Ben Halpern
Posted on
What’s the most frustrating thing about the process of looking for work or interviewing?
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Top comments (74)
Hi Donita, so true, being a junior dev is a struggle these days.
This github repo We Hire Remote Jr. Devs might help.
Totally agree with (5). I have not had a single interview where the HR has gotten back to me with feedback, despite my asking with utmost politeness.
I feel this should be made mandatory as part of the interview process. If I were to interview someone, I would definitely want to let the candidate know the good and the things that need improvement (constructive criticism).
I can relate. I'm fairly new but know I can be productive but the lack of years of experience is why I get turned down. I have heard from a few recruiters and it's always lack of experience. I'm trying to overcome that by building as many projects as I can.
^ This. Hang in there and build those projects Nicole.
Thanks will do! 😊
Here in Québec the shortage is big enough that they hire juniors for any roles. They pay them as juniors but expect intermediate or senior level skills. Getting a first job is hard enough, but now here we have to make sure the employers know that they are hiring a junior and that this is what they want.
I can certainly relate to the first three. I haven't found a job via a recruiter, so I have no experience with 4, and my last interview was for my current role, just over 6 years ago, so I can't recall what 5 is like.
I found another resource full of summer 2019 internships
I am in the same boat and can relate 100%
Not having feedback about your interview or when you send your resumé and the company doesn't say anything, not even a rejection.
I'm aware that some companies receive hundreds of applications and can't answer all of them, but it is frustrating nonetheless.
Agreed. It's almost impossible to know how to improve or make oneself more hire-able without that knowledge. I provide it to many applicants at MousePaw Media, but I've seldom received it from any company I've applied to.
Yes! A company should always respect that you gave your time, and the nerves it takes to show up for an interview. These can be nerve-wracking, and that should be appreciated.
Being interviewed about algorithms and the bleeding edge stuff, and then, when I've given chance to look at their code, it's just a damn spaghetti mess.
Also, so-called "talent hunters", I don't like the idea of being hunted 😄
code questions for a managment and mails job 😁
As a senior dev with 40+ years in many, many frameworks and languages:
No feedback when you are turned down
Do you want to move clear across the country for a 3-6 mos. contract ?
Please complete this (20+ hour) project for free.
Please take this basic skills test and you will be timed.
I really expect to have a conversation about my past experience and current interests/goals with the object of whether and how I can help the prospective employer. I would expect the employer or recruiter to check my references (they've stopped doing that for some reason).
Figuring out what their culture is really like.
"Are you lying about all this great stuff about working here you just told me" just never seems to come off right.
A company hiring and letting someone go quickly doesn't show up as easily as your resume having a one month job stint because it just didn't work out because of culture or values, or they said you would do one thing and dumped you somewhere else.
I keep a list of questions around on what to ask to get a better idea of the company for when I look for a new job next time.
Do you have anywhere that you've shared that list? This is one of my frustrations, too, and I'd love to have some options for questions to ask companies.
Sorry that notebook is an another state.
It was questions like
"how the team structure and work divided?" Trying to get out how big team sizes are and how they function. Is work organized and driven by clear leaders or is it a free for all.
If you get to talk to your potential future coworkers and not just HR and boss, ask them how they got the task to be in an interview. did someone drop by and say "hey we got a person in right now come join" or did they know in advance and get to schedule work around it and actually prepare. Did people respect their time and yours.
Do they actually respond to anything in particular to what you say?
I'll be biting the bullet soon and looking for a new job again. Ill have to dig up my old note and send them to you. Though since it hasn't been long I wont assume I am too successful, but life's to short to stay where its not fun and interesting in tech.
I haven't really done the traditional job search thing, but I get so annoyed with recruitment for positions that don't make sense. Like, I have no interest in becoming a junior java dev that's a contract role in Kansas. Just seems to be a waste of everyone's time, especially if the recruiter gets snappy if you don't respond to them.
You get those Java in Kansas emails too? :)
From my job search last year and early this year.
Ageism. I'd pass phone interviews, often multiple ones, only to get quickly dismissed when they figured out how old I was when they met me in person.
Lack of timely feedback from interviews, especially after initial contact with recruiters and HR reps.
Recruiters getting my name and number and calling about contract jobs I had no interest in or didn't have the appropriate skills.
Misleading statements by recruiters. They seem to work on the philosophy that it's not a lie if they believe it.
Recruiters who don't live in the same city who don't understand the length of commutes here.
Pushy recruiters.
Language trivia or code on a white board interviews.
Dealing with HRs who know a sh** about the industry.
