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bluedino 1 hours ago [-]
You'd mail your resume in (it was a 'hack' back then to hand-deliver it), then get a call in a couple days or weeks. Then someone who was home during the day (if you already had a job) would answer the phone and take the message from the HR person (or they'd leave one on your answering machine), you'd then have an appointment to go in or return a call to set one up...
andyjohnson0 1 hours ago [-]
You still had to do a coding test -- but it was pointing to the bug in the C++ linked-list implementation on a single sheet of line printer paper.
Because nobody was going to carry a Sun workstation down to the meeting room just for your interview.
freedomben 24 minutes ago [-]
I remember a Java job interview like that. "Tell us what you would do to improve this code" with a couple pages of code printed out :-D
yonran 1 hours ago [-]
The newspaper does still have job listings e.g. for Amazon, NVIDIA, DoorDash, Tesla, Chewy. I haven’t been having much luck applying to them though...
Den_VR 55 minutes ago [-]
Ah yes, the h1b box checker ads.
loloquwowndueo 52 minutes ago [-]
Chewy! Yay
pudgywalsh 2 hours ago [-]
How tech company HR departments game the system for PERM jobs: A newspaper classifieds story
clintmcmahon 53 minutes ago [-]
Or attending a local job fair with a stack of printed resumes.
subpixel 2 hours ago [-]
Not only jobs, but NYC apartments - although in the Voice not the Times.
georgemcbay 2 hours ago [-]
As someone who lived in NYC for a while circa 1999 the process at the time as I recall it was using a newspaper classified ad to find a broker to find an apartment.
The vast majority of actual apartment listings were all gatekept within the broker system making hiring a broker (with an insane fee) effectively mandatory for actually finding a place to live in a reasonable timeframe.
geoduck14 2 hours ago [-]
What about the obituary?
theturtle 2 hours ago [-]
[dead]
busterarm 2 hours ago [-]
Brokers still gatekeep the best inventory in NYC for the most part.
Every craigslist apartment I ever found was sketchy as hell.
pavel_lishin 2 hours ago [-]
Every Craigslist apartment listing I've ever seen turned out to be through a broker as well.
busterarm 7 minutes ago [-]
They have/had broker/no-broker categories and I never had the budget for broker.
The broker ones are kinda big scammers though, from what I remember.
ogou 1 hours ago [-]
We were told the quality of paper mattered and that the envelope should have the same high-end watermark that the resume sheet had. Inkjet printed resumes were discouraged because the quality back then was low and the resolution made anti-aliasing on the type come out weird. Laser printed only, please.
loloquwowndueo 49 minutes ago [-]
Laser printers were expensive AF for poor guys just out of college looking for a job.
My BJ200 ca. 1993 had awesome print quality, comparable to a Laserjet II, if you used slightly glossy paper (so the ink wouldn’t bleed) and you waited a bit for the ink to dry on each sheet.
freedomben 23 minutes ago [-]
Indeed, I remember being told to go to kinkos and have it printed there since I didn't have a laser printer
II2II 2 hours ago [-]
Another tidbit, based upon finding out which company the phone number belonged to: you could go to the library and access business directories. Think the yellow pages, only they were geared towards businesses rather than towards consumers. Print versions were broken down by industry, but electronic ones (on CD-ROM) were searchable. It was also a tool for looking for unadvertised jobs, since those directories seemed to be geared towards making cold calls (albeit, for people doing sales).
kmoser 55 minutes ago [-]
I worked on a project in 1990/1991 (pre-WWW) that involved making the phone book electronically accessible. For development my client purchased CD-ROMs containing the White Pages from the entire NYC tri-state area (NY, NJ, and CT), making it trivial for me to search by name and/or number. Once the web had been around for a few years, reverse-lookup became commonplace.
rzzzt 2 hours ago [-]
Looking straight into the eyes, strong handshake, exuding confidence?
ricardonunez 2 hours ago [-]
This but after going inside the building without authorization and saying you will not leave without a job.
II2II 1 hours ago [-]
I encountered one corporation where you walked up to security, told them you were there to look for work, and they directed you to an office that contained posting of currently available positions. As far as I know, they didn't advertise job openings anywhere else. If you weren't willing to drop by their offices, they weren't interested in considering you.
Of course, talking to anyone about a job within the building was an entirely different matter.
JoshTriplett 57 minutes ago [-]
> This but after going inside the building without authorization
That would make you eminently qualified for a position in AI these days.
jimt1234 20 minutes ago [-]
> ... strong handshake ...
Years ago I had an important job interview. Unfortunately, 2 days prior I broke a bone in my right hand during a bicycle wreck. I didn't wanna show up to the interview with a cast on my hand/arm ("this guy is reckless."), so I cut it off. I interviewed with about 10 dudes that day, and they all wanted to give me a "strong handshake". It hurt like hell, but I had to maintain composure. I got the job. And I've been here for almost 25 years. :)
hdgvhicv 8 minutes ago [-]
You cut off your hand?!
tayo42 2 hours ago [-]
Idk if it's true but it seems like life was simpler before the Internet took off.
