I cant find a job. I am me, a honest guy, I don't lie about myself or my experience and that's what's causing problems

I cant find a job. I am me, a honest guy, I don't lie about myself or my experience and that's what's causing problems.

I'm a programmer and I think I'm a pretty decent one. But as soon as a company asks me about a certain tech stack or paradigm that I didn't use in my previous work, they tend to lose all interrest. They don't want to train people, they want to hire people who already have the experience.

But how do I get the experience if those companies don't give me a chance. Programming is just a too wide area to learn everything there is. Each company needs something different, it's almost impossible to fit everyone's needs.

In interviews they even ask questions like "What animal would you like to be?" or the regular strengths/weaknesses nonsense. I don't get that. No one would say anything bad about themselves, decent answers to those questions can be google'd easily.

But what if you are honest? Tell them your legit weaknesses and guess what? -> next.

Just like in dating. People use makeup and dress up hot when they go out. The "Nice Guy" won't get the girl. And the nice interviewee won't get the job. So as I see it now, interviews are meant to train you to become a better liar until you are so convincing that they will hire you. After making a ton of bullshit up and selling it to them, you need to invest heaps of your time and actually aquire those skills and then simply do a good job.

Just like when you go to the store and they tell you that one brand of vegetables is healthier than others or has a better quality, but infact is not better at all. Selling = Lying. Job Interview = Selling yourself. Am I right?

You've done it, Archimedes, you've cracked the code. I can't believe nobody ever figured this out before now.

>But as soon as a company asks me about a certain tech stack or paradigm that I didn't use in my previous work, they tend to lose all interrest.

This is the exact opposite of how any employer wants a programmer to act.

>literally begging to be a wage slave

>In interviews they even ask questions like "What animal would you like to be?" or the regular strengths/weaknesses nonsense.
I have to agree.

Anyway the secret to interviews is to connect weird, unrelated things together in ways that always tie back to the position and have an opinion on everything.

By which I mean current events. Read a current event in the Wall Street Journal that morning and find some crazy way to tie it to the job you're going for, with an strong but obviously non-controversial opinion about it, and they'll think you're so into them and will hire you. It works.

But yeah, when you're an associate or whatever 6 years from now OP, please don't fucking put anyone through this bullshit.

I'm just really frustrated. And maybe I'm wrong but I feel like at this point I just have to start making shit up. But maybe I am wrong and being honest is actually the best way to find a job and I just suck at life. So maybe some people here can tell me their opinions.

Well, for instance I worked as a freelance programmer, I had many jobs and many clients. It was great because it gave me an opportunity to aquire many new skills that I didn't have before. And now I want to change to an onsite job.

The job I applied for is for java developers. Labeled "Software Engineer" and didn't really state much about the required skills other than "Java 8, SQL, some C++, UI Design, HTML/JS/CSS, agile proccesses, git, automation, code review" etc. So I go to interviews for jobs like that then they ask for any experience with "BigData" and "High Performance Programming". I didn't have jobs in those fields yet, however high performance always was at utmost priority for me.

But as soon as they hear that I don't have any experience with Big Data in this case, they lose interest. So Im beginning to think that next time I should just claim that I did work in that field, not much but at least claim that I did this for at least one client, then I will aquire enough knowledge for the third interview in which the technical skills will be evaluated.. :/

I've done interviews. Point is to weed out retards. If you can't appear decent for an interview in which your job is on the line, why would we expect you to be decent on the job?

Are there actually people who tell companies about their own personal issues?

Don't interviewers get fed up over time of hearing the same almost scripted answers every time they ask those questions?

What about honesty? For example one of my weaknesses is that I overconsume new things that I consider interesting until I can't see them anymore. E.g. a favorite song that I listen to over and over until I can't listening to it anymore. Or related to jobs: If my work looks the same every day for a long period of time, it just gets boring. Companies like google tend to let people work on projects in 3 month cycles to keep them entertained and motivated to tackle those issues.

