
Ask HN - Where do you look for jobs? - factorialboy
Here are my sources:<p>* HN Monthly Hiring threads<p>* GitHub<p>* Reddit<p>* 37Signals Job Board<p>Any other sources?
======
kaisdavis
I don't look for jobs that have been posted — my feeling is that jobs that
make it to Reddit / GitHub / Craigslist / Monthly Hiring Threads, are all jobs
that have been picked over by people working at (or close with) the company.

I make a list of the type of company I want to work with (I want to be paid
$X, they should use this technology, I want to solve this problem or work on
this project) and then I backtrace it and figure out which companies match
those criteria.

Then, I contact those companies. I set up meetings when I can. My goal is to
learn:

    
    
      * What sort of projects they work on
      * What challenges they're facing (geez, our biggest client needs _IDEA Z_)
      * What skills they look for in new hires / freelancers
      * Other companies in the area / tech / market
    

When appropriate, I tell them about my background and skills and ask who I
should be in contact with to learn when new opportunities open up.

Then, I do two things

If they mentioned a huuuuge problem / pain point they're facing, I send them a
follow-up email talking about the problem they mentioned, what I can
contribute to solving it, and suggesting a time for another meeting.

I follow up with any other companies / people they mentioned and set up a
quick coffee meeting.

Periodically, I'll check in with my contact. Nothing spammy, just an update
about something relevant to their industry / problem.

Rather than fight over the same jobs that everyone else sees on 37Signals /
Reddit / GitHub / HN hiring / Craigslist / LinkedIn / Etc, I want to be at the
top of mind with the companies I want to work with.

Every job I've had — salary or consulting - has come from someone inside of
the company calling me up, telling me about a position they have, and asking
me if I want to interview. This bypasses the slog through submitting a resume
and fighting against 20+ other candidates for a position. This gets me the
positions I want working on the problems I want to solve.

~~~
asmithmd1
Can you be more specific about this part:

"Then, I contact those companies. I set up meetings when I can"

How do you contact them, how do you pitch the idea of meeting with you?

~~~
kaisdavis
(Thanks for asking! I'm about to meet with a client, so this is pretty stream
of consciousness. If you have any questions, leave them here or shoot me an
email at kai@kaisdavis.com!)

I pitch the meeting as an informational interview to learn about the industry.
I let them know I'm active / looking to enter the industry and I have a few
questions for a 15-20 minute meeting.

I'll check LinkedIn / my personal network / company website to find the name
and title of the person that I want to meet. It's generally the owner (smaller
companies) or project director / department director.

If their email address is public, I'll send them a short (~5 sentence max)
email. If it's not, I'll use LinkedIn / Rapporative / Spokeo / calling the
company to dig out their email address.

I'll send a short email saying something like:

(I do marketing consulting, but this has worked for my buddy who is a Python
Developer, and my ex-girlfriend who does front end design)

"Hey,

Do you have 15-20 minutes free this Friday for a short informational
interview? I'm a Marketing Strategist in town and I'm curious about the skills
you look for in marketers in your industry.

Would you be free to meet this Friday at 1:00pm? (If that time doesn't work,
just let me know when a good time for you would be).

Thanks!

Kai"

If I don't hear back from them in 1-2 days, I'd do a quick follow-up call.

"Hey, this is Kai. I sent you an email a few days ago about setting up an
informational interview. I'm curious, would this Friday at 1:00pm work or
would there be a better time?"

If the meeting is set up, I'd write down the top 10 questions I have about the
industry and bring the notes + a notebook to the meeting with me.

My goal is to keep them talking. My goal is to learn what problems they're
facing as a department / as an industry, what skills they look for in new
employees / freelancers, and who is the best person to know to find about open
positions.

~~~
CWIZO
I'm really intrigued by your approach. But doesn't this come across as
nagging? I get the first email, and it's perfectly fine by me. I wouldn't mind
receiving such an email. But the second one seems a bit spammy to me.

Can you share what kind of feedback you got from those emails? What is your
success ratio?

