Job search blues

Your feelings are totally valid and it is such a competitive market. I work in a highly niche field and even when we post an incredibly specific position - like maybe 5-10 folks nationally can fill - we still get bombarded with applications. We recently hired a postdoc looking at computer vision applied to disease ecology and ended up with over 400 applicants, of those ~320 had PhDs and of those ~ 60 actually had a resonable enough background for our engineering team to look at projects on their Git and of those ~20 would have been fine hires. We ended up with a candidate with way more experience than we expected, and this is only looking at folks coming out of academia. All that to say, the job market is fucked at the moment.

And it sounds like you are doing everything right. Your work on your resume with co-workers sounds perfect as does running it through ATS scanners. My only thought there is if you can tailor it to the position (I know that is a ton of work for each application) you might have a better chance of getting that first response. If I see someone has curated their resume to the specific job post I'm much more likely to give them an interview as it means they read the post, aren't blindly firing off resumes, and have put some work into the process.

Job hunting is such a frustrating process and I know it feels like it'll never end but you will get there! It may just take a metric fuck ton of applications. If you can, try to be easy on yourself. This isn't a reflection of you or your capabilities; it's a symptom of a truly fucked job market.

I work in this field, and it's not just you. We're in a hiring freeze now, and I had over a 100 well-qualified applicants to a SWE job posting on my team earlier this year. There have been a ton of layoffs in the tech industry from over-hiring during COVID, and there are a lot of good developers whose current full-time job is looking for employment. Hopefully we'll see things lighten up a bit as the year progresses, but it seems that most companies are tightening their belts. In 15 years of working in this field, I've never seen the tech job market this bad.

You're definitely not alone. I've been searching for almost a year, and the competition is just that fierce. Companies are casting wide nets and then splitting hairs due to the flood of qualified candidates. A recruiter once told me that the company went with another candidate, and the only explanation she could think of was that I lived too far from the office. 🤷‍♂️ Like you, I also haven't had success with employee referrals. It was shocking to be complimented on my expertise during the interview, only to be rejected the next day. The common thread was that I didn't have experience in the exact industry or specialized role. What happened to having transferrable skills and being vouched for by current employees??? Anyways, I wouldn't be too concerned about your LinkedIn unless you notice a pattern of rejections after companies view your profile.

I'm actually doing okay with getting interviews, I'm just weak at the interview part. 😅 If you're tailoring your application materials, which have been reviewed by managers and made ATS-friendly, then something else is happening that is excluding you from the beginning. Perhaps it is the sheer number of senior SWE's to compete with? I'm not a SWE, but I have seen sooo many job postings that require "2+" years of experience. While the minimum pay correlates with junior level, the maximum correlates with senior level, so the company might not actually be considering what it says on paper.

One thing that helps me get more responses is cold emailing the hiring manager after submitting the job app. I just make sure not to click on shady websites in the search results. Is this something you've tried?

I also track my job apps and application methods in a spreadsheet to figure out my interview conversion rates, where most opportunities are coming from, and what job titles I have a better chance at pursuing.

I sympathize with your post here. I have been on the other side of the market mostly in the last 7 years or so (hiring or helping hire developers for my company) and when we put up a job posting we're talking hundred and hundreds of applicants within 24 hours. We have a very small development team, and an even smaller budget. Trying to find qualified developers who'll work for what we offer and live close enough to our offices is a really tough ask. Pair that hand in hand with what you're seeing in the market and its not a good combination.

One thing I have experienced and really appreciated is when an applicant reached out to me directly. Either on Slack, LinkedIn, direct emails. I'm not the hiring manager at the company, just the manager of the software team. But I can cherry pick applicants in the hiring process and have them screened faster. Most people who reach out to me directly and want to chat usually get the bump up. I'm not saying this will happen with every applicant or job but its always good to try and network around the recruitment/hiring folks.

Also, if you can, go to local tech meetups and just meet people. Like you said in your post - networking creates a huge advantage.

