[mathatoms]

This article seems to have an assumption that companies have this huge pool of qualified candidates applying for jobs and you, as an applicant, just need to show that little extra initiative to beat out the other applicants. As someone who has reviewed mountains of resumes for a large company, this assumption doesn't match my experience.

In my experience there is this huge pool of unqualified applicants applying for every job no matter what the actual job requirements are. The applicants that got a call for an interview 1) looked at the technologies listed in the job requirements and 2) put their experience with these technologies on their resume.

Also important, once you get called in for an interview make sure you can answer the most basic questions about what is on your resume. If you put Linux experience on your resume make sure you can explain how to list the contents of a directory from the command line. If you put MySQL experience on your resume make sure you can explain how to get a count of the total number of rows in a table.

Are there really companies out there where the difference between getting an offer and not getting an offer is spending a few hours making a bespoke "please hire me" website?

[ravenstine]

> In my experience there is this huge pool of unqualified applicants applying for every job no matter what the actual job requirements are. The applicants that got a call for an interview 1) looked at the technologies listed in the job requirements and 2) put their experience with these technologies on their resume.

I think this is a result of the (frankly) BS practice employers have been using for years of inflating the qualifications required for positions. I can't count on one hand how many postings I've seen for mid-level developer roles that require 5+ years of experience writing Python, C++, C#, Java, and JavaScript; oh yeah, you've also got to know Angular and React, and "bonus" if you know Vue.

Even before I became a developer(I first tried to get into animation), the advice from older folks and career specialists was to "just apply to all the positions you want even if you don't meet all the qualifications", and I'd bet good money that a lot of people are still hearing this advice from various channels.

Now that everyone is just shotgun applying to everything, the advantage is largely gone. But because everyone is doing it, and individual must do so or they'll be drowned out in signal noise.

[aaronblohowiak]

Overly specific job requirements are sometimes used to game the immigration system.

[TallGuyShort]

I've had recruiters tell me they required more years of experience with a particular framework than the framework had been around for...

[BigJono]

This is exactly what I try not to do when hiring.

I don't want someone that's built a bloody todo list in Angular, React and Vue. I want someone that's generated revenue by building quality software in one of them.

I think one of the biggest technical advantages you can get over your competition is to hire good specialists. Almost everywhere I've worked (especially anywhere HR or non-tech people are involved in the hiring) has just hoovered up the "jack of all trades" types and I suspect their tech has suffered for it.

[marklgr]

Jack-of-all-trades come in all shapes and forms; some are just average in many things, while some others are quite good in some areas, competent in some others and can also get up to speed in other parts if necessary. In small teams, these profiles are very useful.

[BigJono]

Yes but nobody considers the cost/benefit of having that over a specialist with the same amount of experience.

What takes longer? A full-stack guy trying to figure out how to work around some obscure front-end quirk (like the restrictions on overflow-x/y resulting in unexpected computed values, or the fact you can't transition to or from computed heights?) or a front-end specialist learning some basic dev-ops, or how to change a few Django models?

"Building something" in a language/ecosystem should be easy for any competent dev. I've never touched Obj-C or Swift in my life, and if you asked me to go release an iPhone app on the app store in my spare time in 3 weeks I'd be 100% confident that I can do it; but if you asked me to go and take a job as a senior iOS dev straight after that, I wouldn't even be confident to put myself forward for it. I probably wouldn't even put iOS on my resume.

I think as a senior tech person involved in the hiring process, I should be doing a better job of identifying exactly what I need and finding the right person than just going on the hunt for 6 "good devs" and hoping everything falls into place.

[z3t4]

There are so many different tools today, so it's impossible to find a match for any set of combinations.

[z3t4]

I wanted to see if I could prove my theory with math: If you count every obscure technology, framework, format and tools out there you should get at least 1000 of them. Job ads require about 10 on average. So correct me if I'm wrong, I can use the Combinations formula nCr which say's we have around 2.6 * 10^26 combinations (really huge number) And even if there are hundred million developers in the word, it will be impossible to find a match. Now in practice there are some stacks that are more common, so it might probably be possible to find a developers who knows SQL+JS+PHP+HTML+CSS+Angular+Java+Git+C+Andorid SDK (I picked some very popular ones), now image how ridiculous hard (impossible) it would be to find a combination of skills that is not among the most popular. This is why hiring is broken. As an employer you should just concentrate one the most important skill, like the main language, say Java, or some soft skills, and just accept that your new hire needs to learn the rest of your stack while practicing it. Also remember that as a developer you learn new stuff every day, so if your applicants have experience in other stacks, that will only make it easier to learn your stack.

