[ryandrake]

Time to do such research is not always a luxury a job applicant has. The hypothetical job candidate would, I'm sure, love to be able to get to know the intimate details of the 30 companies they need to apply to right now (because their savings dries up in 3 months and they have a family to feed), but that takes a lot of time. Maybe you didn't happen to have watched Bob's presentation at $CONFERENCE. Chances are, you don't even know how to contact Bob or that indeed Bob is even the decision maker. What then? In many cases, you'll not know a single person at the company that is in the position to hire or recommend you. At that point, you're back to the "job posting black hole".

I'd turn it around on the company: You're not proposing marriage either. Take a measly few minutes every so often to really look at the stack of resumes you get, and give a few of them a whirl. Don't spend months and months of the company's time and money hopelessly looking for that special snowflake 100% match when there may be many 90% matches lining up at your door. Thanks to lax U.S. labor laws, the decision to hire is not irreversible.

[patio11]

If unsolicited apps are 1/10th as effective as solicited ones (generous!) then you only have to research 4 companies to outdo 30 shots in the dark.

You can find e.g. the name of the CTO of Fog Creek. It's FizzBuzz-level difficulty or less.

You can find e.g. any published work of Thomas Ptacek to bond over. You didn't have to run into him at Black Hat, or even know that he has spoken at Black Hat, to find a video of him speaking at Black Hat.

You may not know who is in charge of Fraud at Square. You know who probably knows? Well, to a first approximation, any engineer there should (or be able to find it out trivially). Can you find any engineer at Square?

We have the good fortune to be in an industry where people are hyper-connected, publicly identified, and Internet routable. Use these facts to your advantage when looking for a job.

[ryandrake]

I don't think we're talking about unsolicited vs. solicited applications. Surely a candidates odds are substantially better when the company initiates contact.

I'm talking about official vs. unofficial channels: does it makes sense to have an official (job site / resumes) channel that pretty much funnels into the trash, along side an unofficial one (where the real hiring happens) that rewards insider connections, friends of friends, cyber-stalking, cold-calling, and/or exhaustive research into companies? Is that the best we can do?

Also not arguing that the unofficial channel is ineffective. Clearly that's where all the hiring is going on, but is this the way it _should_ be?

[jasonkester]

It sounds like you guys are talking past each other. Patrick is telling you the reality of the situation. You're telling Patrick that the situation he describes is silly and unfair.

That's certainly true, but it's definitely not helpful to point it out then continue doing what you're doing.

The correct thing to do when faced with a series of silly steps that are 10-100X more effective than the "fair" way that an engineer would design is to learn how to follow those silly steps and follow them.

This pattern hangs engineers up quite often in life. See also salary negotiation, promotions, dating, etc. etc. It's worth taking a step back, looking at how the real world operates, then finding a way to make yourself operate in that real world.

You'll end up a lot happier for having done so.

[gedrap]

I think it's more about a situation when you are 'omg I want to work at THIS company' rather than 'I just need a job'.

You can get enthusiastic about one company and get something done about it. Following the Patrick's suggestion, it's some mega project that would take the whole week or so, a couple of focused hours should do the trick. And if you are genuinely interested, you will naturally sound generally interested without any bs covering it all.

Even if the case of just needing a job, following this advice will probably help you get produce a few but high quality applications, rather than sending yet another resume.

[bduerst]

>Time to do such research is not always a luxury a job applicant has.

I think their point is that applicants should focus more on quality, not quantity. Rather than focus on 30 companies, focus on six, and spend time trying to impress them rather than just throwing your application into the numbers grinder.

[chris11]

That is true, but I don't think I have 30 companies I would be really excited to work at. I could find 30 companies easily, but that would require doing the same amount of research. Sure doing research on 30 different companies may require too much time, but not doing it would mean I would probably end up shotgunning job applications to a bunch of places I don't have strong opinions on.