my market rate. Is it possible to get anywhere close to a Silicon Valley salary on a remote position?
- toddkazakov 10y ago~$100k is not unheard of
- gumby 10y agoSure, I always pay everybody the same (for a given position). I.e. paying for the job done, not for the needs. Else what do you take into account? "This person has no kids, so needs less cash." "This person has a vacation house; clearly need to cover those expenses". I always prefer local so if I'm hiring remote it's because of some skill I can't find locally. I want them to be a happy, productive employee, not to feel that they are getting a lesser deal. I also have a "no salary negotiation" rule since I do a lot of negotiating, while most people don't. If I'm hiring two Scala developers, why should one get paid more because they possess better negotiating skills when what I actually need from both of them is good Scala programming skills? (Not hiring at the moment -- at new company none of us are drawing any pay yet).
- MattGrommes 10y agoI did 5+ years ago. It was for a senior Java engineer position in one of the cities I was hoping to move to. Ended up being one of my favorite jobs.
- volkanh 10y agoYes.
- mccolin 10y agoI've gone through the interview process and received two job offers as a result of "Who's Hiring" posts. The posts tend to come from first parties that are motivated to hire talented new members for their teams, so the opportunities are very legit.
- ajaimk 10y agoYes! Got an internship with Twilio 5 years ago.
- avyfain 10y agoI got my current role at Apple via "Who wants to be hired," which, although not the same, shows the value of these threads.
- mcjiggerlog 10y agoI got an interview and offer through posting in a "Who wants to be hired" thread, although I ended up taking another offer.
- AustinBGibbons 10y agoI am a software engineer at Periscope Data (https://www.periscopedata.com https://www.periscopedata.com), and discovered the company through a Who's Hiring thread, and we have hired at least two other software engineers through HN Who's Hiring since then as well. I was searching for "scala" and they had the word "scalable" :-)
- FLGMwt 10y agoHah, I have the same problem, but the flip side. I'm searching the "who wants to be hired" posts on behalf of my company (https://www.rallyhealth.com https://www.rallyhealth.com). I search "scala" and get excited when I see 20 or so hits, but almost all of them are "scalable"
- personjerry 10y agoTry searching for "Scala " or "Scala." or "Scala,".
- DiThi 10y agoI was happy to discover Firefox now has a "whole words" option when searching.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- samatman 10y agoTry looking for Lua jobs. Turns out a lot of people want to evaluate hires...
- emilburzo 10y agoHmmm, that's some food for thought... maybe I should stop pushing my HN job search tool[1] You wouldn't have found your current job if you used it. [1] https://hnjobs.emilburzo.com/ https://hnjobs.emilburzo.com/
- kyleschiller 10y agoYup, sent a cold email with HN in the subject line and ended up with a job as a software engineer at a YC startup.
- intellegacy 10y agopretty sure DRChronos has been "hiring" for several years now only to put their interviewees through 2 day hackathons and then use the code they wrote
- misiti3780 10y agoI have gotten consulting gigs through it. Never looked for a full-time position
- orky56 10y agoWas that through the Who's Hiring or the Seeking Freelancer ones?
- maxwell 10y agoI was hired at Moveline as a software engineer (MEAN + CoffeeScript + Golang) back in the summer of '13 via HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5971762 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5971762 The company shut down in '14. A few former Moveliners and I co-founded Crater in early '15 (https://crater.co https://crater.co).
- umbs 10y agoI did not actually get a job, but reached out to 3 companies (Robinhood.io, Intel and can't recall third one) and all of them responded. Robinhood.io (it was 3-4 years back). Got a coding challenge on HackerRank. I did horribly and obviously did not make progress. Intel's position was in Portland, OR. I am in Bay Area. I inquired about working from Bay Area offices. The position required me to be onsite. Can't recall 3rd company. Email communications only and figured it doesn't work for us. So, I had 100% success in terms of responses, by far best acknowledgement rate.
