Ask HN: Getting back to the tech industry after a three-year break

44 points by spiked55 10 years ago | 29 comments

Hi HN,

This is going to be long, but please stick with me here..

My wife came to the US to do her MS in EE and graduated in 2011. After graduating, she started working at a company in the Bay Area, which wasn’t e-verified at the time, meaning that she could only work for 1 year on her student visa using OPT. To add to that, they botched her H-1B application, resulting in her employment with them terminating when OPT ended, which was by the end of 2012.

As a result, she was forced to go back to being a student for a year or so, after which we got married and she came back to the US on an H-4 visa. Thanks to the new H-4 EAD rule that was passed in 2015, she was able to obtain an EAD in September via my H-1B visa.

Now, she is legally allowed to work for any employer, but she just hasn’t been able to get any calls from any company that she’s applied to so far (both big companies and startups). All in all, she’s probably applied to 100+ companies over the last 6 months, but she hasn’t received a single call back.

Though she has an EE background through her MS, her work experience was in C++ and Matlab development, and she’s focused on sharpening her Java and Python development skills over the past year or two. She’s mainly been applying to Java and/or Python development positions, or just SW Developer positions in general.

Recently, there was an initiative by Braintree (http://hire.jobvite.com/CompanyJobs/Careers.aspx?nl=1&k=Job&j=owj61fwG&s=PPpage) that fit her profile to a T, but she received a reject from them as well.

At this point, we’re willing to try anything. Do you have any clues about why it is this hard to find a job? Is it the 3 year break? Her MS is from a decent school, she’s done several research projects and has a year of experience in the industry.. She also has a profile at CodeEval, and plans to continue solving problems there and keep coding every day.

Any advice and/or help will be sincerely appreciated.

patio11 10 years ago |

All in all, she’s probably applied to 100+ companies over the last 6 months, but she hasn’t received a single call back.

Your wife should consider sending in an unsolicited resume to be a no-op and, instead, start meeting people who either a) are hiring managers or b) can refer her to hiring managers.

Her goal in achieving connection with the hiring manager is to secure a coffee date or other informal conversation. Her goal for this conversation is qualifying the company, impressing the hiring manager, and convincing the hiring manager to either invite her formal application or respond positively when she suggests moving to a formal application.

This is one of the huge knowledge gaps in the engineering community regarding getting jobs. Unsolicited applications are not how most people get hired. This is particularly true of smaller employers.

akulbe 10 years ago | |

Did you write your Twitter posts before, or after, this comment? :)

You say this so succinctly there. I used to think it was all about the resume. It's actually one of the least effective ways to apply for work.

One other thing to consider doing... offer to work for free (or reduced pay, where laws prohibit free work) for a short period of time. It lets them see what you can do, and removes much of the risk.

muzani 10 years ago |

Just my statistics:

I don't have a valid working visa in the US and have been applying almost exclusively to American companies.

My "interview" rate is 10%. 100% if it's with people I know, even if I'm completely unqualified.

My "rejection" rate is around 50%, within 2 weeks. I assume the rest won't say anything if they reject.

General job sites (the ones where you can also apply to be a carpenter, etc) are a waste of time. They probably get so many resumes they end up tossing half of them.

Stack Overflow Careers gave me an awesome ~30% of interviews. As in I applied 6 jobs and 2 interviewed. Both of them were jobs I didn't fully qualify for.

Generally, direct emails gave me a 100% (5/5) response rate. An email, like careers@company.com, not a form. Email lets me mention in subject line that I used to have a startup, so I stood out. Most of them rejected on lack of visa though.

I do spend ~10 minutes per cover letter. I really dig deep, like an investor would. I convince myself that I'm doing the company a favor by joining before writing the letter.

In the end, you just have to convince one company. If you have a lead, immediately latch to it... do research on the company, the interviewer, and write questions.

There's a certain bar you have to cross to convince people to hire. It's better to optimize for a few companies than to try to reach out to as many as possible. If you feel unworthy, then optimize for the lower tier companies who have lower standards.

patio11 10 years ago | |

If you feel unworthy

Don't. Feel. Unworthy. Any person capable of programming their way out of a paper bag is someone every hiring manager in the Bay Area urgently wants to meet right now. If you're hirable at their firm that's fantastic, if not they'll chalk it up to "I now know one more engineer who I can keep tabs on over the course of the next few years and potentially place in the future."

nimah 10 years ago |

Here are my strategy that I use for applying and getting hired:

1. Do not apply 100+ companies. Select max 3-5 of them. And research them. Get to know people working there. What are their problems? What tools are they using? What meetups can I meet them? Are they active on some online community? Get in touch with people there. Just talk and show interest in them. It always good to know the company before applying and dropping it, if it's not a great match you can drop it. (Just like dating, get to know them before you marry them.)