Now that guy is probably competing with tons of people more talented willing to work for less
Aurornis 1 hours ago [-]
> Now that guy is probably competing with tons of people more talented willing to work for less
This strikes at the core of it. Life was simpler for those in the know about how the world worked. If you were lucky enough to grow up with the right parents, friends, family members, and class mates to help guide you through how the world worked it was easy. You could count on less competition by knowing where to look, how to present yourself, and what to say. Someone very talented but stuck in a situation where they didn't know how to find these jobs and apply properly was hard. You would lose career advancement at every step of the way relative to peers who had a social network that fed them this information.
If you're one of the people with more talent and hungry for work, life actually got simpler for you in modern times. The advantages of being well-connected and groomed by your parents for success are still there, but they're diminished when everyone can find advice on the internet.
I grew up on the cusp of this change. It's hard to communicate just how hard it was to navigate even simple things like interview prep or even dressing correctly for interviews if you weren't surrounded by people who had up to date info.
EDIT: To be clear, I was raised with a lot of advantages and had a lot of benefits. It was still striking how much of the early job search I had to fumble my way through in ways that would have been so easy to address with the unlimited online resources available today, which many of my peers had handled by their classmates or their parents' friend who had some industry familiarity. A specific example is that I didn't know that there were specific books for learning how to do programming job interviews. At first I just thought you had to learn how to be really good at programming, so I challenged myself to do a lot of tasks like I saw in the first interview I did. These days, it's unthinkable that someone would get all the way through college and into interview loops without knowing what a tech interview would be like and having the opportunity to practice.
II2II 1 hours ago [-]
> You could count on less competition by knowing where to look, how to present yourself, and what to say. Someone very talented but stuck in a situation where they didn't know how to find these jobs and apply properly was hard.
I'm not sure that is any less true today. If you were looking for a job, people used to go to a job centre or look at the classifieds. Since everyone did it, those were also the jobs with the most competition. Swap job centre and classifieds for online job boards, and you have the situation today. Yes, you have more people applying for the same jobs. On the other hand, that is balanced out by people applying for more jobs. It's hard to claim that applying for more jobs involves more work, though there is certainly a negative psychological impact.
On the other hand, knowing where to look (then or now) cuts out a lot of the competition. Having a social network feeding you that information cuts out even more competition.
ghaff 1 hours ago [-]
It's less true today but the networking is also swizzled together with a huge pile of other resumes. The genuine high quality network opportunities still tend to rise to the top--how I got a gew jobs over the past 20+ years--but the noise is definitely greater, especially if you don't have that network.
Probably cuts out as much entry-level hires as AI does.
Aurornis 53 minutes ago [-]
> Yes, you have more people applying for the same jobs
This implies that more people know where to find the job listings and they've become more accessible and available.
II2II 27 minutes ago [-]
When you are comparing online job boards to employment centres and classifieds, they are more accessible and available. Employment centres always involved making a dedicated trip. Newspapers cost money and may involve a dedicated trip to fetch one. Not to mention that plenty of businesses simply didn't advertise jobs in print, particularly entry level jobs. Part of that may have been expectations: people would actually walk into businesses to drop off applications or see if openings are available. Again, it took a lot more effort to find those jobs.
Fun tidbit, I remember visiting Edmonton (Alberta, Canada) in the early 2010's. Boom times for them. It was a bit like walking into a different era with respect to job seeking since many business (again, entry level jobs) were advertising with help wanted signs in their windows.
kevin_thibedeau 8 minutes ago [-]
I once went through a recruiter to secure an interview for an engineering position. He insisted that I "suit up" so I did despite knowing it was out of touch with reality. I showed up to a non air conditioned building where the head of engineering was wearing ragged cutoff shorts. Last time I ever bothered with a recruiter.
decimalenough 43 minutes ago [-]
Back in the day, the 4x5 (medium format film) experience requirement would have filtered out a lot of candidates. It was arty, weird and required expensive gear (Hasselblad or equivalent) and even more expensive film (around $1/exposure).
These days everybody can shoot unlimited equally high-res imagery for free with the phone in their pocket.
asdff 3 minutes ago [-]
Your phone in your pocket is not sniffing medium format film resolution. It also lacks the latitude of really any negative film stock. Color wise slide film is still supreme to this day.
spicyusername 2 hours ago [-]
Simplicity and convenience are often inversely correlated.
Life was for sure simpler in times gone by, but that doesn't necessarily mean it was better. Definitely different.
I'm sure future posters will look back on these years with fondness for this or that as well.
whaleofatw2022 2 hours ago [-]
Used to flip both ways...
I.e. for a time, it became easier for talented people to find a better role.
In the last 5-10 years though, between the race to the bottom and AI/Bot spam (even ignoring the overall decrease in job availability) things frankly suck.
aksss 2 hours ago [-]
Very self-satisfied, and deservedly so. Like when you use that one piece of scrap wood in the garage you've been saving for this one occasion, or something from that drawer of metric-threaded bolts that just saves the project you're working on. It was all worth it, see? This is why we do it. No different with the author's digital preservation and online tool use. Pleasant read.
mikestew 2 hours ago [-]
In case the headline makes no sense, the original title before being mangled by the HN headline censor:
"How We Used to Get Jobs".
tomhow 2 hours ago [-]
Fixed, thanks!
kgwgk 2 hours ago [-]
Thanks. What a pity, the mutilated title sounded promising.
