[caphill]

I've been trying my hardest to find a Junior position. When I finally do find something that says "Junior" they want 4+ years of experience and expert level in everything or it's no where near me and they don't hire remote.

I've taken a break on freelancing for 3months to finish some personal projects I'm hoping that will get me something. /fingerscrossed

[atomical]

The most important piece of advice I can give you is to go directly to the decision maker. Call them if you have to. Make up some excuse to talk to them on the phone. Tell them your e-mail bounced but you really like what they are doing and give them a short summary of who you are.

[hnriot]

No, this is terrible advice. Companies have hr and recruiters for a reason, if you jump over them it just shows you're pushy and impatient. If someone calls me and tells me their email bounced I'd immediately think they were lame. Seriously? "Did you get my message?" Is circa 2001. These days if an email bounces you go back and read sent it properly with th right address. Emails don't bounce on their own. When I lost a job posting I expect the candidates to be screened by the recruiter. If a candidate calls me I'd just put them in touch with the recruiter.

Maybe others like this pushy attitude but it wouldn't work in my company.

[barry-cotter]

Don't listen to this guy. Building relationships is a huge part of how you go grom one of the massive pile of mostly crap resumes to someone who can skip that and get a warm interview. If you have spoken to someone and they remember who you are, you have a relationship. If you develop relationships with people who might hire you later, maybe they don't hire you, but maybe they can introduce you to someone who will.

The EV of contacting people like this is high. You should do it.

[pm90]

I agree with what you're saying, but does this approach scale? What I mean is: (say) Google gets millions of applicants a day. If all of them start calling up Google devs wouldn't that waste a lot of their time? (I guess a reason why this works is that not many people are doing it)

On a related note, I've found that I get a lot of benefit just by calling and speaking to a real person. For instance, an airline representative once saved me nearly $800 on an offer that was not mentioned anywhere else

[hnriot]

Building relationships is a huge part for sure, but contacting dev's directly is bad form and a good way to get on the spam list.

Please don't listen to this guy, it's very bad advice

[atomical]

That's a very anti-social view.

[rprasad]

Definitely important.

You only skip the HR process if you have a pre-existing relationship with a decision-maker in the company. Cold-calling can work, but the most likely outcome is getting black-listed if they think you're one of the crazies.

If you really do want to go the cold-call method, use the cold-call to establish a relationship (i.e., ask for career advice, to talk about their technology stack, etc.) Once you have a real connection, then it may be appropriate to give them your resume.

[benzor]

I've yet to hear of a job where the employer strictly follows their own "requirements." Most simply post it as a "perfect candidate" guideline and end up settling for someone meeting 75% of it, so don't take them too seriously.

[visualcsharp]

Yep. If you're an employer, why would you advertise that you're actually looking for that 75% candidate? You'd get all the trash candidates (probably getting them anyway) and the good candidates would be like "Ew, I don't want to work for that company!" HR-types are often the ones to write those requirements, anyway, and they're just reading Internet tutorials on how to do so.

[nhangen]

I've been there (as an employer), and because my boss often made it very difficult for me to hire when I needed to (always based on current billing instead of future billing), I had to be very particular because I knew that if I chose poorly, I wouldn't get another chance for quite a while. I interviewed many good candidates, but often opted to not hire and keep waiting for the reasons mentioned above.

[arikrak]

It would be simpler if there was a system that ranked job-seekers by aptitude and experience and then they could apply to companies that were matches. E.g. Google would only look at people who were in the 99.9th percentile while small-boring company would have to be less picky.