A network engineer in search of greener pastures

Not to step on the authors toes, but it’s not the job searching that is broken - it’s the market that has shifted to favor companies and to put applicants at a disadvantage, something that hasn’t happened in the IT field for a long time. People reject candidates without a college degree because they can afford to - they still have plenty of applicants to pick from after filtering out the rest. There is no need for them to pay time and money to filter for diamonds without a college degree - they will find someone suitable for the opening even with the crappy applicant experience outlined in the article.

The current system is not broken, it works just fine - for the companies.

People in software really don’t like hearing this, but we should be coordinating as a group for political protection. The reason is very simple. Even if you think you are a 10x engineer, you’ll be replaced in a heartbeat as soon as a fresh MBA finds out you can be replaced with 4 people willing to work for well below market. Maybe it’s shortsighted but guess what? Companies are shortsighted.

What does that mean? At a minimum, there should be much more strict enforcement of prevailing wage pay for immigrant labor.

The H1B should be used to hire experts which can’t be found in the US, not to chop the floor out of the market. There’s no reason Zoom should be able to hire an “AI Scientist” for 75k, but they can because no one is checking. And they did.

Political action means coordinating as a group to apply pressure. Politicians need you to vote for them, so we need to make it clear that our votes are contingent on their action.

"I noted, too, that some of these rejections came instantly after turning in an application. [...] I determined that I was automatically being filtered because I didn't have a college degree. Sure, the job posting says it's required, but you do know I have more experience than the average college student my age, right?"

Sure, I never studied medicine and the hospital stated that they are looking for a doctor, but the experience should count no?

Oh man. I keep thinking about Software Engineering as a craft. Only in our profession is it considered completely acceptable to work without any professional education.

Lawyers, doctors, nurses, even tax accountants go to jail if they practice without being licensed.

You wouldn't get your house wired by some random dude, instead you're looking for a proper, licensed electrician.

But in tech? Somehow we normalized random kids just building critical architecture.

I wonder if that's an anomaly from the exponential, chaotic growth that happened to software engineering since the 60s. I wouldn't be surprised if things normalize, like in a lot of other, mature fields of professions.

> AI is probably losing you a lot of good candidates. It can be easily gamed, and then you'll end up with someone who watched a TikTok video on "how to fool any ChatGPT in ten seconds". I also fail to understand how I can have multiple years of experience in a job as well as active certifications, and somehow still get filtered. My resume isn't that bad...what on earth is your AI doing? Do you know?

While the ol’ prompt injection tactic may soon stop working, tailoring your resume for each job to increase your interview rate won’t stop working anytime soon. Specifically, knowing which of your experiences align well with the requirements is super useful in tailoring. If you’re interested, I made a quick app[0] that does cosine similarity of your bullets to the job requirements to help visualize how well your resume aligns with the job description.

[0] https://resgen.app

The highest order bit about job search being broken at the moment is that the supply of jobs has fallen. It was bad before, too, but that's the primary thing making it worse. The main solution is to spend more time in person networking: find companies you like, and attend any tech talks they host at their offices.

> First, after turning in over 50-100 applications, I didn't have a single email or phone call from a human.

No, that sounds about right.

I came to the conclusion over a decade ago that firing off resumes into the cold dark void of the Internet was a loser's game.

Every single job posted to a electronic jobs board receives hundreds or thousands of applicants. And the MAJORITY of those are people who are actually unqualified according to the requirements of the listing. (A smaller but rapidly rising percent are AI-assisted scammers.)

And, you have to take into account the fact that MOST online job listings are posted because they couldn't find anyone to fill the role who wanted it within the company, or through word of mouth. In other words, most of them are bullshit jobs. Bad culture, low pay, boring work, or all three. Again, not all, but MOST.

Last year I was looking to move onto greener pastures and I tried to prove my hypothesis wrong by dusting off my LinkedIn profile, fluffing up my resume, and hitting the job listings. I applied _only_ to jobs that I knew I was going to be a good fit, skill-wise. The whole year I did not get a single response. The closest thing I got was a cold call from a consultant who sold some complicated mobile backend to the NBA, sat on it for months, then only decided to implement it a week before it was set to go live. I noped out of that one pretty hard.

I did land a job via LinkedIn, but not how you would expect: I sent a message to a former co-worker to see if he wanted to catch up. We had a phone call, he mentioned that his company was hiring, I applied, he referred, and I eventually got the job.

100% of the jobs I have had in my 2.5 decade career, I got through referral or reputation. If you are not including your personal network in your job search, you are very unlikely to find what you are looking for.

> I need to obtain a job that requires a clearance, and the job has to "sponsor" the application for the clearance, before I can get one. Well, this is a catch-22, since I can't obtain a job without a clearance, and I can't get a clearance without a job. Although I'm qualified for these jobs(sometimes overqualified), I can't have them, because of this paradoxical security clearance.

Most jobs that require a clearance only require you to be eligible for one. That is, you’re a US citizen and are truthful on your clearance application form. There are indeed positions that require you to have one going in, but those are few and far between. From my experience, it’s limited to highly specialized staff/principal/management openings where the company would rather hire through their networks than randos applying through an ad.

