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How on earth do people have these experiences? I have to submit multiple hundreds of applications to get one interview. Throwaway because it could turn into mu

How on earth do people have these experiences? I have to submit multiple hundreds of applications to get one interview. Throwaway because it could turn into multiple thousands if that fact is linked to my identity.

marcinzm 7y ago
In general don't blindly apply unless you have no choice. Use your network, have people refer you, respond to recruiters, etc. Someone you know may know someone who can refer you and so on. That said, going through recruiters alone should give you decently high interview rates. Assuming you have some experience and so on. If it's not then your resume needs work. For whatever reason, hiring manager look at it and don't want to talk to you further.
- non-entity 7y ago
  I've never get good recruiters. It's always some underpaid external recruiter trying to pass anyone off for some low paying, and probably mibd-killing position. The kind the heavily editorilzaze you resume unsolicited so that it matches the position description exactly and the description they send you have glaring typos and theres a small percentage its even relevant to your experience. Everytime I've tried to follow through with one it's just ended in nothing, they dont even give you straight answers most of the time when asked a question
  - zebnyc 7y ago
    Agreed. This is part of the reason why I refuse to work with third party recruiters any longer. A few more are: a) They cold call you in a way which makes it obvious they don't respect your schedule. b) They just want to shoe horn you into a role, get the commission and keep moving. c) Some third party recruiters get offended when I tell them that I am also trying to get interviews on my own without them or through other third party recruiters. d) I have a sneaking suspicion that third party recruiters are paid if the candidate stays for 3 months. So if things were not to go perfect in the first few months then the company might be more inclined to fire you to save the commission.
    - Consultant32452 7y ago
      When I get a cold call i ask them to send an email with the job description and salary range and inform them I don't reply to job descriptions without a salary range. If they don't send it I block their phone number as spam. This filter has led to me having decent experience. Very rarely do they comply.
      - theonething 7y ago
        Most 3rd party recruiters I've worked with straight out lied about the salary range of the positions they were shilling. I don't work with 3rd party recruiters anymore.
        Consultant32452 6y ago
        You can fix that by having a contractually guaranteed maximum overhead they can charge for you. Make it a % and it incentives them to max out your pay. You can probably only demand those kinds of terms of you're highly sought after though.
        scarface74 6y ago
        The recruiter doesn’t work for you. Their contract is with the company. You’re the product.
- t_1589165433 7y ago
  I'd love to carefully tailor applications to jobs I'm suited for, get references through people, etc. Unfortunately, when I've tried this, I've been completely ignored or one-liner email rejected if I'm lucky, and it's a lot of effort - so my only option is huge volume, which means I can't carefully craft anything.
  - eel 7y ago
    If I may offer a suggestion, what works for me is that at the start of a job search, I first make a very large resume, with several excess bullet points and detailed lists of technologies. I am the only one that sees this version of my resume. Then, for every job I apply for, I cut out all of the uninteresting bullet points and reduce irrelevant terms for that job description until my resume is about a page long. For instance, if I'm applying for a Node.js role, I minimize my past Java and .NET experience (I may mention each just once to show a little bit of breadth) so that my JavaScript experience shows through more. Likewise, if I apply to a Java role, I minimize my JavaScript experience. After I apply to a few companies, I can easily reuse resumes with little to no modifications. The goal is to hit as many job requirements in the job description as I have experience for without overwhelming the recruiters and hiring manager with irrelevant information. I only submit cover letters if they are required, or if I have a unique connection that I can bring up (e.g., having met the hiring manager at a recent meetup).
    - non-entity 7y ago
      > For instance, if I'm applying for a Node.js role, I minimize my past Java and .NET experience (I may mention each just once to show a little bit of breadth) so that my JavaScript experience shows through more. What if you dont have any JS experience, but have say several years working on .NET and Java. Removing that experience makes it looks like you're an entry level candidate, when in reality theres actually a decent amount of transferable skill between the tech in question and if you have enough informal experience with Node (through personal projects, etc.) you should have little issue switching.
      - 6y ago
MattGaiser 7y ago
I'm a junior dev and my ratio last year when finding a new grad position was about 1 interview per 10 applications. I suspect you are doing something very wrong there. And that was primarily with blind online applications. If you would like a hand or just want someone to read over your resume and see, my email is 13mdg5@queensu.ca. Would be happy to help.
- wolco 7y ago
