Jessica Roy: Dear San Francisco Employers: Please Hire Me

http://jessicakroy.com/2010/03/09/dear-san-francisco-employers-please-hire-me/

by od • 16 years ago

57 53 16 years ago

jessicakroy.com

xal• 16 years ago

Well i'd hire her if I was in SF :-)

This is how you get a job.

jaxn• 16 years ago

I agree. I forwarded it on to someone I know in SF who blogs for a TV station there.

Estragon• 16 years ago

Can you actually live in the area on $12/hour?

Also, someone should teach her about salary negotiation. Stupid to box yourself in like that. She'll probably end up working for $10/hour.

gizmo4• 16 years ago

Actually, I'm willing to bet the opposite. She's going to get significantly more than $12 an hour. Why? Because by saying she's willing to accept $12/hr and fetch lattes to get where she wants to be... she (deliberately) puts herself in a position with no negotiating power. You can't play hardball against somebody like that without feeling like a dick about it.

It's like saying to somebody who's about to punch you.. "Ok, you can punch me if that's what you want, if that makes you feel better", and if you say it right you make it almost impossible for that person to punch you.

You don't want to get into a fist fight with somebody who's unwilling to raise his arms, and you don't want to negotiate with somebody who surrenders all leverage.

I'm confident she'll get an offer that the employer genuinely believes is fair.

protomyth• 16 years ago

uhm... about the whole punching thing... you give too much credit to the better angels of our nature

qeorge• 16 years ago

Having seen several of these postings, I agree with you - the $12/hr rate helps her stand out in a positive light.

I'm not as sure about the leverage stuff, but it definitely communicates that she's someone who's looking to break in anywhere she can, as opposed to a bratty kid who thinks their "reverse job posting" is just too clever.

JabavuAdams• 16 years ago

> You can't play hardball against somebody like that without feeling like a dick about it.

Don't assume that other people are like you, especially when negotiating.

This is awful advice.

ytinas3• 16 years ago

Ok, so if she comes to work for you she's in good shape. In the real world, however, when a jackal sees a gazelle it doesn't care if it has "pouty eyes" or not. Meat is meat, the easier to catch the better.

houseabsolute• 16 years ago

Why not you? But, I would say it's not stupid, just inexperienced.

lanstein• 16 years ago

I did.

nandemo• 16 years ago

First, I do agree that she's selling herself short. Actually she shouldn't even mention salary to start with.

But I keep hearing that X is too low for living in the Valley, for varying values of X.

Out of curiosity, I checked the minimum wage in California and it's $8/hour. In SF it's $9.8. So how do blue collar workers survive? Do they all (mostly?) commute from outside the Valley? If they have to live in the Valley, are their living conditions terrible?

Serious question.

jfarmer• 16 years ago

Blue collar workers have a hard time surviving and there is a massive problem of low/low-middle class flight in SF. This predominantly affects minorities, who have to live in less safe neighborhoods like the Tenderloin or Bayview/Hunter's Point, or move to cheaper places like Oakland.

SF prides itself on its diversity, but every year it gets whiter and whiter.

jasonlbaptiste• 16 years ago

There should be a site that highlights truly fucking awesome people looking for jobs and has an actual insight into them (plus what they've built). I'd hire those people.

9oliYQjP• 16 years ago

Here's the problem. Truly awesome people can jump from job to job with ease. They're always in demand. They're always having offers thrown at them, even when they aren't looking.

Where there's a need for a website is for inexperienced, but otherwise awesome folks. Those people that haven't been discovered yet because they are fresh out of school, perhaps like this person. The big problem with this idea is that there's no guarantee that somebody who is an awesome student will make an awesome employee.

tessro• 16 years ago

>> continuously trolling the depressing opportunities on Monster/NYU Careernet/Craigslist.

Is this system broken? Is there an opportunity for improvement in the way people find jobs, or is the best way to find good work going to increasingly be by performing memorable stunts to get eyeballs from prospective employers? I'm curious, especially in light of the relative lack of successful startups in the area.

smokinn• 16 years ago

Giles has a video he wants to sell you: http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2010/03/programmers-what-to...

MrFoof• 16 years ago

Yes. Isn't this what Spolsky and Atwood are trying to improve for computer professionals? Granted it's a specific niche of the market.