Honestly, I'd like to see the candidate's CV. This description seems off to me:

> I've got a lot of skills - video production, security, Linux, Mikrotiks, Ciscos, virtualization, cloud, domains, DNS, the list goes on and on.

Based on this gumbo of skills (why is there "video production?" And what does even "virtualization" and "cloud" mean in this context?), I would have 0 confidence in the candidate.

> My homelab is probably bigger than some businesses and it's taught me a lot. Even got an SD-WAN site to site VPN set up to my parent's house so they can watch movies off my home Plex server

This gives me a bit more confidence about the candidate, but setting up a VPN is not really a complex task. Is that all there is to the "big homelab?"

> With a fresh CCNA cert in hand, and a CompTIA Security+ to back it up, finding a network or security job should be no problem at all.

CCNA and CompTIA are junior-level certifications. Having a "Security+" cert means nothing if you have no experience in security to back it up.

I don't mean this negatively, but either OP is overestimating their abilities, or is vastly underselling them.

Writing a good CV is a skill... Learn it, or pay someone to do it for you.

I am aware that the font is a divisive choice, lol. I wanted it to look like my scribbles on the page, because that's exactly what it is. Most people I know who read my blog use RSS anyway, and reader mode is a thing that exists.

However, reading over some of these comments, maybe I'll switch it back to Quicksand.

Edit: Fine, I changed it to improve readability.

Typography aside, the frustration of this early career network engineer is palpable and understandable. The open call job situation has always been a mess, but automation and the internet growth has just made it messier.

It's worth remembering, though, many/most jobs don't come from this process. It's worth trawling jobs postings of course to see what's going on, but if that's all you are doing you'll probably have a hard time.

In tech circles, I see mostly two camps of process. One is big and/or established companies that have a bureaucratic evaluation process, the other being more "bespoke" hiring at e.g. young startups.

Navigating both processes is vastly easier if you have some sort of personal connection. It doesn't have to be a deep one, but it gets you out of the slush pile.

Any large company application with an attached internal recommendation will at least be read by someone. Any small company is more to reduce the crapshoot aspect of hiring by convincing themselves they know something more about this candidate because so-an-so's cousin's brother used to work with them.

My most effective advice to younger job seekers has been to get themselves out there in face to face settings (e.g. hardware/software meetups, conferences, etc.) and to directly contact (ideally through a colleague or common connection) companies they already know they'd like to work with... you have no idea what they are thinking internally but don't have posted on a job board.

Also, senior people in your life can often help you with contacts and recommendations, and often are more than happy to. Don't hesitate to ask if you have a good relationship.

For what it's worth, nearly all the jobs I've had in my career haven't been posted. The one that was, reached out to me with an internal recommendation. This only happens with some sort of networking, but that naturally comes with time. This post was by someone 5ish years in, if I recall correctly, and that's long enough to be effective relative to entry candidates.

I’m part of a community that helps connect applicants interested in working in the climate change field with companies in that same space.

Companies browse the list of resumes and invite candidates directly to apply.

After being asked directly by a couple of companies to apply for a position, I was auto rejected nearly immediately leading to awkward follow-ups. In each case there was profuse apologies and eventual interviews (and job offers), but I wonder how many good candidates are getting squashed by a black box AI.

I hadn’t considered the prompt injection trick, but it might be the best defense for a candidate with 10+ years in the field but without a CS degree (but still a MA in an unrelated field).

For years, I've been hoping some startup will finally "fix" hiring.

When I was in college, we had CyberCoders, which was a job search engine.

Then we got Monster, which was a job search engine.

Then we got Indeed, which is...a job search engine.

I do think a good job search engine could solve many of these issues:

1. You should only have to enter your info once, except for certain job- or application-specific items.

2. Inaccurate listings should be removed. If you miscategorize your non-remote position as remote, you should be removed/penalized, same as an Etsy seller would be if they listed polyester sheets as linen.

3. Email delivery would be a non-issue.

But what it's always comes down for me is stuff like his "security clearance required; you can't get security clearance without a job" (change it to "experience" and it applies to most new grads), and the fact that the biggest things are intangibles.

The best way to get a job is to know someone who's worked with you in the past and can say "yeah, I like working with this person". You can't automatically filter for attitude, or communication skills, or productivity. Do you know python? Cool. Are you going to show ownership of your projects, though? Are people going to find you easy to work with? Will you meet deadlines? Can you make good time estimates and properly negotiate deadlines? (Similarly, how can an applicant vet the company culture around these and other intangibles?)

I don't know how a startup would fix these problems, but I hope someone figures it out and builds it soon. We should be able to dramatically improve hiring, both for companies and applicants/employees.

TL;DR:

- The author noticed that he's been auto-rejected when applying for jobs requiring college degrees without having one, and when applying for jobs requiring security clearance without having one.

- The author tried putting an invisible AI string into his resume, noticed a potential (but undefined) difference in the rate of auto-rejections, and because of that, believes companies in general are using AI to make the majority of their hiring decision-making.

