- 50 applications submitted
- 21 no response
- 3 no longer hiring
- 11 rejected without interview
- 15 first round interviews
- 9 technical interviews
- 2 rejected after technical interview
- 2 onsite
I feel like the numbers for this job search are not good but I can't figure out what the problem is. A large majority of the companies rejected me without an interview, either sending a form letter or not response at all. There hasn't been any feedback about why they're not interested in me. This has been especially true of larger, more well-known companies. I'm completely qualified on paper but there's no interest.
I've also started to lose confidence for technical interviews. They feel so arbitrary. Some times I do really well. Sometimes not. But in both cases, I don't feel like my skills have been tested or demonstrated. When I do well, the stars lined up and when I don't, they didn't. The whole thing makes me feel increasingly insecure about my ability to build a career, even though I've demonstrated that I can do the work once hired.
Is this the average experience or is there something going on here?
@patio11 has written a bit about this: https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1086379271415713792 @tqbf and Erin Patek https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring-post/
I think this leads to a lot of false negatives when interviewing. but if you are applying you obviously want to increase your chances of succeeding so, you have to know how to 'play the game'.
My recommendation to you would be: 1. spend a lot of time preparing for these tech interviews. Study how they are structured. There is a lot of material online (blog posts) as well as books documenting what it takes to succeed. 2. there are some people that do paid courses on "how to interview at FAANG style companies". they may be worth depending on the upside. Note that not all companies have those types of interviews but if you are aiming for them it makes sense to prepare the best you can.
I never had any problems with passing technical interviews, so that's not what bothers me. My gripe is with the job ads, that are 100% relevant to my experience on paper, and yet somehow my applications seem to go into a black hole.
I'm not comfortable with carpet bombing 100s of companies and hoping that someone will hire me for some _arbitrary_ job. I want this _specific_ job. I have pretty specific professional interests (in an area that I'm quite experienced in) and aiming high, so there is not a lot of vacancies, that I'd be willing to consider. After filtering for remote-friendliness, what I'm left with is just a few positions. And yet, the seeming randomness of the process makes it unlikely, that I'll be even considered to be put into the interview loop.
One friend of mine, who happens to be a head of the HR at a medium-sized company, told me, that for each publicly posted SWE job ad they get several 100s of applications. So they don't even bother to review the submitted applications anymore (!). Instead, they merely wait for the recruitment agencies to pick up the ad and find some reasonable number of "vetted" candidates via their own channels and bring them in to an interview.
Overall, I think that the "market" for jobs depends a bit too much on the middlemen lately. Needless to say, that most of these middlemen are not interested in catering to candidates' aspirations, nor are they going to spend too much time looking for a perfect match. The end result is (a) total mess with regards to matching jobs to people and (b) little hope for proper career progression, because the whole process is pretty much random.
Also keep in mind that hiring tends to be seasonal. Companies are generally very aggressive at the top of the year, and by Oct-Dec things do slow down a bit (but this is not always the case, for example if a company raised some $$$ in that period). In the past I've avoided applying to postings which are more than 3 weeks old.
You could also try services like TripleByte, which flip the funnel, and help you go directly go to onsites (there are some caveats though).
For the tech rounds, it's just more practice. Unfortunately the interview process is heavily biased towards people who practice, and has little to do with your actual abilities - and you are competing against such folks. For that I've found Pramp, interviewing.io, leetcode, educative (the grokking algorithms and system design courses), GH system design primer, (our even services like Outco.io) etc. to be very useful. The good thing is that atleast in SV these bits have become fairly standardized now, and if you spend time preparing, it significantly increases your hit-rate with everyone.
It does not work like that.
Almost half of all jobs are filled through referrals by existing employees, so if you're cold applying to a company you're at best, cutting your chances in half and wasting your time.
You're also forgoing important information _for you_ if you don't know anyone at the company you're applying to. How do you really know what it's like to work there?
"The whole thing makes me feel increasingly insecure..." Don't get discouraged! There are tons of really great opportunities out there.