Funny part is, I saw once a job post where they want someone who has 5 years of experience in AngularJS (its initial release is in 2016) 😂
update: I mean Angular2+... thx Eric for noticing.
I agree with the sentiment, but Angular is definitely older than 2 years. Wikipedia says the initial release was in 2010.
Angular 1 (aka "AngularJS") was released in 2010. Angular 2 (aka "Angular") was released in 2016.
I had a suspicion that might be the mismatch here. If the recruiter was asking for 5 years experience, I would venture a guess that's it's probably a place still using Angular 1.
My bad, I meant Angular2+ for sure, and it existed actually since 2014 (still less than 5 years): github.com/angular/angular/graphs/...
We both know that Angular1 is not really practical.
And we both know that Angular1 and Angular2+ have dozens of differences, two differnet creatures!
So yeah, the previous experience with Angular1 shouldn't count as "experience" for Angular2+
My date was going by its official release, which I think it more relevant when looking for X experience in Y tech. If you worked with/on a pre-release tech, that should be gravy. :)
That said, I have seen a posting requiring that kind of experience in Vue. They should have just said "we want Evan You." :D
😂😂😂
I applied to an ad where they clearly stated they didn't care if you had RoR experience as long as you were smart enough to learn. A brief questionnaire afterwards asked about my experience with RoR and I responded that I had no experience with it. The questionnaire immediately terminated saying that I would not be a good fit for the job. 🙄
So far, for me, it's been the lack of response either way. I shoot my resume out in to the void for nothing to ever come back. I don't know if my stuff didn't go through, or it's a no. I'd rather get rejected than get nothing back.
Also the line "We'll keep you in mind if there's an opening we think you'd be a good fit for". I highly doubt any of these people are like "We need a new _______ lets go through all these rejected resumes and see if any fit". They're just going to slap the new posting up and sift through the new responses, so why lie about it?
Oh I hate the "We'll keep you in mind..." stuff. That's a polite way of saying your resume is going in the reject pile but thanks for giving it to us.
Do you write cover letters? I review resumes and the cover letter makes a big difference - non generic, showing some interest in us as a company will really help.
I typically have been. Although most of the time it's just the body of the email when they say "Email us at jobs@_____.com to apply". I typically write it out as a more detailed explanation of me (extension of my resume), what skills I would bring to the company, and what I hope to get from the position.
Would you mind if I PM you the latest one I'm writing and my resume to get some feedback?
For sure. It can be a place to distinguish yourself - show that you've done some research about the company itself, demonstrate some genuine enthusiasm - your resume will cover the facts, this is a time to show a little bit of personality (that's my view anyway!) - hundreds of people will be mailing jobs@____.com. It can be useful to make it all pretty and send it as an attachment too.
I ask because I work for a reasonably unique company and I have a heuristic that if the cover letter shows no idea of what we're about (i.e. somebody has read the website, understood our values) then I click reject pretty quickly!
As a freelancer, it's the fact that there is really nothing that I personally can do to make potential clients care how I can solve their very real problems until their hair is on fire. Then it needs to be done yesterday, but MUCH cheaper than quoted because they weren't expecting the outlay...
This made me stop freelancing an focus on my degree. I'm definitely going back to it now but I think having some sort of agreement form with stuff like "Agree to pay me extra for random deadlines"
I get annoyed when they don't read my CV and try to wing it during the interview.
Interviewer: What is a closure?
Me: I have been writing JavaScript for 20+ years. It's like the first line of my resume.
Interviewer: How familiar are you with .Net?
Me: Well, at the .Net Webhost that I co-founded...
My top 3 for interviews:
But there are many others:
Technical tests. Once you reach a certain level and have a proven track record on your CV, at home technical tests that take about 2 hours are really frustrating. The last thing I want to do when I've been developing all day at work is go home and do more development.
The descriptions in the ads are sometimes completely wrong.
Recruiters.
Mindless coding tests, which in my 18 years of developing software, I've never needed, apart from playing around on hackerrank.
Recruiters.
Some recruiters (aha mazon :) ) only caring about their own pockets and own roles, not caring if other roles might be better, because they won't get paid.
Recruiters.
Oh, did I mention recruiters.
Let me put it to you this way, when I want to apply at some company, I want to know who they are, what they are doing, what their offices look like and how cool the people are.
After all, it's team work, right.
Recruiters who try to block a natural process makes my blood boil, especially when they really don't know anything about the industry.
Anyone interested in doing something about this?
Reach out and maybe we can change the world :D
Ah cool, now I just have to figure out how messaging works on this site :D