[kevin_thibedeau]

Well some of us can tick off most of those boxes. Still can't get past the AI gauntlet though.

[paulsutter]

When I was at Apple, the resumes filtered by HR were a huge pool of unqualified candidates. Gems were among candidates rejected by HR. Wasn't easy getting that list.

HR is a compliance function. By some strange fluke, it gets inserted in the hiring process in large companies.

[tnhaoeh34thoe9]

I once worked the recruiting booth at a popular computer conference. HR told me to mark all the resumes that looked good for our group with my manager's name and they'd send them on to him. A week after I got back, I asked him about it, and he said they didn't send him a single resume. WTF did I waste my time (and the company's time) doing at the show then?

[AlexCoventry]

Contacted your picks themselves so they could take responsibility for them.

[flukus]

> HR is a compliance function. By some strange fluke, it gets inserted in the hiring process in large companies.

Someone's got to do it and if it's not HR then it's generally a recruitment company. For the price of hiring 4 devs through a recruiter the company could afford a full time HR person (ignoring stupid accounting tricks).

[philwelch]

But if the HR person does a bad enough job, then the hiring manager ends up having to do it themselves, on top of fighting with the HR department to let them do it themselves, so you end up with a negative net value added.

[paulsutter]

We built a sourcing department to source candidates. A “recruiter” is a salesperson incented to close deals, not someone you want in the hiring process.

[itronitron]

and this is why people overstate their skills on their resumes, because they are trying to get their resume into the hands of someone that will actually read it

[sumedh]

Fake it till you make it.

[busterarm]

> Are there really companies out there where the difference between getting an offer and not getting an offer is spending a few hours making a bespoke "please hire me" website?

No, but it can jedi mind trick your way past HR screeners. And that's the only thing that it can do.

If your only way into a company you want to work for is "through the front door" and you aren't a perfect on-paper candidate for them (same role at a direct competitor) then it could be worth your time doing this...

I did this once while applying to a fully remote company and it got me the interview (hey, it's hard to compete against hundreds of applications per day) but did not end up with an offer.

[blattimwind]

It's probably easier to just befriend some engineers that are already working there.

[busterarm]

Absolutely it is, but that's not always feasible.

[pkaye]

I've had some people cold call me via Linked In because they were looking for a job. Mostly just new college grads. It does give them a little boost for taking a initiative but beyond that they will need to go through the usual resume review, phone screen and in office interview.

[emodendroket]

> No, but it can jedi mind trick your way past HR screeners. And that's the only thing that it can do.

Can it? Frankly, I'd think any application that deviates from the normal procedure in a quirky way is a demerit for most companies.

[eggpy]

Reeeeeeeally depends. In my experience, most people who would do the early interviews/ determine candidacy for an interview probably don't have the time or desire to check out bespoke websites or other "deviations". The look at a summary of the position applied for and a summary of the qualifications and determine to go forward with an interview. In all likelihood, your interviewer probably won't look at your website either. But it's a good talking point, and if the interview is anywhere other than one FaGooNetZon etc, then being able to talk about it in an interview might win you points. So it wouldn't say it is _bad_, just that it will probably be ignored 80% of the time.

[busterarm]

Maybe if you're applying for a bank or it doesn't fit the role.

I was trying to get a support engineer role that would have had me demoing to clients, so I whiteboard-animated and filmed my pitch for why I was a perfect fit for the company. It went over.

[Rylinks]

It seems like a high-variance strategy. Most of the time it would be a demerit, but that doesn't matter if most of the time you will not get past the HR screens regardless.

[ryandrake]

The tech hiring market is like a disfunctional dating pool. Lots of companies complaining they can’t find good talent, and lots of talent complaining they can’t find good companies. Is it too high standards on both sides or on one side? Is it a broken matchmaking system?

[lynnetye]

I think about this a lot. Here's a little brain dump:

Too many people are playing a numbers game, which creates a lot of noise. The noise makes it easy to miss good connections.