- TheMog 10y agoA post from "the other side of the table" :). The previous company I worked at, I hired two people through who's hiring posts. We pretty much tried it out for about six months as we didn't have much luck through the more traditional channels our division's HR department used. So yes, there are real positions being filled through these posts. That said, just because it's on Hacker News and this is an informal place doesn't mean you don't need to put at least a little effort into your application. I don't think I ever received that many emails in response to a job posting that didn't even contain one complete sentence to go with the resume. I seem to remember that I received multiple emails from candidates that contained fewer than five words. The best one was the one that just contained a random link (presumably to his/her resume, but I didn't need to click on a potential phishing link that badly), no words, nothing else... The two people who ended up getting hired (one a very junior developer, the other one a mid-level developer) wrote informal cover emails that showed signs of intelligent life at the other end of the keyboard, much like you'd expect from someone trying to apply for a job :).
- freework 10y agoYou have to see it from th job hunter's perspective. It is very common to send out 20 resume's and maybe get a single response or two. It is very time consuming to write a custom multi-paragraph cover letter with every application. Eventually all job hunters learn that you get the same response rate when you write one sentence cover letters as you do when you put a lot of effort into them. Why spend so much effort when you don't have to?
- loteck 10y agoEventually all job hunters learn that you get the same response rate when you write one sentence cover letters as you do when you put a lot of effort into them. Weird way to look at it. I would think a company that would accept a one sentence cover letter would also accept a longer cover letter, but that the inverse wouldn't be true. As such, wouldn't a classic job seeker always sell to the longer-letter requirement, since they are otherwise automatically disqualifying themselves from an unknown percentage of employers?
- stevendaniels 10y agoI got hired at my current gig through a who's hiring ad. Our recruiter had sent me a message on LinkedIn, which I basically ignored, but when I saw the Who's Hiring post, I reached out and was eventually hired. I've even tried doing a "who's hiring" post myself, but it didn't produce strong candidates.
- meesles 10y agoI was hired from the monthly posts! Firepoint's Phil posted the ad when I was looking for post-grad employment. We chatted, they were exactly as described, and then they flew me out to meet in person. Couldn't have asked for a better team to work with, thanks HN!
- J41Manning 10y agoI actually got my current job at IBM Watosn through a Who's Hiring post. It stuck out to me because my hiring manager put his email in the post. Since I would be talking to an actual person rather than applying into a black hole, I decided to send an email asking for more details. A few months and several remote interviews later, I got an offer. I can't find the actual post anymore though.
- jorov 10y agoYep, currently transitioning to a company I found in the October thread.
- erex78 10y agoI've hired somebody directly from a who's hiring post. This was the post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7830111 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7830111. The developer was remote - we did a couple of phone screens and sent a contract over within a week or two. I still work with him and he's one of the best engineers I know.
- freework 10y agoThe job I currently have I got from a "who's hiring" post about 3 years ago. When I first started there was a team of 4, now it's just a team of two, me and the founder. Back in June 2016 I was told that the company couldn't pay me anymore so I had to find another job. I think I sent out 20 or so applications from the most recent "who's hiring" at the time and didn't get a single response.
- svec 10y agoOther side of the table: we've hired at least 2 people from the "Who's Hiring" posts at here at iRobot.
- TFortunato 10y agoHey I was going to post about iRobot, and you beat me to the punch again! On this - I was one of those hired by iRobot from one of these threads, and this was the guy who I first spoke to about the job!
- zerr 10y agoDamn, I was hoping you wouldn't find enough local people, would finally give up and put REMOTE in your postings... ;)
- vonmoltke 10y agoOut of curiosity, for what specialties? I appreciate your help in getting my resume in front of humans up there, but I'm still kinda upset I couldn't get anyone to even talk to me. Also, y'all better be nice to my first-cousin-one-removed-in-law.
- svec 10y agoBoth of the people that we hired through my iRobot posts are embedded software engineers (both on my team, actually). I'm sorry that we didn't get back to you, though - I saw that I replied to you when you asked about your status, but our HR people should have closed the loop with you too. That's our bad; my apologies! I think we've gotten a lot better at recruiting communication in the last couple of years, both for "yes" and "no" situations. Of course that doesn't help you from a while ago, but hopefully it's better for more recent candidates.
