
How to find a job for hackers  - Peroni
http://voltsteve.blogspot.com/2011/09/how-to-find-job-for-hackers.html
======
wheels
This is all good advice. But there are two even more important things that I'd
add:

• Specialize. It's _way_ easier for an in-demand specialist to find work and
also it's much easier to answer _who_ you'd like to work for once you've got a
narrower focus.

• If you're applying for a job that's posted internet, you're already behind
the curve. Build a network. Make sure that you know other programmers and that
they know you're looking for a job. If you know specific companies you want to
work for, make an effort to meet people at those companies.

The two points interact because if you specialize, you tend to get to know the
other specialists in your field. I've done a lot of audio software in C++ and
did that in my last job. Even before working there I knew a bunch of the other
people that did C++ audio software and one of them did an intro for me that
got me the job. This wasn't even theoretical -- I actually had filled out the
online job form a few weeks prior and gotten the, "This position has already
been filled." mail. When I used a personal intro instead I had an interview
inside of a week and they wanted to know how quickly I could start.

~~~
wisty
You don't need a network. You can just cold-call. If you find a company that
you think you will fit it, you can just contact them and ask if they have
positions. That's what recruiters do, except they don't know what kind of
company you would fit in, so they call everyone.

~~~
Peroni
I really wish it was that easy.

You will face the exact same issues recruiters do. Gatekeepers telling you the
person you are looking for is 'in a meeting' or to email them your CV and they
will get back to you etc.

It takes me a minimum of 20 calls to actually speak to a person in a position
to hire people and my hit rate is better than most.

~~~
achompas
Do startups work like this too?

~~~
Peroni
Not quite but generally with start-ups the person you need to speak to is
ridiculously busy so you will simply struggle to get 5 minutes of their time.

~~~
_delirium
Depends on the size, but I've found startups pretty responsive via email. I
haven't asked for a job, but I'd imagine there's a good chance a real human
will read it, and might remember you if your skills are relevant and they
later need someone in that area.

------
wesleyb
This is how I found my first job (straight out of college, industry had
crashed in south africa after the .99 bomb, I had been looking for a while but
no luck). This is what I eventually came up with, you decide if it's how
hackers find a job.

\- I put an ad in a popular job seeker's rag. It cost a pretty penny, but the
end result was worth it. \- The ad was not as a job seeker, but as an employer
\- The employer, of course, was fake but I described the kind of company that
I wanted to work at \- I then listed credentials and traits similar to mine,
for this was the person my false company was looking for (in the end looking
for someone like me upped my chances of success) \- I put an email and a fax
number, where they could send resume's. I insisted on references being passed
through. \- Naturally, my fax ran out of paper, me email box was flooded. \- I
screened the resume's of the candidates, paying particular attention to their
previous employers, eventually picking the one I wanted to work for \- I then
phoned the few candidates selected and asked them about their previous job
(all the while still pretending to be a potential employer -- it sucks, but I
was running out of hope and really wanted a good job!) \- I finally picked the
one that loved his previous job but decided to leave because he had done
everything to be done there \- I phoned the reference provided in his resume`

"Hi, this is Wesley. I met so-and-so at a party on the weekend, he mentioned
you may be looking for devs that are x, y and z"

Enter my first job.

~~~
Peroni
Innovative but unethical and highly illegal in the UK.

------
larrik
"Do not limit your CV to one page. If your experience spans more than 3 years
or more than 3 jobs then you need details and it's madness to limit yourself
to one page in this situation."

My interpretation was always that the "one page resume" rule was aimed at new
college grads, since they may be more likely to ramble on (and their
experience barely matters anyway). The problem is that they don't realize
after they get a real job that they shouldn't (necessarily) follow this rule
anymore.

~~~
Peroni
_The problem is that they don't realize after they get a real job that they
shouldn't (necessarily) follow this rule anymore._

Absolutely spot on. A grad will struggle to fill two pages but once you have
some bit of experience you really should disregard that rule.