Remember the goal here is to get through this with a job offer at the end. You only need 1 offer. Also remember this is as much about the company as it is about you. The companies/groups you have not had success with might be a total mess.
Another thing to do is, if you have an opportunity, is to ask a lot of questions about the interviewer in a social, friendly way. Be genuinely curious about others. People love more than anything to talk about themselves.
-- Also Apple and even Google have noted that their best individual performers tend to be self-taught. I think that means that if you have the skills and interest to learn programming you tend to be pretty good at programming.
What you should worry about is whether the hiring process continues after the first interview. You moved on to tech interviews in more than half, which is decent. Again, if half of them needed something different than what you are, that is fine. Let it go.
But you only moved to an onsite about a quarter of the time - it sounds like you may have a disconnect in the tech screen. It is difficult to say what isn't working there without more info, but I'd focus your attention on that step of the process.
And one side piece of advice - your blog posts, open source contributions, speaking engagements.... those all are commendable. But mean little when it comes to hiring you. Hiring managers want to know what accomplishments you had in your work. How did you improve the business results of your former employers?
When I was hiring, there was one thing that made candidates really stand out: when they had previous experience that matched the job description exactly.
For example: I was hiring for a Mac app developer, and I got an application from someone who had developed a Mac app and published it on source forge. That's pretty much an instant hire.
The important part is not hide your relevant experience in a long, generic CV. Once you have a few years of experience, you probably have a lot of stuff in your CV, and most of it is probably irrelevant for the job you are applying to.
So it might be worth it to shorten your CV, and strongly emphasize only the parts that are relevant for the job you are applying to. Don't waste time talking about stuff you did a few years ago when it's not relevant for the job you are applying to.
any company that is always hiring is equivalently never hiring.
As for the rest of your funnel, these seem like typical numbers. I assume this is over the course of a little more than a month.
The biggest problem with interviewing self-taught programmers, is that their vocabulary is often weak. This makes it very hard to test their practitioner skill from a conversation.
If you are doing post-mortems on each of your interviews, I imagined that you will land a position soon.
- It's an imperfect system but a closest thing to a functioning one.
- Referral is the best way in.
- Apply early, within 24-48h of job posting. I setup a Tuesday/Thursday morning schedule to check and apply for new jobs. Ignored stale job postings (> 14 days).
- Apply to jobs that fit your profile. If you want to switch to a different stack, work on a project/course and add that to resume. That should get you through recruiter's filter.
- Spaced repetition is the real deal. The more interviews I gave the better I became, primarily because I got more comfortable. It also helps internalize all the concepts and bring it to your system A. Also experiment during your interviews to see feedback and engagement. Most results are canned responses so you have find signals elsewhere.
- It's a search problem (numbers game). It's akin to finding a partner. Wider the search the better. When it clicks it makes a world of difference.
The way I rationalized rejects, which is defeatist, was by thinking they know what they are doing and it's better to be rejected than to be hired and be miserable from being a bad fit. If nothing works, I for one know my worth and will build something I value.
Don't underestimate how many firms rely on academic degrees for their initial filter. It makes no sense, since few university programs turn you into a good programmer, but it's true. This differs per geography but I'd say 50 to 80% of companies will skip CVs without a proper degree if they have the luxury to do so (i.e. sufficiently many applications). Quite some even when they don't have the luxury.
This works in your disadvantage, but in the end it'll just skew the numbers and that's it. Don't take this as "get a CS degree first!" kind of advice, more like: here's an explanation for at least 50% of your rejections (probably even some you did multiple interviews with).
In other words: if you have no CS degree but can otherwise code as well as people with a CS degree and similar experience as you, then this affects you like so:
- on the job: not at all
- when searching for a job: you need to apply 2x to 4x more than others
It's not fair, but others might counter that having to spend 4-5 years in college + be in debt for decades (if you're in the US) isn't fair either.
A final observation: I've found it satisfying to recognize that job hunting (or employee hunting for that matter!) is essentially just sales. And the thing about sales is that it's a numbers game. Reach out to 100 leads, get 10 talks, land 1 customer. Job hunting is similar. It's a shit job but you just got to bite through it. Think about the years of college you saved and how much less time the extra job interviewing is costing you than taking a CS degree would.
