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Comment by pjmorris | Hacker News Reader

How long before we get 'Jerry Maguire' for developer agents?

They used to have them. I was a hiring manager for many years, and dealt with them. I hired a number of consultants.

Nowadays, recruiters are...different. I quickly learned not to have anything to do with them, after leaving my last job, and dipping my toe into getting back into the field.

My experience with today’s recruiters is a big reason that I quickly gave up on looking for work.

I think that the enormous flood of substandard developers has warped the technical hiring process. There’s so much chaff, that wheat has no chance.

Weird place to be.

I'm in a poor situation and looking for work. I'd like to consider myself as wheat(ish) and I'm good at what I do. But there are a lot of of poor devs, and recruiters/companies are looking for... I'm not sure. Glossy CVs with major tech stacks, usually with Big Data or ML or somesuch.

Trouble is, most of those companies don't have any need for this. It's plain line of business and basic data management they need but they're after more, more, more. Unicorn guys/gals. It's unreal.

So I've got to stand out. And I don't really know how. Any suggestions? I'm working on a project that should show my creds, and I know they like that (and that makes sense) but any other suggestions?

My 2c, with all humility. But, I'm not sure you really understand why recruiters and companies are not taking you. For any serious business where it's senior managers or founders doing the recruiting, they are not after the "unicorn guys/gals".

My suggestion is to ask for feedback when you get rejected, most people will be happy to give it to you.

Sadly your last point is incorrect. Most interviewers will not give any feedback because there’s no upside for the company and a strong chance of pissing the candidate off, making them feel they were treated unfairly or engendering resentment toward the company, or causing them to want to start negotiating or arguing, which is essentially wasted time. If you don’t believe me, start giving rejected candidates feedback and I think you’ll quickly see what I mean.

It’s not fair but that’s been my experience.

Solve real business problems. Got a friend that runs a small business? Got a favourite shop you frequent? Maybe you can help them by automating something small. Keep doing that. Get known as someone that solves problems.

Last year I literally went round ~200 businesses in my area offering my services for free and sometimes more than once, stuck up posters in local business centres, did not get one bite.

That is probably because you advertised it for free. Free creates a lot of headaches for business. You should quote a price and offer a discount (or the first project free. Its basically the same thing, but you are actually selling yourself better.

Do it for free = you're worth nothing.

Do it for pay = after a job.

Either way no dice. It's a tricky one.

That's where the first project free comes into picture.

I feel your pain. I really do.

I'm not sure my advice is relevant, but I'll tell you what I have.

I have a gigantic open-source portfolio. I incorporated it into what Stack Overflow calls a "story"[0]. This is sort of a "super-CV."

I have an almost solid green GH Activity Graph[1]. The value of this is reduced by people that "game" theirs.

I spruced up my GH profile[2], using their "hidden Profile README"[3].

I have had over twenty apps in the iOS App Store, over the years. I'm down to just a few, now[4].

I spent my entire career (over 30 years), shipping product; even my open-source work is done as "ship." I have written a tool that has become a worldwide standard[5] (but is now under the care of a new team -I hardly have anything to do with it anymore).

I write a lot of stuff[6].

Basically, my motto is "Don't just take my word for it; see for yourself. I can prove what I say."

I would have been happy work for half of what people with far less skill than I demand, as I do what I do for the love of the craft, and my retirement is set.

That all means nothing. Recruiters drop me like a live snake, as soon as they figure out that I'm older than 40 (50, actually). I now make sure that my age is known up front, so that prevents a big waste of time. They don't need to give me a binary tree test to weed me out.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

[0] https://stackoverflow.com/story/chrismarshall (Story Format) https://stackoverflow.com/cv/chrismarshall ("CV" Format)

[1] https://github.com/ChrisMarshallNY#github-stuff

[2] https://github.com/ChrisMarshallNY

[3] https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/github/setti...

[4] https://littlegreenviper.com/AppDocs/

[5] https://bmlt.app

[6] https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany

Thanks for a comprehensive post. I hope you can find work. From all that you've done you should be in a better position than many. Good luck!

That's not going to help get a well paid job and small businesses are needy and don't want to pay for what's needed.

They are a means to an end, a way of getting known and getting real customers. It's a slow grind to start but it is a way to build a name.

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