
Ask HN: Unemployed for years. Am i in the wrong business? - meesterdude
in the past 4 years, i&#x27;ve spent far more time doing tech interviews than I have actually doing work. I&#x27;m all for resiliency and not giving up, but am I barking up the wrong tree at this point? I&#x27;m not hearing any feedback when I get rejection notices except that they went with someone else - getting hard to know if its me or them at this point!<p>Any advice would be awesome.
======
n_t
It's difficult to give any advise without knowing more about your background.
Finding job can be uphill task due to many things -

1\. Age factor (above 40 might have some challenge finding new job)

2\. One and only one skill in quiver and if that's antiquated, even more
challenging to get job.

3\. Resume doesn't match experience. E.g. in industry for 7 years and have
nothing significant to put on resume. You wont get contacted at all, probably.

4\. Interviewing for position/group/company which do not align with your skill
sets or experience.

5\. Lack of interviewing skill.

6\. Lack of depth in domain of interview.

7\. Some personality trait which is becoming hindrance.

I think all of above can be tackled in some way, one just needs to identify
the problem. My advise for interviews in general is -

a. Pick one generic domain and try to learn a lot in that domain instead of
glossing through tonnes of terms.

b. Pick one language and stick to it for practicing interviews, you can always
learn new language on job once hired.

c. Pick companies to apply for carefully. See if their product or requisition
matches with some of your skill set. If they invited you for interview, focus
on those match and try to project them. Even if you dont do well on certain
things, your grasp on some other area might sway the interview.

d. Be enthusiastic, even if you are tanking the interview. It's not end of
road.

e. Treat each interview as preparation for next one, instead of do-or-die
situation. Be mindful of your shortcomings and mistakes and then practice on
correcting them before next interview.

f. Apply to companies where you know someone. See if they can help get some
feedback for you.

As others said, interviews are not valid measure of skill. There is no way
interviews can find if a person is in wrong business, so spend some time on
job before coming to that conclusion.

* edited for formatting.

------
Neowizard
As a part-time CS teacher and part-time developer, I can sadly say that quite
a few people in the industry are in the wrong line of work. However, I
wouldn't say that interviews are a valid measure of skill. They're short and
often done incorrectly.

Before you give up, you might want to seek elsewhere for validation. You might
just be choosing the wrong places to interview with.

------
sharemywin
What have you been doing?

you probably not going to get past HR without a good story.

just my 2 cents not an HR person.

