Ask HN: Keeping yourself hire-able while not working?
8 comments
Sorry to say this, but really the best, and to some extent only viable way to keep yourself always "hirable" is to always be employed.
This is because about 80%-90% of the time, employers (and even more, recruiters) aren't looking at all at any of your intrinsic traits, but rather at proxies, e.g. where you went to school, who you worked for.. and how long you worked there.
That is to say, to a large extent their logic goes like this: "I don't have time to parse all of this candidate X's attributes and traits; but I can see that entity E (school,employer) has conveyed the following attributes {a1,a2..} to candidate X in the recent past. So as a matter of expediency, and to get make some headway this inbox of resumes before I need to get coffee again, I'll just X++ or X-- accordingly."
And it also happens that one of the must highly valued attributes they have is whether the candidate was recently (or even better, is currently) employed by some company they consider to be cool (by whatever criteria).
Of course, it's perfectly fair to say you wouldn't want to work for an employer with such a shallow way of looking at the world... and that anyone who's willing to just close their eyes, and look at the real you not only won't ding you for taking off a year to live in a squat in Barcelona with your hot girlfriend, work at a coffeeshop, and not only start to learn from scratch, but make commits to the source tree to some emerging language Y that's decades ahead of its time, albeit with precisely zero value in the current job market... but might even find you a potentially much more valuable, well-rounded candidate for having done so.
But the vast majority just don't think that way, course.
This is because about 80%-90% of the time, employers (and even more, recruiters) aren't looking at all at any of your intrinsic traits, but rather at proxies, e.g. where you went to school, who you worked for.. and how long you worked there.
That is to say, to a large extent their logic goes like this: "I don't have time to parse all of this candidate X's attributes and traits; but I can see that entity E (school,employer) has conveyed the following attributes {a1,a2..} to candidate X in the recent past. So as a matter of expediency, and to get make some headway this inbox of resumes before I need to get coffee again, I'll just X++ or X-- accordingly."
And it also happens that one of the must highly valued attributes they have is whether the candidate was recently (or even better, is currently) employed by some company they consider to be cool (by whatever criteria).
Of course, it's perfectly fair to say you wouldn't want to work for an employer with such a shallow way of looking at the world... and that anyone who's willing to just close their eyes, and look at the real you not only won't ding you for taking off a year to live in a squat in Barcelona with your hot girlfriend, work at a coffeeshop, and not only start to learn from scratch, but make commits to the source tree to some emerging language Y that's decades ahead of its time, albeit with precisely zero value in the current job market... but might even find you a potentially much more valuable, well-rounded candidate for having done so.
But the vast majority just don't think that way, course.
"MUST HAVE: PHP 5.4 w/ Code Igniter, mastery of the latest jQuery plugins..."You're in probably the best job, in the best industry, at the best time, in the history of ever, to not have to care about a gap diminishing your perceived value to employers. They need coders. If you can code, they'll deal.
If you absolutely have to address it, and you don't, "I took a few month to explore some projects and refresh myself, and now I'm itching to get back into big challenges like $MY_WHAT_A_LOVELY_COMPANY_YOU_HAVE_THERE."
If you absolutely have to address it, and you don't, "I took a few month to explore some projects and refresh myself, and now I'm itching to get back into big challenges like $MY_WHAT_A_LOVELY_COMPANY_YOU_HAVE_THERE."
In today's market, if you are umemployed, it is extremely difficult to get through large corporations even though not completely impossible. Your better bet is to go with startups or smaller companies. Have something to show. Github? SO ? blog ? etc. Do your homework about the company before you approach them. Don't just say "Hey I am a brilliant coder who can do xxx". That puts you in competition with several others. Instead, know as much as about the company. For example, if you say "hey I know you guys build x and I have done y in similar space and can offer you my service to further build/enhance x". Then, you catch their attention because you are talking about their problem not your problem. At that point, they may not care whether you are unemployed or employed.