But at an interview, I wouldn't even mention an issue like that. I would make up some minor issue, which wouldn't affect my work. Which basically is the same as lying.

Big data is buzzword bullshit.

It just means these morons can't properly filter or tag data so they dump it in this catch-all repository called a "landing zone" or "data lake" or some other euphemism for "giant spaghetti database", then make the architects looking to make sense of that data go fucking fish for it. It's no different from a code perspective other than there are more fields you need to review to ensure your program evaluates the correct one.

Most of the industry is just like this too; it's just morons trying to make their ineptitude sound like a feature.

As for how to handle yourself in interviews, never mention a shortcoming unless you're prepared to discuss how you're addressing it; if someone mentions a stack or buzzword you're not familiar with, don't be afraid to ask questions about it. Odds are you can come up with something similar you have worked on that will put them at ease about your experience.

The key here is thinking flexibly and demonstrating how your skills apply to their needs.

I was in upwards of 50 interviews before I found my current job. Some times people in first round interviews said I was exactly what the company was looking for and they'd definitely recommend me and then the second round interviewer was a dud who just dryly says "Uh huh" "I see" to everything and writes it all down verbatim despite me giving perfectly reasonable answers that cover my resume, highlighting the strengths that would tie back to the job, etc., and him/her only asking questions like the OP's example. On the other side, I've also had an interviewer that was flamboyant, swearing, and uncomfortably "over-the-top". And yet another kind (big multi-billion dollar corporation) calls me several days before our scheduled interview time, then apologizes saying they must have called the wrong person, sets up another time for a skype interview, then doesn't show up at that interview and doesn't respond to email, then claims their email servers are only working half the time (yes really) and emails me again asking to set up yet another interview, does the interview this time and promises to call me in a week, but never calls and at this point I just let it go because this wasn't worth my time and I wouldn't wan to deal with this again.

You might be a great interviewer, but most of them are genuinely pretty awful.

Nobody cares if you are qualified or not. I've known people with masters and PhD degrees who think they're entitled to a job but then they end up being high school teachers or call center monkeys for insurance firms.

Without connections you are literally fucking nothing with all your education and experience.

Society rewards the connected, not those who have the highest IQs or how many programming languages they know.

To give you an example, I know a guy who still types with ONE finger and calculates averages on excel by typing EACH number out without realizing theres an AVERAGE function.

And he's on a higher pay grade than me.

When employers want you to say something negative about yourself they are gauging your ability to take constructive feedback. I recommend you tell them something like, "I used to have a hard time working with _____ but I worked on it and now I feel like it's one of my strengths.."

Always tell an employer you can do something and when youre hired youll need to find out how to do it.

If I told the truth at interviews I wouldn't be sitting in this office chair browsing 4C right now.

He probably has some other positive points, I have a guy like that in my office. The man is a complete dinosaur when it comes to tech but on the other hand he has a near encyclopedic recall of tax law.

That's a pretty good advice, thank you. I always assume that even if I have experience related to that field, that my experience can't really compare to what is needed since I never had to work on projects as huge as the projects those companies are working on.

They also seemed a little disappointed about me not working on huge projects. "What was the biggest project you worked on?" and "What was the longest time that you worked for a client?".

The issue here is: I dont have a team. I am a solo freelance developer. Clients who need a huge project done hire a team, not a single person. At most I do get to code modules / algorithms that might or might not end up in some huge projects. Other than that, most of my work is on a smaller scale and usually I don't even get to see the finished product except for the cases when the client wants me to deploy the project.

So I generally can't even say anything about the scalability of my code. It's frustrating.

Then how do I get myself connected? Staring a linkedin page? Talking crap on quora and stackoverflow? Trying to become friends with programmers who are working in those companies? I have literally no idea how to get myself connected.

Good point, I will keep trying too until someone gives me a chance and at least invites me to the technical interview. Also I wonder why they invite me even tho most of my work isn't even in the same field as their work and they knew that from my resume, yet most questions were about my experience in their field.

