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Comment by b1twise | Hacker News Reader

I've just been through a round of hiring--and it was more painful than it has ever been. It was a telecommute position for US candidates only. The quality of applications was abysmally low. The majority of applications were Java programmers who couldn't be bothered to a) read the instructions on how to submit their application or b) write a cover letter AT ALL.

I don't care if you have a degree. Write a good cover letter, have a resume that isn't all HR keywords spam and actually tells me about your skills, and PUBLISH somewhere. Have a blog that shows me what you're doing and that you can write. Publish some code on Github or contribute to a larger project so I can go look at your work.

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>The majority of applications were Java programmers who couldn't be bothered to a) read the instructions on how to submit their application or b) write a cover letter AT ALL.

Properly because if you simply send the same letter you can send the same to 10 companies in the time it takes to conform to the wishes of one company. And until you are ten times more likely to be hired that way, you are still ahead (unless you are Google, all a large companies are essentially the same, so it doesn't really matter where you get hired).

As for publishing a blog, you are hireing software engineers, not writers. Sure you expect them to be able to write, just as you expect them to be able to speak, but you don't hire speakers either.

you can send the same to 10 companies in the time it takes to conform to the wishes of one company. And until you are ten times more likely to be hired that way

Incorrect. 10 times zero is zero. If you don't put any thought into applying for a job, you have next to no chance of getting called in for an interview.

On the other hand, 1 times something is something. If you take the time (measured in minutes) to learn a bit about the company and job in question, and change two sentences on your cover letter to talk about those things, you'll find yourself moved off the big tall stack of "idiot who didn't even bother" resumes and into the tiny little pile of "maybe we should call this guy" ones.

I very much doubt the chance to get hired is zero, even if you filter them out - there are properly people who don't do that.

Have you done much hiring in IT? If not, you'd be astounded by the sheer amount of crap that comes flying at you for every job you post.

You'll have literally one thousand resumes to sort through, and of those, roughly one thousand are terrible, poorly-written, undirected resumes from unqualified people. You have a few seconds at most to decide if a given resume is worth even reading, and you're in a headspace where you're pretty certain the answer is "no".

In that atmosphere, the chance of me looking at your undirected boilerplate resume with no cover letter and deciding that hey, this guy stands out, is exactly zero.

Try it yourself if you want. Better still, look at all the people who can't find a job in this industry, and the tactics they're using to market themselves. Chances are you'll discover a lot of them using the "send the same resume to every single job posting on monster.com" method that you recommend.

And they're going to stay unemployed until they change.

I have to agree.

It is far, far too easy and too tempting for applicants to fire off a resume and cover letter that is ill-aligned for the position, overly generic, rife with mistakes, or a mix of all three. The humans screening these documents are looking for an excuse to EXCLUDE you: spelling, a sense of appreciation for the role and the business, and professionalism are all key here. Look, finding a job is work. The courting process is involved and is much more than just a submission of a resume. A gross rule of thumb: treat finding a new job like finding a life partner. There are steps involved, and care and feeding along the way. However, you'll likely find dividends down the road.

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