Comment by mikebabineau | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikebabineau | Hacker News Reader

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Speaking from the other side, I've hired 10 people from HN over the past 5 years, 2 within the last 6 months. These have included some of my best hires.

Currently, I see about 30 HN applicants per month. We interview roughly 30%. The rest are unqualified, demonstrated no understanding of or interest in what we do, and/or were spamming their resume.

These get interviews:

  * Strong candidates who did their homework (this is always the best)
  * Strong candidates with minimal or lightly tailored emails
  * Borderline candidates who did their homework

These get polite rejections:

  * Borderline candidates who did no homework
  * Unqualified candidates

These get ignored:

  * Candidates who send blatantly templated emails
  * Candidates who apply via "email blasts" (e.g., BCC all recipients; send via an email campaign tool)

I prefer to see both understanding of and interest in the role. Tell me why you're a fit and why you want to work here. A few sentences will suffice. Doing so: 1) improves the probability of an interview; and 2) for me, practically guarantees you a response.

> Tell me [...] why you want to work here.

This part always makes me laugh. The only possible true answer is usually "to get a job", and not much more. The applicant generally does not and cannot know about the company, nor about the job at that point.

The only info about the company is some bullshit in the job posting; and on the company website, some info intended for clients, i.e. in advertising format, and a bit more of the same bullshit in the company description.

The job is just described through technical requirements and a list of tasks. Tasks that you may or may not have to perform on a regular basis, you don't know. You cannot know which task will represent 90% of your work, and which one will in fact never show up, because it was there "in case", or to attract answers.

There are so many different domains in computing that you generally don't know beforehand which will really interest you; and you often have no idea of what the specific domain in which the company works even is a thing. Anyway you could work the same way on the same satisfying job in various domains and trades, whatever these are.

So, why this specific company? Because I need a job, this offer seems to fit me, I seem to fit it, the purpose of the job does not make me sick and the location is OK for me, the rest remains to be discovered. During the interview process, for example. But why this specific company, I cannot answer, for I don't care what its name is, and yet I have studied it more than most applicants who will write how much they'd love to work in company XXX to design YYY.

I think that's an overly cynical outlook on job hunting and not in line with what I've actually found on the hiring side. In general, I've found that people have specific areas of interest. Some people love social products, others love enterprise, others love hardware products they can mail to mom and pop, others love games, others love productivity tools, etc. The list is really endless.

Of course, people have different personal situations that might result in them ending up at a job that's not in one of their particular areas of interest, but it's overly dismissive to say "the only possible true answer is to get a job", when in fact many candidates could get jobs at tens or hundreds of companies and are very selective about where they end up. We recently hired a candidate who took a sizable pay cut to work with us. I'm sure he could've gotten a meaningfully higher offer to work elsewhere, but ultimately he actually just believed in the long term value of what we were building, and that's valuable for both parties.

It is true that some people don't really care at all, but that actually seems to be the minority in my experience. I've had candidates answer me in the past with "to be honest, I saw a job listing and applied" when I asked them why they want to work at our company. I appreciated their directness, but ultimately if that's how they feel, it probably wouldn't be a good fit for either of us.

When I read your writing and you say things like

    the purpose of the job does not make me sick

that makes me quite sad actually. You should aim much higher.

When was the last time you yourself actively looked for a new job? I've found there's a strong disconnect between hiring managers/recruiters who haven't been in the job market for several years and applicants actively looking for new employment. I've been on both sides recently and have to say I'm more sympathetic to the concerns of the job seekers voiced here than I am to the concerns of hiring managers.

It takes less than a minute to skim a resume and determine if a candidate has the requisite skills/experience to merit a phone screen. On the flip side, it takes at least an order of magnitude longer to research a company, figure out what the role is actually about, and tailor a cover letter. Meanwhile, my experience has been that hit rates for applications typically follow the 80/20 rule for most people (80% go to a black hole, 20% get a favorable call or email response), regardless of how much time is spent buttering up a profile vs. just sending a resume.

Unless you spend as much time as your applicants responding to their applications and telling them why they're not a good fit (which would be great), you're basically asking someone to work much harder than you for a less than even chance of getting a response back when they likely have better things to be doing.

I don't think it's cynical at all. Unless you're one of those rare, elite, top-0.1% talents, who can literally pick and choose among offers from his favorite companies, the deck is very much stacked in the employer's favor--you often have to settle for what you get.

"I'd like to be able to pay my rent this month, but gosh I don't have a passion about this company's area of interest so I think I'll pass on this job" -- said nobody ever.

OP's answer may be a bit cynical, especially compared to a highly qualified candidate with a pick of many offers, but one thing he said does ring true:

"...the rest remains to be discovered. During the interview process, for example."

In my experience as both employee and employer, the interview is a discovery process for both sides. Prior to interviews, the candidate should have some hypothesis about why they want to work for you based on an extrapolation of publicly available information, and it's worth following up with them after the interview process to see if their hypothesis has been confirmed with more concrete information. If it's still vague, then there may be a problem.

Works in reverse for the company too, of course.

Good to know things from a recruiter's perspective! Thanks.

What do you mean by "strong" "borderline" and "homework"?

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