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Comment by joekrill | Hacker News Reader

I was actually very surprised at the amount of folks that simply didn't respond _at all_ -- meaning not even an _acknowledgement_.

The folks that I did hear back from were great, though. Nothing ever actually worked out in my case, though.

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I've been on the job market in several industries before finding my way to software engineering. I can tell you that non-acknowledgement is absolutely the norm in pretty much any other industry, particularly in the case of online applications. Imagine firing off 100 applications through online portals, personal emails, responding to posts, going in person, etc and never, _ever_ hearing even a robo-response. It is soul-crushing. I felt like I was screaming into the void.

Even though I've been in this industry awhile, the _luxury_ of being sought after in the job market still shocks me. Every time a recruiter reaches out to me on LinkedIn, even when they're clearly spamming, it is still mind-blowing. Every time I get a casual job offer from friends or acquaintances who are hiring on their teams, I'm flabbergasted.

Back in the day, I would've been thrilled to hear even a "thanks but no thanks."

It's like the difference between being an attractive person vs non-attractive.

That seems to happen everywhere these days - I've sent out several applications recently (non-HN) and had absolutely nothing back, not even an acknowledgement.

It says a lot for the professionalism of a company when they can't even auto-respond a receipt, although a personal rejection would always be nice - if you can't be bothered to say you're not interested, why should I be bothered to apply ?

I take the time to filter out jobs that I know I would be good at and then write a cover letter and customize my resume for the job, only to not hear any acknowledgement at all. I'm about to just blast my resume out with no filter and see what happens.

And I think that's the crux of the issue. When I was laid off, I hit the job boards. I started out being careful with my choices, doing custom cover letters, etc., but after no response from many, I started "shotgunning" and hoping something would stick. But that's what everyone else is doing: one-click apply to job/send your resume, and then HR gets overwhelmed, and determines not to send individual responses, which continues the spiral.

I had one job I finally got a rejection from a week after I had started someplace else. As much as I may have liked any one position, I had mouths tl feed. No point in waiting 3 weeks for a simple response.

I think you nailed it. Then the recruiters start doing the same thing on the other end. I have 10 years of experience ands till get entry level help desk positions in my inbox.

Ditto + I get electronic engineering stuff, which was my career path/company role until I switched to systems and networks in about 1989.

I've gotten very cynical and hardened to this over the years. I remember meticulously researching companies and preparing detailed cover letters showing exactly why I'm a great fit for that job, spending hours reviewing and tweaking them until finally sending them off, only to be "black-holed" by the company. After 40-50 or so of these you just start spraying and praying.

Hiring managers & HR: Tired of getting "spray and pray" resumes? STOP DOING THIS.

Founder here. I used to reply to every applicant individually because I couldn't believe someone wanted to work for my startup. But then that got to be burdensome so I set up a reply template, but even then people would reply to the template and continue the conversation. Then my co-founder pointed out that spending lots of time replying to everyone wasn't a good use of my time.

Point is it's nothing personal. If you're not getting replies, try to stand out more. Don't just send a resume, send a GitHub link to a project that's relevant to the company.

I get a dozen resumes a day (not joking), so give me a reason to not hit "Archive" immediately.

If you're in the position to get a dozen resumes a day, is there not someone else in your organization who can handle the initial resume screen? Seems a bit inefficient to have the founder personally hitting "Archive" on all the applicants he rejects.

This basically says you don't value people. You want them to go through all of the effort for you.

You say that replying to everyone isn't a good use of your time, but having to apply to everyone, with the likelihood of being ignored apparently is a good use of my time ? My time is just as valuable as yours.

The Github idea is great... except there's no way I can magic up a project 'relevant to the company' for all of the applications I'm making - which I have to be making because nobody replies any more. I'm certainly looking to get some projects going in my spare time, which is minimal.

I'm too old to 'stand' out - if 20 years of programming isn't enough to get a more personal interview, then I'll just move on - I have no interest in competing with people from a marketing perspective.

Of course, I don't expect us to agree, as we're coming from completely different sides (and requirements).

In the modern world, it's amazing how many old-school (Business time is more valuable than employee) mindsets still exist.

Thanks for taking the time to reply though. I genuinely do appreciate that.

> My time is just as valuable as yours.

The co-founder's time is worth what? They just got investors to hand them millions of dollars over a few meetings, on the assumption that if successful, they'll be worth hundreds of millions one day.

You are one of dozens of applicants. Some guys with 20 years have the problem that it was the same year over and over. How do they know your skills are even current and relevant?

If you're an experienced programmer, maybe you're going to make $50 to $100 an hour (depending on your market). But if you're applying to multiple firms, wouldn't you put yourself to work at that opportunity cost to differentiate yourself enough to get the job you want?

