6 ms·

I was laid off in August 2022, and it took me 6 months to find a new job. I was able to land a decent number of interviews but I interviewed poorly and didn't g

by SCUSKU 3y ago

I was laid off in August 2022, and it took me 6 months to find a new job. I was able to land a decent number of interviews but I interviewed poorly and didn't get any offers. Doing interview prep actually helped a lot -- now having been on the other side it is very apparent when someone hasn't prepared and practiced interviewing. It really is a skill in and of itself. I found my current job through the January HN Who's Hiring post. This company doesn't post anywhere except HN. Would definitely recommend that since the August post is coming out soon! This experience inspired me to build a tool that uses AI to match your resume to the best matching jobs: https://hnresumetojobs.com/ https://hnresumetojobs.com/ Give it a try, maybe it'll help you! Best of luck, it truly is a grind and is emotionally taxing -- but you WILL find something soon.

InvOfSmallC 3y ago
Hey, I tried your website, it selected 314 jobs. Doesn't look like is matching correctly. Or I am a jack of all trades.
- ulfw 3y ago
  No the website doesn't work at all. It shows me the same 314 jobs. Not a single one relevant.
  - SCUSKU 3y ago
    Hey, sorry to hear it's not working for you -- would be happy to look more into the problem! Could you shoot me an email with your resume attached? My email is in my HN profile.
- SCUSKU 3y ago
  Hey would be happy to look more into it -- my email is in my HN profile, would appreciate if you sent me your resume there.
Dylan16807 3y ago
> now having been on the other side it is very apparent when someone hasn't prepared and practiced interviewing. It really is a skill in and of itself. And now that you can recognize that skill in isolation, do you use it as a major factor when choosing candidates? If you do, why? Do you think the people interviewing you could recognize that you were specifically bad at interviewing, and not at everything?
- SCUSKU 3y ago
  You'll have to forgive me here, I was only drawing on one experience when talking about being on the other side of things. So I am generalizing based only on one experience, however, with that said, I think the unfortunate reality is just that we as humans do bias toward wanting to hire people who are in fact able to communicate well and demonstrate their abilities to you. Even if someone is really smart, you have no way of knowing if they are if they can't communicate that with you. Not to mention working on a team is all about communication.
  - dumpsterdiver 3y ago
    > I think the unfortunate reality is just that we as humans do bias toward wanting to hire people who are in fact able to communicate well and demonstrate their abilities to you I mostly agree with your assessment, except I don't think that it's unfortunate at all. If applicants are so dense that no one can get along with them, those people, imo, should be removed from the team. It doesn't matter that you can 10x everyone around you, when you are bumming a team consisting of hundreds of people out.
    - xenocratus 3y ago
      You've got the topic of the conversation somewhat wrong. The problem discussed above was that some people are simply bad at handling the kind of stressful situations that interviews present them with. (Note, it's not necessarily about any stressful situation, just one where you're under intense scrutiny.) Hence, you can end up not hiring someone because they're struggling to show their skills in an interview, even though they'd be an excellent hire otherwise (including being a great team member). This is, indeed, unfortunate.
mrcnkoba 3y ago
Could you describe the process of learning the skill of being interviewed?
- SCUSKU 3y ago
  For me, I was actually just really bad at selling myself (job interviews are not where you should have false humility I learned). I was very fortunate in that my girlfriend helped me a lot here. But quite frankly what she did was very straightforward. She would do a 30 minute mock interview with me, and ask me pretty standard behavioral questions. Questions like: - Can you tell us about a time when you had to work on a project with a tight deadline? How did you handle it? - Can you give an example of a project or initiative that you spearheaded and the impact it had on the company or team? - How do you prioritize and manage your tasks and responsibilities when faced with competing demands or tight deadlines? I answered these questions on my own in a notes app, and then when she would ask me I would then draw on my previous experiences and figure out how to answer question that tells a story as best as possible. This really helped me a lot. One tip I would give is to generate these questions, try copy/pasting the job description into ChatGPT and ask it to generate a list of interview questions for that role! I found that much better than sifting through the SEO spam for interview questions.
  - yogurthewise 3y ago
    "job interviews are not where you should have false humility I learned" This is so true, definitely screwed over some of my earlier interviews due to doing this
  - sukki07 3y ago
    definitely use chatgpt to get the typical behaviour questions, works like a charm.
- pSYoniK 3y ago
  I had 7 jobs in the last 9 years. I've quit all of them. I interviewed at probably 50-60 places during this time and I'm currently moving to my next role, so I'll begin the 8th job in 9 years. To practice interviewing you need to firat get details about the job and company and develop a list of questions. If I really wanted a job I'd get 30-40 questions prepared, from job specific to behavioral ("tell me of a time you had to deal with a difficult stakeholder"). Then add variations of the question so you get used to being asked the same thing different ways. Then always use STAR (situation/task/action/result) to answer the question. This will help the interviewer remember you a lot better and it will also highlight what YOU did. Practice going through your CV/resume back to front and front to back. Be prepared to highlight what you learned at each role and why you left from it/got made redundant. With sufficient grind you will become proficient at this and it will make a world of a difference. I can now confidently say "I wont get this role because I messed up X, so if they were paying attention they will reduce my score for this". You will still get rejected (sometimes there is just someone better than you) but the goal is to improve your odds at being the one that gets the job. Hope this helps!
m463 3y ago
> now having been on the other side it is very apparent when someone hasn't prepared and practiced interviewing I noticed this when interviewing candidates and although it's nice to have someone with their interview skills together, you run the risk of hiring "the master of interviews".
- sanderjd 3y ago
  I would say that you run the certainty of this.
- isbvhodnvemrwvn 3y ago
  Well, there's degrees. Last week I did 5 interviews where the candidate gets a full PDF explaining what we are going to do during the interview (along with a sample problem to practice on), and half didn't have an IDE or testing libraries set up for a TDD coding interview...
  - m463 3y ago
    lol, what a guantlet. (sorry, I haven't interview since covid)
lizardking 3y ago
I second this, I was hired through a who’s hiring post late last year myself. A director of engineering who is an active HN user was a green flag for me that the company was the right fit for me, and it turned out to be the case.