  I found this to be true depending on job source. Local positions depending on the match can be 8 / 10. Remote roles in other countries. Indeed 1 in 25. Stackoverflow 1 in 100. Angelist 2 in 10 (best 10) then 1 in 25.
zebnyc 7y ago
I feel you. Pre-pandemic I would get hit up pretty often by recruiters. Now the companies which have responded to my job application have dropped to a trickle (for an initial recruiter call). Most are auto-rejections. For reference, I have also been internally referred in multiple companies including 3 FAANG style companies. Absolutely crickets on that front. What woke me up was when I got rejected after the recruiter call with SurveyMonkey. That was whenI realized my pre-pandemic /recession attitude wouldn't hold any more and I had to show interest / motivation / better prepared at every stage and not just when the tech rounds rolled around. Since then I have been able to make progress with the few callbacks that I am getting now. Hope that helps.
JustARandomGuy 7y ago
Tell us about yourself. Are you early/mid/late career, what types of jobs you're going for, locations, etc. If you're looking for advice, it really depends on where you are in your career.
cortesoft 7y ago
What is your experience level and location? For me, every job after my first one (15 years ago) has been via reaching out to the people I have worked with before. Do you have people you have worked with who are at new places?
- wolco 7y ago
  The problem with that approach is you get less broad based experience and limit your circle.
jmchuster 7y ago
You always want to be working with warm leads. I've only ever applied through the following: - college OCR postings - a recruiting firm run by people i personally know (specializing in smaller startups) - companies that ex-co-workers work at - FAANG recruiters that reached out via LinkedIn - personalized emails from in-house recruiters or hiring managers So, in all these cases, I'm already connected with someone who is incentivized to get me hired, and I start off with a recruiter screen or initial technical screen, depending on the company. And then from there, it's up to your own skills at interviewing (which are slightly correlated with your skills as an engineer). If I was just randomly dropping resumes everywhere, no way I would ever even make it to that first screening call. You need to be paired with someone who's going to handhold your resume through the whole process until you are either hired or bomb your interview.
adamredwoods 7y ago
I forget what my actual stats are, but it was difficult for me, too, but I did get a successful and good job. I think it was 55 resumes- 11 contact made/ tech exams - 21 rejections - 6 interviews - 1 offer. (about 40 days) I am bad at technical interviews, but I got better the more I did them. Keep at it! You can do this! :)
sergiotapia 7y ago
in charge of hiring engineers, send me your resume at stapia@joinpapa.com and I can provide pointers to help you polish your CV. please use PINEAPPLE in subject line so I can find you easily.
silveroriole 7y ago
Is America completely saturated with developers or something? If so how are their salaries still so high? In the UK I can safely say I’ve gotten an interview for every job I’ve applied for. I’m not an amazing programmer, it’s just that the general quality of applicants is very low (I’ve been on the recruiting side before). Yet I see this “I’ve sent hundreds of resumes” problem on HN frequently.
- mywittyname 6y ago
  I'm not batting 1.000 for interviews/submission, but probably over 0.800. I'm also not a terribly great developer. I think this is more a measure of risk tolerance than developer skill. I don't generally apply for highly competitive jobs, nor ones which I'm am not clearly qualified for. My strategy is normally to find jobs that are looking for candidates with a specific skillset and focus on that. Recently this has been AWS/Cloud development skills. I think some people are not so reserved and conservative. They either want to break into a specific field for which they are currently under-qualified (like data science), or just apply for jobs that have a significant number of excellent candidates in the application pool.
- mixmastamyk 6y ago
  Salaries are that high because only 1 person in a hundred gets those jobs. Winner is a somewhat smart one, lucky enough to have solved the random questions the interviewers cooked up, in the last week. Interviewer proceeds to imply the other 99 are morons. Some of them are, but all are unlucky.
Vadoff 7y ago
It's a lot harder for junior engineers since the market is saturated at entry level. I'm a senior engineer, and I feel I get a 80%+ response rate.
gitgud 6y ago
If you're submitting hundreds of applications, it's unlikely your'e spending hours on each application (which you probably should be) Each resume and cover letter needs to be customized for each company. It needs to fulfil each of the roles and demonstrate compelling evidence (projects) of how you meet the requirements. It's amazingly clear if the resume is not written for a specific job and will most likely be immediately discarded from consideration. So why bother sending all of them then? More time on less applications leads to more interviews
yxhuvud 6y ago
People are different. I had the exactly opposite take - I reacted because he sent so many applications and got so many rejections. The 20 or so applications he wrote is probably about equal to the amount I have written in my entire career (10+ years at 5+ different places. Not a frequent job-hopper though, two of those positions have 8+ years put together).

