mooredsAdvice to young people, the lies I tell myself (2024)
> How to Get a Job
Idk about this, I have gotten almost every job I have ever had on cold-apply, including internships. The only one that wasn't that way was talking to a (internal) recruiter in college.
Don't discount that path. I did not have the best grades or anything, but (IMO) a mix of skills that was a good fit for the job at hand and confidence I could apply them.
Most of the people you will interact with in the (corporate) world have no understanding of their own understanding, and are operating in unknown unknown territory. Being confident, demonstrating competence in something jointly known/unknown or known/known helps a ton.
And I am exactly the opposite - aside from my first job out of university 10 years ago I have gotten every job since through connections
My current job was done via a connection, but every previous job has been through spamming my resume to every job I'm even remotely qualified for and/or I find interesting.
I have a degree now, but I dropped out of college the first time around, and so I didn't have any connections in the software industry, or anywhere really. When I dropped out, I assumed any desk job career was out the window. I applied to Aldi, Lowes, Burger King, McDonalds, Starbucks, and Taco Bell in one day (driving and applying in person).
On a lark, and almost as a joke to myself, I applied to exactly one software job from an ad on Craigslist, and they were the only ones who actually got back to me, thus jumpstarting my software career. I've had a lot of jobs in a lot of different places, and despite knowing lots of interesting people I've only managed to convert that to a job one time.
I have no idea how people use friendly connections to get jobs.
> I have ever had on cold-apply, including internships
FYI cold-applying to bigtech (e.g., FAANG) is like throwing your application away. Pro-tip: ping people on LinkedIn and ask for a referral. If you're a decent candidate they'll happily do it because there's a O(1k) referral/hiring bonus at all of these companies.
That's fascinating. I know only a handful of people who got their jobs through cold applying. The majority of my friends were either referred by colleagues or received inbound recruiter email. That is, with the exception of my cohort in CS undergrad; we attended our university career fair for out entry into the workforce.
It's heartening to know that the cold apply method can be successful.
Every job I’ve ever gotten has been cold apply, with no degree except a GED high school diploma equivalent. You can certainly get jobs through cold apply, I get a job offer for basically every job that gets to the interview, even when I hadn’t worked as a dev I had two job offers I had to pick from. I like to think my passion, knowledge, and genuine interest shines through in my cover letters and my interviews.
Cold applying works reasonably well IME, but you have to be able to nail the interviews for it to make sense. I'm great at what I do, I only apply to jobs which should be a good fit, and I still only get interviews 1-2% of the time. I then get offers 95% of the time, which keeps the process manageable.
I've gotten 3/4 of my tech jobs through cold applying though [0], and been offered many, many more. I know it's possible.
Ok that note, I love my current job, and I would've never found anything like it through my network. Cold applying was a literal game-changer in that regard.
[0] One was through Google Foo Bar, and one was through Codefights (now Codesignal or something), so those were slightly more tailored than cold applying.
Same. Much more difficult as an immigrant because you have to prove a lot more than other candidates but I have always managed to get a job with cold-applications, zero referrals, which even I find interesting because I dozens of people at different companies, have thousands of followers on LinkedIn, and am super active in local meetups as an organizer, which means lots of locals know me, at least by name, but still no good referrals whenever I apply for a job, which is why I always resort to cold apply.