Using recruiters to get tech job

Im going to ignore them and just apply more myself.

>using recruiters
are you paying them? if not you're only getting a portion of your salary. Only thing you're getting out of it is interview practice. Work on projects and apply to companies yourself.

No. I have some friends who got jobs through them, so I just accepted them cause of linkedin. Only a couple helped get me interviews, with one interview done where I applied directly to the company.

They get bonuses if you're hired but they are technically doing their job just by getting you to an interview.

It just sucks. I know what I'm capable of, but all this HR clout is just making me be out of the job longer. I'm starting to forget what having money feels like.

do you have a portfolio?

I have a resume of past jobs. No code ports like github.

how are you presenting your skillset? People who are familiar with C# are highly sought after when it comes to interacting with Azure. I know because I'm on the hook right now trying to interview for a coworker like this who will complement my work in AWS.

Just C# by itself might not get you many replies, but if you relate it to things like a modern hosted provider, and say things like "I've used C# to automate builds with TFS" or something like that, it could get more traction. Lots of these recruiters are also full on retards you have to do the work for them. tell what _what_ things in C# or C++ you know about as they relate to these big well known frameworks or patterns.

tl;dr you're still good I bet just step up your buzzwords. cloud cloud cloud functional yay

I've been noticing this recently with how the interviews or phone screens go. For instance, when I elaborate on something, they say they don't exactly know what it is, but they instantly click on the keywords they're likely reading from some piece of paper.

this is only partly true

being connected is the easiest way to get an interview.

2nd easiest way is to GO TO FUCKING JOB FAIRS AND TALK FACE TO FACE WITH RECRUITERS. RECRUITERS, HR PEOPLE, NOT NECESSARILY EMPLOYEES.

Job Fairs are basically a free 1st round interview. All you need to do is present yourself in a really nice and professional manner, explain your skill set, ask a few questions, then walk away with the HR persons card. Then you find job postings for that company, email the HR people with your resume, tell them you talked to them at the career fair and you can get an interview most times that way.

My past 2 months:

3 career fairs attended

at least a dozen business cards collected

7 companies responded

2 from my personal network

4 from career fairs

1 from random application and well crafted cover letter (fortune 500 company in top 20, I have a project that is inline with their industry)

11 interviews (counting phone and in person interviews)

3 job offers

I can keep sharing my experience but only if people are actually reading

it's unfortunate but it's a result of the person looking for the talent also being completely unqualified to determine if you actually have said competencies.

I recently ran into this myself right? I came from Lisp, then C, then Haskell, and actually got worse as I got older (people these days love Python). I didn't really ever start hearing too much until I started working for some hosted provider consultancies.

My linkedin is drenched with all kinds of buzzword bullshit but i'm getting on average of 5 recruiters a week reaching out to me for positions that i routinely ignore

Yeah but how long did you take to get said job and what were you applying for?

this. you can have a resume filled with spelling errors, but if you're referred by someone (preferably who is a decent or high up employee themselves) then you're hired.

Everything I listed is from starting in February of this year. My college had 2 career fairs and I went to a local city career fair as well.

wrong. The 2 interviews I got from my personal network fell through. Had phone interviews and in-person final rounds but nada.

Find a place with in-house programing. Apply for another position if you can do it. Then rise from within.

Missed the last part of your question.

I was mainly applying for entry level software engineering and web dev positions. One company was a Linux help desk position.

I could be mistaken but I think OP has been out of school for quite some time. You need to consider that people who don't have the support network of academia have to consider other means to find employment. Tech especially gets trickier and trickier the older you get. There is this understanding in enterprise that at some point corporate is going to pluck you and make you a lead or a PM and after that you don't get to touch code anymore and nobody trusts your input.

there's a pecking order, fuckass. it also sounds like you're a broke dick recent grad.

>I could be mistaken but I think OP has been out of school for quite some time
Near ten years at this point.

Sounds more like was in school but didnt work shit jobs so no related experience.

if it's any consolation, my coworker (basically the only other guy at my company who can write code with finesse) is an old Caltech dude. he's got usenet posts with richard stevens directly replying to him in them and shit. He's super oldschool but his Makefile-fu is insane. I'm lucky to have him around.

he's still in the game learning new shit every day. Keep your head in the game you'll get there. Like I said just buzzword it up, get a stiff drink and try not to let all the social-media-esque shit bother you.

Don't get discouraged, like I said I had 11 interviews and didn't get any offers until the very last 3.

I met people at the career fair who drove 1-2 hours to get there. Look for tech focused career fairs, usually they have resume review stations. Also never seem desperate, act like you already have 3 interviews everytime you interact with a new person.

