The MM Network

[JustinG]

Taylor only qualifies for the diesel gate cars cause of his busted pile history.

[Senor_Taylor]

Taylor only qualifies for the diesel gate cars cause of his busted pile history.

I'd rock the shit out of a TDI golf.

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[D_Eclipse9916]

Taylor only qualifies for the diesel gate cars cause of his busted pile history.

It totally includes insurance though at that price.  Still, a $60k MSRP RS3 (if you qualified) would be $600 a month.  While it is a "discount"; you are still paying good money if you wouldn't otherwise have a car payment.  $7,200 a year - $600 in insurance -$1800 in PP taxes = $4800 a year.  More than I spend on vehicles a year but still not bad.  If I worked for them I would probably take them upon it for my wife's vehicle.

For those that normally lease a vehicle, sounds awesome!

[Apoc]

Most recruiters are working dozens of jobs with hundreds of applicants each. It's unreasonable to expect they provide white glove service for every applicant and that includes personally rejecting each. It's a pure numbers game unless you're in a highly specialized role and/or your skills are in short supply.

How are each of your LinkedIn profiles? Say what you will about it, but it's the best tool to get passively recruited. It's also the first place recruiters look to learn more about you. Granted I have more experience than recent grads, but I haven't applied to a job in 10 years because of it.

[Jake]

How are each of your LinkedIn profiles? Say what you will about it, but it's the best tool to get passively recruited. It's also the first place recruiters look to learn more about you. Granted I have more experience than recent grads, but I haven't applied to a job in 10 years because of it.

That's how Slalom found me. There was no job posting and I never applied for anything. The whole thing happened over coffee. It was wonderful.

[Senor_Taylor]

pls critique https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylor-johnson-6405b398/

[Jake]

pls critique https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylor-johnson-6405b398/

I'd change your cover photo to something either more generic, or less busy looking.

First sentence or two should be something more about where you are now and where you are looking to go, something like "Currently an Application Support Engineer in Tyson's Corner, looking to transition into a Product Management role." This line about "I love problem solving and working with my hands. I love to lead and organize people and and my goal every day is to make other people's lives a little easier." is good and can go right after. Put the car stuff in a paragraph below that and shorten it a bit. I don't think you need your resume as an attached file given your LI profile is basically just that.

List MM in your "experience" section and change title of "Worker" for NASA to something more specific.  You are one of a relatively small group of staff that is tasked with ensuring the safety and success of a 300-person event at a racetrack once per month. Remember that you can impress non-car people with that kind of part-time/hobby work experience. Drop that from your LI and resume once you have more career experience.

In general, look at your keywords that are interspersed throughout your profile. Recruiters will search on things like "Agile" or "SQL" or whatever and you need to have anything relevant in there.

FWIW this is my profile. I recently added GLASS and Out Motorsports to it as both are fairly significant as my career develops: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakethiewes/

[Sijray21]

i agree with what Jake mentioned about the background photo; i find it distracting (albeit neat). I also agree with converting the track experience with non-track lingo to appeal to more IT oriented people. i like the use of numbers and quantifiable results.

when i listed 'Madison Motorsports" as a hobby when i first started looking for jobs (first 3-4 years after graduating), just those two words at the bottom of my resume, it sparked a conversation with the interviewer with my first job who happened to race his 911s at PCA events. We chatted for an hour just on car/track stuff and said the interview was a formality and that he looked forward to meeting me in-person.

Now that i'm in the position of interviewing people small tidbits of information like a hobby actually give me a segue into discussing something with the person that they're passionate about (outside of work, if they're even passionate about work) to get an idea of how this person communicates. We've had issues with hires not communicating effectively and it's actually something i pay close attention to without being too obvious as to what i'm doing since that usually changes the behavior of the interviewee to appeal to me instead of just being themselves. As you gain more experience i'd drop the hobbies thing on the resume as an interviewer will ask about that if they're trying to gauge your personality anyway.

I'd also avoid placing things on your resume that you DON'T want to do (not sure if you did this, since that's subjective). You can talk about the experiences, however you'll get a lot of hits from recruiters looking for certain keywords that are placed on your resume when it's actually something you don't want to do. (ie: placing mobile/android/ios development when that's not what you want to do - instead put something like application development for non-pc platforms).

[Deceus]

Yeah LinkedIn has been a steady source of leads, just not very good ones. Had a quick call with a guy from SC about a perfect full remote opportunity in Greenville, they just weren't paying well (about a $20k paycut). Get a message from some internal recruiter from Amazon or Microsoft just about every week but there's no way I'd make it through either of their interview processes. I haven't studied the ins and outs of data structures in years but will be working on that starting Monday. I think that might be my only "in" outside of my portfolio page I'm working on

I'd totally jump head-first into just about any meat-grinder at the moment provided they paid decent and provided some form of relevant web experience.

[Apoc]

Amazon cannot find enough qualified people. You might be surprised at how far you get.

[rherold9]

I agree with the above about LinkedIn, I have been actively recruited on LinkedIn, 100+ messages in the past year (2018)... I started to stop responding to anything and barely check anymore because it got very overwhelming. And let's just say my profile isn't the greatest or filled out to current date of experience lol

[V1GiLaNtE]

I agree with the above about LinkedIn, I have been actively recruited on LinkedIn, 100+ messages in the past year (2018)... I started to stop responding to anything and barely check anymore because it got very overwhelming. And let's just say my profile isn't the greatest or filled out to current date of experience lol

Does it say "Software", "Engineer", or "Developer"? That's really all you need...

