What I say to people who are looking for a job

Re:What I say to people who are looking for a job by rc-1140 on Thursday November 08, 2018 @01:07PM (#18408352)

> Based on the title, I was expecting the article to suck, but I think it's actually pretty solid.

I disagree, honestly. After reading it, I saw another stellar example of empty yet well-meaning advice. It's just enough to stand on its own, has good intentions, but doesn't actually focus on a tangible problem or set of problems that people have. Rather, it addresses a few high-level topics in extreme brevity and is just an outlet for the author to demonstrate some kind of power they feel that they hold[0]. The article looks more like a wrapper for a previous HN comment, which is in a thread about an article detailing a very specific and actually useful piece of advice, and a Data Science book.

[0] https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6...

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Re:What I say to people who are looking for a job by dnautics on Thursday November 08, 2018 @01:52PM (#18408809)

a lot of the advice struck me as something that not everyone looking for a job can afford. 10 weeks of trying a new thing for a week? I found the best advice in the article to be the one about taking time off to travel - that it will be hard getting back (know someone who is in that state now)

Honestly: If you're looking for a job - find a friend who is hiring. Be sure that friend is not just a friend, but a friend who is going to go to bat for you.

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Re:What I say to people who are looking for a job by jehlakj on Thursday November 08, 2018 @02:01PM (#18408897)

It’s a tricky situation. I was in a position to look for hires, but I was surprised to realize how many of my friends weren’t necessarily qualified for that position. It wasn’t a high position or anything either.

If you can vouch for a friend to that degree, they probably don’t need your help.

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Re:What I say to people who are looking for a job by dnautics on Friday November 09, 2018 @12:16PM (#18416012)

> If you can vouch for a friend to that degree, they probably don’t need your help.

A friend of mine finished a coding camp. He'd been looking for a job for 9 months. I interviewed him and totally understood why - he just had no chill at all. Super anxious, very nervous, seemed way too eager to please, borderline desperation? Sat him down, we did a very tough coding problem, and he did just fine for a junior position, so I made an offer happen.

A lot of times people have a 'singular flaw' that nobody will tell them what it is, and it takes someone willing to come up with an excuse to get them hired.

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Re:What I say to people who are looking for a job by PopeDotNinja on Thursday November 08, 2018 @07:17PM (#18411317)

Speaking only for myself, I've found looking for to fluctuate between quite easy and quite hard. Anytime I've really struggled to find a new job, whether I already had a job or not, it was usually because there was some factor beyond my control that I could not work around. In those hard times, I think I would have landed new employment more quickly by focusing more on making myself more marketable so I could stand out in a sea of applicants without enough to go around. Sometimes rushing to fight the wrong fight is simply not gonna work.

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Re:What I say to people who are looking for a job by 30 on Thursday November 08, 2018 @01:37PM (#18408654)

> ...a thread about an article detailing a very specific and actually useful piece of advice.

Anyone have a link?

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