2 hours ago [-]
krackers 1 hours ago [-]
>I’ve just gone through a butt load of resumes
Perhaps she said "bulk load of resumes" and you misheard it as the funnier version?
jagged-chisel 1 hours ago [-]
Boat load?
JoshTriplett 55 minutes ago [-]
Nope, this is a common expression.
If someone's feeling especially playful, they might ask if it's a metric or imperial buttload. An imperial buttload would be loosely based on the idealized/claimed size of some prominent arse in the past, while a metric buttload implies the existence of a platinum-iridium reference derriere.
Because nobody was going to carry a Sun workstation down to the meeting room just for your interview.
The vast majority of actual apartment listings were all gatekept within the broker system making hiring a broker (with an insane fee) effectively mandatory for actually finding a place to live in a reasonable timeframe.
Every craigslist apartment I ever found was sketchy as hell.
The broker ones are kinda big scammers though, from what I remember.
My BJ200 ca. 1993 had awesome print quality, comparable to a Laserjet II, if you used slightly glossy paper (so the ink wouldn’t bleed) and you waited a bit for the ink to dry on each sheet.
Of course, talking to anyone about a job within the building was an entirely different matter.
That would make you eminently qualified for a position in AI these days.
Years ago I had an important job interview. Unfortunately, 2 days prior I broke a bone in my right hand during a bicycle wreck. I didn't wanna show up to the interview with a cast on my hand/arm ("this guy is reckless."), so I cut it off. I interviewed with about 10 dudes that day, and they all wanted to give me a "strong handshake". It hurt like hell, but I had to maintain composure. I got the job. And I've been here for almost 25 years. :)
Now that guy is probably competing with tons of people more talented willing to work for less
This strikes at the core of it. Life was simpler for those in the know about how the world worked. If you were lucky enough to grow up with the right parents, friends, family members, and class mates to help guide you through how the world worked it was easy. You could count on less competition by knowing where to look, how to present yourself, and what to say. Someone very talented but stuck in a situation where they didn't know how to find these jobs and apply properly was hard. You would lose career advancement at every step of the way relative to peers who had a social network that fed them this information.
If you're one of the people with more talent and hungry for work, life actually got simpler for you in modern times. The advantages of being well-connected and groomed by your parents for success are still there, but they're diminished when everyone can find advice on the internet.
I grew up on the cusp of this change. It's hard to communicate just how hard it was to navigate even simple things like interview prep or even dressing correctly for interviews if you weren't surrounded by people who had up to date info.
EDIT: To be clear, I was raised with a lot of advantages and had a lot of benefits. It was still striking how much of the early job search I had to fumble my way through in ways that would have been so easy to address with the unlimited online resources available today, which many of my peers had handled by their classmates or their parents' friend who had some industry familiarity. A specific example is that I didn't know that there were specific books for learning how to do programming job interviews. At first I just thought you had to learn how to be really good at programming, so I challenged myself to do a lot of tasks like I saw in the first interview I did. These days, it's unthinkable that someone would get all the way through college and into interview loops without knowing what a tech interview would be like and having the opportunity to practice.
I'm not sure that is any less true today. If you were looking for a job, people used to go to a job centre or look at the classifieds. Since everyone did it, those were also the jobs with the most competition. Swap job centre and classifieds for online job boards, and you have the situation today. Yes, you have more people applying for the same jobs. On the other hand, that is balanced out by people applying for more jobs. It's hard to claim that applying for more jobs involves more work, though there is certainly a negative psychological impact.
On the other hand, knowing where to look (then or now) cuts out a lot of the competition. Having a social network feeding you that information cuts out even more competition.
Probably cuts out as much entry-level hires as AI does.
This implies that more people know where to find the job listings and they've become more accessible and available.
Fun tidbit, I remember visiting Edmonton (Alberta, Canada) in the early 2010's. Boom times for them. It was a bit like walking into a different era with respect to job seeking since many business (again, entry level jobs) were advertising with help wanted signs in their windows.
These days everybody can shoot unlimited equally high-res imagery for free with the phone in their pocket.
Life was for sure simpler in times gone by, but that doesn't necessarily mean it was better. Definitely different.
I'm sure future posters will look back on these years with fondness for this or that as well.
I.e. for a time, it became easier for talented people to find a better role.
In the last 5-10 years though, between the race to the bottom and AI/Bot spam (even ignoring the overall decrease in job availability) things frankly suck.
"How We Used to Get Jobs".
Perhaps she said "bulk load of resumes" and you misheard it as the funnier version?
If someone's feeling especially playful, they might ask if it's a metric or imperial buttload. An imperial buttload would be loosely based on the idealized/claimed size of some prominent arse in the past, while a metric buttload implies the existence of a platinum-iridium reference derriere.