Somehow I ended up getting seduced by a position at a big name IT enterprise, joined other enterprises and now working remotely for 3 years for a medium-sized company.
I think companies look at my 8 years at big enterprises and think I'm not a good fit for a startup. The truth is, I never felt at home in enterprises and was always fighting the processes and complaining. Go figure.
What could I do now to make myself more employable at startups?
Startup hiring is a fuzzy science at best. Apart from abilities it's a lot about what impression you make in the first few interactions with the team.
Before talking to the team, invest a good amount of time researching on the space the company is operating in. The problem space, adjacencies, incumbents in that space and their offering, know what's unique about the company and the product. Learn terminology. Understand key metrics. Go overboard. Know everything you can beforehand. Use this knowledge in your interactions with the team. Ask pointed questions. Recognise and complement if there is something clever about their positioning and the business advantage they have because of it.
You want to leave them with the impression that the guy is not just experienced but is sharp and understands what we are doing here.
My favorite line to follow up on these empty complements is: "Thanks for the kind words. What do you think we're doing that is unique? What would you do differently if you were in my shoes?"
In that past week, 2 of 8 interviews have had this empty praise. Neither of the 2 could provide a meaningful example of how what we're doing is truly unique... and it is in the job ad clearly spelled out. One of the 2 hadn't even been to our website.
Interactions like these make you want to put up huge filters to weed out the people using a "resume shotgun" interview process but in my experience the amount of effort you invest in hiring pays dividends once you do hire.
Smart people will grasp your product once they get going; I'm more interested in their intelligence, skills, and experience. If your product is sufficiently complicated that a solid engineer might not understand it's market appeal three weeks in good luck selling it.
Sounds to me like you like it when people who interview flatter you with their understanding of your amazing invention.
It's very hard to find good people. If you're good at what you do you'll easily find an appealing position once you sort out culture. Stay away from the megalomaniacs deluded enough to think you have time (or reason) to do in depth research on their company along with the many others you are applying to.
This isn't an internship, you are already valuable.
No one said anything about doing in-depth research before applying, and while good people are hard to find, they're not unicorns. If you're walking into an interview without any background knowledge on the company or position that you're hoping to get hired for, you're at a severe disadvantage to those that do show the tiniest shred of initiative.
Your attitude strikes me as remarkably entitled and arrogant: "I didn't spend any time learning anything about this company, what the challenges are, etc, BUT I'm really smart and talented, so you have no choice but to hire me."
Sounds like looking for applicants who show they care even a little bit is a great heuristic :)
It sounds like you might have this mix. The more you can show that you are a "startup" person, the better. The best way to do this is by researching the startup and playing to the hiring manager's needs.
Of course, this is entirely dependent on the type of startup you want to work for. Pre-PMF startups are incredibly fun, but require a very specific type of person. If you're looking at startups with $10+mm in ARR then your enterprise experience is going to be much more well received.
Eventually, I found one that was a great fit, and I've been here for over a year and am extremely happy. What I've seen at least in the Bay Area startup scene is that many companies have unrealistic expectations and are waiting for unicorn candidates that magically fit all of their wildest dreams.
If you were at a company that started from nothing and became successful, a startup that has sense should be interested in you.
Not all do this, but some things I've seen/heard done by a handful of small, "scrappy" startups:
- Interviewing candidates knowing they don't have the budget to even give them a job. It's a shitty thing to do because they are essentially knowingly wasting someone's time only to say "Yea, you're a great fit, we just need a few months to be ready to onboard someone for this role!"
- Putting up unrealistic salary ranges on angel.co to look competitive to attract more applicants, then giving an offer that's 10-20% lower in salary than what was given (or pulling the "another applicant is willing to do the $100k advertised job for $80k, but we want to hire you, would you be able to come down to meet that number?" card).
- Giving applicants "day in the life" interviews, where you sign an NDA, work a full 8 hour day, then don't get compensated for it. Sometimes 6-10 people are given these kinds of interviews for a 1 person job opening, and it's mostly just getting free work.
- Bosses setting an expectation for a great work-life balance in the interviews, talking about how "they value their employees time", then expecting everyone to work 10 hours per day or be on call at whatever whim someone needs work done.
- Assuming that because someone is foreign, they must be used to working long hours for little pay and not complaining about it. Even with contractors, there was a boss who hired a team in Ukraine, was invoiced $20k, then only paid them $15k without any legitimate reasons and said "well, that's still a lot of money for you so just be happy with it." It's amazing how shitty some people are when they make themselves seem so outwardly exuberant or buddy-buddy in person.
Also, (and sorry to promote our own stuff) but you might look at workatastartup.com, a website we built to help engineers join YC startups. I'd be happy to look at your application and give you some feedback if it would be helpful.
I think I'm competing with fresh graduates. I applied at startups with 20-200 employees initially. Really looking for that experience of taking something of the ground and scaling.
I know we shouldn't take rejections too seriously but reality is it was always easy for me to find a job. Maybe I've been too picky and overestimated my skills, maybe companies are being too picky now. I'm not sure but I'm thinking hard about this.
Spend time to figure out what your strengths and weaknesses are with those "fresh graduates". As a startup founder, I would take a 10x engineer any day. Fresh grads bring great energy and enthusiasm but experienced heads make sure my business is going to make the simple mistakes.
Don't sell yourself short. You're definitely valuable to any organization (startup or otherwise) as you've seen the best and worst of both worlds. You're an incredible asset.
