3 ms·
Ask HN: A lot of jobs, but little reputation. How to build it up?
I can't stay long enough in one job to be considered a "known quantity" that can be recalled upon to vouch for good work. To make matters worse, I usually lose/finish my current job before getting an offer for the next. 7 jobs, but I never get jobs through recommendations. It's always been some sort of blind job application, and I'm tired of the rat race. I'm a software engineer with a non-STEM degree but does the degree not matter much anymore(?). A lot of the problem would be due to the fact that I've only taken shorter-term jobs, all at very small companies.
Here's an summary of my work history as a programmer:
Held a total of 7 jobs over 11 calendar years. 90% web dev work. 5 of those are contractor (only 2 of which are 30-40 hrs/week), one short full-time job and one part-time job (those two were 8 and 10 years ago respectively). I might spend anywhere from 2 to 20 months unemployed in between. Out of all these jobs, I made connections from the 2nd job, and current job. But they usually don't know anyone that is hiring when I contact them, nor do they really contact me first about work.
So I am at a standstill on how to build up my reputation after so much time spent not building it. I can see myself with two options:
* Return to college and complete a CS degree as a BS or MS. Use the resources in college to network with people. Talk to professors, join career-oriented clubs, go to job fairs, hackathons and take internships, convert to full-time.
* Harder route: Apply to larger companies for full-time roles, and interview prep. I don't know of any good reliable sources for reading your interview approach. I'm talking to local developers through a Slack channel to see if anyone has time to mock interview, but opening up time is hard.
I am open to other options besides these two. Let me know what I should do to build that network effectively, and get better leads to jobs without cold applying so I don't have to be in the rat race forever.
- PaulHoule 7y agoYou have to rethink the work you do or you will stay in the same traps. Here's what I learned doing a PhD. If you have an obsessive interest in something and put in an effort into something you can make "something that I've never seen before" that makes a good demo in a few months. Larger firms are more stable than small firms, possibly more likely to offer health insurance and other benefits. However there are smaller firms that are better to work with than some others. The consultant kind of company is a tough biz to be in because of agency problems between you and your tower of bosses and them and their tower of bosses. Work on interview prep should be as much about social skills as technical. I used to joke that you could pass any data science question with "look it up in the hash table" or "look it up in the literature". I failed to define the word "Regularization" in an interview with a team and I did not fail the interview because I was too busy regularizing things. Showing enthusiasm is good.
- dafrelencer 7y agoI have worked at small firms all the time but I rarely feel like I've done much impact. If I did I would ostensibly have more people vouching for my work and getting more interviews via referrals. But I don't have this reputation, so it seems like I'm a major outlier. A person who has only worked for small companies but nevertheless feeling disposable or mundane in the grand scheme of things. I did not learn the importance of creating value. Maybe it's due to my perpetual contractor status? As never working legally as an employee, I'm not expected to have much stake in the business, or its decision-making. I didn't intend to always be a contractor. I took a contract-to-hire job right out of school, but the "hire" part never came. The company moved the goalposts. > Work on interview prep should be as much about social skills as technical. This is exactly what I mean about having trouble finding good reliable resources for reading one's interview approach. There is no structured interviewing platform that focuses on soft skills, that I know of. No "cracking the soft skills interview" book.
- PaulHoule 7y agoRead this guy's work https://job-interview-answers.com/job-interview-tips/about-bob-firestone/ https://job-interview-answers.com/job-interview-tips/about-b... He sounds like a crazy marketer but he knows what he doing.
- cimmanom 7y agoIt sounds like you’re being let go from a lot of jobs. What feedback are you getting about why?
- ccajas 7y agoUsually I'm let go because they don't need the additional help, or that they reverted to a different tech stack and prefer hiring someone already familiar with it instead of giving me time to learn it. Plus it's easier for a company to let go a contractor than to fire an employee.
- cimmanom 7y agoAh, it wasn’t clear from your post that these were contract positions. Those are generally expected to be short. Have you looked for/are you interested in full time work? It’s not clear to me what problem you’re trying to solve.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- dafrelencer 7y ago>It’s not clear to me what problem you’re trying to solve. The original post lays out the problem and also the question for the solution I want.