Inexperienced people (on both sides) are looking for the wrong things and just like it is w/ love, a lot of us need to learn the hard way. Wanting to date the most popular guy/girl in school is the equivalent of wanting to work at a "company everyone knows."

A few years later, we want to meet someone who is "ambitious, interesting, and has a good sense of humor," which is maybe like wanting to work at a company in an industry you can get behind. It's less superficial, and we have some direction here, but it's still too vague. (A lot of people are drawn to health and education not because they're truly passionate about either, but simply because it'll be easier find purpose/meaning.)

After a heartbreak or two, we finally figure out what our deal breakers are. Examples: I can't date anyone who cares a lot about fashion. I'm very attracted to people who dress well, but it turns out prioritizing it means attention and money is spent in ways I can't get on board w/. Similarly, I can't work anywhere that has a lot of mandatory meetings. Counter intuitive because I'm very extroverted and social, but meetings destroy my productivity. I would have never known these things 10 years ago.

Resumes and "dating profiles" don't give us a full picture. What we really want to know is: "Are we truly compatible? Are our goals and values truly aligned?" Those things take time, introspection, and research. However, it feels like job searching/sourcing/recruiting is going in the complete opposite direction (ie. "let's email 1k engineers every day, maybe 1% will respond").

This creates the noise that makes it hard for people who've figured out what they are looking for to find it.

[bigiain]

I think this is part of what the advice is trying to say.

The noise looks like noise. It's the guys who say "Sup babe?" to every girl on dating-app-de-jour.

Standing out from the noise isn't hard. But it does mean at least writing a cover letter for each job app that shows you've done more than just copy/paste your generic details and cv into every role on $jobSite's new listing page this morning before you left for work.

Saying "Hey, I see you like live music, wanna go see $coolBand next Thursday? Oh, and I really like your hair in your 3rd pic :-)" isn't gonna "win you the girl", but it's going to be much less likely it be insta-deleted than "Sup babe?" sent to everyone.

[Double_a_92]

Btw dude, those girls on dating sites are not going to even read the text. They just look at your image while scrolling...

"Sub babe?" instantly works of you have a hot pic in your profile.

[ShabbosGoy]

> Resumes and "dating profiles" don't give us a full picture. What we really want to know is: "Are we truly compatible? Are our goals and values truly aligned?" Those things take time, introspection, and research. However, it feels like job searching/sourcing/recruiting is going in the complete opposite direction (ie. "let's email 1k engineers every day, maybe 1% will respond").

100% agree on this point. But it’s a hard problem to solve. How do you go about finding the best candidates? Just like in the dating world, the best candidates are already taken.

[cbluth]

> the best candidates are already taken.

There is still that 1% that are looking...

[paladin314159]

I don't know that you need the "dysfunctional" qualification to that statement.

It probably suffers from the usual problem: people want to work at a place that is too good for them (whatever that actually means) and companies want to hire people that are too good for them (again, whatever that means).

[bigiain]

And it gets deeper too. From both ends. Nobody knows what they're doing here...

Most mediocre devs overestimate their abilities - while many of the truely top devs severely under estimate themselves.

The recruitment process/chain at many companies severely overestimates their desirability as an employer ("If selected, you'll be given the privilege of working at this traditional corporate bank, working on 6 year old Windows desktop development machines, under overpaid architecture astronauts who's suits cost more than your weekly take-home, on strictly waterfall projects. But we'll still expect you to be in the office at 9am for the mandatory "Agile Standup"!!!)

[itronitron]

It is probably a combination of a) the standards being too high on the employers' side and b) the opportunity not actually being there... Employers are only willing to hire people that are a 'perfect fit' presumably because they can wait which would suggest that there isn't much pressure to fill the position. They often wait longer to fill a position than it would take to train/bring someone up to speed on their tech stack.

[watwut]

People who apply to jobs they dont fill requirements for on average get better jobs - because many times it works. This is one of probable reasons between male and female career differences - women tend to apply where they dont fill all requirements less and consequently men who dont match them get more jobs.

As is now, rational behavior is to apply even if you are unqualified and hope it works, unfortunately.

[emodendroket]

Every time I've been involved in hiring, we didn't really mind what technologies they used if they'd done some sort of vaguely similar programming.