Matching these sorts of unique demands with a wildly varying supply is a devilishly hard problem. It's not much different than dating sites. I'd put both dating sites and job boards in the "better than nothing" category. However I've always maintained that if you could find a very high-quality partner (or employer, or employee) as easily as it is to Google for most things, you will be the richest person on earth.

ismarc2• 16 years ago

Here's the problem with the current "employment opportunity discovery" mechanism. You need a large number of qualified applicants to review job postings and to reply to those, generating a "success" for a particular site for a particular company. You need a large number of accurate, quality job postings to attract applicants.

I've thought about this space for quite a while, fragmenting job sites all charge money to the company just to post an ad. From that, you expect a user response. I think the ideal method would be to have an indexed, structured database of potential applicants, people who are interested in potential job offers. Company's then input their requirements and a list of potential applicants is spit out, no identifying information, just the raw skills/experience (10 years with C++, 15 with C, 2 with C#, etc.). The company then pays $x to solicit that potential applicant into applying for the job. This preserve's the anonyminity the current system has (no personal identifiable information revealed until application takes place) and allows companies to spend significantly less time attempting to discover potential applicants. It's not without it's massive drawbacks (you need the index of applicants, get companies to use it, get applicants to keep their information up to date, gives the applicant a feeling of not trying to find a job, HR does the hiring so they may not pay for the grey area applicants when normally they'd at least make it to the hiring manager) but you can overcome some of these by providing the traditional service as well, company's pay a "nominal" fee to list a position and applicants search/apply.

From what I've discovered, the best jobs are the ones you can't find. They're posted on the companies job listings and sit there, or the current job search systems have crappy indexes and include more cruft than quality (try a search for 'c linux' on one for a good example). Hmm...maybe there's room in this sector if one could tap into a large number of people who are interested in anonymously being considered for other potential job opportunities.

lhuang3• 16 years ago

Your last paragraph is on point.

I disagree though with your idea about a database of applicants thats searchable by skill.

I think your system would fail without a means to authenticate and validate people's credentials, plus without a validation layer it'll only encourage people to exaggerate or lie about their skills.

The other problem from the perspective of an applicant is submitting resumes and cover letters to online postings often feels like all work for no gain. Most of these postings feel like black holes. You submit something and (typically) never hear back.

Maybe an improvement to your idea is some carrot/stick mechanism, that at the very least, incentives both parties to stick to good behavior (timely submissions of RELEVANT resume / cover letters and timely responses from the companies that listed the original posting). This would solve for some of the frustration these sites illicit.

semanticist• 16 years ago

Indexing large amounts of candidate data, including extracting 'skill' information from CVs, is pretty much a solved problem. It's what my employer's products do.

We also have products that do 'Candidate Matching' - which is exactly what you're talking about here, taking structured requirements for a specific job and then seeing who in the database matches. We normally do it against a recruiter's own local DB, and can do some degree of matching against internet job boards, LinkedIn, that sort of thing.

There was some interest in a product that would index all of the job boards for every UK local authority/council for one client, but that fell through. Going through every company's individual job postings is just impossible, and wouldn't help anyway: in my experience the best jobs are the ones that say 'no agencies', and it's only recruiting agencies who are spending on the kind of software we make.

lhuang3• 16 years ago

A joke an econ professor once told me:

"Look under your foot, do you see a twenty? No? Well, thats because someone already took it."

The point was a generalization of the fact that in a free market, arb opportunities don't exist because market inefficiencies are corrected in real-time.

Thats not always true, but the general point is.

The problem with finding good jobs on Monster, CL, etc. is that, more or less, there aren't any. Good jobs fill fast, most often through backdoor channels - networking, campus recruiting, etc.

The jobs that flow down to sites like Monster and CL are those that smart, skillfull people don't want.

Think about it from your own perspective. If you wanted to hire someone for a job, chances are you would turn to your circle of friends and trusted advisors and ask them if they knew anyone. You branch out from there like a ripple, with each ring being less focused and more general, until you hit mass market sites likes Monster.

I think this is why the majority of jobs on these sites are usually low-paying admin type work or one-off small business contractual work.

LinkedIn attempts to solve for this, but they I don't think they have a direct enough of a mechanism for doing so.

Other sites fail too because most operate under the assumption that they can do better by improving usability and don't really address the underlying problems, so they suffer from the same issues (namely no good work).