2. Fine-tune that resume. I didn't see your wife resume but I am sure it could be improved. Here are some very fine tips : http://www.slideshare.net/perlcareers/how-to-write-a-develop...

3. Build some portfolio. Anything is fine. Really. Just showcase that she understands/can write code. She can join on some open source community or just build something on her own. Better the first one, because she can be mentored and demonstrate teamwork.

4. Blog about it, the learning experience. This about as much about showcasing work as communication. If she can communicate effectively that counts as much as programming. (Actually more if she really great communicator.) Don't be shy on this.

5. Repeat from step one.

And one last thing. It is not just about what your wife wants, please be considerate about the company needs too. I know a lot of company that would be good for me, but for the company I would be just a drag. That's how it is.

RikNieu 10 years ago |

Does she have a github account with some examples of personal projects she works on? Does she go to networking events or meetups to expand her professional network, or could she maybe contact previous colleagues to ask for tips on upcoming openings?

I'm not in the states, so I don't know what the employment environment is like on the ground, but from what I know in general getting a job depends on who you know and what others know about you. In other words; getting employed via the traditional vanilla job application route is going to be tough. Especially for immigrants.

She needs to go out and meet people, work her personal network, and have some cool and interesting projects to hook people's attention with.

curun1r 10 years ago |

If you're in the Bay Area, you might try meet-ups. There's an quite a few of them in SF [1] and most of them are hosted by companies trying to hire or are explicitly hiring events [2]. Even if the host isn't hiring, you'll find companies that are hiring by talking to people. Most will either be hiring managers or people willing to receive a referral bonus. Worst case scenario, it's free food and some interesting talks about technical subjects.

Also, make sure your online reputation looks good. LinkedIn (make sure to enumerate skills) and Github are probably the two that get me the most recruiter touches.

Best of luck!

[1] http://www.meetup.com/find/events/?allMeetups=false&keywords... [2] http://www.meetup.com/software/events/224734607/

JSeymourATL 10 years ago | |

> If you're in the Bay Area, you might try meet-ups.

Networking is solid advice! It's also hard to do and time consuming. Yet it often yields the best results. In addition to meetups- look for applicable conferences, workshops, trade events, etc...

It's true that most resumes (especially unsolicited ones) are completely ignored these days. Here's a good read with unconventional advice on why people buy ( this applies to hiring people) > http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/75890.Little_Red_Book_of_...

spiked55 10 years ago |

Folks, thanks a lot for all your comments. Let me try to respond to some questions that were raised:

She has a LinkedIn profile, with relevant skills highlighted.

She is not active on Github yet - that will be her focus now. She was focusing on sites like HackerRank and CodeEval so far.

If she finishes any projects, we will definitely post it to HN for feedback.

We are trying to find more “back to work” sort of programs - a lot of banks seem to have them, but the cutoff date for applications seemed to be the end of last year.

We do have friends working in the industry, but most are at large companies where it’s hard to bypass HR and go to the team required, or companies where hiring is currently frozen, and so on..

We are going to try to find Hiring Managers to talk to or have a coffee with - if any of you guys are looking to hire an highly competent Python/Java programmer down on her luck, or would just like to talk, she’d love to talk to you over coffee anywhere in the Bay Area. Please send me an email at (username) at gmail if you'd like to talk.

It’s great to see the support and advice from everyone here. Really, thank you.

patio11 10 years ago | |

highly competent Python/Java programmer down on her luck

As a sibling poster has said, never ever ever ever talk like this. In particular, don't talk like this in 2016 in the Bay Area, which is approximately the best time and place to ever be a developer. Your wife should present herself as a confident professional with substantial programming skills who is looking for a career change into software development.

n.b. That transition is not as smooth as changing between dev jobs, but practically speaking after she's gotten one software development position under her belt this conversation gets very, very easy in the future.

In the current environment clueful employers should be foaming-at-the-mouth rabidly enthusiastic to make your wife's acquaintance. Coding bootcamp graduates with minimal technical background, ~12 weeks of Rails training, and no related professional experience are hireable in Bay Area right now.

muzani 10 years ago | |

Just a final bit of advice: most people would not look to hire someone "down on their luck". An optimistic and enthusiastic attitude certainly helps.