~~~
saraid216
It's worth pointing out that Kai is a marketing specialist, and this is fairly
normal (read: not bad) behavior when it comes to doing marketing. Keep in mind
that he's spacing it out by a few days, which matters, and the follow-up
actually demonstrates that he's (1) a human and (2) very interested.

~~~
kaisdavis
Well put!

I'm approaching this from a marketing perspective and effective follow-ups can
make the difference between a lead becoming dead or turning into a prospect.

It also proves that I'm human and not an automated mass email. (We all hate
those).

Thanks Michael!

------
PaulHoule
I haven't looked for a job actively for about five years or so and I hope that
I don't need to ever again. Instead, I get contacted regularly by recruiters,
founders and other hiring agents who, unfortunately, I mostly need to decline.
(Otherwise I wouldn't be getting any actual work done!)

Chasing listed jobs is a mug's game for two reasons: (i) you need to compete
with a mountain of applications, and (ii) people often list jobs that they
aren't entirely serious about filling. Even if you have a strong resume and
put 30 minutes into writing a good cover letter for each applications, the
odds really are against you in this case.

Factor (ii) is still a problem if you get an interview because many
organizations put multiple random barriers ahead of applicants. For instance,
if you don't pass some test or flub a question or one of the fifteen people
who talk to you just doesn't like you on an animal level you've wasted all the
time you've put into the process.

Anybody who's using a recruiter, on the other hand, really wants to fill the
position. The odds are in your favor because the recruiter is going to walk if
the company keeps putting candidates through the gauntlet and rejecting them.

So how do you get people to call you?

Be active on the web. For me that's meant developing a few side projects and
also developing connections and adding some content to LinkedIn every day...
Even when I'm not looking for work.

If you get yourself known you can quit wasting time looking at job boards.

~~~
tocomment
Can you expand on what you do for adding content to linked in every day? And
how does that help?

~~~
EnderMB
I'd also like to know why, mainly because I decided to finish off my LinkedIn
profile during a lazy afternoon and for the past couple of days I've had
recruiters from Google, Microsoft and loads of other companies sniffing around
my profile and on my website/github profile.

Perhaps it was coincidence, or perhaps putting the right things in your
profile tends to get you noticed?

~~~
Vishnu3014
Would you give me an example of "putting the right things in your profile" ?
Might be far-fetched but, if I could see an example of "Mr.X"'s profile, that
would be great starting point.

~~~
EnderMB
In my case it was just a matter of playing the game.

I added people that I had interacted with at my previous companies as
connections, I listed any articles I've written, put up links to personal
projects/sites and reduced my skills to a small list of strong skills. I also
joined a few small but known groups related to my work and made a couple of
posts. Nothing too special, just a few posts here and there to answer some
questions. Finally, I added my Stack Overflow reputation and any "out-of-work"
stuff I handle. Basically, going from 30% completeness to 100% completeness on
my profile.

A few days later I checked back on my profile and found that my profile views
had gone from zero to around 10-15 a day. I tend to get a lot of recruiter
spam on there but have had a few EMEA recruiters from Google, Microsoft and
Facebook stop by my profile. No offers, but always nice to see people
interested in reading about me.

~~~
thomaslangston
I'd expect that in addition to 'completeness' you're also landing at the top
of the 'last updated' sorting as well.

~~~
EnderMB
Aha, that'll do it! I never knew that there was a "last updated" list.

What worries me is that recruiters must think that this is a legitimate way to
source talent...

------
negrit
I don't want to sound like a douche but I've never looked for a job on a
website. Each time i needed a job i got an offer from a company or from
someone in my network.

To grow your professional network I would recommend to attend to meetups,
hackathons, user groups or even better to get involve in the organization. It
worked pretty well for me.

I met some incredible people and got some good jobs offer.

~~~
sown
> To grow your professional network I would recommend to attend to meetups,
> hackathons, user groups or even better to get involve in the organization.
> It worked pretty well for me.

Everyone of these meetups I've been to feels so...forced? I don't know but
I've never really felt comfortable at these kinds of things. It's always so
contrived?

~~~
whichdan
I mostly just go to reddit meetups in Boston, so my perspective is slightly
skewed, but I find the biggest problem is usually the venue. Very few places
can seat more than 6 people or so together comfortably.

------
masnick
I wrote a long post about job boards for programmers that was on HN a while
ago:

<http://www.maxmasnick.com/articles/jobs/>

~~~
Peroni
What a coincidence. I emailed you about 10 minutes ago regarding this exact
post!

~~~
masnick
I just saw your email!

I wish I knew more about the UK job scene....I'm in the US so I don't have any
personal experience there. Are the big job boards the same there? (I'd guess
Github, StackOverflow, 37s, angellist are the big established boards
everywhere, but not sure.)

