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by ghaff 979 days ago
The problem is the person who selectively applies to a job or three doesn't need this. The target is the person who has dozens of applications in various stages of flight and is "casting a wide net" to put the strategy charitably.
1 comments
b112 979 days ago
I suppose so. I tend to apply to a few jobs a year, but mostly because it seems like a neat place to work, or a change of pace.

One thing I have noticed, as I'm extremely skilled at this stage in my career, is that there are logically fewer jobs.

Spray and pray is more, I think, a junior thing.

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deprecative 979 days ago
>Spray and pray is more, I think, a junior thing.

I'm at least intermediate, I've done senior work before, and this is still my strategy. Applying to one or two jobs isn't going to do anything. It takes at least a calendar year to find a job that wants me. I can't imagine applying for less than 5 positions a week, and usually it's at least triple that.

I'd love to hear a different strategy for a developer that doesn't specialize in any given language or technology. Most of the employment gates seem locked for me. Yet I hear of other people doing things just like that and making bank from it. Who knows, maybe people don't like me as much as I don't like them.

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ghaff 979 days ago
Although I've never been primarily a developer, it's always been about the people I know and have worked with in some manner. My network, if you would, although that term tends to get conflated with things like "networking events." Job-seeking hasn't been about about applying to posted jobs for me since I've been working professionally for decades.

Even in school I wasn't applying to multiple positions per day on average. Probably a more focused strategy is indicated than sending applications into the void.

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deprecative 979 days ago
Fair, yeah. I don't have a professional network. I find the folks I work with to always be insufferable. Guess it'll be launching resumes into the void. Thanks for the perspective.
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ghaff 979 days ago
Certainly applying for jobs out of school--at a time when nothing was online--it was very much a mass snail mail exercise for the most part as augmented by on-campus interviews. A lot of companies basically hire warm bodies. One job offer I got out of grad school was sight unseen. I had to ask them to invite me to see the place and talk to people.

Everything I've gotten since then (just a few) was sending an email to someone I knew at a company.

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