~~~
mseebach
I assume you should aim to keep it succinct, though? I've interviewed a guy
who literally listed the names of the methods on an API he'd developed. I
think he clocked in a 6-7 pages for a three year career. Surprising as he came
through a recruiter, I'd assume a recruiter would provide some CV critique.

~~~
Peroni
Chances are the recruiter hadn't a clue what he was looking at. He would have
been too afraid to edit it as he had no idea where to start. That sort of info
is fine on your personal site which you can link to from your CV but to
include it all on your formal CV is madness.

Personally I think 3 pages, 4 max if you are a contractor is more than enough.

------
sixtofour
"The advice I would give you however is to send your CV as a Word or PDF
document and include a link to your LaTeX version."

I understand why a recruiter would want an editable resume (Word), to strip
off the candidate's PII and add the recruiter's branding. I don't understand
why a hiring company, receiving a resume sent directly from candidate to
company, would need an editable resume.

~~~
hvs
My guess is that their recruiting software doesn't handle PDFs correctly. I
recently went through a job search and was dumbfounded by the number of places
that would only take a Word document.

~~~
hapless
If they only take a Word document, I don't want the job.

It's that simple.

~~~
bitwize
Cowboy up and buy a Windows PC, or at least install fricking OpenOffice if
you're persnickety.

It's 2011, the efforts to boycott Microsoft have failed, the world is tooled
to use Word for documents and Excel for lists and basic numerics. Adapt or
suffer the consequences.

~~~
zeugma
On the contrary, I see more and more pdf usage. Word is just a mediocre tool
for editing documents and it is not supposed to be an exchange format.

------
tejaswiy
I'm going through this process myself and I think one thing that'd be great is
if you can A/B test your resume. What do you think about the general idea for
a website that lets you do a hot or not style A/B test for resumes? Basically,
limit it to programmers, Upvote / Downvote the resume and a comment section.

~~~
HSO
Sounds like a good idea.

One crucial difference to the original, though, is that you're _supposed_ to
react instantaneously to a picture. Resumes, even 1-pagers, demand more care
or some involvement of higher cognitive functions. So, this could get very
tired soon. I myself would be _much_ more interested in what other people
think than in looking at other people's resumes; at best, I might be able to
look at 5 max. People watching is (kind of) fun, people pay premiums to have
their coffees in cafes, after all. But it's not exactly my idea of fun to look
at a bunch of random CVs.

~~~
rquantz
Make people work for it then: in order to get feedback you need to review 5
other people's resumes.

------
davesims
I disagree with OP's advice about the job boards. Yes, you will be inundated
by cattle-call outsourced call centers. Yes, 90% of them will be: URGENT NEED
6 MO CONTRACT 8+ yr experienced J2EE 35.52/HR.

Totally annoying. My advice: get over it.

You want a job, right? Why limit yourself? Where's the harm? Learning to sniff
out the bad recruiters from good is a pretty essential skill in this business.
I have really good relationships with a handful of recruiters I met this way
that are experienced, professional, genuinely interested in my career and not
interested in mismatching. Yeah, I had to get burned a couple of times, and
yes I've had to learn to filter out the cattle call, code monkey staff aug
stuff. And it's great.

Once you learn to filter and know the good recruiters from bad (tone of voice
in the first 30 seconds usually gives it away) you'll find that in the 10%
non-crap calls are usually lurking some good opportunities.

Flip this around to the recruiter's perspective. 99% of their candidates and
contacts are crap as well. If you actually know what you're doing and have a
decent resume, there's a significant percentage of these recruiters who will
be thrilled to find you and may actually have some interesting work, if not
now, down the line. This has happened for me on a number of occasions.

If you want to avoid annoyances, by all means avoid the job boards. But if
you're on the market, don't limit your options by snobbery or fear of
annoyance. Learn to filter your calls and sift through the dross -- there may
be a great opportunity in there if you're patient.

~~~
Peroni
All completely valid advice however most find job boards a chore so my advice
is designed to be a preemptive measure to save people from the standard route
of job boards.

------
gmodena
As a reference on the topic, I found Andy Lester's "Land the Tech Job You
Love" (PragProg) an informative and entertaining reading.

It contains a few useful tips & hacks on how to tailor your CV and "hunt" jobs
that match your expectations (backed by real life stories and examples). Some
of the treated aspects - imo - fall under common sense, but I would suggest
anyone with little (or none) experience on the job market to pick it up
nonetheless.