~~~
Peroni
All of the above are relevant. Tech wise there are few that stick out aside
from those which is why we are really pushing to be a bigger player as we
reckon the UK tech job scene needs a lot of TLC.

~~~
masnick
Agreed...do you have any idea how effective the big job boards are? In my
experience (one post for a somewhat weird job), we didn't get any hits from
the big boards.

Is there any sort of public reporting/metrics for the effectiveness of these
boards, or do people use them because every other company does so it seems
necessary to compete for candidates?

------
eel
I found my current position via LinkedIn. I also searched with StackOverflow
Careers, the HN monthly hiring threads (which weren't useful due to a lack of
posts for my area), and the job pages of local companies. I probably would
have used more sources if it had taken any significant amount of time to find
a job.

My previous position was via a university career fair when I was still a
student.

~~~
hyramgraff
I also used StackOverflow Careers and found the position I just started.

I also tried the Who's Hiring HN thread, but I didn't find it very useful
because of the small number of posts in my geographical area.

I tried LinkedIn, but found it very hard to filter down to a decent match for
my skill set.

------
imack
I haven't used it personally, but Angellist jobs looks interesting:
<https://angel.co/jobs>

I like that they have to disclose ballpark salaries. Makes it easier to get a
sense for how the company values developers.

~~~
grotm001
We're creating a more targeted platform than AngelList called EquityLancer,
aimed at providing a marketplace where equity is used as a currency. In doing
so, the jobs on our site are guaranteed to offer equity.

We've seen more than 90% of the jobs posted on our site also include salary.
After reading many of the posts in this thread, I'm eager to expand the
functionality of our platform's tools to include many of the methods described
in finding a job outside the popular platforms.

------
sarhus
You can check <http://roundabout.io> too for London jobs. A good UK job board,
not yet mentioned is <http://www.coderstack.co.uk/>

~~~
kami8845
thanks for mentioning these!

------
adventureloop
When I was looking for a job I would routinely go through:

\- careers.stackoverflow.com \- prospects.ac.uk (Though you need to have been
a student to register) \- s1jobs.com (Mostly so I could have at least seen one
ad a day) \- talentscotland.com \- workinstartups.com

~~~
Peroni
As you're UK based, check out our site next time (if there is a next time)
<http://hackerjobs.co.uk>

------
tommorris
Last time I was looking for a job, it consisted of posting an update on
Facebook saying that I was back on the job market. I got six promising leads
to follow up from friends in about 12 hours. And in most cases, it's from
someone who works there, or even the person trying to hire.

(Sadly, the same trick doesn't work for boyfriends.)

------
kingnothing
I found my previous job through a local Ruby User Group meetup. At least in
Atlanta, pretty much every company that attends is always hiring. I currently
average about three recruiters or hiring managers a week contacting me on
LinkedIn, which is how I found my current job.

------
Peroni
<http://www.hackerjobs.co.uk> if you're looking for UK based work. We
occasionally get some European roles posted too. Had a few Irish & German jobs
in the past.

------
jaybill
This is going to sound arrogant and troll-y, but I assure you it isn't.

I don't look. When I want a new job, I stop ignoring recruiters and wait to
see what comes along. I've never waited more than a few days to have a pile of
interesting opportunities. (I also end up with a much _bigger_ pile of
bullshit talent-trawls, but that's beside the point)

I wish I could say this was a function of my being awesome, but I think it has
more to do with the job market in my area (PDX). There just aren't enough
senior developers to go around.

------
zbruhnke
I have never really looked for a job honestly, but if I were going to here's
what I would do.

Find the type of company you want to work for. Narrow your list down to about
5 of those companies you'd like to work at.

Now sit down and write a personalized cover letter for each of these companies
and the role you'd like to play in said organization.

Now email each of the companies hiring depts, founders, etc with said letter
and sit back. If you wrote a truly compelling cover letter (you should have if
you are actually passionate about working for the company) you will most
likely get some sort of response.

Rinse and repeat if no success.

As a multi-time founder and hiring decision-maker I always enjoyed a good
cover letter and great interview more than a resume. Even when it comes to
technical knowledge the most important thing to me is that if you did not know
it you were smart enough and capable of learning it.

If you can knock it out of the park on a cover letter and show why you're
excited to be a part of said company then they would be foolish not to hire
you.

EDIT: Obviously you should still send a resume as well. But sending one
without a cover letter in my opinion is the equivalent of career suicide.

------
rpwilcox
<http://careers.stackoverflow.com/> has been a really good source for me

~~~
ianstallings
I found my best hire to date using this. As soon as I put it up he emailed me
his resume and we made it happen. He's been a great asset.

