> So, what's your trick to avoid getting skipped

Ideally write the hiring manager and not HR. And, write something that makes it hard to not want to talk to you.

1: Minimal hygiene is writing something that shows you read the vacancy (if any). Don't: "I'm interested in the role, CV attached". do: "You want onsite in Amsterdam, I'm living in Milan but already planning to move to Amsterdam for reason X".

2: Stand out from the average applicant. Someone recently applied with a personal website that was a kinda-functioning OS (with some apps). Someone else applied with a YouTube channel hacking an ESP32 into their coffee machine. Someone applied with a tool on their GitHub profile, super well written, in our target language, doing interesting things on the database we're working with, etc., etc. how could I _not_ talk these applicants? All of these are soft signals that show affinity for their work as engineers. Don't: generic application letter combined with 3+ pages resume with too much detail.

3: if invited: get curious (but not overly opinionated/combative) about their stack. Candidates we've been most excited about have come in asking questions on how we're setup, and why we've made certain choices. Don't: expect the interviewer to ask all the questions, or bring only a prepared question that misses the mark.

4: Its a people process, if that's your challenge, work on that. Maybe you share a hobby with the interviewer, maybe you've both solved similar problems in earlier jobs, maybe you both like Haskell, maybe something else to connect over. Connection matters to most hiring managers.

> So, what's your trick to avoid getting skipped because a contract recruiter or internal recruiter is going through resumes at 6 a minute and looking for keywords nowhere near the job profile?

I don't know, but I can't imagine the person whose job is not to look at resumes at all is going to do any better.

There's a tragedy of the commons thing here. It might work if people are getting one inbound email a week and they like reading them. Once it becomes common wisdom, suddenly J Random Employee has dozens of incoming cold emails distracting from their work. So all of them go in the bin.

You got me there, I don't have one. I'm senior in my career but haven't been able to build a network that I can rely on when I'm looking for my next role, so I'm in the same boat with all of you guys and gals.

I do maintain though that cold reach out is more often harmful due to the barrier of HR/recruiting built to prevent this from happening, and you trying to go around that will likely cause trouble.

Also, when you reach out to the employees for "the referral", what does this even mean? If the person knows you, worked with you, or went to college with you, then they can refer you, but if they haven't even met you and don't even know if you're real, what are you asking them to do? "Hey boss I got this email from this guy he says he's a good fit for this role we have open, do you wanna hire him?", is that it?

DO research the company. DO research the role, the team, the manager, the environment, the toolsets, the issues they're facing. Do NOT flood people's inboxes asking for "referrals" whatever that means.

A judicious email to the hiring manager? Sure, why not roll the dice.

We’ve had candidates spam our every Senior+ level staff at my current job (many not even in the relevant department) trying to get their resume boosted.

Those went from candidate to rejects very quickly.

I guess the risk is that if the CEO doesn't like getting bothered and remembers your name, it might hurt your chances being hired in other ways?

I honestly don't know if it was sarcasm or if you were serious.

At any rate, the downside of this is as follows.

The goal of having Human Resources, talent acquisition, recruiters, and other similar roles is to let hiring managers (and everyone above them, up and including the CEO) concentrate on doing their job and only assist the aforementioned roles in hiring. Of course hiring manager is ultimately responsible for hiring a good candidate but they are not expected to do things like posting job descriptions, initial screening, background checks, referral checks, employment history verification, dealing with legal stuff like NDAs etc etc, that's the job of HR/recruiters. Candidates reaching out to hiring managers (and especially higher ups) are not treated nicely by the HR as these candidates are attempting to take HR out of the picture.

HR are people and want to keep their job and get paid, and you circumventing them might be perceived as a threat to that.

That IN ADDITION to a disruption you will be causing hiring manager (or especially CEO) cause now they need to decide what to do with your email. Even though they have HR/recruiters to handle these things.

A typical result of such a "reach out" will likely be forwarding this email to HR and subsequent rejecting/blacklisting the candidate.

Edit: some clarifications

> interviewed 3k people with Karat as a professional interviewer

Working for an interview mill is not the same as working for a company.

An interview mill’s objective is to assess whatever criteria their client told them in a somewhat repeatable way.

A company worker’s objective is to find someone who would be a good colleague or addition to the company.

>circumvent the normal proces

I might agree in good, normal times.

But in bad times where "the normal process" can't even let you have a human look at your resume, it's different. "circumventing" is at worst a simple act of rebellion to annoy people who can change their process. It's a best a chance to actually get the response that isn't even granted with a form rejection these days.

If it's 5 person company they likely don't have HR or recruiting and the CEO is likely doing the hiring (for VPs/Directors/etc). In that case of course you would communicate with them directly, they are effectively a hiring manager and don't have HR to outsource the hiring to.

If the company has a person/group dedicated to hiring then going around them is counterproductive. IMHO of course!

Agreed. I've worked in startups most of my career, I've messaged CEO's, CEO's have been messaged, never a negative experience and higher quality candidates in my opinion.

Side note: You gotta hustle people!