Ask HN: Were you able to get a job lately in the Bay Area?

16 points by throwbayarea 9 years ago | 5 comments

I'm desperate guys... I've applied at 20 different companies and haven't been able to land a job. This has never happened to me in the past. I'm applying for software engineering positions. I'm a full stack engineer with several years of experience, I worked for some very hot companies out there in the Bay Area.

What is going on right now??? I've always been good at interviewing and I've switched jobs 6 times over the last 10 years. I manage to get through the interviews and answer most of the questions, sometimes ALL the technical questions. I come up super motivated and energetic over the phone and onsite. They keep saying they love my profile and experience and at the end of the whole process I keep getting the same email: "we decided to move with other candidates" or "we don't think you're a perfect fit".

theologic 9 years ago |

It is difficult to diagnose this on a forum, but I'm going to suggest another angle.

Unless there has been something radically change in your life, I'm going to suggest that you are simply having a run of "bad luck."

1. You have a good work history

2. You are in a field that is in demand

3. The unemployment rate is low not only in the bay area, but nationwide

At least for me, "Fooled by Randomness" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb was a life changer. The main thought: when we get hit with chance (good or bad luck), we (as humans) tend to find some type of causality, when it was just randomness. With a large amount of readers for HN, somebody is going to get into a situation where something didn't click on multiple job interviews (even 20 interviews or more), and the negative outcomes were just bad luck

Now I may be reading between the lines, but your post sounds a little panicked. Once you panic this rolls in the job search, and panicked humans have a tendency to regress in terms of our execution on job interviews. The interviewer starts to get the feeling that the person is desperate, and once somebody is desperate, you no longer get the feeling that the person that you are hiring is unique. This lowers the chance of getting a job.

The key is convincing yourself that it is a numbers and networking game. Even on your time between jobs, keep networking using friends and social meetups. Then interview as much as possible, and tell everybody that your just looking for the right match on the right team.

godot 9 years ago |

This is going to be very anecdotal, and may be unrelated, but here's another data point.

I recently went through the shutdown of a startup and also had to find a new job. This was my first time seriously job hunting in 10 years as I got my last few jobs in a variety of ways that were easy. So I did what seemed to make the most sense -- launch up LinkedIn Jobs and started applying.

Out of 20+ jobs I applied to on it, I heard back from basically none. 1 company responded, but was a very quick "not a fit" without even a phone screen.

I got a total of 3 interviews, where 2 were friend referrals and 1 was through a new job matchmaking startup. (Won't name it here in case it's mistaken as advertising) Fortunately for me I landed 1 of them.

So my issue could be that no one really checks these LinkedIn job applications, which isn't related to your issue.

I'd also like to point out that the shift in technologies in just the past 3-4 years have been huge, among startups especially. Your skillset may not be up to date with what companies look for now if you had been with the same company for 5+ years.

throwbayarea 9 years ago | |

Thanks for sharing your experience. Last time I switched jobs was 2.5 years ago. My domain is pretty stable in terms of technologies, I'm up to date.

I had a little bit of everything, mostly linkedin. My "conversion rate" is actually pretty good, I usually get contacted when I apply. I made it to several on-sites even though I failed at a couple of technical phone screens at the very first stage. I'd say I nailed about %50 of my all interviews. Sometimes I'd "score" %100 at a tech interview, leaving plenty of room for me to ask a lot of meaningful questions (well prepared in advanced) to my interviewers. I mean, when you nail their coding questions, answer all their technical design questions and describe your past projects in details, what else do they need? I stay pretty humble usually and try not to come up too cocky.

I feel somehow confident about all the on-sites I had and usually got a good feedback right away (during the actual interview). Though, as I said, none of them led to an offer which is pretty amazing.

Also, I went through 2 jobs from 2 friend referrals. Failed on both. I also noticed that companies are super messy sometimes. I would apply for a position and in the middle of the process they would switch me to another position thinking it would be a better fit for me. I end-up talking to a new set of people (WTF??) who haven't heard about me nor selected my application in the first place. I feel like a bag of potatoes.. So it puts me in a weird situation where they're like "well, let's talk to him at least see what's up" without really carrying too much since they're already talking to a bunch of candidates. At the end they email me saying I'm not a great fit. Like... dude...

I'm a bit speechless right now to be honest...

godot 9 years ago | | |

I have to say I had a very similar experience as you did in my interviews as well. I felt like I did at least decent, if not pretty good, and not getting the offer from 2 of them. The place I did land, may only be because it's a small team and half the team were people I knew from a previous job (i.e. friends).

patwalls 9 years ago |

You should apply to more. It's a numbers game.