- jboggan 10y agoYes, my first real engineering job at Factual. I applied as a data scientist (not actually really knowing what that entailed) and was re-routed to be a data/software engineer, which ended up being a great fit. Once I was at Factual I kept running and updating the Who's Hiring post and picked up some other amazing candidates, my favorite of which now works at Google LA with me! It's definitely a worthwhile funnel.
- burger_moon 10y agoI just accepted a job kind of through this. It was with a big tech company but the recruiter ended up having me interview with a different team than the one advertised in the thread. I submitted a thread yesterday about doing reviews for who's hiring companies but it seems like it was deleted or I didn't submit it correctly. I think there should definitely be more open dialog directly related to these companies posting. I have had a lot of luck getting interviews through this process and I'm currently writing a blog post on how I approached it and tried to game my way in almost to interviews. After reading the post by TheMog about the emails they received I can see now why putting in a little effort goes a long way for this.
- dinedal 10y agoNot through the monthly post but I got hired at Vitrue because of this comment on HN getting me the lead: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2112938 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2112938
- spencerbrown 10y agoYes! I learned of Mixmax (https://mixmax.com https://mixmax.com) in a Who's Hiring post from last fall, interned with them from January to August of this year, and am returning early next year after I graduate. We're still hiring like crazy :).
- emilsedgh 10y agoI got contacted by an advertisement agency. I worked with them remotely for a year (until I decided to join a startup) Very nice people indeed. Projects varied in topics and difficulty. From editing HTML pages to managing RC Robots via internet and gathering/analyzing data from huge databases. Not sure if they want me to share more info. But I'm thankful to this monthly post for it. It was a nice gig.
- hellskitchendev 10y agoI hired someone who found our job listing on the "who's hiring" post and it worked out really well....
- facorreia 10y agoI was hired through a "who wants to be hired" post. I was looking for part-time work, provided my background, and got contacted by a great company. Not long after, we decided to make it full-time.
- mikebabineau 10y agoSpeaking from the other side, I've hired 10 people from HN over the past 5 years, 2 within the last 6 months. These have included some of my best hires. Currently, I see about 30 HN applicants per month. We interview roughly 30%. The rest are unqualified, demonstrated no understanding of or interest in what we do, and/or were spamming their resume. These get interviews: * Strong candidates who did their homework (this is always the best) * Strong candidates with minimal or lightly tailored emails * Borderline candidates who did their homework These get polite rejections: * Borderline candidates who did no homework * Unqualified candidates These get ignored: * Candidates who send blatantly templated emails * Candidates who apply via "email blasts" (e.g., BCC all recipients; send via an email campaign tool) I prefer to see both understanding of and interest in the role. Tell me why you're a fit and why you want to work here. A few sentences will suffice. Doing so: 1) improves the probability of an interview; and 2) for me, practically guarantees you a response.
- lonewolf_ninja 10y agoGood to know things from a recruiter's perspective! Thanks.
- wott 10y ago> Tell me [...] why you want to work here. This part always makes me laugh. The only possible true answer is usually "to get a job", and not much more. The applicant generally does not and cannot know about the company, nor about the job at that point. The only info about the company is some bullshit in the job posting; and on the company website, some info intended for clients, i.e. in advertising format, and a bit more of the same bullshit in the company description. The job is just described through technical requirements and a list of tasks. Tasks that you may or may not have to perform on a regular basis, you don't know. You cannot know which task will represent 90% of your work, and which one will in fact never show up, because it was there "in case", or to attract answers. There are so many different domains in computing that you generally don't know beforehand which will really interest you; and you often have no idea of what the specific domain in which the company works even is a thing. Anyway you could work the same way on the same satisfying job in various domains and trades, whatever these are. So, why this specific company? Because I need a job, this offer seems to fit me, I seem to fit it, the purpose of the job does not make me sick and the location is OK for me, the rest remains to be discovered. During the interview process, for example. But why this specific company, I cannot answer, for I don't care what its name is, and yet I have studied it more than most applicants who will write how much they'd love to work in company XXX to design YYY.
