Searching For a Job is Broken, part 1.

Drinking from a firehose while looking for a needle in a haystack.

So, I had some PTSD this morning.

I am trying to help one of our portfolio companies find some devs. I posted a message on Linkedin and on Twitter (expecting that maybe one of the many people I know might need some work or know someone who does.)

I was not expecting to wake up to see my LinkedIn inbox flooded with HUNDREDS of inmails and requests to connect.

Many of the requests were so off the mark that after 3 minutes of trying I gave up, and archived them all (and maybe missing some gold in there). Most were from a biz dev person representing an outsource dev shop. I think that perhaps I could have been more clear in my initial post — I was expecting a few of these.. not .. hundreds.

I am not a ‘warm intro’ hard liner. I am thinking that there is someone out there who genuinely needs a break to find the work they love.

What I experienced was more like walking into a restaurant, asking for a menu, and being handed a book like the one in the picture above.

Menu: Aardvark Burger. Aardvark Soup. Aardvark and Ziti….

This is not working.

Flashback to a stack of several hundred applications — it all came back. This sucks. It sucks for me. It sucks for them. Billions of people in the world and I am sure there is a match made in heaven, if not for the fact that I need to sift through a stack. Not a small stack.. less than 12 hours, HUNDREDS.

and I am sure there are people working on solutions, but honestly this whole process needs an overhaul as the friction here is insane. Those searching, those sorting, I feel your pain in this moment.

For those searching, don’t take not hearing back as rejection. I honestly had to archive most of the inbound requests. If I missed you, try again, with a thoughtful message. The process is broken, not you.