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Comment by ThePadawan | Hacker News Reader

I'm in similar shoes to the author here, and am glad to hear you show some understanding for this.

I interviewed with a quite promising company beginning of December, only to immediately get the written feedback (after the first call) of

"Well I know a lot of SWE in this town and none of them are struggling to find a job - so if you've been looking for X months, surely there's something wrong with you - and anyway, we've already signed a contract with someone else in the 5 days since we last spoke."

(To be fair to them - I had mentioned how frustrating it was to simply get "no" as negative hiring feedback and asked them to elaborate if at all possible)

I take it as a "well, bullet dodged" moment, but I am not going to lie and say it didn't sting.

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This sort of thing is pretty common. It happens in both directions, if you're employed job offers line up, if you're available there must be something wrong with you. Highly frustrating. A couple of takeaways: unemployed < freelancers < has a job < has a prestigious job. So if possible and you're on the job market at least fill the time freelancing so you don't end up with the 'unemployed' status because hiring managers are going to see that as a way to excuse themselves, from that point forward they look at employing you as taking a risk, which, as a rule they are trained to avoid. VCs suffer from the same disability: the start-up that has a deal on the table will have multiple parties trying to get in on the deal, the start-up that is just pitching is probably somehow faulty or someone else would have given them a terms sheet long ago. They see no inconsistency in this. Also, you don't necessarily have to inform them of your feelings and the fact that you've been rejected more than once. Best of luck there!

Thank you for the well wishes and a happy new year!

>"so if you've been looking for X months, surely there's something wrong with you - and anyway, we've already signed a contract with someone else in the 5 days since we last spoke."

I think letting them know you are currently unemployed is a mistake. Frankly your current state of affairs is not their business. You can always tell them that you are ok but looking for a better job. Very simple and understandable. Yes it is a lie but it is the only reasonable option. Telling perspective employer to sod off and not to stick their nose into your internal situation is not going to do you any good. Telling that you are out of job and looking will immediately put you into unfavorable position. Treat yourself as a business in this particular case. Businesses have zero problems lying to each other / their employees for as long as it does not break a law.

There's really no way to hide you're currently unemployed, or at least not employed in the tech field, unless you make up an entire fantasy world. Not only will you have to put the lie into your resume, and maybe provide fake references, but you'll also get tons of interview questions about skills and projects and challenges from your current job.

You're bang on - I was asked in the very first call for two references.

Also in this case I really don't mind disclosing - I was laid off because my position was made redundant entirely.

>"There's really no way to hide you're currently unemployed"

It is absolutely trivial.

>"but you'll also get tons of interview questions about skills and projects and challenges from your current job"

Your last job unless it is 10 years old should provide all of the answers. Any really identifying details should not be asked / answered as the employee is normally under NDA.

Same for references. Reference from "current job" can simply be refused. I can hardly imagine employee going to their boss and asking for a job reference while still working.

Anyways I am independent and run my own company. Maybe I am not up to date about how deep the US employers are able to stick their fingers up that proverbial hole.

While interviewing in the U.S. you'll get a lot of casual questions about your current job, such as what you like best about it, what skills you use there or why you want to leave. These will come from the recruiter, the manager and your future peers. These are both technical and social questions. Refusing to answer any of these questions would be very weird socially, and even very restrictive NDAs should allow you to at least speak generally about what you're doing.

>"While interviewing in the U.S. you'll get a lot of casual questions about your current job, such as what you like best about it, what skills you use there or why you want to leave. "

These fall perfectly into experience with last job. Does not have to be current. And all those questions you asked are trivial. Also I've never dealt with the recruiters. I have always searched and found perspective companies myself and no they were not Amazon big type. If I could not speak with the owner I would simply walk away - not my kind of place.

My first programming job in Canada - I just simply walked into the office and asked to speak to the owner (I knew it was small 20 person consultancy).

Since 2000 I am on my own but I still find clients and have interviews. Just a different type of interview of course.

Freelancing since 2020, most often working on foo bar baz…

> I had mentioned how frustrating it was to simply get "no" as negative hiring feedback and asked them to elaborate if at all possible

Don’t do this! You’re inviting feedback from someone who is basically a complete stranger, who has an undisclosed set of “standards” they’re judging you against, and who might not actually be very good at assessing talent. The odds of getting a “false signal” are high.

Asking for feedback is okay if you're in the right mindset. Understand that unless you completely failed something, it's probably them, not you, and any feedback you get should be seen as likely rationalizing a decision they made for who knows what reasons. So as long as you don't take the feedback too hard or too personally, you might get some ideas for how to improve your chances with the next employer.

I've honestly made enough of a positive experience to recommend doing it.

Sometimes people just genuinely tell you things like "there wasn't enough detail about X on your CV, but we took a chance and called you anyway" - that tells me that I can improve my chances for a callback in the future by adding more detail (if I get that same feedback 2-3 times).

You're right though in that a looooooooot of hiring people also have no clue what they want to see.

There's no reason to avoid information. You can still ignore it.

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