------
thekevinjones
This seemed like a good question that could be elaborated and stored on Quora
as well. I compiled most of the sources as well as the original thread and put
it on here:

[http://www.quora.com/Web-Development/Where-do-you-look-
for-d...](http://www.quora.com/Web-Development/Where-do-you-look-for-
developer-jobs-online)

------
kevhsu
Any tips for new grads? Currently in my last semester of undergrad.

~~~
meaydinli
I recently graduated (at the end of August 2012), and I have been looking for
a full time Android Developer position in SF Bay area since then. Here is what
I did:

\- Cleaned up my Linkedin profile. Set my title to my desired position
(Android Developer). I worked on my resume and made it as detailed as possible
but still fit in 2 pages. In the Linkedin "Summary" field, I put in my
objective, goal and my "Professional Summary". Then I filled in the
experience, courses and projects. I got endorsements and recommendations from
my former colleagues. Next; I bought "Job Seeker" membership from Linkedin,
put on the "Job Seeker" badge, and opt in for OpenLink. This made it easier
for people to find me and message me. After all these, my profile views and
search appearances skyrocketed. The next thing I am considering is, setting my
Linkedin location to San Francisco (I am temporarily in Chicagoland) so that
recruiters in SF can find me.

\- I built a single page resume site (<http://bit.ly/aydinli_resume>), put
links to my Linkedin, AngelList and Github. I also have Google Analytics.
Nothing fancy, and mobile compatible. I also had business cards with a QR code
linked to my resume site.

\- Here is a list of websites I use to search for jobs (in no particular
order):

    
    
      + Indeed
      + SimplyHired
      + Startuphire
      + Startupers
      + Glassdoor
      + UseTheSource
      + DeveloperAuction
      + AngelList jobs
      + Github jobs
      + Mobile development groups on meetup.com
      + Interviewstreet
      + Dice
      + VentureLoop
      + Startuply
      + Linkedin
      + Crunchboard
      + VentureBeat jobs
      + Hacker News Who is Hiring xxxx 201x?
      + Reddit SfBayJobs
      + 37Signals Job board
      + JobScore jobseeker
      + Sometimes Quora
      + Directly from the websites of well known companies
    

Currently, I don't have any problems finding jobs to apply. I search for jobs,
if the project seems interesting, I apply and ask for more information. The
problem I have is; companies don't have to reply to your application whether
good or bad. It doesn't matter if it is a giant company or a startup founder
that gives out his/her personal email for applications, you rarely get an
answer. Even with tools they have, like jobvite, resumator, jobscore, etc.,
they very rarely reply. I am getting used to it though.

~~~
thekingshorses
If you want a job in SF, move to SF now. It will be lot easier to meet people
and get hired. There are tons of job openings.

~~~
meaydinli
I thought about doing that, but then I couldn't find any advantages. I can
move there, change my Linkedin location to San Francisco, and that would bring
more recruiters. I can try going to meetups in the area and try to network.
Aside from those, what do you think I could do? I have a very limited amount
of time to find a job.

------
mzarate06
Other.

I'm a freelancer, and most of my work comes via referrals now. Not always, but
it's been the case for the past few years.

Wasn't much different back when I was looking for full time work though. Even
though I only worked for 2 companies, I use to get interviews through
referrals, or through past colleagues that left and wanted me to come aboard.

------
civilian
Have a well connected and up to date linkedin profile, abd accept the random
friend requests from recruiters.

go to offline networking events.

get to know your local group for whatever you program in. Seattle-python-
interest-group has periodic job emails, and more importantly if I asked them
for help I would probably get a couple responses.

------
jboggan
One strategy if you're already in SF or SV is to figure out the places that
tech folks congregate and passively get leads while doing other work. When I
moved to SF a few months ago and was jobhunting I would go to Four Barrel
Coffee in the Mission while I was writing my cover letters and doing recruiter
correspondence. I'd make a point of talking to anyone who came in the door
with a startup tee or hoodie on and tell them what I was doing.

This meant that my list of places to apply to actually grew every time I went
to go and knock a few off my list. I met a lot of interesting engineers this
way and generated a lot of leads that I wouldn't have found through HN Hiring
or other boards. In some cases I found jobs that weren't posted online until
after I found out about them in person.

------
tocomment
How do you look for them on Reddit? I hadn't heard of that.

~~~
newsoundwave
<http://reddit.com/r/forhire>

------
beghbali
I like the new Coderwall team pages, they showcase the team members, their
stack and other cultural bits that fill in the gap that typical job posts
create.

