Ask HN: What job search strategies work for you?

My current version of "it's not who you know, it's ..." ends with "it's who wants to work with you again." Which is another way of saying that whether you're moving up, down or sideways on a job, doing good work and treating people professionally goes a hell of a long way to increasing your luck surface later on.

I love to see how this works in practice. Most jobs seem to be gated by various interviews and maybe panels. At lower levels it doesnt seem knowing someone is an advantage beyond avoiding the circular file. Smashing the interview seems key. I have seen at higher levels (higher EM levels) yeah people move as a tribe.

Anecdote from me: I jumped from leading an engineering team for an online virtual events company to working as a solutions engineer for a WebRTC vendor.

They asked for a reference from my previous CEO.

I had left on good terms (gave 4 weeks' notice) and was incredibly professional while working with the previous CEO, so I got a glowing reference. If I had been an ass, it'd be unlikely I'd have gotten such a great reference and got this job. ~6 months later, we even scored my previous CEO as a customer.

The tech world is SMALL. Especially if you niche down career-wise, it's possible to find yourself in a situation where only a couple hundred people worldwide have the same expertise as you. At that level, people would instead work with people they know or have strong references from people they know.

Fun story: I quit my previous job due to health reasons (as far as everyone there knew). I later hear from a friend who works there that during the retro the CEO just said "He couldn't handle the small amount of work that was on his plate." I had never had a one on one with this guy since I started working. He didn't exit interview me. Just a piece of shit truly.

He must have been terrified that people would follow. That’s one of the things about the workplace - the second you’re out the door you don’t matter. He even had the temerity to show everyone around you how they’d be treated if they left. Culture of authority and fear. It’ll come to every company eventually (and spreads like wildfire whenever people hire from Amazon)

Two people I know, one friend and one family member, landed jobs this year in a tough market due to the reputation they had built for themselves.

The friend is a programmer. He used to work in CGI, gained a reputation in animated film, and decided to leave it. People he had known for years convinced him to apply for a role in gaming. He wasn't a typical candidate, but the insiders he knew vouched for his skills and volunteered to onboard him, so he effectively switched industries.

The family member is a nurse. She holds an NP with a midwifery specialization. She was based in a large Western city and couldn't land a job for many months after she got her license. Every clinic wanted someone with 1-2 years one the job experienced.

When she finally applied for a role in the small mountain town where she had done her clinical training, the people she had interned for put their reputations on the line with the folks hiring at the clinic. The job offer documents were ready before she walked out of her interview.

These people are both conscientious and hard workers, but they were each making a leap of sorts. One to a new sector that also needed his skills, and another starting her career and in need of a couple years training post diploma. In both cases, people who had the ear of the hiring manager staked their repuations so that they would be hired.