Annoyed with my career so far. So I made a fake linkedin. Here's what I learned
I'm angry. Really angry. #tech I started my swe career at GD thinking it was a good thing. "It's a fortune 100 company!" I told myself. No recruiters take me seriously. They refer to me as a "contractor" even though I'm a salaried employee. I've had multiple claim I was underqualified for positions despite having had enough experience, major impact within my team's, and working with relevant, modern tech stacks. I get no interviews, my application is ignored even with references. SO I made a fake linkedin with better companies and university but my same experience VERBATIM. Here's the result:
Here's what I learned: - Your experience doesn't matter: your company does - If you don't work in the Bay or Seattle they don't take you seriously (location matters on linkedin) - University Prestige is REAL stop pretending it isn't - Reputation > actual engineering skill. Don't waste time on anything that isn't high impact and accessible to non-technical audiences
Holy f dude! This just made my day!!
The location is an easy problem to fix. Just change it on your normal profile and you’ll show up for recruiters searching in those markets. I did this when I wanted to relocate to New York. School prestige does matter. Company matters some. For me, with great schools and two FAANGs, I don’t get the quality of inquiries I should. I’m also a female from an underrepresented group and my name makes that pretty obvious. My friends have similar experiences.
Lol so true. My inbox is blowing up ever since I made it Amazon. Now, I get to the onsite interviews in a breathtaking way. I guess you gotta pay your dues and get into a FAANG
Same. These companies leave under a rock while you are trying hard to get into to a FAANG+ I had a recruiter from Robinhood that emailed me every two days. She finally gave up and said that she’s following with me for the last time and came back again to see If I got her email from the last week
Send her my way lol
You got this far, what's stopping you to do the interviews, get the offer, and then say SIIIIKE
I COULD but the minute I tell them I didn't work at faang they'd probably disqualify me lol. If I'm really unlucky I can get blacklisted
I'm sorry dude, but you have balls. You should be the messiah for us. Just apply everywhere, ace all these interview, and then let these duckers reqruters handle the mess. I'm sure they will lern something along the way, and it'd be better overall. Also spread the news. The whole hiring crap is pretty much signaling theory in action. It's like bias against you. People must be aware about it as much as possible. There is no excuse for reqruters to be this way.
I have the reverse. I always got great 👍 offers relevant to my experience and now that I’ve joined MS I’m getting mismatch offers for things I don’t do and assumptions about the power I have. 😂 It’s a shame that tech looks down on defense companies.
I was working for FAANG and all I got was contract offers to work for, wait for it, the exact same company I was at. Even though my role said I was FT, all recruiters assumed I was a contractor. I have great companies listed on my resume, but many recruiters are biased.
Im confused. I used to work at a company very similar to GD and i got many inquiries from FAANG and similar tier companies this time last year. I think you are just trying at a bad time. Maybe you need to specialize more with your LinkedIn. Are you sure your profile isn’t shit?
The picture is literally a copy of my profile with different companies/schools on there. That's it. If my LinkedIn was so bad, changing the companies shouldn't make THAT much of a difference
Recruiters are like moths, they will fly towards the brightest light and think it’s the moon. Moths are retarded and will fly into the same lightbulb over and over again and keep getting burnt. Same thing with recruiters. They will message the flashiest profile with all of the keywords or whatever, they aren’t very bright if you get my drift. And of course the flashiest profiles on LinkedIn are of people who are usually very comfortable in their jobs and will never entertain a recruiter. Basically the point is you need to be the brightest bulb in the room. Use all of the keywords and craft your LinkedIn so that you are specializing in something, whether it be DevOps or AI/ML or even Django or some shit
Fwiw, based on info you’ve provided, they might be referring to the fact that GD as an entity is often labeled as a large contractor (def what they call you guys from the government side), and likely not the fact that you’re an FTE as opposed to a contingent worker. The former of which, certainly has a stigma amongst it within some communities.
Regardless it's often used in a patronizing fashion in conversation I've had with Big Tech recruiters. Not maliciously either, they genuinely believe gov contracting is bottom tier
Trust me I feel ya dude - came from that environment many years ago, no name state school, government adjacent company, etc
Lol recruiters are pathetic. As a previous commenter mentioned they just go to profiles with the flashiest words. Had to CLAW my way into AWS for an internship coming from a non target school + non tech internships and without referrals. And then there’s kids who got FAANG for their first internship coming from a target school lmao. In the summer of 2022 I then started getting call backs left n right. Now it’s back to like no interviews bc of market for new grads lol. Use it as motivation OP and keep this in mind. These clueless recruiters couldn’t spot talent if it hit them with a brick. Keep grinding.
Canada is tad bit harder than US to get call from.
Have you tried referring yourself to all those recruiters? Just be like, "I'm not in the market, but I know this amazing person..." then send them your linkedin.
Having impactful projects at bigger and “better” companies is more impressive and not the same as at smaller/not as good companies. Competition is more at such companies and usually harder to make as much impact
And I got CALLS. I picked up the phone and they actually cared about my projects. They were "impressed" by my experience and accomplishments. What a crock of shit I've been grinding leetcode and revising my resume and upskilling for months but now with layoffs it seems like I'm doomed to this tier on the ladder that I can never get over. I am PISSED
This could be because that profile showed up as new ?
This profile is over a month old now so I'm not sure that's it. I definitely had to get some connections before the messages started coming