- The job market is weak right now.

Unlike a few other commenters, I personally didn't have an issue with the font. It made me do a double-take at first, but once I started reading, my eyes didn't stop (and I was able to understand it just fine).

I just started to fill out a job application from the HN "Who's Hiring" thread, and it required a Loom video of me describing why I'd be a good fit for that specific position. The fuck? Abandoned the application process at this step. I'll do an interview, but creating a video just to get rejected for each job? That's a bit much.

I'm a civil engineer and self taught developer. I've done software development at an internship, twice. I wasn't even hired to do so, I was in operations, I just found a need that I could fill with their system and taught myself SQL, VBA, stuff like that. I didn't end up going full time because I didn't want to move to the company HQ. Fast forward a little bit, I'm a couple years out of graduation. I've resigned myself to the fact if I want a software job my best bet is use my civil degree, get a civil job, and work my way up in the company, find a niche to target, fix it, and just do that all over again.

I really wish you all the best. As many have already said, pure sys admin is a thing of the past for most companies

My advice is, ask you social network. Most engineers I know have friends who are engineers, too.

A simple recommendation is often enough to get a interview where you can then show your competency

  It's an incredible security risk to have asked my address, work history, contact info, sometimes my SSN and demographics, and have me trust that you won't have that leaked.

I have immediately closed applications asking for a SSN. You know you are going to reject all but one of the candidates. Why are you hoarding this PII? Is it just an implicit way to reject immigrants? Also the ones that ask for sexual preference (or however it is worded to get you to say straight/gay/other). As a pedestrian straight white male that question makes me uncomfortable. What is the goal?

It sucks the tech market is ultra competitive.

Everyone and their grandma transitioned to tech.

Some raw thoughts:

* Its been about 3-weeks since the author was laid off. Personally, I would expect that being close to a job offer from cold intros in that time frame could also signal a broken job market.

* Quick rejections are a good thing.

* Resume screening tools are a necessity for HR. Candidates robo apply for positions that they do not qualify for (such as requiring clearance)

* There are jobs that will sponsor security clearances, but those tend to go recent grads. The expectation is that for more senior positions you already have a clearance.

* Startups and networking engineers: you really dont need networking specialists my guy. AWS and the other pickme IaaS platforms have made it trivial to get code in the hands of customers,that your company can operate for years without needing to invest in dedicated sysadmins.

* AI is losing candidates, however there enough candidates that it does not matter. The issue is that there are too many candidates, and just not enough time to screen them all. False negatives is not an issue when you get 100's of resumes.

I think that if a site asks you to fill a form along with attaching a résumé, then it's a scam, and they're just using you to train their AI.

I think I found OP's cv, if anyone is interested in seeing it https://read.cv/ncropp Also his WiLine employee card: https://www.signalhire.com/profiles/nicolas-cropp%27s-email/... (funny, last year<Aug> he was listed as tier3 tech, maybe he fudged a little, or the company was unaware of his skills "shadow IT talent"..lol. Please be nice guys, could be any of us out there in the cold. Here are my suggestions OP,

Seeing how you are in Oregon, choices may be smaller, but, it all depends what you wanna do. A)get a job which affords you free time and energy (yes, a boring desk job where you twiddle your thumbs)...use the free time and your free time to make your skills crowd ready!!. A couple of certs and reach out to the colleges that the NSA is certifying/approving for cyber-training to either get certification from them or full fledge degree (some college should be able to gvie you credit for work experience). B)If you want to stay on the ground(non-cloud), find and old school fortune 1000 company in an eare you want to live and target them with your resume, but tailor your resume to their needs (look at their website, query their MX/DNS/etc, look at their website code etc. In my humble opinion, a package like this will keep you marketable for a few more decades <skills package> Network/WEBSITE/MTA/pbx/hvac/timeclock/CCTV/BIOMETRIC-ACCESS-CONTROL/CYBER SECURITY/ASSET-INVENTORY control </skills package> These are skills/technologies that 99 percent of fortune 1000 companies NEED. And I bet you very few have all these skillsets in one person, and it is doable at the server/platform management level, not the menial manual level of inventory control and badge scanning level.

As for access to the humans in the company, do what we've seen in the movies, you know, where the aggressive intrepid protagonist waits for the ceo or manager at the elevator, or follows him to the restaurant. I realize this is 2024 and you might end up in Jail, but I'm talking about the cyber version of that. I just did a lil web snooping and I got your resume link, I'm sure you can do the same and get linkedin of the hiring person, or the ceo if you prefer. Anyways, the idea is that youresearch the company, find their deficiencies, or maybe you spot a new project in their latest Q report and you see something you can help them with, so your letter goes, "hey yo chief, Here's my bag of skills, also in your latest Q report you mention you guys are expanding in shipping, I can setup a fleet monitoring system for you"

Best of luck buddy, go after the unlisted job vacancies now buddy, or better yet, fabricated your own opening.

Cool font. Fun to see someone customize their website in a way that speaks of them!

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