Why it's hard to get hired despite glowing jobs reports
> What bothers her most is the way some employers seem to relish being able to string candidates along. One flew her in for several hours of face-to-face interviews and never followed up.
I am sure a lot - maybe most! - of this "ghosting" really is just rudeness and/or abusing power. But in my anecdotal experience I was always way too busy to do my normal duties along with handling a hiring process, and I ended up stringing candidates along without intending to - in fact I felt terrible about it! Some managers accommodate the work of hiring by taking other stuff off your plate. Other managers dump too much of the hiring process onto you, even if you're already coding for 60 hours a week (my last job really sucked).
That said, note the extremely important caveat tucked at the very end:
> More than three-quarters of the reported job gains in the last month were concentrated in four sectors: government, healthcare, construction, and leisure and hospitality. Jobs in tech, finance, law, and accounting were essentially flat or slightly down.
Tough to say if I have a "glowing" history, but I do have experience a few big companies that I think looks good.
One time, when I was applying to work for a newspaper [1] as a software engineer. The recruiter was pretty sure I'd get an interview so he actually fast tracked me to do some stupid personality quiz and compliance crap, which took about three hours. The next day, I get a call from the recruiter and he tells me that I was passed over because my resume "looked too much like a manager's resume, no hands on coding experience".
Now, that is very bizarre, because I've never really been a manager. I was an adjunct professor for two semesters, but for the last 13 years I've been a pretty vanilla software engineer, and my resume pretty much exclusively tried to highlight my work with .NET and Java and Node.js and Kafka. In fact, people have told me that my resume was "too technical" and that I need to speak at higher levels and get out of the weeds.
The recruiter was confused too for the same reason, and then I realized something: the hiring manager probably never actually read the resume. I believe that they already knew who they wanted to hire for the position, but for bureaucratic or legal reasons, they had to make it look like they were trying to find the "best person for the job", and put out feelers for people, and they were just kind of ambivalent about wasting my time. It really bothered me, but there's not much I can do about it.
2023 was probably the worst year of my life. I got laid off twice, and spent about six months applying to jobs. I never really got used to waking up to twenty rejections every morning so every day I would feel kind of depressed until I went to sleep. I hated the faux politeness that I display during Zoom interviews. I hated logging into LinkedIn every day, applying to 100 jobs. I hated messaging all my contacts to ask if they know anyone hiring. I hated feeling desperate. It was tough, and I don't wish it on anyone.
I have a really decent job now and I consider myself very grateful and lucky to have it. It's a really tough market right now, and anyone who's stuck competing in it has my sympathies.
[1] Not going to say the name but it's definitely one you've heard of and probably have read.
About ten years ago, only one or two interviews were required to get a job, without any tests.
Nowadays, there are 4 to 6 rounds plus 2 technical challenges... Do they think they are Google? But they don't pay like Google.
I was looking at a big tech company recently. They list well over a 100 open positions. I reach out to a friend who works there. He says some very nice things about me to his manager, who asks for my CV. Been six weeks and I haven't heard a word. I might apply again through the regular formal channels, but I would have thought that a strong recommendation was worth more.
I'm not really complaining, I'm in a fairly good spot myself, but for others out there in this situation, you're not alone.
It appears that economy is in widespread recession. Hundreds of thousands have lost jobs. Job reports are getting revised after every few months.
I saw a tweet that showed we had a net job loss when revised reports are accounted for. I see thousands of videos on TikTok saying people are struggling.
Many job gains are in low-wage category.
I don't know what is going on. We have a business but people have stopped buying for the most part in last 6 months.
Anyone else see your business or startup struggling to close deals in last 6 months?
Hope it doesn't last longer. Slow bleeding is worse than hard recession.
I've been actively seeking a new role and trying to jump ship for about four months now. It's definitely been a lot more difficult than I imagined.
There isn't a large tech industry in my area so it's difficult to network or leverage my local connections. I was fortunate to land my current role simply because the CEO found me on LinkedIn and offered me the position. However, I now realize now that he likely had no one apply for this position at all given the pay and benefits.
But I'm still glad I found this role as it is my first official software development job after years of freelancing. I'm hoping to use this role to help me transition into a better compensated job with a more legit company.
> Jobs in tech, finance, law, and accounting were essentially flat or slightly down.