[Deceus]

Amazon cannot find enough qualified people. You might be surprised at how far you get.

Yeah it's on my radar for sure. I really wouldn't mind working out of their Herndon office and they have like 70+ openings at the moment I believe. Going to give the Charlottesville and remote job search a month but that's the first place I'm going to stop in May for sure with the way that Capital One call went plus the feedback here.

[rherold9]

I agree with the above about LinkedIn, I have been actively recruited on LinkedIn, 100+ messages in the past year (2018)... I started to stop responding to anything and barely check anymore because it got very overwhelming. And let's just say my profile isn't the greatest or filled out to current date of experience lol

Does it say "Software", "Engineer", or "Developer"? That's really all you need...

Nah, why would I put what I do on my LinkedIn?

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[D_Eclipse9916]

Amazon cannot find enough qualified people. You might be surprised at how far you get.

You don't work there anymore correct?  As soon as my parental leave is up (and requisite 30 days working after); I would like to apply to their open finance remote positions.

[Apoc]

Amazon cannot find enough qualified people. You might be surprised at how far you get.

You don't work there anymore correct?  As soon as my parental leave is up (and requisite 30 days working after); I would like to apply to their open finance remote positions.

I don't, but I know people who'd appreciate a referral bonus. 

Amazon is a weird place. Hiring managers say they can't hire fast enough and the response rate I got when emailing referrals to them directly from an internal address was only about 50%. It's also not uncommon for hiring managers to spend evenings on the couch searching for candidates on LinkedIn.

[Steve85]

Tying together Deceus experience with the recruiter re: Java versions, and Apoc's comment on not able to find qualified personnel.

I don't write reqs or hire people so I'm curious, how much of this rests with the technical leads who create the requisitions in the first place?

I mean, if you are working on Java 8 and you know a Java 6 or 7 person could be up and running very quickly on 8, it should be clear in the req (and to the recruiter) that Java 6+ should be considered qualified to at least pass through the initial conversation. (not saying that's what happen here, but it's a good example) It seems to be a fairly common story where the req is so specific, the only qualified candidate is the one who just left, and the spot remains open for months on end. Especially in the commercial world where you're not tied to a contract with the govt that lays out minimum quals.

[Senor_Taylor]

Btw, both Dueces and Apoc are Chris.

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[D_Eclipse9916]

Amazon cannot find enough qualified people. You might be surprised at how far you get.

You don't work there anymore correct?  As soon as my parental leave is up (and requisite 30 days working after); I would like to apply to their open finance remote positions.

I don't, but I know people who'd appreciate a referral bonus. 

Amazon is a weird place. Hiring managers say they can't hire fast enough and the response rate I got when emailing referrals to them directly from an internal address was only about 50%. It's also not uncommon for hiring managers to spend evenings on the couch searching for candidates on LinkedIn.

I will reach out to you when the time comes.  I am not available till December/January timeframe.  How long is their hiring process typically?

[G.Irish]

Tying together Deceus experience with the recruiter re: Java versions, and Apoc's comment on not able to find qualified personnel.

I don't write reqs or hire people so I'm curious, how much of this rests with the technical leads who create the requisitions in the first place?

I mean, if you are working on Java 8 and you know a Java 6 or 7 person could be up and running very quickly on 8, it should be clear in the req (and to the recruiter) that Java 6+ should be considered qualified to at least pass through the initial conversation. (not saying that's what happen here, but it's a good example) It seems to be a fairly common story where the req is so specific, the only qualified candidate is the one who just left, and the spot remains open for months on end. Especially in the commercial world where you're not tied to a contract with the govt that lays out minimum quals.

It's a couple of things.  A technical lead is usually not involved with screening resumes, looking at LinkedIn, calling/emailing people, and fielding applications.  It's up to the recruiter to sort through that whole mess, and for them the quickest way to pare down that very large haystack is to use keywords and some rough filtering to make your list of candidates manageable.  So if someone has Java 8 but not Java 10 experience or has a combination of .NET and Oracle instead of .NET and SQL Server they might get filtered out.

The other problem is that job req's will get created based on the stack in use at the project, rather than the skillset needed.  So the req gets generated with a grab bag of technologies, which then gets used to filter.  Reqs that look more for skillsets rather than particular technologies would be better, but the problem it creates for a recruiter is that it casts a wider net, which is not necessarily better for them.

Then you get down to perhaps the worst problem, which is that interviewing in IT is largely broken.  Many if not most companies have a hard time evaluating people in a way that is a good balance of time invested, not too many false positives, and not too many false negatives.  So you get companies that create arduous interviewing processes that a lot of talented people won't even bother with (because really good people switch jobs through referrals).  Or you get companies with interviewing processes that are loosy goosey and allow too many incompetent people through, or are really inconsistent and arbitrary as to who gets a thumbs up and who gets a thumbs down.  Or you get interviews that select for the wrong things.

It's a hard thing to get right, but it is critical for a company's success.