I've got two gaps in my work history and I explain them fairly similarly: I didn't want to jump from one thing to another immediately if I didn't have to. The first gap was largely spent playing video games and pointedly not doing anything remotely resembling work for most of it, the second is full of travel and independent small projects. In both cases the response I get from companies ranges from "makes sense" to "sounds like a good idea".
Work on stuff that's quantifiable and visible to recruiters. Like contributing to GitHub, Stack Overflow and other code communities.
Work on your code portfolio. You should have your own site where you collect and publish work and ideas. Lots of people use GitHub for this too.
Keep your brain in shape by taking a course on Coursera or Udacity.
Work on your code portfolio. You should have your own site where you collect and publish work and ideas. Lots of people use GitHub for this too.
Keep your brain in shape by taking a course on Coursera or Udacity.
This.
Go code. Open source. Port your first game to HTML5/canvas, just for the kicks. Pick up new language. Record a screencast of hello world of some technology you like. Port an algorithmically interesting code, eg a hashing function from some language to another. Start a blog. Do an interview with a few founders of recently announced startups about their technology stack, write about it. Get involved in hackernews discussions. There is so much to do!
Whether you get money or not, keep coding, keep creating, keep passionate about making bits dance. Job/money will come.
Go code. Open source. Port your first game to HTML5/canvas, just for the kicks. Pick up new language. Record a screencast of hello world of some technology you like. Port an algorithmically interesting code, eg a hashing function from some language to another. Start a blog. Do an interview with a few founders of recently announced startups about their technology stack, write about it. Get involved in hackernews discussions. There is so much to do!
Whether you get money or not, keep coding, keep creating, keep passionate about making bits dance. Job/money will come.
Most recruiters don't their ... from their ... (fill in the blanks).
Most hiring managers at bigcorps aren't nearly so clueless, but a lot of them take a, how to put this, long-term view of things... and don't always know about from GitHub or SO, let alone what cachet they have in hacker communities.
So again, it can be a, let's not say perfectly viable, but viable-ish strategy to bank on one's commit history on GitHub, and other proxies like Stack Overflow... if you're content, and secure enough in your market value to stick to the 5% of the employers that value these kinds of markers very greatly.
But for the other 95%, not so much.
Most hiring managers at bigcorps aren't nearly so clueless, but a lot of them take a, how to put this, long-term view of things... and don't always know about from GitHub or SO, let alone what cachet they have in hacker communities.
So again, it can be a, let's not say perfectly viable, but viable-ish strategy to bank on one's commit history on GitHub, and other proxies like Stack Overflow... if you're content, and secure enough in your market value to stick to the 5% of the employers that value these kinds of markers very greatly.
But for the other 95%, not so much.
You are right: better target that 5% that are startups, startupish BigCorps, etc.
Applying to jobs, working on projects, taking contracts. You know what to do, you just want us to tell you to do it. Do it bud!
Email [email protected] with some times you have an hour free to run through a FizzBuzz etherpad. If you have the fundamentals down, we're hiring contract positions.
As many others have said, just don't explain the gap. Instead say "hi, I can code, interested?".
As many others have said, just don't explain the gap. Instead say "hi, I can code, interested?".
Instead say "hi, I can code, interested?"
Groovy for startups -- as are things like having a cool Twitter handle, making pithy remarks in SO, etc. If you're exclusively interested in startups, that is.
But for the vast majority of employers out in, you know, the general universe out there -- not so much.
Groovy for startups -- as are things like having a cool Twitter handle, making pithy remarks in SO, etc. If you're exclusively interested in startups, that is.
But for the vast majority of employers out in, you know, the general universe out there -- not so much.
Develop software... Write an app, make a web-site (E.g. using Amazon's AWS 12 month free tier), solve a problem, whatever.
Just have something to talk about in the interview.
Just have something to talk about in the interview.
My question is what i the best way to make myself appealing to prospective employers even though i am currently not working?
Thanks