marcinzm 7y ago

In general don't blindly apply unless you have no choice. Use your network, have people refer you, respond to recruiters, etc. Someone you know may know someone who can refer you and so on. That said, going through recruiters alone should give you decently high interview rates. Assuming you have some experience and so on. If it's not then your resume needs work. For whatever reason, hiring manager look at it and don't want to talk to you further.

non-entity 7y ago
I've never get good recruiters. It's always some underpaid external recruiter trying to pass anyone off for some low paying, and probably mibd-killing position. The kind the heavily editorilzaze you resume unsolicited so that it matches the position description exactly and the description they send you have glaring typos and theres a small percentage its even relevant to your experience. Everytime I've tried to follow through with one it's just ended in nothing, they dont even give you straight answers most of the time when asked a question
- zebnyc 7y ago
  Agreed. This is part of the reason why I refuse to work with third party recruiters any longer. A few more are: a) They cold call you in a way which makes it obvious they don't respect your schedule. b) They just want to shoe horn you into a role, get the commission and keep moving. c) Some third party recruiters get offended when I tell them that I am also trying to get interviews on my own without them or through other third party recruiters. d) I have a sneaking suspicion that third party recruiters are paid if the candidate stays for 3 months. So if things were not to go perfect in the first few months then the company might be more inclined to fire you to save the commission.
  - Consultant32452 7y ago
    When I get a cold call i ask them to send an email with the job description and salary range and inform them I don't reply to job descriptions without a salary range. If they don't send it I block their phone number as spam. This filter has led to me having decent experience. Very rarely do they comply.
    - theonething 7y ago
      Most 3rd party recruiters I've worked with straight out lied about the salary range of the positions they were shilling. I don't work with 3rd party recruiters anymore.
      - Consultant32452 6y ago
        You can fix that by having a contractually guaranteed maximum overhead they can charge for you. Make it a % and it incentives them to max out your pay. You can probably only demand those kinds of terms of you're highly sought after though.
        scarface74 6y ago
        The recruiter doesn’t work for you. Their contract is with the company. You’re the product.
t_1589165433 7y ago
I'd love to carefully tailor applications to jobs I'm suited for, get references through people, etc. Unfortunately, when I've tried this, I've been completely ignored or one-liner email rejected if I'm lucky, and it's a lot of effort - so my only option is huge volume, which means I can't carefully craft anything.
- eel 7y ago
  If I may offer a suggestion, what works for me is that at the start of a job search, I first make a very large resume, with several excess bullet points and detailed lists of technologies. I am the only one that sees this version of my resume. Then, for every job I apply for, I cut out all of the uninteresting bullet points and reduce irrelevant terms for that job description until my resume is about a page long. For instance, if I'm applying for a Node.js role, I minimize my past Java and .NET experience (I may mention each just once to show a little bit of breadth) so that my JavaScript experience shows through more. Likewise, if I apply to a Java role, I minimize my JavaScript experience. After I apply to a few companies, I can easily reuse resumes with little to no modifications. The goal is to hit as many job requirements in the job description as I have experience for without overwhelming the recruiters and hiring manager with irrelevant information. I only submit cover letters if they are required, or if I have a unique connection that I can bring up (e.g., having met the hiring manager at a recent meetup).
  - non-entity 7y ago
    > For instance, if I'm applying for a Node.js role, I minimize my past Java and .NET experience (I may mention each just once to show a little bit of breadth) so that my JavaScript experience shows through more. What if you dont have any JS experience, but have say several years working on .NET and Java. Removing that experience makes it looks like you're an entry level candidate, when in reality theres actually a decent amount of transferable skill between the tech in question and if you have enough informal experience with Node (through personal projects, etc.) you should have little issue switching.
    - 6y ago

MattGaiser 7y ago

I'm a junior dev and my ratio last year when finding a new grad position was about 1 interview per 10 applications. I suspect you are doing something very wrong there. And that was primarily with blind online applications. If you would like a hand or just want someone to read over your resume and see, my email is 13mdg5@queensu.ca. Would be happy to help.

wolco 7y ago
I found this to be true depending on job source. Local positions depending on the match can be 8 / 10. Remote roles in other countries. Indeed 1 in 25. Stackoverflow 1 in 100. Angelist 2 in 10 (best 10) then 1 in 25.

zebnyc 7y ago

I feel you. Pre-pandemic I would get hit up pretty often by recruiters. Now the companies which have responded to my job application have dropped to a trickle (for an initial recruiter call). Most are auto-rejections. For reference, I have also been internally referred in multiple companies including 3 FAANG style companies. Absolutely crickets on that front. What woke me up was when I got rejected after the recruiter call with SurveyMonkey. That was whenI realized my pre-pandemic /recession attitude wouldn't hold any more and I had to show interest / motivation / better prepared at every stage and not just when the tech rounds rolled around. Since then I have been able to make progress with the few callbacks that I am getting now. Hope that helps.