>solo freelance developer

See theres your problem. There are just so many freelance developers in the market that you are not able to stand out. Employers know they can always hire a Pajeet if they want a developers.

You are competing in an oversaturated line of work where the odds are overwhelmingly against you because you have no connections. This means you either apply to 1000s of jobs and get 1-2 offers, or change your line of work entirely.

No, you missed the point. I want to work onsite, not as a freelancer anymore.
While I was working as a freelancer I had no problem finding jobs at about $40-60/hour, but I can earn just as much onsite without having to go through all that trouble of finding clients/discussing projects with them.

Besides big IT companies have great perks here.

>graduate for accounting
>didn't get accepted for any internships, graduate with just one college-organized tax prep season
>can't get hired anywhere
>H+R block turns me down
>a couple interviews
>"not enough experience"
>need a job to get xp
>need xp to get a job

RRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Veeky Forumsness time, though. We know companies hire complete fucktards. I mean someone who types the web address into a search bar and follows the google link level retarded. What if there was a company who hired competent people? Wouldn't they have a competitive advantage? I mean, I sure don't have the starting capital, but theoretically a Veeky Forumsness organized company would have the edge, right? inb4 everything is a monopoly already (I know it is.)

Maybe you should have done an internship. If you didn't get accepted, it was probably because you're a bottom of the barrel candidate. No one wants to touch you and you probably interview terribly, which explains why you are here going REEEEE

You have no one to blame for your failures besides yourself.

Do you have a university degree? Most of these companies hire directly from universities. If not, its infinitely harder for an outside freelancer to break into the corporate world without knowing anyone on the inside who can give a hand.

Employers tend to look down on hiring freelancers full time because they believe they can't perform well under authority. This is important because interacting with a paying client as a freelancer is completely different than interacting with a boss who you have to report to everyday and take shit even if you do your work right.

Can you really prove to employers you won't just leave your job after 6 months because your boss has "unrealistic expectations"?

Here's my tip: quit being such a long-winded beta bitch boy. All your posts are pathetic excuse filled drivel. Save the neurotypical behavior for the bathroom mirror and start acting confidently and speaking concisely.

>Big data is buzzword bullshit.

It's misused bit it is a thing.

I work in bioinformatics and we'll be crossing the 1 petabyte boundary sometime this year among our workstations. And we're a three-person team.

Such volumes of data require highly specialised solutions to handle and process.

I had severe social anxiety. Been working on it and I pass as normie now, but my interviews suck. All my current bosses love me, though. I just can't pour 3 months of charming into a 15 minute conversation, and they say I'm timid and seem shy. God damn I hate interviews.

I don't know, I guess I can buy a new outfit and invent a fake personality to rp as for interviews. Would that work?

>or the regular strengths/weaknesses nonsense. I don't get that. No one would say anything bad about themselves, decent answers to those questions can be google'd easily.
You are not 12, at worst it shows you know your weakness, at best it's something bad depending on the situation. Just

Personally, I tell them that I tend to overthink everything and could try to solve a more general problem than the one they want me to, what is really good when you want to capitalize on generic solutions but it takes more times and it has more chance to fail and to end with no solution at all. So as my managers, they should be aware of that and tell me to focus on the specific goal if I ever start to think bigger than needed.
I tell them I'm too confident about my memory, I often don't takes note thinkin I will remember that.
Then I tell them that I have no issue talking about my failure, I'm not perfect and I do mistakes. But it's often seen as not giving a fuck about it, or having an excuse for everything. It's just that I prefer to act that I fucked up, why I fucked up, if I did so we can advance faster from that point instead of trying to do damage control and not fixing things.

They often stop me from talking about my weakness, because I can go on and on.
Right now, I always got hired really quickly. Even if I'm middly autistic.

Most companies value retards because they stay at the company for a long time. Reliability > Competence is how a company makes money.