<http://coderwall.com/teams>

------
naspinski
I have found that Dice.com is a great place to post for Technical jobs.

~~~
forgivegod
I 2nd this. Dice has always done great things for me.

------
mdhayes
Offline - local meetups and user groups

~~~
CodeCube
I second this ... every job I've had (with the exception of my first
programming job) has come through contacts made at meetups/user groups.
Although, secondary to that has been keeping up a laundry list of secondary
projects that I work on on my own personal time.

~~~
mdhayes
Also agree on side projects. In my opinion both show eagerness and give people
the opportunity to get to know you/your work so it lessens the risk of hiring.

------
pmb
Social networking has consistently produced job offers for me, but I did also
get one job through my undergraduate college career fair and my current
academic position through ACM jobs.

------
broken_symlink
I browse on indeed occasionally. I'm a senior in college though and am
applying to grad schools right now, so I've never seriously looked for a job
before.

------
bdcravens
See if there's a job-specific mailing list for the language you're interested
in.

Get involved: speak at user groups and conferences. If possible, step up and
manage. You'll get work sent your way, and once you've built up a reputation
(like when people come up to you at conferences and know your name but you
don't know theirs), you can often drop the idea of needing work on Twitter and
get a good response.

------
orrenkt
I just put together a tool that aggregates developer jobs tweeted on twitter -
you can see jobs by area and type.

The best part is that it also shows jobs that haven't made it to formal
listings yet.

It's at <http://www.jobquacks.com> \- regrettably I haven't built in support
for mobile yet..

~~~
meaydinli
A similar web site is: <http://jobstractor.com/> . Though I think I like yours
better.

~~~
orrenkt
Thanks!

I didn't realize job tractors was out there when I made this. @meaydinli --
did you find the site useful at all? What would make it better?

~~~
meaydinli
Yes, it was useful. I actually found an opening somewhere. What would make it
better? A couple of suggestions:

    
    
      - It defaults to Milwaukee. Maybe ask for a zip code?
      - I like that it loads more as you scroll down, but it also loads the same things so there are lots of repetitions.
      - No filter for android/ios/mobile
      - Highlight the words that I filter for; ex: If I choose Android, color the word Android in the page yellow.
    

Best of luck to you!

~~~
orrenkt
Thanks a ton for your thoughts and i'm really happy the tool helped you find
an opening! To your points:

-I just added a mobile filter (includes all mobile dev) so take a look! hope this helps.

-highlighting filtered words is an awesome idea and it's now on my list.

-Obviously there are still some bugs in the geo-locating and scroll stuff - where are you located?

-I'd love to hear more about what kind of jobs you're looking for and why the opening you found was useful so I can understand how to make the tool better. If you have a second to respond here I'd really appreciate it, or you can tweet/email me @orrenkt/orrenkt at gmail

------
stevenelliottjr
I've been working in the same place for 11 years now! I know it's startling
but it's a pretty sweet place and I've moved myself up through the ranks so-
to-speak. I have perused a few jobs on Stackoverflow careers a few times but
never applied. They tend to have pretty decent places with interesting work.

------
juaninfinitelop
ZipRecruiter is a good one. It has some useful features that I haven't seen in
other job board sites. Some features include, total number of candidates that
have applied, including AND in the search query, and a few others. Worth
giving them a look.

------
joonix
A lot of good advice here that almost never applies to or works for those
entering the work force out of school with no work experience. That's
exponentially worse, especially outside of tech.

------
peterwwillis
* Hackerspaces * User Groups * Hackathons * Tech Happy Hours * Friends and Family * Monster, or company-specific job boards * Classifieds * Mailing lists, local or tech-specific

------
alincatalin0199
If you're a mobile app developer - <http://www.BigBangJobs.info> could be a
good choice to find exciting new projects to work on.

------
whichdan
Gotta plug one of my weekend projects - <http://careers.sh>

It links to a bunch of job sites. No referral links or anything.

------
deepakg
For Perl specific jobs I look at <http://jobs.perl.org>.

------
schneby
I used Indeed to find my current job. Great free daily email of top jobs based
on role/geography

------
jes5199
Local [language-of-choice] meetups

------
genystartup
LinkedIn is quite good too.

~~~
munyukim
I also find LinkedIn very helpful.

------
adrianwaj
related question - if I wanted to, what'd be the best method to post tech job
ads to my site <http://hackerbra.in> ?

------
akrakesh
Dribbble Behance Authentic Jobs Folyo

I'm a UI designer