- slau 10y agoAbout 18 months ago I posted on "Who wants to be hired?" and saw that Realm was looking for people in the monthly "Who's hiring" thread. I think it was Tim ('ello mate, hope you got the bucket picture) who posted those on HN back then. I reached out to them, alongside a number of other startups that were interested in remote workers or had an office in Copenhagen (my SO and I wanted to move there from southern France). I got to the final stages of interviewing with a handful of companies before choosing Realm. I initially applied for an engineer position on their C++ backend database, but was offered a team lead position. I'm currently leading the Realm Object Server team in Copenhagen. We're always looking for great people around the globe, either remote, or through relocation packages.
- rsfinn 10y agoThe job listings on your web site don't suggest that remote work positions are available. If that's really the case, then I respectfully suggest updating the text. (I really appreciate the effort Realm has put into supporting the development community by hosting conference videos; you're definitely creating a lot of goodwill that way.)
- slau 10y agoIt looks like there's a change in strategy here, which goes against what I posted initially. I wasn't really aware of it, and it's still up for grabs on a case-by-case basis, but from the looks of it, we're now mainly interested in local candidates. Apologies if I created any confusion by claiming something without fact-checking first.
- manlio 10y agoYep - I was lucky enough to be hired by The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com https://www.theguardian.com) :) Oh, and we're still hiring! Happy to help if you have questions, or want to be referred. All positions are in London, UK.
- dxbydt 10y agoI got hired at Twitter(pre-IPO) through the monthly Who's Hiring post. Definitely the best outcome from multiple povs - career, money, learning, future-proofing. I would literally not be able to do what I am doing today if I hadn't clicked on that HN Who's Hiring thread & taken a chance.
- RickS 10y agoI got hired from a "want to be hired" type post, not replying to a company listing. I was hired recently as a product designer, and my understanding is that the CTO saw me in a thread and passed me on to the design team. Overall, a great experience, because I was talking to real people from the jump, rather than going through a recruiter/web form layer in the beginning. I've gotten many other inquiries from similar postings, but few were of interest. In general though, the answer to the question "do people respond to the postings" is a strong yes. --- The freelancing section is a different story. I've only gotten one serious lead ever from that, and he dropped off shortly after in search of cheaper labor. So it goes.
- ryanferg 10y agoI used to browse the "who's hiring" every month, even though I had a job I loved. I saw an ad for an MLB team (Astros) looking for an analyst, which was super interesting to me. I sent in an application, went through the process and ended up taking the job. I don't browse them anymore, there is no way there is anything better for me out there right now.
- jpan135 10y agoIndirectly. A friend pointed me to the forum when I was looking for a job - I reached out through the company website listed on a few posts and accepted an offer at one of them :)
- bogomipz 10y agoWhile I have not, I have had three experiences recently that I would like to relay for whatever it is worth. In the past years that I have responded to these monthly posts, three of them have progressed into multiple phone/Skype interviews and two of those multiple phone /Skype interviews have progressed to on site interviews one in San Francisco and one in Berlin. The one that consisted solely of multiple rounds of phone/Skype interviews went on over the course of a few months and had positive feedback each time. Very recently one of the cofounders emailed me and said they have decided that they aren't going to hire for this role at all. So it was interesting to see this company advertising the same position yesterday. The cofounder emailed me a week ago. The two interviews I had that progressed from multiple phone/Skype interviews to actual on site interviews were very similar. I felt that the onsite went very well and the feedback that I got from the recruiters was that "everyone really liked me" and "thought it was a good fit" and "how did I feel about it. In each of those I had mutual positive feedback and said I was interested in moving forward. What followed in both of these was unprofessional and disrespectful behavior. Recruiters responded with "Great, you will hear back from me by the end of the day" and we talked salary and relocation issues. And then days and weeks would go by with radio silence. Needless to say this puts the candidate in a really awkward position. Feeling that enough time had significantly passed I reached out to the recruiters and new assurances would come about they are waiting on something and they would be getting back in touch asap, by the end of the day or latest tomorrow etc. Then the dithering and silence would be being anew. All three of these companies had postings yesterday for the exact same positions. In fact all three perennially post these same positions on the "Who's Hiring" threads. Anyway, thanks for letting me share.
