

Jessica Roy: Dear San Francisco Employers: Please Hire Me - od
http://jessicakroy.com/2010/03/09/dear-san-francisco-employers-please-hire-me/

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Estragon
Can you actually live in the area on $12/hour?

Also, someone should teach her about salary negotiation. Stupid to box
yourself in like that. She'll probably end up working for $10/hour.

~~~
gizmo
Actually, I'm willing to bet the opposite. She's going to get significantly
more than $12 an hour. Why? Because by saying she's willing to accept $12/hr
and fetch lattes to get where she wants to be... she (deliberately) puts
herself in a position with no negotiating power. You can't play hardball
against somebody like that without feeling like a dick about it.

It's like saying to somebody who's about to punch you.. "Ok, you can punch me
if that's what you want, if that makes you feel better", and if you say it
right you make it almost impossible for that person to punch you.

You don't want to get into a fist fight with somebody who's unwilling to raise
his arms, and you don't _want_ to negotiate with somebody who surrenders all
leverage.

I'm confident she'll get an offer that the employer genuinely believes is
fair.

~~~
JabavuAdams
> You can't play hardball against somebody like that without feeling like a
> dick about it.

Don't assume that other people are like you, especially when negotiating.

This is awful advice.

~~~
gizmo
I'm not advocating the tactic at all. I'm simply predicting that she'll get a
significantly better deal than $12/hr because only one employer has to step up
and make a reasonable offer. You don't have to get the best offer on average,
you simply have to get one good offer from one employer.

Some people assume that because she states she's willing to work for $12/hr
that's automatically the best rate she's going to get offered. I think it will
affect her average salary offer, but I don't think it will affect her best and
worst offers much if at all.

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starkfist
She could get a writing job at a place like RWW easily. Unfortunately it's one
of the only places she could get a job. It's also a boiler room. I don't know
what the right phrase for a blogging boiler room is.

I hope she truly loves SF because career wise there are more and better
opportunities for people like her in NYC.

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prosa
>> continuously trolling the depressing opportunities on Monster/NYU
Careernet/Craigslist.

Is this system broken? Is there an opportunity for improvement in the way
people find jobs, or is the best way to find good work going to increasingly
be by performing memorable stunts to get eyeballs from prospective employers?
I'm curious, especially in light of the relative lack of successful startups
in the area.

~~~
chime
The system is indeed broken. Finding a job is a horrible experience for most
people. If you know enough people in your selected field, it is usually not
that bad. However, if you want to change careers, move to a new area, or are
generally not interested in networking for networking's sake, finding a job is
a soul-sucking misadventure.

Monster/CareerBuilder sites are absolute crap, especially for IT-related jobs.
Indeed, Dice, and Jobing aren't that great either. The Web 2.0 job-hunt
startups are just mashups of existing job sites so while the interface is
cool, the content is no better. Most of the jobs have no mention of salary,
benefits, or the social/managerial environment. Recruiters / headhunters are
only interested in you if you are a potential fit for a specific job. The
moment that job gets filled, you're back to square one.

I've actually been more on the other side of the job hunt i.e. finding people
to hire. The problem there is that the good/quality coders are just impossible
to find. Most of the resumes I come across are people who taught themselves
Active Directory and are applying for ERP-coding jobs. I've looked at
"superstar" job hunt sites like jobs.joel and jobs.37signals but there's
barely any traction in my area (Tampa, Florida).

Surprisingly, Craigslist has been the best choice for me as a former applicant
and as someone looking to hire. Craigslist is very blunt, direct, and
accessible. The last part is the key here. You don't have to sign up for 10
services to place a job ad on Craigslist. As a result, I've found many more
job offers on Craigslist that end up in an interview than other sites. I know
with near certainty that someone is actually reading my email when I reply to
a Craigslist post. I feel my email ends up in a large junk folder when I apply
on other sites. Similarly, whenever I've posted an ad on Craigslist for a job,
I've received direct emails from candidates and some of them have been pretty
good.

I don't know how this system could be fixed. All I know is that there are a
lot of good candidates and good jobs and it's not easy for them to find each
other.

~~~
mattm
"I've actually been more on the other side of the job hunt i.e. finding people
to hire. The problem there is that the good/quality coders are just impossible
to find."

What can I do to stand out as a quality coder when I'm applying? I'm probably
not the best on selling myself properly but I think I'm a good coder (and have
had very satisfied clients/employers).

~~~
chime
Problem isn't what makes you stand out. Problem is where are you? How do I
even find you? How do you find me? There are over 10k jobs on Monster for
people with experience in LAMP in my area. Are you really going to apply to
all of them?

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cmelbye
How does one raise their "Google Index"?