Oh I'm way past the desperate stuff. I dont have to act it cause I do have multiple stuff coming my way. The annoying part is closing deals so I can finally have a job again.

>get linkedin
>post BS projects to github
>commit a couple features or fixes to opensource projects

you're welcome, now you have a soc med portfolio rather than a sad list of things you lied about on a resume

I was a bartender before I was a consultant. Dude ordering a beer from me one night spits his beer out when I start talking about type inferencing and shit. He luckily didn't blackout because i got a call the next day

Avoid recruiters.
Target your CV to the job you want. Do some research. If it's a bank they don't care about 3D programming experience, etc.

Do you know why you fail the interviews?

closing fucked me on my early interviews for sure. It was awesome practice for my self-awareness, I just reflected on the interviews and thought about where I might have lost their interest, without dwelling too hard of course.

Avoid banks, go credit unions. They are more fix on the fly but have more openings.

hi! I used to be in your boat

recruiters really are parasites, as the other user said.

what they do, is they present the companies with a bunch of developers for every position. some of those devs already have a job, and are significantly better qualified than you, or are generally more desirable (women)

the recruiters have a contract with the companies, forcing them to interview you. you're just a number in the process, most of the time.

what's worse is that they take a commission based on your salary. this means that your starting salary will be even lower if they decide to hire you because the companies don't actually wanna pay the commission.

you really need to apply directly. the best way is still to know someone inside the company who can fasttrack your resume.

I'm unemployed for personal reasons at the moment but my friends keep asking me if I want a job, and they would vouch for me. (that's how I got most of my previous jobs) With this approach, you also have a frank insight into the company so you can decide whether it's somewhere you want to be.

you need to connect yourself in the industry. the reality is that it's still the best way in the digital age, as it has been since the dawn of civilization.

>meet with job agency last march
>they don't get CG jobs very often, but they'll get in touch with me when they do.
>get automated emails about jobs that barely relate to my skillset.
>respond to some of them, hear nothing
>fast forward to february
>I get a call from the recruiter
>tells me about an animation job I'd be great for. He tells me it starts in april and he'll contact me then to make sure I'm still interested and he'll have me meet with the client.
>I take the time to work on some animation to show the client
>April is approaching. I email recruiter to tell him I'm still interested
>no response
>April is here. I get job alert from linkedin about the exact same job
>I email recruiter again
>no response
>next day I call agency
>"Hi can I speak to *recruiter's name*, please?"
>"Yeah he doesn't work here anymore. Is there anything I can help you with."
Tell her my situation
>"Yeah that company isn't working with our agency anymore."
>applied to the job myself through linkedin. haven't heard back yet

I would have had no idea if I didn't call them. For all I know he could have left/gotten fired the day after I spoke to him. The point of my story is it's tough on everybody, but at least be happy you're getting interviews.

Should have gone the Java route. No excuse for saying 'went'.

OP
In Java you'd just interview against pajeets who barely speak English, so you'd be a sight for sore eyes in an interview.

You probably just have a shitty personality and rub people the wrong way

If you're qualified and can't get a job, then something seriously is fucked up with you.

stfu

Great advice, prick.

Move to SF and spam your resume. Whore yourself out and git gud.

not necessarily there are diversity quotas to fill. it depends on many different factors. its more like random luck, a roll of the dice

not that user, but does that mean I shouldn't check on the application that I'm a white male?

I can guarantee you that those jobs interviewed more than four people. Just keep trying. I probably went through 20 interviews my first job.

Doesn't matter. Unless you're filling in their quotas for their tax break or whatever they're getting it doesn't matter if you're a white male or the last white rhino. So opting out and filling out the demographic are essentially the same thing.

no just saying you have to spam out and do lots of interviews. The companies go through a lot of interviewees and might know who they are going to hire even before they interview you. But they go through with the interview because of "equal oppurtunity"

They did. I usually got a "we found a stronger applicant"

Are you actually not that good at C++ to the point where you are decent at C? Apply in the automotive / industrial embedded space. Caterpillar, Komatsu, John Deere, CNH, Cummins, Allison, Sauer Danfoss, Worth, etc. There are always a shit ton of C jobs at these places. I know I work for one. They're almost always in miserable boring places (Midwest) where no one wants to move so the hiring is not competitive, and the salary is out of this world in comparison to the cost of living.

If by miserable and boring you mean an affordable cost of living, sure.

Honestly I know a decent number of people at Cat/Komatsu/Deere and the workplace is fine. Honestly the idea that the Midwest has something lacking is a meme perpetrated by people on the coasts who developed stockholm syndrome for their cost of living.