- rezashirazian 10y agoI got my job at YourMechanic as a Sr. Software Engineer by applying to a job posting on HN. It wasn't the monthly who's hiring thread but close enough.
- XaspR8d 10y agoApplied to about 11 HN jobs during my last job search (over the course of 2 different monthly posts). Only got acknowledgement from 3: - One said they decided to merge their two listings and I wasn't qualified for the new joint role. - One asked me to do a small programming challenge, but afterward indicated they were pursuing a local applicant (they had said upfront relocation would be covered). - One invited me for an on-site interview weeks later, but I had already taken my current job (found through Craigslist). I'm not upset at all for the behavior of the companies that did respond. Even if they were working the market, from my perspective they were very respectful. I am very pissed at the non-acknowledgements and it makes me more and more likely to start sending shotgun emails. (I definitely have crafted my cover letters carefully and researched the companies up til this point.) At the very least, I'm going to start being more extreme and aggressive in my prose, and skip traditional fluff. That said, I adore my current job, so I don't expect to be leaving anytime soon. :)
- vayeate 10y agoI have a similar experience. I do my homework, write a brief but specific and relevant intro letter, all together probably takes half an hour at least. Never hear back, not even a rejection email. This has been my experience with 10+ applications. I got a phone interview after one application and had the exact experience as your #2 - asked to do challenge, they hired someone immediately after giving me the challenge but didn't tell me. Wasted a weekend working on it.
- tptacek 10y agoFor a couple years at Matasano, the Hiring thread was our most successful recruiting tool.
- braydenm 10y agoIn May 2014 I got two onsite interviews and one offer from the "Who wants to be hired" thread.
- edoceo 10y agoI've hired three from these posts. I really wish every candidate had a one page lander that let me evaluate without clicking so many links.
- jack_zampolin 10y agoI found my job (InfluxData) through "Who's Hiring".
- karmakaze 10y agoFound my current gig at 500px through Cmd+F "Toronto". It was the most effective filter for finding progressive tech companies. Also interviewed at a couple other places. This was the most interesting by far. Started out as just a series of conversations regarding technologies/processes used at 500px and other places I've worked and the conversations evolved into an offer.
- akavi 10y agoI got a pre-senior year internship at PagerDuty through a Who's Hiring post back in 2011. Ended up converting to full time the next summer and working there for nearly four years. A+ experience, would apply through HN posts again. The post in question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2431094 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2431094
- owenversteeg 10y agoAs a freelancer, I've found lots of work through HN. My most recent posts [0] have gotten a decent amount of attention and I usually get emails for a few days after the posting. I find that most people from HN are my best clients, but a few are people who I have absolutely no interest working for (never reply to emails, low pay, confusing project specifications.) They rarely lie in the middle. I'd bet that freelancers (or people hiring freelancers) are way more successful than people looking for full-time jobs, because the process of hiring an employee usually involves a lot more people than just one "normal person" typing up a comment on HN - a handful of people will work together with budgeting, interviewing, salary discussions, HR, etc to get a person hired as opposed to a freelancer who can be hired by just one person who says "sounds good, here's the project, let's get started." [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12853391 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12853391
- nathanvanfleet 10y agoI have received 3 offers through "who's hiring" for a job as a iOS developer. As a Canadian I am still waiting for some VISA requirements to finalize the job I accepted and I will be moving to SF. I believe I got a lot more responses when applying through HN than I did elsewhere. My experience has been very good. If the VISA does not work... square one and I guess remote work again.
- cottonseed 10y agoI made one hire through Who's Hiring.
- zura 10y agoYes, several years ago I found a great REMOTE C++ job. The first contact, the interview process and the actual work - every step with this company was very enjoyable. The team, the most important factor for me personally, consisted of extremely talented, friendly and simply great people from around the world. The company is defunct now, but I still have a nostalgia of working with these guys and gals.
- 49531 10y agoMy current job is from a "who's hiring" post. The post was in the last July edition and I was hired this last August. It's also the best job I've ever had. So there's that.
- jakob223 10y agoI was hired for an internship through this last summer by a Boston-area startup.
- wglb 10y agoI ended up being hired as a result of hn conversations before who's hiring started. I have hired one person through who's hiring. Terrific results.