JustARandomGuy 7y ago

Tell us about yourself. Are you early/mid/late career, what types of jobs you're going for, locations, etc. If you're looking for advice, it really depends on where you are in your career.

cortesoft 7y ago

What is your experience level and location? For me, every job after my first one (15 years ago) has been via reaching out to the people I have worked with before. Do you have people you have worked with who are at new places?

wolco 7y ago
The problem with that approach is you get less broad based experience and limit your circle.

jmchuster 7y ago

You always want to be working with warm leads. I've only ever applied through the following: - college OCR postings - a recruiting firm run by people i personally know (specializing in smaller startups) - companies that ex-co-workers work at - FAANG recruiters that reached out via LinkedIn - personalized emails from in-house recruiters or hiring managers So, in all these cases, I'm already connected with someone who is incentivized to get me hired, and I start off with a recruiter screen or initial technical screen, depending on the company. And then from there, it's up to your own skills at interviewing (which are slightly correlated with your skills as an engineer). If I was just randomly dropping resumes everywhere, no way I would ever even make it to that first screening call. You need to be paired with someone who's going to handhold your resume through the whole process until you are either hired or bomb your interview.

adamredwoods 7y ago

I forget what my actual stats are, but it was difficult for me, too, but I did get a successful and good job. I think it was 55 resumes- 11 contact made/ tech exams - 21 rejections - 6 interviews - 1 offer. (about 40 days) I am bad at technical interviews, but I got better the more I did them. Keep at it! You can do this! :)

sergiotapia 7y ago

in charge of hiring engineers, send me your resume at stapia@joinpapa.com and I can provide pointers to help you polish your CV. please use PINEAPPLE in subject line so I can find you easily.

silveroriole 7y ago

Is America completely saturated with developers or something? If so how are their salaries still so high? In the UK I can safely say I’ve gotten an interview for every job I’ve applied for. I’m not an amazing programmer, it’s just that the general quality of applicants is very low (I’ve been on the recruiting side before). Yet I see this “I’ve sent hundreds of resumes” problem on HN frequently.

mywittyname 6y ago
I'm not batting 1.000 for interviews/submission, but probably over 0.800. I'm also not a terribly great developer. I think this is more a measure of risk tolerance than developer skill. I don't generally apply for highly competitive jobs, nor ones which I'm am not clearly qualified for. My strategy is normally to find jobs that are looking for candidates with a specific skillset and focus on that. Recently this has been AWS/Cloud development skills. I think some people are not so reserved and conservative. They either want to break into a specific field for which they are currently under-qualified (like data science), or just apply for jobs that have a significant number of excellent candidates in the application pool.
mixmastamyk 6y ago
Salaries are that high because only 1 person in a hundred gets those jobs. Winner is a somewhat smart one, lucky enough to have solved the random questions the interviewers cooked up, in the last week. Interviewer proceeds to imply the other 99 are morons. Some of them are, but all are unlucky.

Vadoff 7y ago

It's a lot harder for junior engineers since the market is saturated at entry level. I'm a senior engineer, and I feel I get a 80%+ response rate.

gitgud 6y ago

If you're submitting hundreds of applications, it's unlikely your'e spending hours on each application (which you probably should be) Each resume and cover letter needs to be customized for each company. It needs to fulfil each of the roles and demonstrate compelling evidence (projects) of how you meet the requirements. It's amazingly clear if the resume is not written for a specific job and will most likely be immediately discarded from consideration. So why bother sending all of them then? More time on less applications leads to more interviews

yxhuvud 6y ago

People are different. I had the exactly opposite take - I reacted because he sent so many applications and got so many rejections. The 20 or so applications he wrote is probably about equal to the amount I have written in my entire career (10+ years at 5+ different places. Not a frequent job-hopper though, two of those positions have 8+ years put together).