by SCUSKU 3y ago

InvOfSmallC 3y ago

Hey, I tried your website, it selected 314 jobs. Doesn't look like is matching correctly. Or I am a jack of all trades.

ulfw 3y ago
No the website doesn't work at all. It shows me the same 314 jobs. Not a single one relevant.
- SCUSKU 3y ago
  Hey, sorry to hear it's not working for you -- would be happy to look more into the problem! Could you shoot me an email with your resume attached? My email is in my HN profile.
SCUSKU 3y ago
Hey would be happy to look more into it -- my email is in my HN profile, would appreciate if you sent me your resume there.

Dylan16807 3y ago

> now having been on the other side it is very apparent when someone hasn't prepared and practiced interviewing. It really is a skill in and of itself. And now that you can recognize that skill in isolation, do you use it as a major factor when choosing candidates? If you do, why? Do you think the people interviewing you could recognize that you were specifically bad at interviewing, and not at everything?

SCUSKU 3y ago
You'll have to forgive me here, I was only drawing on one experience when talking about being on the other side of things. So I am generalizing based only on one experience, however, with that said, I think the unfortunate reality is just that we as humans do bias toward wanting to hire people who are in fact able to communicate well and demonstrate their abilities to you. Even if someone is really smart, you have no way of knowing if they are if they can't communicate that with you. Not to mention working on a team is all about communication.
- dumpsterdiver 3y ago
  > I think the unfortunate reality is just that we as humans do bias toward wanting to hire people who are in fact able to communicate well and demonstrate their abilities to you I mostly agree with your assessment, except I don't think that it's unfortunate at all. If applicants are so dense that no one can get along with them, those people, imo, should be removed from the team. It doesn't matter that you can 10x everyone around you, when you are bumming a team consisting of hundreds of people out.
  - xenocratus 3y ago
    You've got the topic of the conversation somewhat wrong. The problem discussed above was that some people are simply bad at handling the kind of stressful situations that interviews present them with. (Note, it's not necessarily about any stressful situation, just one where you're under intense scrutiny.) Hence, you can end up not hiring someone because they're struggling to show their skills in an interview, even though they'd be an excellent hire otherwise (including being a great team member). This is, indeed, unfortunate.

mrcnkoba 3y ago

Could you describe the process of learning the skill of being interviewed?

SCUSKU 3y ago
For me, I was actually just really bad at selling myself (job interviews are not where you should have false humility I learned). I was very fortunate in that my girlfriend helped me a lot here. But quite frankly what she did was very straightforward. She would do a 30 minute mock interview with me, and ask me pretty standard behavioral questions. Questions like: - Can you tell us about a time when you had to work on a project with a tight deadline? How did you handle it? - Can you give an example of a project or initiative that you spearheaded and the impact it had on the company or team? - How do you prioritize and manage your tasks and responsibilities when faced with competing demands or tight deadlines? I answered these questions on my own in a notes app, and then when she would ask me I would then draw on my previous experiences and figure out how to answer question that tells a story as best as possible. This really helped me a lot. One tip I would give is to generate these questions, try copy/pasting the job description into ChatGPT and ask it to generate a list of interview questions for that role! I found that much better than sifting through the SEO spam for interview questions.
- yogurthewise 3y ago
  "job interviews are not where you should have false humility I learned" This is so true, definitely screwed over some of my earlier interviews due to doing this
- sukki07 3y ago
  definitely use chatgpt to get the typical behaviour questions, works like a charm.
pSYoniK 3y ago
I had 7 jobs in the last 9 years. I've quit all of them. I interviewed at probably 50-60 places during this time and I'm currently moving to my next role, so I'll begin the 8th job in 9 years. To practice interviewing you need to firat get details about the job and company and develop a list of questions. If I really wanted a job I'd get 30-40 questions prepared, from job specific to behavioral ("tell me of a time you had to deal with a difficult stakeholder"). Then add variations of the question so you get used to being asked the same thing different ways. Then always use STAR (situation/task/action/result) to answer the question. This will help the interviewer remember you a lot better and it will also highlight what YOU did. Practice going through your CV/resume back to front and front to back. Be prepared to highlight what you learned at each role and why you left from it/got made redundant. With sufficient grind you will become proficient at this and it will make a world of a difference. I can now confidently say "I wont get this role because I messed up X, so if they were paying attention they will reduce my score for this". You will still get rejected (sometimes there is just someone better than you) but the goal is to improve your odds at being the one that gets the job. Hope this helps!

m463 3y ago

> now having been on the other side it is very apparent when someone hasn't prepared and practiced interviewing I noticed this when interviewing candidates and although it's nice to have someone with their interview skills together, you run the risk of hiring "the master of interviews".

sanderjd 3y ago
I would say that you run the certainty of this.
isbvhodnvemrwvn 3y ago
Well, there's degrees. Last week I did 5 interviews where the candidate gets a full PDF explaining what we are going to do during the interview (along with a sample problem to practice on), and half didn't have an IDE or testing libraries set up for a TDD coding interview...
- m463 3y ago
  lol, what a guantlet. (sorry, I haven't interview since covid)

lizardking 3y ago

I second this, I was hired through a who’s hiring post late last year myself. A director of engineering who is an active HN user was a green flag for me that the company was the right fit for me, and it turned out to be the case.