- huehehue 10y agoEarly in my job search, I sent a few emails out to companies through Who's Hiring. Turns out I was a bit under-qualified for the positions (college sophomore, they wanted post-terminal-degree types), but each chat was a positive experience. Maybe 1 in 5 stopped replying before we could have a serious talk.
- bahmboo 10y agoYes, and I wrote a short informal introductory email along with my resume. If you don't understand the problem from the perspective of the person doing the hiring you don't come across as a good problem solver. Hiring is a social human transaction.
- zeusk 10y agoI almost got hired. I had a very good phone interview and then an interesting set of coding questions with Silicon Valley Bank. Unfortunately, before we could meet in person and possibly have an offer - I got an offer from a startup I really liked but they wanted me to respond within the next few days. Given that my start date was less than three weeks out, I accepted the offer and had to quit the process but nonetheless it was quite a positive experience.
- greendragon 10y agoA few years ago I contacted a few people, and got contacted myself a few times with a "who wants to be hired" post. Some of those led to interviews, the one that led to a job was from being contacted through my "who wants to be hired" post.
- pryelluw 10y agoYes, I have gotten contracts (not salaried jobs).
- dcre 10y agoI did! I guess the title was "generalist hacker type." Here's the original post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7325886 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7325886
- Cyranix 10y agoYes, twice. First I was hired for a mid-level mostly-remote web dev position at Moveline and stayed there roughly a year until the company folded. My current job at Socrata, where I've been quite happy for the past 18 months, also came via a monthly HN jobs thread; it has been mostly doing frontend web dev (but with enough variety). If I find myself in need of employment again, I will undoubtedly turn to the jobs thread again.
- denisnazarov 10y agoWe've hired two amazing (remote) ML and Distributed Systems engineers at Mediachain Labs from "Who's Hiring". We try to post every month. They were both excited about our vision and finding them in the wild like that was a perfect fit! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12846907 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12846907
- qrohlf 10y agoYep, my current gig (ridewithgps.com) I found through a "who's hiring" post. Didn't have to move, I have a 15 minute bike ride to work every day and get to work with great people in a fun industry.
- chipgap98 10y agoI got a job offer in 2015 from a company I found through their who is hiring post. I also have had lots of informal conversations and a few other interviews from those posts
- austinl 10y agoI found an internship, and my roommate has found his last two full-time jobs through "Who's hiring?". I haven't checked the thread recently, but I appreciated the early days when some companies had a filter for people coming from HN (e.g. "email hn@yourcompany.com"). It felt like there was some sort of community. Now there are probably 1k+ posts in those threads so I'm guessing that feeling is gone, but I still recommend it to friends that are looking.
- vayeate 10y agoI got an interview through one and wound up spending an entire weekend frantically working through their "assessment project" only to be told on Monday morning that they hired someone else, before even looking at my work. I don't blame HN for this, just sharing my experience. Not sure whether I'd be willing to do assessment projects in the future.
- blahshaw 10y agoI've definitely been interviewed, never hired though.
- ekimekim 10y agoIn my most recent job search, I drew from the Who's Hiring thread almost exclusively. I probably contacted about 10-15 companies, of which I heard back from about 5, did the full round of interviews from 2, and got hired.
- retube 10y agoTo those of you remarking on the lack of response to applications: 1) recruiters get a lot of applications. 2) it's risky providing feedback. "Unlikely to be a team fit" could lead to discrimination claims.
- cliffy 10y agoI obtained my current position through a "Who's hiring" post, back from around the fall 2014 time frame. I currently work as a full-time remote software developer for Rackspace's OnMetal product (https://www.rackspace.com/cloud/servers/onmetal https://www.rackspace.com/cloud/servers/onmetal), which can be succinctly described as a bare-metal cloud. It's been an enjoyable position in many dimensions: interesting work, open-source focused development, a large degree of autonomy and flexibility, and highly competent teammates. I believe the main reason I got a phone interview was due to the email I wrote in response to that post. It described my most recent professional experience in terms of how it challenged me to grow as a software developer, an overview of how it worked and what technologies I used to build it, and what value that work ultimately provided. That modicum of effort was well-rewarded. Actually getting hired also depended on doing fairly well during the subsequent interview process, but that process wouldn't have happened without standing out somehow in that initial interaction. tl;dr: Write a good cover letter!
