5 Tips for Hiring and Applying for Jobs
Hiring is hard. Here are a few things I’ve learned.
Candidates
1. Reaching out via email is okay.
Hunting for a job is tough. Even hiring for a non-profit is super competitive. In less than a day, we had over 100 applicants for an engineering role, and this is on the low end for many open positions. It’s easy for lists of people to get long, making it easy to be overlooked, even if you’re amazing. A simple way to address this is to send an email in addition to applying on the platform where the job was posted. It tells me you’re excited about the role, and even though I have to check two places now, I still appreciate the energy and time it takes.
2. Name your CV appropriately.
This is simple: give your resume or CV a meaningful name. It’s not terribly frequent, but a resume will often be named “resume.pdf.” My workflow is typically: Get an application > Review message and skills > Download PDF > Look deeper.
I’ll download the PDF if you seem like a good fit. When I need to schedule a call, I look through a list of resumes and scan for your name. If I have to open up the five resumes without a convenient naming convention, while it isn’t a deal-breaker, it’s super annoying.
3. Have patience.
Depending on the company, a single person will likely review hundreds of applications. If it’s a big company, a recruiter or team of recruiters will screen the applications and give a short list to the hiring manager. Communicating with everyone is time-consuming, and response times might be delayed.
While I understand how anxiety-inducing the job hunt can be, so is hiring. Give it time, and it’s okay if you aren’t contacted; we’re all super busy and doing our best. Flexible and understanding people will have a better chance in the future than someone who comes off as demanding and entitled.
4. Be flexible for part-time contract work.
Not many people are into contract positions, but this might work against you. Typically, a contract can pay more because you don’t have insurance or other entitlements they need to offer. If the company is saving money, it’s my opinion that some of that should be given back to the employee.
5. Come with questions.
It’s a simple suggestion, but important. If you’re interested in a job, come with questions about the company, product, or people you’ll be working with. This shows me you’re engaged and excited about the role.
Recruiters/Hiring Managers
1. Come with questions.
In past interviews, I’ve experienced many hiring managers come without any questions for me. Instead, they want to “keep the conversation natural” and see where it goes. If that’s your style, fine, but if you can’t keep a conversation natural AND have good questions for the candidate, your expectations might not be met.
Come with a set of consistent questions you can ask all candidates so you can better understand the nuances of varying levels of expertise across interviewees.
2. Don’t assume your talented, already employed friends and colleagues don’t want a side gig.
If you’re hiring for part-time contract work, don’t assume that your employed friends and colleagues aren’t candidates. That said, if you’re hiring for a full-time position, your already-employed connections might not be able to entertain the offer since changing jobs is very different than a side gig.
Lots of really talented, senior people understand that jobs, especially in Big Tech, aren’t that demanding once the learning curve flattens. As a product designer at a Big Tech company in the past, it was trivial for me to help other internal teams AND contribute to more than one open-source project consistently.
3. Post your salary range.
This is a legal requirement in some cases, but where it isn’t, you should be posting your salary range. If you aren’t, that tells me you can’t provide competitive rates and want to hide that fact.
If you’re waiting for someone to be emotionally attached to the job to soften the salary limitations, you’re simply wasting their time and being manipulative. Not a good look and it’ll hurt your credibility in the long run.
4. Be honest.
It’s the best policy. I’ve had colleagues in past jobs tell me that I should embellish, if not flat-out lie, about the realities of a job on a JD. “Cast the widest net possible; then we’ll narrow down.” They wanted a JD that said, “You’ll be responsible for creating the future of X,” when the job is really, “you’ll work with cross-functional stakeholders to deliver X that matches our already defined requirements for our immediate releases.”
The only thing that happens when you embellish like this is that your attrition rate will skyrocket. Talented people will be sold on a vision, join, realize you were dishonest, and either quietly quit or flat out leave at their first opportunity. People want honesty and transparency, full stop.
5. Save all resumes for future opportunities.
Hiring is so freaking time-consuming. Reviewing resumes, contacting people, scheduling, and interviewing will be your whole world when you need to hire. While meeting talented people excited about your position has value, that’s not the point. Finding the person who’ll be able to align with your goals and objectives is critical for the success of your product, and finding ways to streamline the process moving forward will pay dividends.
Save the resumes you receive and categorize them. If someone is really into building AI models, note it, even if you’re not actively working on that now. It’s also helpful to understand if someone is a junior, senior, or unicorn. Remember: the best job posting is no job posting at all, and if you’re sufficiently organized when a need arises, you’ll have a repository of qualified people who you can lean on first.
Conclusion
Get organized, be standardized, and come curious. If you have any questions about the information above, you can find us on Mastodon at @scidsg@fosstodon.org.
