A Review of Hired
After gaining back my technical skills and feeling confident in interviewing again I decided to become useful and jump into the endless sea of available technical jobs. Of course I applied to the typical big engineering companies and some other smaller ones but sometimes you just need to know what else is out there. I think Hired fills this void perfectly.
preface: It seems like this is the second time I’ve plugged Hired, I ensure you reader that I am not in their books.
Hired is just like a typical job hunting site, except this time the roles are reversed; the recruiters hunt while you respond. Pretty crazy concept right? Instead of having you search for positions through Monster, Dice, or other job listing sites, you publicly advertise yourself and your abilities and the companies come to you.
The Story
I’ve been around six to seven months unemployed. During that time I’ve been working on personal projects to familiarize myself with the current trends in web development. I finally felt that I was ready to contribute with my new-found skills and was ready to go on the hunt. I had some companies in mind, the typical engineering bigs, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook so on and a few smaller ones. I also wanted to see what else was out there and decided to try out Hired.
The Rundown
I sign up, set up my profile, and list my skills and locations I want to work. In the same week I get a call from my ‘Talent Advocate’ to walk me through the whole process, the kind of work I’m looking for, and some advice on how to make my profile stand out to employers. It was essentially a recruiting phone screen that you can’t mess up. After the screen I fix up my profile a little, add a nice picture, list out my GitHub projects, and make my location preference much more specific. My Advocate then places a one-liner describing me and my work that companies will view when browsing over my profile. After that I’m ready to roll and submit my profile to be available for the next ‘auction’ which starts every Sunday each week and lasts for two weeks.
Hired Roadmap
- 1. Fill out your profile
- 2. Get a call from a ‘Talent Advocate’ or Hired recruiter
- 3. Fix up your profile
- 4. Put it up for the next ‘auction’
- 5. Wait for the ‘offers’ to roll in
Now when Hired says candidates usually get 5-15 ‘offers’, they really just mean introductions but we knew that already right? In fact from my experience, the offered equity and salary and signing bonuses are still negotiable for the better or worse. These offers are just a way for companies to entice you so you can start talking. In fact Hired requires you to get back to each and every company that contacts you. You have the option of declining the offer outright, re-negotiating terms or clarifying job descriptions, or immediately set a phone interview right then and there. After the two weeks are over you’re free to continue communication with each of the contacted companies until you’re no longer considered or until you finally get your dream job.
Things I liked
Loads of responses
The response rate is incredible. From my own personal searches, I’ve received less than 1/6th response per resume sent out. With Hired, I just create one profile and received 12 requests for interviews. That’s a 1200% return for 1 resume posted! If you’re looking just to see what’s out there, Hired will get you a solid returns on your time invested into the site.
Very Concentrated, Very Quick
I like how there’s a very defined start and end time on responses. It forces each company that’s gunning for your heart to get a fair start and lines up each company’s interview schedules together which allows you to have a more organized schedule. It also benefits you in that when multiple companies end up giving you job offers, you can use each offer as leverage to see which one loves you more.
Things I don’t like
You’re still going through the initial recruiting hoops
So this is what happens. Recruiters sit down Monday morning and browse Hired for the latest batch of candidates. They sift through and find some profiles where the skills and history seem to match the requirements of the job. They contact you to set up a call where they… have you… state your skills and history to see if you’re a good fit…
I don’t get it. The initial recruiting call seems highly unnecessary since a Hired profile gives way more information than a normal resume does. It also gives more information that a standard recruiting call will ever expose. I think this practice of screening the candidate is still done because internal company recruiting processes are slow to change and a concept like Hired which should make this step obsolete is too different from their traditional hiring process that they choose to leave this redundant step in.
I personally would rather talk directly to an engineer for the opening call but that was very rare.
Talent advocate sets up your one-liner description
Your talent advocate will size you up with a one-liner description after your thirty minute introductory call. This description is the first thing recruiters will see when they see your name. I actually wanted to look for more Node.js and fullstack JavaScript opportunities, but my talent advocate boiled me down to ‘Frontend developer previously with Experian; led multiple teams and projects to success’. I didn’t realize until after the two weeks were over that this was how I was being advertised which kind of explained why I got so many offers for front-end lead positions even though this was something I wanted to shift away from.
It appears now that Hired encourages you to contact your Talent Advocate if you’re not happy with your description. I’d like to think my complaining about this made a difference haha..
Most of the positions are going to be startups from SF
Home to all the hippest engineers, SF and Bay Area companies are begging for more talent. I originally wanted to look for positions all over the United States but my Advocate recommended I boil it down to three cities. I chose LA, SF, and Seattle. I got 1 response from LA, 1 response from Seattle, and 10 responses from SF. Out of those 12, 2 of those were large companies and the rest were Series A startups.
These kinds of results may change depending on the type of job you’re looking for but if you’re a front-end engineer or any web engineer, you’re going to be getting similar results.
All in all..
It’s a really good service. Its searching for jobs without actually putting in all the work of having to find them. Granted all the responses you’re going to get aren’t going to resonate with you and some companies that contact you sound like straight up scams but the quantity of offers definitely offset the few that aren’t quality.