The sites that I think do a better job are those that are niche industry focused. Niche sites help job seekers find relevant (to them) jobs and job posters find relevant hires to fill those positions. This helps both parties filter down, which I think is their value-add.

Ultimately whatever improvement that hopes to be successful needs to focus on ways to either change or divert the current way most employers find employees - word of mouth and personal networks.

Perhaps better mining tools for LinkedIN would solve. I think some functionality that lists job seekers by skill (profile, resume) weighted by in-network relationships may help.

Another idea is scaling the head-hunter model for public consumption. Something where as a job poster, I could send a request out to my network on linkedin, and there would be some sort of incentive (money or otherwise) for those in my network to recommend people the know. There is already natural incentive to do so... having a solid network is a good skill to have by itself; knowing good people says good things about the type of person you are.

Just some thoughts. I know relatively little about this space, so my opinions are just based on my own experiences.

_delirium• 16 years ago

That joke actually reminds me of a more common counter-joke: when an economics professor sees money on the street, he doesn't pick it up, because it can't really be there

chime2• 16 years ago

The system is indeed broken. Finding a job is a horrible experience for most people. If you know enough people in your selected field, it is usually not that bad. However, if you want to change careers, move to a new area, or are generally not interested in networking for networking's sake, finding a job is a soul-sucking misadventure.

Monster/CareerBuilder sites are absolute crap, especially for IT-related jobs. Indeed, Dice, and Jobing aren't that great either. The Web 2.0 job-hunt startups are just mashups of existing job sites so while the interface is cool, the content is no better. Most of the jobs have no mention of salary, benefits, or the social/managerial environment. Recruiters / headhunters are only interested in you if you are a potential fit for a specific job. The moment that job gets filled, you're back to square one.

I've actually been more on the other side of the job hunt i.e. finding people to hire. The problem there is that the good/quality coders are just impossible to find. Most of the resumes I come across are people who taught themselves Active Directory and are applying for ERP-coding jobs. I've looked at "superstar" job hunt sites like jobs.joel and jobs.37signals but there's barely any traction in my area (Tampa, Florida).

Surprisingly, Craigslist has been the best choice for me as a former applicant and as someone looking to hire. Craigslist is very blunt, direct, and accessible. The last part is the key here. You don't have to sign up for 10 services to place a job ad on Craigslist. As a result, I've found many more job offers on Craigslist that end up in an interview than other sites. I know with near certainty that someone is actually reading my email when I reply to a Craigslist post. I feel my email ends up in a large junk folder when I apply on other sites. Similarly, whenever I've posted an ad on Craigslist for a job, I've received direct emails from candidates and some of them have been pretty good.

I don't know how this system could be fixed. All I know is that there are a lot of good candidates and good jobs and it's not easy for them to find each other.

pw0ncakes2• 16 years ago

The professions, and everything about them, are designed for people who don't have to work to earn a living, and who work out of service to society. Professional culture is a result of this. That's why rich kids do better in the professional environment. It's not anyone favors them because of their families. It's because they aren't ruined if unemployed for a while, so they don't fear the boss, get more respect, and handle a professional environment better.

The difference, circa 2010, is that nearly everyone has to work to earn a living. So the professional norms are out of date for most people.

This should shine some light on why interview processes are the way they are. For people who are working for love and leisure, a 2-month process from application to decision, with 2 or 3 rounds of interviews that require time off work, isn't unreasonable. For people who either (1) are unemployed and have a ticking clock, or (2) are employed but will be in trouble if they lose their jobs (which is likely if they're caught interviewing, in today's environment).

As for why it's so difficult to find good candidates, the interview process is a big part of it. Good candidates are only willing to go through with it for something approaching a dream job (for a hacker, Google Research; for a quant, DE Shaw). Otherwise, they ask their friends who they know and search informally.

Also, the fact is that most corporate environments are utterly mediocre and soul-sucking, and that hurts all but the most-established companies. There are probably 1000+ companies where a smart person could work and have smart co-workers, good pay, and interesting projects... but only a few stand out for having this reputation (e.g. Google). If you're not on this list of 20 companies, you're going to have a hard time proving that you're not one of those mediocre failboxes.

mattm• 16 years ago

"I've actually been more on the other side of the job hunt i.e. finding people to hire. The problem there is that the good/quality coders are just impossible to find."