------
skrebbel
It's a good thing that Silicon Valley = The World, because otherwise half this
post wouldn't have made any sense.

HN's "Who's hiring" thread, yeah that works. And I think the amount of hiring
managers in the Netherlands who know Github is below 10. Sure, some years may
fix this, but right now, the advice in this blog is painfully regionally
specific.

~~~
Peroni
Funnily enough I'm based in London and a lot of the advice is UK-centric.
Granted Github has limited exposure outside of the US & the UK but I am not
versed on Dutch standards so I'm afraid I would struggle to offer advice!

------
bhoung
Disappointed. Was hoping that this was how to find a 'job for hackers', not
'how to find a job' for hackers.

~~~
Peroni
Technically it's both.

The advice I give in regards to where to look and how to go about improving
your chances is exactly that. People who post vacancies on HN & GitHub are
looking for hackers, not code-monkeys.

~~~
rawsyntax
honestly this looks like a little advice on how to format your resumé / look
for a job online. I saw nothing about acing the interview or how to write a
really killer cover letter. I wrote a post about how to get a programming
interview a few months back, I feel it provides more detail than your article

[http://rawsyntax.com/post/6249655944/how-to-get-a-
programmin...](http://rawsyntax.com/post/6249655944/how-to-get-a-programming-
interview)

~~~
Peroni
The title is 'How to find a job' not 'How to secure a job'.

Finding the opportunity is the hardest part and cover letters aren't as
relevant as what you may think. I'm sure your post is great for interview
advice, mine was aimed at helping people get those interviews in the first
place.

~~~
jim_h
My experience is that the cover letter was beneficial to getting an interview.
In the cover letter I am able to demonstrate that I know about their company
and that my skills/experience are a good fit for their position.

I know this was useful from my experience since the interviewers have
mentioned that cover letter was very useful or they brought up details from
it.

------
Hyena
So how does this fit in with the other articles on HN which insist that there
are far more openings than people?

~~~
wccrawford
Not all job markets are the same. Your skills may be less in demand where you
live, and more in demand elsewhere.

Likewise, companies may be trying to hire people with skills that are rare in
their area.

~~~
randomdata
In the field of software development, location doesn't matter.

Especially when some of the most vocal companies are in the business of
bringing people at a distance together. If they cannot manage remote workers,
what does that say about their products?

~~~
xentronium
> In the field of software development, location doesn't matter.

