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Interview Question: What tools have you made to help you find a job?

1 points by scumola ↗ HN
Just recently laid off. Applied for unemployment. They want me to track all of my applications for work, so I wrote a tool. I figured that anyone worth their salt would also do something like this. How's that for an interview question? :)

5 comments

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tyohn
Maybe you should create a website that other people can use to track their applications?
jarek
When I was applying to many internships during school, I had an Excel sheet that did the job fine. These days I'm being a bit more discriminatory, so a couple of labels and moderate use of starring in Gmail does the trick.
scumola
Just for example, I made a webpage that I can submit an email address, a job title and a job type to. The webpage submits the data to a database. Every 5 minutes, a cron job wakes up and emails an appropriate resume and cover letter to the recipient based on the job type. I use the perl MIME::Lite modules to insert the name and job title into the email. I've got an html and text version of the emails, and it attaches a PDF of my resume to the email. All I do is submit an email address, the title and click on the job type, and I can mass-bomb the job market in a short while each morning. I'm thinking about putting together a followup button. :)
scumola
Also, it has a tracking pixel in the html template, so I know if the email was ever opened - which comes in handy to tell if people are actually getting my resume submission.
evo_9
It works out great, actually (if you mean as an answer to what have you been up too lately).

I find it's always much better to go to an interview when I've been working hard on code - mine or a others.

Also, if you write something useful it's more impressive to the potential employer.

I wrote a simple web-app to help find work last year; I found it to be a pretty effective way to demo my skills to a potential employer too. It's posted here if anyone wants to check it out: http://linkpro.dotglow.com (demo login below login box).