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.

> 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.

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.