I saw this post when you first posted it and meant to come back to it when I had time.

I'm also in a job hunt and it's been rough, though I brought some of this on myself. I work in IT (Sysadmin, though I'd like to move more into Network Engineering/Security). My wife and I moved our family to her home country to help care for older family members and let our sons experience this part of their heritage.

After our company was acquired, I worked with my previous employer to transition to a contract role. During this process, I was transferred to a different team and my new manager was way overworked, he had 30+ people reporting to him. When I could nail him down he was happy to work with me and his team had several long-term contracted employees that they had been renewing annually. With that he let me know that once things got transferred over into their new systems and I was trained up he had plans for me to train under different parts of their team and effectively become their "night time" on-call person since my day time is night time in the states. I spoke with him every 2 weeks about my contract renewal for 7 months and he kept saying he was pursuing it. Turned out he was way too busy and didn't push for it and when his new manager decided that he only wanted full-time employees (besides 1 guy who is critical to the team but can't be full-time for personal medical reasons), all of the contracts were cut.

I had a one-month notice that I wasn't being renewed (this would have been August of last year) and since then I've applied to over 2,000 positions both in the US and in the country I'm staying in. I'm getting hit with a double whammy of US companies not wanting to hire someone abroad, and local companies not wanting to hire someone who is white because they either don't understand my visa situation (married to a citizen so I can work with no restrictions locally) since they think I need a sponsorship to work or they think I want to earn full US wages like I was a specialist expat coming over for one of the many multinational companies in the area.

I've had a few interviews with all but one of them saying no/ghosting me after the initial interview. The only one that said yes and offered me a job I would have needed to live in a city 4 hours drive away from my family and 5 days a week (and some weekends as well), and for what they offered me and how long I'd have been gone I might as well of just went back to the US and worked for half the year and then came back here because I would have made more money. I even had a position locally that I fit all of the qualifications and had 2 somewhat senior people in the company recommend me for the hiring manager said no because I was "over qualified" (white) and would be underpaid for the position and they felt like I'd leave it to soon to make it worth their time to hire me. I had all of the certifications they were asking for and only 1 year more experience than they listed as their desired amount.

I won't pretend like this isn't entirely my fault, looking back I could have worked harder to specialize my skillset more or even done the "learn to code" route. That and moving abroad hasn't helped me finding a job. Just frustrating to spend so much time applying, tweaking my resume when needed, writing different cover letters, or even just trawling through job boards to find positions I'm qualified, overqualified, or tangentially qualified for.

I started keeping a spreadsheet with all my applications ~500 applications ago so I can see where I've applied for jobs and companies have reposted positions or if I've applied for a spot on a different job board and seeing the number of rejections pile up or how many positions just never reply to me felt draining so I took a break for the last week to focus on a different project.

This came out a bit more rambly than I thought it would, but overall I wanted to say you're not alone in this and a job hunt nowadays can be incredibly frustrating.

Yeah it's pretty rough right now. I'm not in software, but healthcare, and I like my company, so I only look at internal positions for promotions in line withy track. In 2023, I had several interviews and it went from "we'll have you an offer next week" to "requisition has been cancelled." I had another several interviews were the requisition was closed when I was the final (or in one case only) candidate. The recruiters are transparent with me and I can see the internal team so I know they are telling the truth. It just seems like people say yes to additional staffing until they don't, and market forces can 86 many positions or departments while you're mid interviewing (not to mention all the layoffs, which makes the internal pool more competitive). Talent acquisition got hit with layoffs and they are overworked, and hiring managers are way too picky, I've seen over my career the number of interviews increase, the sophistication of the interviews increase (content interview, case interview, presentation interview, behavioral, kill me) because everyone is looking for their "we saw you across the bar and liked your vibe" unicorn. It's patently ridiculous.

All I can say is keep your head up and play the numbers game. One of the incidental benefits of this hell situation is the stigma around unemployment has dramatically decreased, seems everybody gets it now, that jobs don't just get handed out these days.