i saw someone on twitter saying to “leverage your network” i’d sooner leverage a shotgun into my mouth jesus fucking christ
plus all this is meant to be done at a time when you’re likely at your lowest confidence, most insecure, and most desperate.
just the idea that it’s my job to sell myself to these sorts of business goons who ENJOY seeing people desperate and on edge is so sick. i have nothing to sell, i am not a commodity, i am a human being. and everything’s ran thru some shitty AI now i’m sure. like the applications weren’t demeaning enough.
can’t we all just be assigned jobs by the government? it’d build social cohesion. like the hunger games. maybe you can opt out but I’d rather take my chances than answer these fucking personality tests or get so hopeless i’m actually applying for something with hours I hate with a miserable commute with a terrible wage which ALSO won’t hire me
“Have you tried applying on LinkedIn? Messaging recruiters or hiring managers on LinkedIn?”
“Oh no don’t use LinkedIn, everyone ignores those because of bots, apply directly”
“Put keywords from the job listing in your resume so the algorithm will rank you hire”
“Oh no don’t use words from the listing in your resume or you’ll be flagged as a bot”
“Hire a headhunter to apply to many positions for you”
“Avoid headhunters because when they spam your resume, you’ll get flagged as a bot”
“Complete a tedious and time consuming project for the company and post it on your personal site so they see you’re not a bot already qualified”
“Oh they didn’t even open the link to look at it? Well do one for the next company and the next and the next…”
Looking for a white collar job today is basically an arms race with the net result recruiters spend the bulk of their time weeding out bots, and applicants spend the bulk of their time trying to not look like bots. It’s ridiculous and I kind of wish places just accepted in person applications again.
yeah, people shit on the boomer ‘firm handshake’ thing but at this rate, even as a card-carrying introvert i’d rather take my chances and at least get a feel of the place rather than filling out another godawful application that no one will ever read
One way I was able to land a job was doing the old fashioned “speak to the hiring manager and shake his hand”. She said out of all the online applications (hundreds by the way every month) I was the first person to actually go up there and express interest. Still had to put in the online application, but a week later I interviewed and got the offer.
These businesses love to dehumanize the employee pool when they should realize it’s so easy these days for them to get in the exact same position.
People shit on it because it was mostly backed by racism and sexism.
LinkedIn is fine, my past 2 contracts both were off LinkedIn
Yes, include keywords but spread them out, absolutely. Also include them in your cover letter.
Don’t use headhunters, but you can use recruiters.
Pick a specific tech stack to specialize in, one that is popular abd high demand. 100% yes you should have a portfolio using that tech you can link to on your resume or applications. Focus on applying to the smaller but refined pool of jobs that explicitly need the exact tech stack you have in your portfolio.
Example: I specialized in .NET tech stack. C#, azure, EF Core, NUnit, Sql Server, etc etc. The full windows stack.
It’s a super popular stack, and there’s tonnes of demand. I don’t waste my time applying for python or c++ or lua or go or rust jobs. I stick to my stack.
I have many projects on my github using that stack, including install instructions, releases, docker containers, etc etc.
As a result I can talk about the tech used in these stacks extensively, I know them like the back of my hand. I have strong opinions on patterns with them, I can teach others about them, etc.
What’s the strongest opinion you have on the stack you know (or one of its elements)? Not necessarily “interview-safe” opinions