[8_hours_ago]

From the viewpoint of a job applicant, I have been very happy with the job postings on HN. Of the 4 jobs that I applied to over the past 3.5 years (I'm pretty selective), all 4 responded to me on the same day, and 3 resulted in phone interviews. Those numbers are very good compared to other job posting sites.

I found that job aggregation sites like Monster performed absolutely terribly. In that same category are the careers website that large companies like Microsoft and Boeing have, which are basically black holes. I can't remember ever getting a response from any of them. It's easy to spam your resume to dozens of jobs at once, but 0/1000 is still 0.

My favorite technique (which got me my current job) was to apply to the company directly after finding the job opening through Craigslist or other means. Applying directly got me a response rate of 14/17, and an interview rate of 10/14.

Emailing companies directly through Craigslist was fairly poor for me, and gave me a response rate of 2/8, and an interview rate of 1/2.

I realize that my sample size is small, but I hope it helps.

[danielweber]

Your talk about "black holes" made me realize that when I apply anywhere I should put some URLs into my cover letters to see if anyone ever reads them.

[Evgeny]

How would you use URLs in the cover letters to check they were read?

[danielweber]

Put them on a server I control and check access logs.

[mmorris]

Just curious... you said your best result was "applying directly" after seeing a company on CL, but that emailing the company after seeing on CL was not as successful. In this instance, does "applying directly" mean you went to each company's website and applied on their jobs page? Or did you call them/research and email someone specific/something else?

[8_hours_ago]

Yes, "applying directly" means that I went to the company's website, found the job opening, and applied from there. Generally that approach involved more research because I was actually able to browse their website and see exactly what they do.

When I say "emailing through Craigslist", I mean that the job listing did not have the name of the company, so my only option was to email them through CL.