[52-6F-62]

> especially when random company HR wants 10 years of NodeJs and its been around for 2 years.

My bane!

I swear. I've been doing some form of programming since I was a kid, and as a hobby and moonlighting for more like 10 years, and professionally for a notable company for a few years and I still get automatic responses (* rejections) from HR within hours or a couple of days with 99% of the applications I send out with a generic message full of platitudes. And from any size: small startups to multi-national conglomerates. If I hear anything at all.

[crankylinuxuser]

Thankfully, my current place did exactly the opposite. They stated what technologies they used, and had a distinct understanding that you would not know their inhouse app.

They also wanted to see your experience. So the first thing they do before an interview is a audition. You're sat down, on prem, (sys ad job) with Windows 2012 server, IIS, MSSQL, and a toy app. You have to make it work. They record the screencap, and review it as a team to see how you perform the job.

Frankly, I love how this place works and gets things done. Roadblocks are a thing, like all jobs.. But some of these are from those much higher up. But communication and support of your coworkers is absolutely amazing.

But the other thing, I work now in a regulated space. I knew that going in (3 good friends work there as well). Lying on my resume would not be, uhh, good :) There's these nice guys and ladys in suits who specialize in a wee more stringent background checks.

[52-6F-62]

That's an interesting approach. I also don't mind the idea of a take-home project if it's not, say 6+ hours. The performance anxiety that can set in when someone is peering over your shoulder or going to review your recording later could be a bit of a handicap for some. Still, it's a fresh, and more realistic take.

My problem has been getting past the gatekeepers to get to that point—any face-to-face.

Though in my current role, I'll say they were happy after speaking to me and discovering I had heard and was familiar enough with their solution to have fiddled around with the platform outside of a professional context. In spite of my amateur knowledge of it, it seemed to be the distinguishing factor in my interview... just not until I actually got past the gatekeepers— in what increasingly seems like a game of chance! :P