[noirbot]

But at the same time, I only have so many hours in the day to research companies. If you asked me what companies I was interested in working at, you'd mostly get big-name stuff, even though right now I work somewhere you've likely never heard of.

If you're not a FAANG company, you almost have to be hiring folks who are applying to you because "why not", and then pitching them on your company. I've gone to plenty of interviews and been sold on a company that I previously had almost no knowledge of, especially in B2B industries. Massive portions of the jobs in tech are for teams, companies and industries that your average developer has no exposure to, and no real reason to care about, but it doesn't mean people can't become passionate about working there if given more information.

[mdip]

    > even though right now I work somewhere you've likely never heard of.

I'm with you on that. I'm working at a place that, prior to the interview, I had never heard of. It turned out I and much of my family had DTE Energy Bridges, which they were responsible for, had watched a cable news network who featured their Surface Table app for the 2008 elections and a number of other things that I'm not actually sure I'm allowed to mention.

Some of the best companies are hidden gems like this and almost all of the people I've interviewed have started out not knowing who we were before the interview and being very excited to work for us by the end (the others were already excited). Even though we tend to attract great talent -- it's difficult. Frankly, lately, I'd like it if my thinking was "I need fewer people who are ~qualified~ somewhere-in-the-same-time-zone-as-qualified for this position[0]" that would require a trap to weed some out.

[0] And we've paired down our job requirements -- these are also common positions: C# Backend Web / JS Front-end React (with TypeScript as a bonus!)

edit: the year was 2008, President Obama, not 2018 mid-terms (the network was MSNBC)