How do you help someone find a job?
I am helping someone look for a job related to coding (in Canada). Software development, web development, app development, etc. You get the idea. I have no connections in tech to help them network. And I don't understand what the difference is between an intermediate/intro position, what qualifications to help them highlight on their resume, or what is preventing them from finding a job. I know they've applied to hundreds of posts on LinkedIn and Indeed, etc. but they have only received a single interview (but no job).
I am at a loss - how do I help this person? How do you help someone find a job in a field you don't understand or have any network to help them meet the right person? Tech specific advice would be a godsend, but really any job-search related tricks, tips, etc. that I can pass on would be greatly appreciated.
This is going to sound really glib, but... If this is the case, you're just the wrong person for the job.
Is there someone else you can introduce them to that's a little closer, even if they aren't exactly the right person?
I think you're entirely correct, which has been the biggest frustration. I want to help but I have no idea how or where to start and wanting to help is just...not good enough I think.
Unfortunately, I don't have anyone to introduce them to. I work in a completely unrelated field and don't interact with anyone who is in a job related to coding. As silly as it sounds, this is one of the things I've been beating myself up over the most. I feel like if I knew the right person then all this stress could be avoided.
Wanting to help is a good start, but you should sit down and think if there might be somebody just slightly closer to the industry you could point them towards.
If they've applied to that many jobs and only heard back from one, my assumption is either: they're applying to jobs that they don't have the relevant experience/education for, or their application materials aren't up to par.
There are two things you could do (and maybe more, but I don't know your relationship to this person. Are their parent? Friend? Significant other?): Review their application materials and look for the obvious -- typos, formatting issues, tonal issues (does the resume look professional?) Anything that might be working against them in their initial introduction to the hiring committee.
The second thing is to point them to a career resource in their community. Does your city have something like a Workforce Development Center? To be direct, without any connections or understanding of the industry the person is trying to get a job in, you're a little out of your depth. They need help from someone who not just knows their end goals but how to get there. And I know that was your point in making this post, but I think it would be better to cut out the middle man here. Get your person in touch with someone whose whole job it is to help career seekers develop the skills and connections they need to find a job in their field. There are workshops they could attend, hiring fairs, resume writing resources, etc.
Another option is to look at local community colleges/universities. Though a lot of times their resources are specific to their college community, sometimes they'll extend opportunities to the community at large. I know the writing center I used to work at in grad school would take appointments from non-students who lived in the area. We would help them revise their resumes and cover letters and such,
I feel this from the bottom of my soul haha. I think your point about their application materials not being up to par might be the biggest contributing factor. From what I've read there seems to be a big emphasis on coding projects or previous work being on Github and/or certifications, both of which their resume is lacking. What sort of projects do people put on their Github if they are in between jobs?
They live near Toronto but I am helping from abroad (I live in the USA) so I am not sure if there is a program like that. When you say someone whose job it is to help career seekers - what type of person is that? I know they've submitted their resume to recruiters like Randstad but that seems like a service that just sends job posts similar to Indeed?
I will try to see if there are workshops or events that they might be able to attend as well. I didn't consider those would be popular for software devs.
Thank you so much for the honest feedback and advice. I just want to help but it's been very difficult and I've been feeling very self-critical since I'm struggling to do so.
Here are my suggestions for how you can help since you don't understand the roles or have contacts:
Function as an organizational buddy. Help them keep track of when / where they applied for jobs and when to follow up on those applications.
Once your buddy has told you of a place they are applying to help look for peer companies (for example in the Toronto area a lot of tech workers are in Finance, so if they apply for a job at TD Bank go and look at the other big banks [CIBC, Scotia, etc]) and see if there are job listings there for them.
Spend some time looking over the job posting and seeing how well their resume pings the keywords. Many people in HR who do first pass screenings also are not experts in the field the person is being hired to but they are able to see if the requirements that the hiring manager put on the posting are coming through in some manner on the resume.
Practice interview - again take the job posting and verbally get your buddy to explain how they can help the company in each of the areas of responsibilities (the answers don't really matter it's the practice that counts here with you). Then take a couple of them that you don't understand at all and have them explain it to you in simple terms - see if you understand it or not at the end. Then turn that same question over to say ChatGPT and see how it answers it and compare them, who gave you a better understanding?
Finally just be understanding and a sounding board - that alone can be helpful if the person is stressed - you don't need to SOLVE this problem for them, but you can help by being an ear to let off steam on the stress of it.
I work as a software development, and do interviews since they make all ICs do it. If your friend isn't getting past resume screening, then indeed it is their resume. Unfortunately, there's a lot of bad traditional advice for resumes that just don't work in the tech industry. It's a bit hard to name all of them, but I can try to answer any specific questions.
Past that, they need to get ready to start leetcoding, if they haven't already. Leetcode is the way, unfortunately, to practice for technical interviews.
I saw a specific piece of advice that said to take the summaries of previous jobs from your resume and then ask chatgpt to rewrite them using the job duties from the job posting. Is that sound advice? I would have no way of verifying that the description remains accurate to what they actually did.
Also, separately, I read that you could just copy and paste the job duties in white font to "trick" the resume filters and not have to rewrite your job summaries each time. Is it really that easy or is a person going to see through that?
What does a good tech resume focus on? They have their frameworks, libraries, and languages listed separately of their previous job summaries. At a glance, to me, it seems similar to other tech resumes I've seen but I'm truly not sure.
I'm a software engineer, I just started a new job two weeks ago. It's the 5th company I've been with in my career.
Here's my advice for how to at least get some interviews in the current market:
I highly recommend looking for non-tech companies and applying for jobs through their website. These companies tend to be less sought after, but more stable and still pay really well.
Examples:
Retail: Walmart, Lowes, Costco, Home Depot
Food Service: Starbucks, McDonald's
High Quality Contract firms: Accenture
Heavy machinery: Caterpillar, John Deere, Komatsu
Insurance: Northwestern Mutual, State Farm, Allstate, Geico
The look and feel of the resume matters a lot. I was struggling to get responses to applications until I redid my resume in ~July. I used http://resumatic.rezi.ai/, it was cheap and effective and it will even generate a pretty decent cover letter. This service gave me a resume that imo was the same quality as one my friend paid ~$300 to have done by a professional.
If the person is very junior it helps to have something to showcase. i.e. open source contributions, a website, app on the app store, etc
There have been a lot of layoffs in tech recently, so they are also competing with a ton of people at the moment. Not getting responses could be a combination of factors.
So a lot of tech hiring is quite nepotistic. As you don't have a network you can introduce said person to I would encourage you to tell the person in question to try and meet some people. Usually there are lots of tech communities based around either particular technologies (such as specific software packages) or programming languages. These are worth going to to meet people.
Otherwise a lot of cold call hires happen via GitHub (companies often message prolific contributors to open source projects seeking to hire them).
You can hire people who work in recruiting, as consultants. You can reach to recruiting people on linkedin. I'm not sure how exactly to tell whether they are available for this, but know that many do it on the side. They can help a person make a great resume and whatnot. For money though.
I am not in tech but I have a close contact who is very happy managing database technology for a university.
This person should polish their resume and mention projects that demonstrate technical skills but also think outside the box re what organizations to apply to.