Wow it's baffling to me that any Cat employee could ever give off any semblance that the workplace is fine. It's absolutely awful but the pay is nutrageous so we stay. I'm 8 years out of college and I will make 140K$ this year. No matter how bad things get I wont find anything close to that anywhere else.

I grew up on the south side of Chicago so I'm used to the Midwest and find it fine, but I hear the never ending bitching from everyone about it every day forever so that's why I mentioned it.

>multiple times its the end of spring semester
>sent out hundreds of applications
>resign myself to being a neet all summer
>someone hires me last second for summer internship
>now the internships are paying off and my resume isnt literally empty
>think about what would happen if I didnt get those last second hires
>stroke of luck is the difference between a useless degree and being an employed wageslave
do internships lads

Most of the Cat people I know are from HQ in IL, the layoffs suck(ed), but the pay seems to make it worth with everyone I've talked to.

do you work in peoria? i have a mechanical engineering phd and thought about applying there but i have 3 properties in the inner chicago suburbs. i'd have to hire someone to manage them and i don't think it's worth the hassle.

Yeah I do. What do you want to know?

Well, I should say I work in Mossville, which is where the engineering center is just outside Peoria.

is it really as bad as they say it is? it seems everyone complains about peoria being a shit town. i'm currently working in des plaines making 80k a year while i'm pretty sure CAT would offer me more and peoria is dirt cheap.

It's fine. Peoria has generally everything you'd need. It's also not that far from Chicagoland so you can go up there to do stuff on the weekend if you want to. I grew up on the far South side and I still drive up to visit family all the time. Peoria is a nice little town that has a bit of city, in a compact package that's easy to get around in with very little traffic. It's not like you're moving out into farm country or somewhere like Pontiac where there is nothing around. I bought a nice older house in a good neighborhood for chump change and my commute is 14 minutes.

Being white actually helps you because then you don't have to deal with implicit bias. Jow Forums knows this which is why they screech so hard. Also blaming imaginary "quotas" is pretty much the go to for any shit mediocre coder who just isn't competent.

There is such a thing as full stack developer still. Jave and node both have their places.

Look up "Good Faith Efforts". Every company that has any government contracts does it... We literally have spreadsheets where managers have to fill in every month every case where they gave an opportunity to a minority or female over others. If you don't have enough enterprise wide over time you can lose contracts or otherwise get your company in hot water.

i have a job that pays little over $70k/year, but i was pretty much told i would not be moving up pay grades any time soon, while people hired at the same time as me with less experience are moving up. also not a big fan of management, its nothing but buzzwords. they also talk about how people arent resource but ship most dev jobs to india.

whats the best way to get out of the company without risking my job?

Nobody cares about that. This is how it works in the real world: hbswk.hbs.edu/item/minorities-who-whiten-job-resumes-get-more-interviews

wait how does that practically work? like seems like you'd be able to tell if someone's last name was Mugabe or Chan?

That's what the studies do. They have the same resume with white sounding names, and black sounding names. No matter who conducts it, the results always significantly favor the resumes with white sounding names. The only reason Jow Forums screeches so hard about diversity quotas is because they know that they're in a position of advantage and want to hold onto it. Any awkward white kid on Jow Forums complaining about not getting a job because of diversity quotas is most likely a piece of shit who pees in bottles, watches anime, and isn't very good at coding.

but the article talked about real people whitening CV's too, which just seems like, idk how its done??

it's the same when people cite papers in academia. one of my friends decided to legally change her hispanic surname to an anglo one during her PhD.

>quit
>send out CV to 4 interesting companies
>invited to all 4
>get offers from all of them

living the fucking life

What's your CV look like? How long have you been working?

1.5 years of actual experience, 10 years as hobbyist before that so I always do pretty well in technical interviews

Also I'm in Europe, I think our market is not as saturated

Did you have a formal education or was it all hobby based? And what did your actual experience look like?

Went to university for a few years but dropped out to take my first job, so no degree. Actual work experience was as full time backend dev and a few short term working student jobs

Really it's surprising to hear that people have so much issue in this field. Where I live employers are desperate for any software devs they can get, it's not like I'm special

This is true, especially when you have a shitty resume but are confident you can get shit done if given the chance.
I don't work in tech but I got a job in a field I had 0 experience in thanks to a friend, something I wouldn't have gotten based on my resume alone, and I quickly adapted and ended up doing a better job than people with years of experience.

And the alternative, since rubbing elbows with other people is not exactly what I see an average Jow Forums poster doing, is building some kind of portfolio that you can show off. Recruiters and HR reps rarely know about the job they're trying to fill. They judge solely based on what they think you can contribute. They don't care about your "potential".