 | | Friend of mine moved on to the company I'm at now (he has since left) and when they were looking for a senior developer he gave them my contact info. I'm in the market right now and the most likely opportunity thus far is through another buddy of mine.I've never gone through the front door at any company, for that matter, in the 25 years I've been working. The first job I ever got was because the teacher of a college class I was taking owned a small ISP and needed a sysadmin, and he liked how I was doing in his class. Everything since then has been through someone I know personally. |
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| | I work at a large, well-known Silicon Valley company. I interned at the company while I was in college, but decided to work elsewhere after I graduated. After a few years, one of their recruiters reached out to me via email, went through the normal interview process, and ended up with the job.Past jobs/internships have been a mixture of applying directly on college job boards, recruiters reaching out through email/LinkedIn, and Hired. |
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| | I was presenting at a conference, the CIO came to me after the presentation and we chatted about her company. She ended up offering a great position.Funny that I have never heard of this huge company (and uber cool), some of the great ones are just not visible to outsiders. 10 years later I still love it. |
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| | Twitter DM in response to an engineering manager that tweeted ≈'we're hiring!'. Talking to the eng manager directly, rather than going through a typical recruiting channel, made the whole process a lot smoother I think |
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| | Easy: recruiter asked me if I wanted to work remote. I said writing go and working remote and getting paid bay area comp sounds good.But of course becoming the person that recruiter reached out to involved several years of study, betting on a brand new language, taking a risk on a startup with no money and a few other things. |
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| | Last startup I joined died. A tip – when a founder tells you they raised money, make sure they have actually "received" the money and that the fund they raised from hasn't gone insolvent 🙂Luckily an ex colleague referred me and it has been an amazing journey at LinkedIn. BTW We are hiring! |
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| | A recruiter who I worked with in the past called me. This is why I tell recruiters who will listen to maintain relationships and not approach each match-hire as a one-and-done proposition. I can't count the times that a recruiter ghosts me after I turn them down. |
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| | As someone looking for work, the super enthusiastic recruiter who gets all excited, sometimes I even meet them at their office and……ghosted….. is a super frustrating thing. (I keep wondering if someone committed a terrible crime in my name and nobody is telling me.)There was some article floating around LinkedIn about how frustrating it is for recruiters when someone ghosts them… that had to be some sort of troll right? |
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| | My current job at Amazon: Took two online coding tests, didn't talk to a single person and got an offer a couple days after the second test. Efficient. |
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| | I was unemployed, because I got fired (first time ever, by an asshole who never liked me). I had taken a month or so to try my hand at writing a novel, but eventually a recruiter cold-called me and offered me an interview, and COBRA was so expensive I said "sure, go ahead and schedule it."Current job is a good fit, I enjoy it and have been here for two years. |
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| | I was a freelancer doing contract work for various companies (while also running a few side projects) and a guy I did work for recommended me. Guy who I was recommended to messaged me on LinkedIn and we arranged a lunch meeting to get to know each other. Soon after I started doing contracting work for them. After about a month of the contracting gig he asked what it would take to bring me on full time and we came to some agreements. Now two years later I'm a partner at the company and we're growing like crazy. It's cool how all the little decisions and events in your life can come together to get you where you want to be. |
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| | Power of the second-degree network: a friend of a friend referred me to my current job. |
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| | That's been studied. The phrase "the strength of the weak tie" is one I have heard in relation to this phenomenon. People you don't know that well tend to be better leads than your closest friends. |
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| | Wrote a blog post that got featured on HN. Someone from Facebook reached out and after a series of interviews I got in. |
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| | I'm a freelancer, so I usually have several jobs. The last 3 jobs:1. A VC who I pitched to didn't invest in my startup, but he was impressed enough by my technical ability that he took me on for some work. After being conscientious in series of jobs over a year, I usually get first pick in his projects. 2. A guy whose project I failed at recommended me to a friend. Two other people also mentioned me. He was a speaker at a talk that I liked and so I added him on Facebook years ago, which broke the ice. 3. Some of my students were doing a real world project for educational purposes. They dropped out and I took on the project, which was easy and paid very well for the difficulty level. |
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| | inurl:careers Helsinki devopsAlso tried couple of the variations (inurl:jobs, Espoo, sre, Linux). This helped to find companies which didn't post their jobs on the usual job boards (mostly startups at the time). |
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| | Hated my current job and while I was on vacation in China, I sent a couple of inquiring emails to some contacts I had. I had a phone interview from a hotel lobby in Hong Kong at 2am (job is in Illinois). By the time I got home, I had a face-to-face interview and had a new job in a week. |
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| | CEO of a previous employer was working there and brought me in to fix shit |
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| | Had interviewed with a recruiter I met via LinkedIn a year ago, and rejected an offer. One year later I felt like it was the right moment to switch jobs and called him again. He got me the new job I have now. |
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| | Who's hiring right here on HN (on the first of the month). |
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| | 2 last jobs were through networking in tech meetups. (Vancouver, BC) |
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| | Moved to Saigon from the Bay Area about 2 years ago. Was unemployed at the time (I mostly do tech consulting) and sitting in the newly opened cafe in my apartment building. A guy sits down next to me and is reading a book about bitcoin. He just moved into the building a couple days before. We start talking and he tells me he is mining, invites me to come help install the next shipment arriving that weekend. I go with him to the data center located about an hour outside Saigon, which turns out to be in a super secure Vietnamese military telco building and install 150 new machines. Had a blast doing the install and I got a job offer to become CTO to help run the operation. 8 months later, the whole operation moves to Canada and I'm out of a job again (long story). Telling the story to a friend of mine, he offers me a job working for another large crypto company that he recently joined, to do an even larger mining operation. So here I am… working on that now.Needless to say, I'm a huge believer in serendipity. |
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| | Friend referred me to his boss.I know for sure I couldn't have gotten in if it was through normal interviewing channels, I always bomb interview questions in the most phenomenal ways. |
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| | Salesforce: recruiterTwitter: referral Current: referral I also had to do a typical interview at all of them. |
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| | So much varies by industry, specialization, time of year, time in economic cycle. My clients typically find 40% by aggressive networking (in-person, LinkedIn, Meetups, conferences), 30% by who they currently know in industry, the balance cold approaches and other. |
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| | I literally saw a super cool company sign on the side of 101 and thought to myself, "hmmm, I wonder what they do?" Two months later when I was browsing the job boards I saw a perfect fit opening for "that company with the sign".I looked into the company further at that point and found out their customers were evangelical fanatics about the product. I ended up getting the job and three years later, it's by far the best job I've ever had – the team, daily responsibilities, financials, etc. So when you're stuck in that long slog of a commute on 101, take the time to peruse the corporate creativity lining the freeway. It may just lead to your next opportunity. |
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