- nicolashahn 10y agoTwice, actually. The only two engineering jobs I've had so far. First time: Sqor Sports (~50 person startup), I was an entry level 'Platform Engineer.' Sent an email with my resume, got on a Skype call with the CTO, talked about some code on my Github. Then went in for an in person interview, talked to him, VP of Engineering, and the head of DevOps who would eventually be my boss. Only technical questions were about linked lists. Learned a lot, made friends and connections over the 7 months I was there. Then the company had a huge round of layoffs which I survived, but knew the company was going downhill, so I started looking again. The first of the month came around, and a couple days later I got a response from another email I sent via a 'Who's Hiring' HN post, a company by the name of Distribute (~20 person startup). Showed the CTO some of my code on Github again, then met in person, did a very quick, to the point interview. Was asked to implement DFS in python, took 5 minutes. Talked a bit about Python modules and unit testing and in about half an hour I had a job offer as a Python Engineer, with a salary 1.5x the previous company. The entire process from my first email to the offer took less than a day. Gave my two weeks and I've been working there ever since.
- throwawayosiu1 10y agoThrowaway from my main account. I am a recent grad and I was looking for a job since May to Sept. I applied to a lot of places from the HN Who's hiring threads. I thought I'd post my stats below: Remote: I applied to around 25 of these posts - I got only ~3 replies. * Coinbase: Had a hacker rank challenge that didn't work seem to work (and was disqualified) * Hola Networks: Extremely slow & async (took almost a month) - Google Docs code test (2 questions - was not allowed to use an external editor or compile my code) and the contact refused to talk to me before I had complete this challenge. Now for in-person local interviews (in and around Toronto): I must have applied to over 50 companies posted in that timeframe. A few rejected at first reply (needed more experience although the posting itself didn't mention how much experience was needed), a few didn't bother replying and finally of those who did reply (~10): * 1st interview stage: went to about 5 companies (rejected for culture fit, not enough experience, didn't do well at the white board [0]). Others made me use hacker rank or other similar tools. * 2nd Stage: white boards (most went well apart from [0]). One hired an internal referral (and rejected me). * 3rd Stage: Rejected because they had better candidates. One offered me a Job Offer (but not in my field at all - it was a call center support role - they why even interview my coding skills? :/) Notes: Overall, while I didn't have a lot of success at HN Who's hiring, the quality of interviews was much much better than from other places I had applied. If I were looking for a job again, I'd definitely use it as a source of Jobs. [0] - It was at an American car manufacturer: First stage: phone call with coding questions over the phone (and verified against answers his paper) and 2nd stage: in person, they kept asking me THE EXACT DEFINITIONS of various stuff in Java (I explained what they were, and what they did but they were not the exact definition as in Wikipedia - WHICH THEY WERE VIEWING AS THEY WERE INTERVIEWING ME)
- mojoe 10y agoInterestingly, I got a job as a senior data scientist at Oracle via a "who's hiring" post, and I found out later that my hiring manager wasn't aware of it at the time. A contractor at an Oracle acquisition posted that the acquisition had open reqs, and I emailed him. He forwarded my info to a recruiter, who passed me along to the hiring manager. When talking with my manager later, we were both amused to discover that he thought I'd been approached by the recruiter, and didn't know about the HN thread.
- markbnj 10y ago[raises hand] SRE, not going to post the name of the company but its a distributed org and former YC alumni company. It's only been a few months but I am very happy there so far, and the process that resulted from reading their post here was one of the more enjoyable interviewing experiences I've had.
- ud0 10y ago- Gotten a contract gig - My current Job was found here I'm a front-end engineer.
- factorialboy 10y agoI got one, back in 2012.
- janbernhart 10y agoI've hired about 10 folks via HN in the past years (not going to share names for obvious reasons). The average quality is really good, better than any other 'channel' i've used.
- kentosi 10y agoYes, I got hired in my current role through HN. Even moved countries for it (Australian now residing in NYC).