What can I do to stand out as a quality coder when I'm applying? I'm probably not the best on selling myself properly but I think I'm a good coder (and have had very satisfied clients/employers).

jonknee• 16 years ago

Hey, I'm in Tampa. Maybe HN should have a better jobs section.

ytinas3• 16 years ago

I haven't found it so bad and I'm not great at networking. I just use consulting agencies, that's the only way I've ever had any luck. It's easier to get into a company via someone who knows people there, than just some resume in an email.

The trick is just to remember these guys are extremely busy. If it's more than a week old it isn't relevant anymore, so get a contact within lots of different agencies and contact them on a regular cycle (once a month is probably ok).

cmelbye2• 16 years ago

How does one raise their "Google Index"?

I can help raise your Google Index through SEO.

nopassrecover• 16 years ago

through SEO?

Let's not pick on the terminology, clearly she is talking about your ranking for common keywords and PageRank.

cmelbye2• 16 years ago

I just think it's odd that she's using the completely incorrect term in a professional setting where she's trying to convince a future employer that she can do the job.

clistctrl• 16 years ago

"I was reared during the internet age, most consciously during the dot com bust. I am also only 22, meaning that I am the definition of cheap labor. No, seriously, I think that getting paid anything more than $12/hour is “living large,” and getting paid $12/hour is “extremely manageable.”"

I'm also 22, Currently making 70k... i would find $12/hour anything but living large.

encoderer• 16 years ago

And this woman graduated from NYU, Junior year in Paris, she's been published, and she's absolutely charming. She's optimized for distance, not speed. No reason to be a douche.

jrockway2• 16 years ago

This is the kind of person you pay $100k starting to though, to keep them around for a while.

I was like this, and I kept changing jobs every 6 months because someone would come along and offer me twice what I was making before. Sure, I'll come work for you! (Oh, and I'm 24.)

My bet is that two years from now, she will easily be making $50 an hour, even if she starts on $12 today. But if you're that person paying her $12 today, I estimate that will last maybe 3 or 4 months. Then someone else will have her talent, and you'll be saying to yourself, "yeah, paying someone like that $12 an hour was fucking dumb of us".

lhuang3• 16 years ago

True, but you have to take into consideration the type of job she wants.

Very few, if any, entry-level jobs in media and publishing pay 70K.

Plus I'm not so sure that $12/hour is so ridic. An entry level job at a consulting firm is ~70K but you work ~80 hours a week which results in a whopping $18/hour!

Living large indeed.

faramarz• 16 years ago

If I was a startup in the Valley, I'd hire her as copywriter.

xelipe• 16 years ago

I could use a copywriter for $8/hour.

forgotAgain• 16 years ago

Hey Shane,

Why use profanity? Your friend is putting herself out there looking for a job and you lessen her efforts by using profanity in your comments. Way to be a friend.

starkfist3• 16 years ago

She could get a writing job at a place like RWW easily. Unfortunately it's one of the only places she could get a job. It's also a boiler room. I don't know what the right phrase for a blogging boiler room is.

I hope she truly loves SF because career wise there are more and better opportunities for people like her in NYC.

cj• 16 years ago

Perfect: Presents some degree of intelligence mixed in with an emotional appeal.

byrneseyeview• 16 years ago

I'm a little disturbed that this is how the most talented people in my generation behave. It seems like most people her age are simply lazy, but a small minority are talented, hardworking, and desperate to undersell themselves.

If you've gone to a good school, gotten a good GPA, and been published, don't you dare compete on price! Figure out what the average entry-level college grad would make in a given position, and ask for 25% more. Tell them why it's a good deal.

If she says $12, she sounds like damaged goods. If she says "I'm a better deal at $60K than the last applicant was at $40K," she has another sentence or two to make her case--which she can do.

dtap• 16 years ago

How do you pay off NYU on $12/hour?

paraschopra• 16 years ago

Not particularly related to this but I am amazed how people here and on the blog are surprised that she is willing to work for $12/hr while at the same time web app startups are afraid to charge even $10/month from their users. What an irony!

PS: I know scale v/s no-scale argument, but still one should charge for your web app (no matter how trivial is it)?

Jessica Roy: Dear San Francisco Employers: Please Hire Me

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