Ask HN: Can I hack my job search with inbound leads?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43509583

by jhgaylor • 1 year ago

3 2 1 year ago

news.ycombinator.com

I have been thinking about changing jobs for a while now but the process can be quite a slog. I have an idea that by getting my website in front of the right people at the right time I can cut through a lot of back and forth emails and get on the phone with the hiring manager and see if there is a fit.

I am trying out a new form for my personal website where I market how I work instead of things I've built or writing a book about myself. https://jakegaylor.com.

Have you tried to get inbound leads to your job search? How'd it go?

DamonHD• 1 year ago

Someone just did half a job interview in advance here on HN in the last ~24h (LED solar light box).

PaulHoule• 1 year ago

It's cool but nothing that special. It's kinda bold that you're willing to say what you don't do but it doesn't stand out. It's basically a resume, there are many different ideas about how to write a resume, you're focusing on "how I work" but there are other ways to do it to.

A few lines of analysis are:

(1) If you have a good resume you should blast it out by every channel imaginable: get it on LinkedIn, turn it into a Slideshare presentation, put it up on your GitHub, you ought to put it up in 50 places. Present it as a YouTube video.

(2) Early in my career I struggled with job interviews. Bob Firestone (look him up!) got me to look at it like a pick up artists and I went from being terrified of job interviews to doing them for fun or to gain information. There is a lot of "science of seduction" and self-psychology here but the thing I'd call out is "is it about you or about them?" In a process like that you want it to be about them and not about you, or at least not that you are thinking about you.

(3) Personally I'm a bit of a chameleon for the good of the team. Some teams are really too cautious and they need somebody a little reckless to shake them up. More often people are sloppy and need someone who helps them be careful. My pet peeve about "data scientists" and people who've worked in big companies is that they often don't have the small company or startup ethos that you do whatever the team needs if it isn't in the job description. I think a lot of employers value flexibility a lot, I know I do.

(My better angel points out you might avoid some bad situations if you're more clear about your boundaries up front!)

(4) If you want to get attention online you have to do something really special. A demo which looks like it fell off a UFO, a blog that you wrote a post on every week for a year where 50% of the posts are S-rank. Preferably the blog and 10 of those demos.

(5) ... and yeah, get a pic that was taken with a long lens instead of a wide angle lens

Good luck!

Ask HN: Can I hack my job search with inbound leads?

Related Stories