How and Why to Backdoor Into Jobs

When I read anecdotes from frustrated job seekers in the tech industry, they usually start out the same way.

“I applied to dozens of jobs
but I am not getting any response.”

Sometimes the low response is warranted due to lack of qualifications or less obvious factors, but often the problem is simply that the job seeker never got access to the person/people who matter most in the hiring of technical professionals. Hiring bottlenecks start with the traditional application process (submit résumé blindly) and can be further complicated by HR reps that are hiring for disparate skills and business units. At a smaller company with no recruiters, the task of screening résumés may go to junior employees and administrative personnel with no background or training in hiring.

When you like a company and want to get an interview, the ideal entrance is very rarely the front door. The front door is the advertised entrance that HR wants you to take, crowded with active job seekers with varying qualifications that will be culled or herded through the process by the people manning the door.

After many years in the business I’ve learned that if you ask privately (meaning not within earshot of HR), most technical managers don’t want candidates to come through the front door either. They would rather you came through a back door, and if necessary to hiring protocol they will later introduce you to the front door guardians to ensure passage.  HR mans the front door, but the geeks own the back doors. This is how it works at many employers.

What are the more common back doors?

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Hiring Indicators, OSS, and the Value of GitHub

As someone who writes about tech hiring and who has also encouraged many to participate in open source and establish a GitHub presence, a recent article caught my eye. Why GitHub is Not Your CV ¹ by James Coglan was partly inspired by another article, The Ethics of Unpaid Labor and the OSS Community by Ashe Dryden. Both articles are well-written and if you evaluate programmers for hire please read them.

Dryden’s tl;dr for me was meritocracy in OSS, an explanation regarding the lack of diversity, and ways to hire that are ‘less biased‘ than relying on OSS contribution or public code availability. Coglan references her piece and adds his own thoughts around similar topics, but his readers might disregard the value a GitHub presence provides. Neither article tried to discourage a presence, but the Coglan piece dismissed the value quite a bit.
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Why Your Résumé is 10 Pages

Even though there are hundreds of articles professing the beauty and efficiency of the one page résumé, not a day passes where I don’t see a five pager. The issue of length has even surfaced amongst college undergrads applying for internships, who seem to have increasing difficulty trimming their list of accomplishments and experiences into a single page (really). This is a troubling sign for future HR and recruiting professionals tasked with selecting applicants, as job seekers who are unable to shorten their credentials will continue to have difficulty in their search.

The amount of time a recruiter or hiring manager spends reviewing any single résumé varies by the individual.  When offered a single page résumé, the reader is much more inclined to give that page a proper scan to make a fair assessment.  A two page offering should get a proper review as well.
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Hello World! What Every CS Student Should Know About the First Job

Anyone involved with hiring entry-level technology professionals (or reads posts on Reddit’s cscareerquestions forum) is aware that students are being prepared by schools for how to do work in the industry, but are often ill-prepared on how to find work in the industry.  There is a major difference between the two, and many grads are being edged out on jobs by equally or even less-qualified peers who were just a bit more proactive about their career. If you think finding a job is only about internships and GPAs, please keep reading.

Some students feel that if they aren’t working 10 hours a day building the next Twitter from their dorm room, or if they didn’t intern at Google or Amazon, that they will struggle to find work. This is hardly the case, and I assure you that if you do a few things during your college years (that require a minimal time investment and no money), you will be several steps ahead when it is time to apply for your first job.
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How to Network Less For Geeks

The fundamental importance of professional networking for today’s career-minded tech pro has been pounded into our heads for many years now. “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” gets spouted by everyone who gets denied a job or interview, and there is certainly some truth in the saying. The mere thought of hobnobbing with other technologists at an event may instill terror in many (myself included at times), and most in the industry yearn to be evaluated purely on technical skills and not the ability to shake hands and make solid eye contact. If you are repulsed by the notion that elbow-rubbing skill may be integral to career success, or are uncomfortable in traditional networking situations, please continue reading – it’s less necessary today than most think.

When visualizing networking, most probably picture a room full of people segmented into smaller groups of varying size having discussions. (Googled “professional networking”, was not disappointed) It could be an industry conference, meetup, or even a more social event such at a bar or restaurant. The images will be appealing to almost no one except perhaps salespeople, and even many of them may shudder.
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Salary Negotiation For Geeks

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Advice on salary negotiation is abundant, but material written for the general public may not always be applicable to a technology sector where demand is high and the most sought after talent is scarce. There is quite a bit of misinformation and the glorified mythology of negotiation is often mistaken for the much less interesting reality where little negotiation actually takes place.

Let’s start by going over a few “rules” that are often thrown around in these discussions.

Always negotiate

Using absolutes is never a good idea (see what I did there?), and there are definite situations when you should not negotiate an offer. For example, entry-level candidates who are considered replaceable with other entry-level candidates often do more harm than good by negotiating, particularly when the job being offered is among the most desirable. We will cover when you should and should not negotiate a bit later, but there are clearly some conditions when it’s not a great idea.

There’s no harm in asking for more/Doesn’t hurt to ask

Actually, sometimes it does. When you propose a counteroffer, there are only a few realistic outcomes.

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How to Prevent Crying During Your Technical Interview

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A recent blog post Technical Interviews Make Me Cry by Pamela Fox tells the personal tale of a technologist and conference speaker who gets a Skype/Stypi interview for her dream job, becomes stumped on a technical question, breaks down in tears, almost abandons the interview, fights through it, and eventually gets the job.  Everyone loves a happy ending, and it was courageous for the author to tell her story so publicly as a service to others.  However, I think some of her takeaways and the advice she provides can be improved upon.

So how can we prevent crying or freezing up during a technical interview?

Let’s start with the author’s advice.  She offers that interviewees should prepare for the format and not just the material, and writes
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