As a software engineer with a CPA, it’s been brutal. I was laid off in January and have received zero interviews in 100 applications. I’ve received 3 responses, which led to an initial conversation and then being ghosted. I’ve received about 10 rejections. The rest have had no response.
My workmates and I got laid off by our employer (a FAANG company) last summer and I spent 4 months looking for a job (in Ireland). I started using a simple spreadsheet to keep track of all the jobs you apply for: company name, job title, salary, url, outcome (ghosted / rejected / interview).
Over those 4 months I applied for a total of 87 roles for data scientist / analytics engineer. Outcome:
- Ghosted: 49.4% - Rejected: 34.5% - Role cancelled: 3.4% - Interview: 12.6%
That breakdown was consistent across all my former workmates (between 50 to 100 applications before signing a contract), which is largely due to mass layoffs / high competition in the tech sector
Being ghosted is the norm (more on that later)
Avoid recruitment agencies at all cost. Here, they will ghost you for the jobs you apply for, and will then start contacting you for roles you're overqualified for (internships, etc..)
What we realised after a while, from chatting with folks who work in the recruitment field is that if you start getting loads of templated rejection email a few days / weeks after applying for roles, this means that nobody ever read your resume.
Each role we apply for usually receive 100+ applications, and that the recruiter who posted the role is also hiring for a network engineer, a janitor, two junior data analysts, a marketing consultant, a senior project manager, etc..
In other words, they're going to receive several hundreds of resumes, and they won't be able to read all of them. Actually, they'll only read 10 resumes for each role, as is the norm in modern HR.
It seems that most recruiters these days use ATS software to do all of the work for them. Here in Ireland the top ones are "Lever ATS" or "Recruiterbox ATS". Depending on the keywords that the recruiter enters, each resume gets a score. The recruiter then proceeds to open the top 10 applications only, and clicks on a button that sends a templated rejection email to all the unfortunate candidates that didn't make the cut.
Though recruiters usually try and become experts in a specific area ("I'm a tech recruiter", "I'm a recruiter that specialises in finance"), they actually know very little about the jobs that they hire for.
The truth is, 99% of the time, the reason why we get rejected isn't because we're not a good fit for the role. It's because we failed to pass the ATS software filtering process.
I can't believe the candidate ghosting is a thing now
Applied for Meta through a referral in 2023. Got ghosted.
Which is weird because recruiters reached out for both Meta and Google in 2021 and I passed their interview then. I took a job at a startup instead. Not sure if good or bad decision since both Meta and Google had mass layoffs.
So even if you cleared 2021 bar, 2023 results in being ghosted.
It’s a pretty absurd market. Unless you’re one of the few ML/AI scientists, it’s pretty rough out there.
Our society turns a blind eye to HR incompetence; even to enter HR requires very basic credentials. The ghosting nonsense, or pointless job searches, creates work hours for those HR teams, but does nothing for the ignored candidates
Is this an American thing? From my European pov, the market seems not as hysterically good as during the early covid years, but pretty solid nonetheless if you have some experience.
> Why It's Hard to Get Hired Despite Glowing Jobs Reports
.. perhaps because jobs numbers are now partisan and politicized, and no longer reflect reality.
non paywalled, found on Reddit: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/why-it-s-hard-to-g...
I’m guessing a lot of people here are nearer to 40 than 30.
Tell us how many 40-somethings you rec’d when they were on the other side of the desk.
I'm kind of glad it's a dumpster fire right now. If I got a job like I had in the past I wouldn't have decided to go down a different path. I'm going back to school to complete premed requirements and apply to medical school next year. I'm working as a medical assistant and training for EMT. I'm much happier than I would be as a web developer. There are tech jobs that would have interested me but I'd still rather be a doctor anyway, not that that is guaranteed. I did some open source Rust and learned some AI but you really have to show devotion through unpaid work to secure those positions, or get lucky.
Because jobs reports and unemployment stats are dishonestly generated, of course. I can't read this because of the paywall, but I'm sure it's a gaslighting article.
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not hard at all if you want to work at chipotle
the govt bean counters do not care about job quality...to them, a job is a job and if you took it you must be happy with it
I wonder how much of this is:
- Company lists position - Company interviews citizens. - Company claims it can’t find any qualified citizens - Company hires immigrants, paying them less
This is not true. It's very easy to get a job if your salary expectations are not too high. It's only hard to get a high paying job.