

Ask HN: How do normal people find jobs? - melvinmt

We software engineers get job offers thrown at us every single day. But what about normal people with a college education - outside of tech? A lot of these job sites are noisy, have low-quality posts and often have unreasonable demands (5 yr+ experience for everything). There&#x27;s no transparency in salary either.<p>How do normal people find (and get) jobs? I truly don&#x27;t know.
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laughfactory
It's a numbers game frankly. Right out of college I scoured the web for data
analysis and credit/banking related jobs because I had a bachelor's degree in
economics with lots of supplementary statistics and math. I put out 84
customized application packets (cover letter and resume) in a monthbefore
receiving my first offer.The offer was good so I went to work as a Credit Risk
Analyst using SAS. A could years later (last fall) we moved to Southern
California and I did the same thing. This time it only took, I think, 30-40
customized application packages to find a job. It pays well, but not well
enough for the area ($65000), and the work is super dull, but it's a job while
I work on developing my Android development and Rails development skill sets
in my free time. Hopefully in the next year I'll be able to make the jump to
development and out of banking. But yeah, it's a LOT of hard work scouring for
interesting job posts with requirements which don't read like they're looking
for Superman, with reasonable pay then digging up the direct email address of
the recruiter, customizing the app packet, emailing it to them, following up,
getting the interview, aching the interview, and getting the offer. It's
probably partly why so many stay in suboptimal jobs for so long.

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nandemo
Perhaps you mean "we software engineers in the USA".

I live in Japan. I don't get attractive job offers thrown at me every single
day.

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krapp
I live in the US and I don't either.

But to answer the question - normal people, including a lot of software
engineers in the US outside the bubble - send out resumes and take whatever
they can get. They network, check job sites, facebook groups, want ads,
whatever.

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yen223
I must be an abnormal software engineer, because that's how I found my job
too. It certainly wasn't "thrown" at me.

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LarryMade2
Newspaper classifieds, Craigslist and other on-line classifieds, online job
sites like monster. Cold contacting businesses looking for work. Advertising
services. Workmarket and other tasks for hire services.

Beyond that it is also networking, knowing people who know where there is an
opening available, nepotism - hiring family members to meet needed demand,
etc.

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jhwhite
Networking. Attending meetups in my industry.

Endlessly perusing job sites.

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a3voices
Obama gives them jobs