Why wouldn't you be willing to jump through whatever hoops necessary to get the job you want?

> on the assumption that if successful, they'll be worth hundreds of millions one day.

Building good relationships is a good foundation for future success. I have had interviews that didn't result in me getting/accepting an offer, but the process was smooth and the decision amicable that I look forward to meeting/cooperate with/work with the same people in the future when the stars align. On the flip side, I have had interactions so terrible I won't ever consider working/meeting with or recommending the companies and the people involved, should they move on. It's a small world.

>Why wouldn't you be willing to jump through whatever hoops necessary to get the job you want?

Because I'm not a performing animal.

Perhaps you should let the marketing team reply. Candidate interaction is also customer interaction.

This does sound so unprofessional if you are hitting "Archive" button after skimming through resumes/cover letters. You do understand that candidates spend significant amount of time applying for an open position and trying to get your attention. Everyone's time is equally valuable.

A 'reply' template is rarely useful. If it is not a yes/no response, then you are just wasting more of the candidate's time by making them wait.

As a founder if you aren't able to handle the volume of the applications that you are receiving, then you should delegate the work to someone else and get them to filter the applications.

You don't have to continue replying after sending them the "sorry, not interested" template reply. Sending them that is infinitely better than just ghosting people, which is grossly rude and unprofessional.

That's appallingly self centered. Nothing personal.

You have to realize that "We're hiring" is not always what it seems. Many company advertise that they are "hiring" to form a narrative of growth and perceived success for investors, customers and the industry in general.

Even worse is when their application process is "different" and they ask that you write code addressing some specific problem to submit with your resume. I'm not talking something simple, but a well thought out problem that requires a few hundred lines.

I get that they're trying to be different and evaluate candidates on metrics other than just resume, but to send that kind of thing in (which takes a week of effort outside of your real job) and receive no acknowledgement or response to a follow up a couple weeks later is lame.

Is it possible they didn't expect the problem to require a few hundred lines?

Well, that's not the point. The point is they didn't acknowledge that I submitted anything at all, and didn't acknowledge me after a follow up email a couple weeks later. That is always annoying, but in especially poor taste when you ask the applicant to complete a coding challenge before submission.

I don't like nonresponsive folks either, but it's par for the course. Consider that before putting effort into a coding challenge or whatever they're asking of you.

I was recently stupid enough to have had taken a task involving Spring Boot. I literally had to learn Java in a week make a web application using it in a week.

The recruiter knew my inexperience with the technology but have it as "a challenge to observe my performance in an unfamiliar setting."

It made that rejection much worse. Particularly when I had my code judged for a framework I'd only used for a week.

In my experience for remote-position, at-least I received ack. mails like "time-zone issues are there" etc and like 20% never sent ack. at all. Strangely most often those company appear almost every-month with same job posting, I wonder whats going on.

My theory is that the no-cost HN posting allows some of these companies to keep posting perpetual openings in hopes of finding that elusive 100x developer that's willing to work for less than market rate. I can't say that bothers me too much, though. It's not that hard to see who has the same open req month after month and avoid those companies.

It's 100x now? I thought it was 10x. And theses guys work for _below_ market rate? Interesting...

I have a feeling those positions will be open for a while ;)

A 10x developer that works for 10% the normal rate, maybe :)

I always hear "we're looking for remote but not in your area". Most remote posts don't actually seem to be truly remote. I'm in the US eastern timezone, shrugs.

To your second point, they are probably fishing for good devs that will work for lower than market rate. They don't actually have a job but are hoping to find a unicorn.

There are tax implications for having an employee in some states, regardless of what the person is paid. For instance I've been told that it would cost us several million dollars to hire someone remote who lives in New York. That developer would have to be really amazing to make it worthwhile to hire them!

That's interesting. Sometimes I do see "remote (Seattle area only)" or something like that. I work remote now but my company basically has a presence in every state and most countries.

"appear almost every-month with same job posting, I wonder whats going on."

Perhaps H1B fraud? There's a local company just a mile from my house that's been advertising the same $50K CCIE position for near fifteen years now.

I'm actually working on a fun project that sorts through months of "Who's Hiring?" posts looking for companies posting identical or nearly-identical postings month after month. It'll be called "Who's Not Hiring?" Look for it once I get some free time :-)

That sounds like fun.

If you haven't done that part yet, I actually wrote a scraper[1] in Java for the "Who's Hiring?" threads when I built a job searcher[2].

Not the prettiest, but it's pretty fast.

[1] https://github.com/hnjobs/parser

[2] https://hnjobs.emilburzo.com/

The scraper was the easy part :)

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