Wishful thinking.

~~~
randomdata
Anecdotal experience. I've been working "big city" development jobs from the
farm for nearly a decade. I have never had difficulty finding people who
wanted to work with me.

------
cHalgan
I think the main problem is that in brave new world of "connection is
everything" landing job is really really hard if you just sending resume thru
HR/normal process. If nothing you should always edit resume based on the job
posting (so you can match lingo used in the posting) - but chances that the
resume will land on managers desk is near zero (it like sending unsolicited
business plan to VCs...)

The most efficient way to land the job it to establish _direct_ contact with
hiring manager (or somebody in the team). I.e., pay $50 for linkedin so you
can send email directly saying exactly what you want ...

------
snorkel
I've had to hire many hackers myself so I'll cut to the chase for you:

* RESUME ACCEPTANCE IS BASED ON KEYWORDS: If your resume does not inlcude the SAME KEYWORDS MENTIONED IN THE JOB POSTING then it gets tossed aside.
    
    
        if (posting.keywords() != resume.keywords()) {
          resume.destroy();
          continue;
        }
    

Are hiring managers really this stupid and shallow?! YES!!! All of them!!! HR
reps are even twice as shallow because HR doesn't know the meaning of the
keywords!

* If the job posting says "Scrum" and your resume says "Agile" then you edit your resume and change that word to say "Scrum".

* If the job posting says "Django" and your resume says "many popular Python frameworks" then you edit your resume to say "Django"

* If job posting says "Ruby" and you put "Rails" ... guess what you should do about it?

* Skip the cover letter. This is not an essay contest. Nobody reads this.

* Top of resume: BRIEF two sentence description of your typical role on a technical team and the type of role are seeking.

* Next item of resume: Bullet point list of skills and experience. Keyword A, Keyword B, Keyword C ... remarkably similar to the job posting. What a coincidence!

* Remainder of resume: Employment history. Short descriptions. Everything you ever worked on is boring so don't get into details. Don't exceed 3 pages.

ACTUAL RESUME HACKS:

* Fill employment gaps decreasing the time scale. Instead of Month/Year next to each job, just put the year. Nobody cares if you weren't working between April and August so don't draw attention to it.

* If your GPA sucks then don't mention it. Nobody cares about your GPA unless you have no work history to speak of.

* Don't mention unrelated jobs in your work history. If your spent a year as a galley cook on oil rig then mention that under hobbies, not work history. It makes you seem like a transient to have a lot of odd unrelated jobs that don't follow the theme of this job posting.

* Non-paying jobs are still jobs. If you worked on your uncle's business web site for free while looking for a job, and you had to build the web site, then put it in your work history if you need it to fill the gap. Technical work is still work. If later on someone verifies your work history tell them it was an unpaid volunteer. Nobody cares.

* Isn't omitting the truth lying? If this is how you feel then don't bother applying for marketing jobs. Ask a marketing person to tweak your resume for you. Explain to them you are a technical person who only has a binary understanding of truth.

* Send your resume as a PDF attachment. Everyone can open a PDF. Not everyone has the latest greatest version of Word.

If your skill set matches, and you can prove your skills, then don't put
things on your resume that will kill the deal. The resume makes the
introduction, it is your calling card, it is your marketing. List the skills
you have that they want. Your resume not your complete autobiography or a
place to confess your gaps and incompetencies.

~~~
Peroni
There is a lot of shitty advice here. I have found work for a lot of hackers
(including a few HNer's) so allow me to nitpick:

 _If the job posting says "Scrum" and your resume says "Agile" then you edit
your resume and change that word to say "Scrum"._

If the hiring manager can't see the relevance then I'd rather not waste my
time with them. This applies to your Django & Rails reference also.

 _Skip the cover letter. This is not an essay contest. Nobody reads this._

Most people don't read it, some insist on it.

 _ACTUAL RESUME HACKS:_

I agree with your first 2 points. The third and fourth a contradictory
however.

 _Send your resume as a PDF attachment. Everyone can open a PDF._

Untrue. You will find most places prefer Word over PDF.

~~~
snorkel
> If the hiring manager can't see the relevance then I'd rather not waste my
> time with them.

You have to understand that hiring organizations have layers of people, your
resume passes through a few human filters before it gets to the desk of the
manager who posted the job, and not everyone in that filter process knows
Agile ~= Scrum so you have to factor according to the lowest common
denominator.

~~~
Peroni
True but if it's in the hands of HR then it's the responsibility of the hiring
manager to communicate that Agile & Scrum are analogous.

~~~
snorkel
... and some hiring managers would communicate that to HR, but honestly, to HR
people it all sounds like R2D2 talking to the trash compactor. You got to
imagine some key deciders reading your resume has no clue what any of it
means, they don't want to know what it means, but they know when strange words
have the same spelling.

~~~
Peroni
Ultimately I agree with your original post to an extent. It certainly doesn't
hurt to include the appropriate keywords but I wouldn't lose sleep over it.

------
swalkergibson
Network, network, network! Get out and shake hands. People make most of their
decisions based on emotions, you want to interview for the position before you
even get to the interview. Also, I find that a good strategy when looking for
a new job is to say that you are currently working on something else but are
always on the look out for new challenges and to keep in touch if they have
something come up.

------
known
Writing software (hacker) != Selling software (MBA) != Selling consulting
(Bodyshopping)

------
illumen
Prove you the have skills.

That's the shortest piece of advice I could think of on the matter that works.

~~~
alexshye
Agreed. To add on to that, I'd say have skills, have a good network that knows
it, and don't be an asshole.

------
iCococabana
Nothing about this posts addresses the fact that, unlike other authors,
companies will steal your work and claim your IP, in exchange for a pathetic
salary.

That means no royalties on million-dollar applications. Suckers!