Feel free to reach out to me by email if you think I can offer more specific advice/help/resources.
Even if you'd rather be somewhere smaller, it'll probably be a better fit in the short term, and after a couple of years you may have an easier time transitioning to something earlier stage.
Hilarious - Are they right?
Consider the source -- frankly, many startup leaders lack the executive seasoning and managerial savvy to make a balanced scorecard assessment of talent. Their hiring criteria often boil down to 'hot or not'.
Get clarity on your targets -- specifically, WHO is the Founder, Co-Founder, Early-Stage manager YOU can most help? That's the person you want to speak with.
How would one find out? If as OP stated, their skills lined up and matched the job requirements, how will they ever know?
Startup recruiting seems a lot like modern dating: a lot of terribly communicated expectations resulting one party effectively "ghosting" on the other, ending in a lot of frustration and apathy from one party at the other because of said terrible communication-and that resentment or 'baggage' being unknowingly carried with them to the next interview cycle.
"Not a good fit" can mean anything from asking too much salary, to being just a month short of the necessary 5 years of experience for a tech stack that's been around for 3, to not wearing the right color shirt to the interview. You'll never know what "not a good fit" means because it seems like once a company decides you're not the perfect unicorn, rockstar candidate with a pocket full of ninja stars, you never hear from them again.
But don't worry, your resume is kept on file for other roles.
Job hunting as a software engineer has just become a literal grindfest. There’s very little signal you can obtain from the entire process, but you can gain a lot of noise.
Did you get the interview? If you got the interview, it might be how you interview with them. I'm a startup founder and i try to hire people I can go to the bar with and seems very talented.
What kind of startups are you applying to? If you're targeting startups who does not or never plans on selling to enterprise customers, then they might be denying you because of that.
If you're interviewing with them and they ask you questions, just remember that you have to answer in a manner of "We'll get that done in 1 hour, and not 10 hours like you would with enterprise". And jobs are mostly a numbers game. They could simply be using your enterprise experience as an excuse.
Startups depend on Generalists to make autonomous decisions that are aligned with a company mission.
Enterprise Specialists often get disconnected from the company mission and need a lot of direction, which is a liability for startups.
A cover letter, or in-person introduction that says "I understand your mission and this is what I would do in the first year to achieve the company goal".
Although phone screens and coding interviewers are looking for tech skills on the surface, the underlying motivation is "I'm too busy to train/manage you. Just preemptively tell me what you're going to do and how you'll do it".
Perhaps, focus on startups that reduce the number of change variables. For example, startups focused on satisfying the needs of enterprise IT customers should value your inside knowledge of the pain points.
Keep looking - the right thing will be out there. (For example, my company, Turbot, is actively seeking remote employees with enterprise experience and a pent up hunger to get stuff done.)
1) employee thinks your risk averse
2) ageism. Unfortunately is real when applying to startups.
As for 1, I think proactively addressing this in a cover letter / interview would be helpful.
Hit me up if you’d like to talk. We may be hiring.
Also what type (industry) and what stage startup are you applying to?
For example, "startups" like space-x I'm assuming value having a ton of enterprise experience versus something more consumer facing like Snapchat two years ago.
Different stages as well as industries will be looking for different potential + proof of experience and you should highly tailor your resume + interview to those expectations!
If it's more on the business side, happy to chat further if helpful :).
Your experience is not the norm for people working at startups, so you actually have an upper hand, just not necessarily in the smallest of places. Look for companies that are undergoing a rapid growth, just past the make-or-break point. These places need people who are experience working with problems regarding scale, and solutions that they require.
I’m also gonna take a stab at reading this so take with a grain of salt. I think the companies are not getting back to you because it’s super low odds of mutual fit. 15 years in and looking at early stage startups, you probably are not going to be a fit unless you are replacing a key team member or part of founding team. You have experience level, trading off for the very unglamorous aspects of early stage means the value prop to you would only make sense with significant stock package and likely a high salary. To get into that, you’re really talking about opportunities coming in from your professional network, or a number of other low odds vectors for getting in the door.
If you want to go down that path I would suggest really building some solid relationships at either bigger companies nearing IPO or midsize, basically you need to expand the pool of people you’re close with who might create new startups
There are so many startups in San Francisco right now, and we're in a strange situation where both demands and supplies are high, but the matching isn't always great and companies (especially startups) are still struggling to hire because they can't find the right fit. (sometimes true, sometimes because of terrible interview processes, sometimes because of not finding candidates like you who might actually be a fit but don't look like it on paper)
If your resume contains things like C#, .NET, etc. chances are many/most startups will overlook you for other candidates. (Not saying or generalizing what your skills might be at enterprises, just giving an example) Vs if you have Node, React, Docker, that sort of stuff, you'll look like an attractive candidate to them.
As an engineering hiring manager for (mostly) startups, I love candidates that have both BigCo and TinyStartup experience. Diversity of thought and usually by then, the candidates have a sense of where they want to work.
If you find that your tech or skills or experience don't line up with startups then you may have some work to do.
Most BigCos need specialists. Most Startups need generalists. Depending on your field, you might need to study up as some other posters have mentioned. I wouldn't study haphazardly however. Apply to a few startups (or industries) you are interested in and take notes of the questions they ask you and especially the questions you struggle to answer. Those are the areas to spend your time getting up to speed on.
As long as we think a candidate would be productive in our stack, or quickly ramped up, works for us!
We'd be more curious if you have the startup attitude, where the support, and bottlenecks, are yourself and our can-do team.