 _I can help raise your Google Index through SEO._

~~~
nopassrecover
through SEO?

Let's not pick on the terminology, clearly she is talking about your ranking
for common keywords and PageRank.

~~~
cmelbye
I just think it's odd that she's using the completely incorrect term in a
professional setting where she's trying to convince a future employer that she
can do the job.

~~~
jonny_noog
Bearing in mind that there's a good chance that her prospective future
employer probably couldn't describe the task even that well, I'd be willing to
give her a pass on that one.

If I was the prospective employer, it would actually serve a great purpose for
me, it tells me that she has some amount of experience with the technicalities
of the Internet, but not a great depth in this kind of area. She seems to be
going for writing jobs ideally, not a dev or server admin position or
something, so this would not necessarily be a detractor to her overall pitch.
And you can tell she's pitching to non-technical people:

"I can even make that div float so that the text doesn’t get all messy. Don’t
know what that means? See, _you really should hire me_."

I quite liked that passage.

She also refers to "software packages like Microsoft Office and Adobe Suite"
where I would in any similar situation at least refer to it as "the Adobe
Suite" and most likely I'd be a little more specific than that, going into
further detail about which apps in the suite I actually have experience with.
But again, I give her a pass because the way she's written things up I suspect
works for the audience she's targeting.

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faramarz
If I was a startup in the Valley, I'd hire her as copywriter.

~~~
xelipe
I could use a copywriter for $8/hour.

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paraschopra
Not particularly related to this but I am amazed how people here and on the
blog are surprised that she is willing to work for $12/hr while at the same
time web app startups are afraid to charge even $10/month from their users.
What an irony!

PS: I know scale v/s no-scale argument, but still one should charge for your
web app (no matter how trivial is it)?

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byrneseyeview
I'm a little disturbed that this is how the most talented people in my
generation behave. It seems like most people her age are simply lazy, but a
small minority are talented, hardworking, and _desperate to undersell
themselves_.

If you've gone to a good school, gotten a good GPA, and been published, don't
you dare compete on price! Figure out what the average entry-level college
grad would make in a given position, and ask for 25% more. Tell them why it's
a good deal.

If she says $12, she sounds like damaged goods. If she says "I'm a better deal
at $60K than the last applicant was at $40K," she has another sentence or two
to make her case-- _which she can do_.

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jasonlbaptiste
There should be a site that highlights truly fucking awesome people looking
for jobs and has an actual insight into them (plus what they've built). I'd
hire those people.

~~~
9oliYQjP
Here's the problem. Truly awesome people can jump from job to job with ease.
They're always in demand. They're always having offers thrown at them, even
when they aren't looking.

Where there's a need for a website is for inexperienced, but otherwise awesome
folks. Those people that haven't been discovered yet because they are fresh
out of school, perhaps like this person. The big problem with this idea is
that there's no guarantee that somebody who is an awesome student will make an
awesome employee.

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xal
Well i'd hire her if I was in SF :-)

This is how you get a job.

~~~
jaxn
I agree. I forwarded it on to someone I know in SF who blogs for a TV station
there.

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cj
Perfect: Presents some degree of intelligence mixed in with an emotional
appeal.

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dtap
How do you pay off NYU on $12/hour?

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clistctrl
"I was reared during the internet age, most consciously during the dot com
bust. I am also only 22, meaning that I am the definition of cheap labor. No,
seriously, I think that getting paid anything more than $12/hour is “living
large,” and getting paid $12/hour is “extremely manageable.”"

I'm also 22, Currently making 70k... i would find $12/hour anything but living
large.

~~~
encoderer
And this woman graduated from NYU, Junior year in Paris, she's been published,
and she's absolutely charming. She's optimized for distance, not speed. No
reason to be a douche.

~~~
jrockway
This is the kind of person you pay $100k starting to though, to keep them
around for a while.

I was like this, and I kept changing jobs every 6 months because someone would
come along and offer me twice what I was making before. Sure, I'll come work
for you! (Oh, and I'm 24.)

My bet is that two years from now, she will easily be making $50 an hour, even
if she starts on $12 today. But if you're that person paying her $12 today, I
estimate that will last maybe 3 or 4 months. Then someone else will have her
talent, and you'll be saying to yourself, "yeah, paying someone like that $12
an hour was fucking dumb of us".

~~~
starkfist
_This is the kind of person you pay $100k starting to though, to keep them
around for a while._

Why??? She's exactly like every other 20-something woman in Manhattan, only
they all have better looking tumblr sites!

~~~
jrockway
Published author?

I am not really in this industry, so I have no idea. I was a published author
at 22 and make about that much.

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forgotAgain
Hey Shane,

Why use profanity? Your friend is putting herself out there looking for a job
and you lessen her efforts by using profanity in your comments. Way to be a
friend.

