Announcements: Sponsor Announcement: Hired

There are certain tropes that show up in our articles, and judging from our comments section, our readers are well aware of them. For example, if a manager in a story says, "You're going to love working with $X, they're very smart," it's a pretty clear sign that the character in question is not very smart, and is almost certainly sure to be TRWTF in the story.

Part of this is narrative convenience- we try and keep our articles "coffee-break length", and dropping a few obvious signals in there helps keep it concise. Most of it, however, really boils down to the fact that reality is full of certain patterns. The world is full of people who aren't half as smart as they think they are. There are legions of PHBs ready to micromanage even if they haven't a clue what they're doing. And there are a lot of employers that can make a terrible job sound really great for the duration of the interview process.

Let's focus on that last bit: finding a new job is hard. Finding a good job is even harder. At its worst, you end up suffering your way through a horror story that ends up on this site (so hey, Internet "fame", it's not all bad, right?). Maybe you just end up trading hours of your life for a paycheck, doing work that you don't hate but you don't love. If you're really lucky, you land something that you really care about doing, and you get paid exactly what you're worth.

And let's not even get into the job search process- it's stressful and eats enough time to be a job in itself. You have to dance around recruiters who just want the commission and don't care if the job's a fit for anyone involved. You chuck your resume on job sites, which might as well be a black hole. You can end up investing countless hours into a company's interview process only to get an offer that isn't sufficient, or to discover that the company culture isn't what you were looking for.

Which brings us to our newest sponsor, Hired. Hired flips the script on the traditional job site. Once you fill out a simple application, employers start applying to interview you, instead of you applying for an interview. Whether you're looking for a full-time or a contract gig, whether you're looking for engineering, development, design, product management or data-science- Hired will match you up with top employers.

And "top" doesn't mean "gigantic" or "corporate". Sure, there's companies like Facebook on there. But in their pool of over 6,000 employers, they have everything from titans of industry to small startups, spread across 17 major cities in North America, Europe, Asia, & Australia.

Okay, sure, there are lots of companies you might work for there, but what does this "apply to interview you" stuff mean? It sounds like marketing copy that Remy just pasted into this article to make the sponsor happy, and you're right- but it's also so much more.

Once you have filled out Hired's application, employers who are interested in your profile will send you a personalized interview request which includes salary information up front. Hired's going to provide a "talent advocate" who can provide unbiased career advice to help you put the best foot forward. And Hired solves one of the worst problems of the job search: they hide your profile from current and past employers, so your boss will never find out you're searching for a new job until you're ready to tell them.

And most important: you'll never pay a dime for this service. So try it out and plan your next career change.

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