Her stance should not be "I'm a great programmer but have not been given the chance to prove myself". It should be "I'm a great programmer who wants to save your company millions of dollars." Or even something like "I am happiest when writing code, but I'd rather be paid to do it."

jzwinck 10 years ago |

It seems like her H-4 EAD status might give some employers pause. First it is tied to your H-1B if I understand correctly, so if your status changes she could become unable to work. Not to mention if you decide to move to another country. Consider that her explicit status is that of a dependent, which gives a potential employer the signal that she is a "trailing spouse" meaning for her to stay with the company she not only needs to like her job and be good at it, but you need to do the same. Yet they can't interview you.

H-1B is known to be a sort of lever that employers can use to keep you at a job. She seems to present just the opposite, yet with qualifications which are a dollar a dozen.

I apologize for being blunt, but it appears to be an atypical, disadvantageous situation. You might do well to embrace it and aim for some contract work in the near term--none of the above will be a negative then.

s_r_n 10 years ago | |

Curious what you mean by "a dollar a dozen?" I thought that the demand for developers in SV was high right now, and a master's in EE with coding experience would also be in high demand.

It seems like the reason she's not getting phone calls is more because she doesn't have a portfolio, not that her skills are so common that they're negligible.

jzwinck 10 years ago | | |

A foreigner with MS from a US school but prior from a foreign school which as far as we know isn't a famous heavy hitter like Physics in Moscow. Minimal work experience. I said dollar a dozen after some consideration. There is some substance there but it simply isn't standing out relative to a thousand other candidates. More work experience will help, hence the contract suggestion.

AlexMuir 10 years ago |

My first filter on recruiting now is: "Has this person built anything I can see?"

A website, an app, a repo on Github. If the answer to that question is 'No' then my assumption is either a) this person isn't interested in the work, or b) they don't know how to code in the real world and I'll be paying them to learn.

I'm constantly amazed at the number of people applying for dev positions who claim years of experience and have absolutely nothing tangible to point out.

I run a small operation so I can't comment on big firms.

TLDR: Build something recruiters can see, and preferably use. It'll put you instantly in the top 10% of applicants.

CyberFonic 10 years ago |

Job hunting can be very difficult. A lot depends on the types of companies and positions she is applying for.

It is easier to get a job with the skills and experience you already have and then try to migrate to newer skills. So maybe going for Java & Python jobs without relevant experience is an issue.

Whilst education is important experience is far more pertinent in hiring. As is the personality factors revealed during interviews or even in the covering letters. 100+ applications suggests that there are issues. The trick is to find out where they might be. Getting some professional advice might be necessary.

a-saleh 10 years ago |

Do you have friends that work for companies she would like to work at? I.e. at place where I work we have incentives for seeking out new coleagues. The best thing about this, that when your friend tells his manager something like "You know how we have rack open for 4 months? I think I know a person." you usually bypass the HR guy skimming through 100 aplications and maybe thinking "C++ & Matlab? Who needs that?" or something like that.

If you have no friends that would help you with this, I would suggest going to local conferences and talking to speakers. On local linux group meeting, I had a conversation that literary went

me: "Hey, awesome presentation, do you think I could get your slides?"

speaker: "I don't think I want to hang them over, I might have divulged too much about our company internals so I don't really want to have it on the internet."

me: "That is a pity, good I was taking notes :-)"

speaker: "Well, if you liked it, you might want to work for us, we have a junior position open."

(Disclaimer, I was 22, still doing my masters at the time, your conversation might be different)

klunger 10 years ago |

Create a LinkedIn profile, with links to any projects she may have done. Use the right keywords. Recruiters use this to find and contact people with specific skills.

Maybe also take a 2-3 sentences to explain the gap, with a positive spin. "For a brief period, I was unable to work, due to visa issues. I therefore spent my time on the following independent projects: ... The visa issues have resolved and I am now actively looking for work in ... ." Or something.

nicholas73 10 years ago |

Does she have any projects to post here?

I also have an MSEE and looked for coding jobs. I only had one finished website* but it was good enough to get some responses and a few interviews.

* http://sudokuisland.com

mhsenkow 10 years ago |

I can't find the specific posting, but IBM has some jobs that are being labeled "back to workforce" in the data scientist/analytics area. May be worth looking into?