1. I always work with recruiting agencies. Might sound odd, but they have a direct line to managers and their incentives align with yours. To that end you only submit a handful of resumes. I’ll submit some outside of the recruiting agencies as well, but generally they get the bulk of my interviews.
2. I always interview a few times a year (2-5), so I always have offers on the table. This let’s you negotiate and keeps your skills up.
3. Regarding your pass rate. You may not be applying to the correct roles and / or there are some other key-words you’re missing in your resume. Try to pack keywords where you can, because NLP is used to filter resumes as a lot of places.
4. Find someone to professionally review your resume. A recruiting agency will do this for free!
5. Practice coding interviews on leetcode (website), cracking the coding interview (book), etc.
6. Practice mock white board interviews if you can, I actually have a 6ft white board at home (for general use, but good practice)
7. What you’re seeing is normal, you’ll always face rejection. If you’re a dev, facing 50% to 90% rejection is fairly normal (From top of funnel) depending where you apply and you’re skill set.
I for one always apply to the best jobs I can get. This means I face probably higher rejection rates than average.
Note, none of this is really about your skill at the job. That can come into play for high-end niche jobs, but full-stack developers will always face the same default problem set, found on leetcode and the like.
Our idea is to offer a tool that - at first - aid the job seeker to keep track of job applications, cover letter and CV variations and also provide some insights about the process. Or saying in another form, we want to give you a understanding of your job search. For later we are aiming to have more and profound insights, allow the user to compare his journey with similar population and maybe do some predictions before hand.
Our product is for the final user, the person living the experience of sending 100's of job applications, we felt that the market for applicant tracking system is now really widespread, and we are aiming to give back some control to the applicant.
Feel free to check our page: https://www.voorjob.com we are really interested in any feedback that you can provide given you recent experience in job seeking.
Ps. If anyone have doubts we would be really happy to answer back, but since this is literally our launch, first we are going to drink a bottle (or two) of champagne :D
It takes luck, skill, and a personal match between you and a set of people at a company. At the end of the day both parties must feel like they have a good match.
Re: Tech interviews, unless you pore time into things like leet code and "cracking the code interview" tech screen will always just be psudo random.
Small, disruptive companies benefit from having a handful of really great individuals that can give them a competitive edge.
But as FAANG becomes the norm, hiring has shifted towards desiring good but ultimately hot-swappable engineers. Being a talented individual developer with something unique to offer has shifted from the ultimate asset to being a liability. On small teams at companies that value unique skills, you being featured on the front page of HN is a source of team pride. But on a team of generic engineers it's a source of jealously and resentment. I've had more then a few posts on the front page here and have personally witnessed these two extremes.
As the Misfit's once sang "Is it time to be an android not a man" and the answer is right now is leaning toward android. What can you do with this information? There are two things you can do:
The first is to make yourself the shiniest android you can. Practice leetcode (it's honestly a lot of fun) and get really good at technical interviews. Learn to think like a robot: creative answers at non-creative places will hurt you. Being an expert will hurt you. I have personally worked at a place (fortune 500 company) where a case study was technically wrong so answering with insight and understanding would cause you to fail. Instead think "how would someone with less experience answer this?" because someone with less experience wrote it. And realize that for robots this is a very stochastic process so just keep applying.
The second is even better: target interesting, smaller companies that benefit from you being the developer you are. These interviews will be easier and the job will be more rewarding. The only catch is that currently the number of these jobs is much smaller than it was 2-3 years ago. Compensation might also be less (but doesn't have to be).
Don't let the occasionally negative comments here get to you. People have a lot of anxiety about the job market so they'll want to make this your fault to reduce their own anxiety.
Good luck! It will take more time than it used to but you'll get there!
If you are someone who is not good at networking and hence finding referrals is hard, there perhaps other things you can look at.
After spending about 9 years working for myself, I decided to go back to work for others. I was in a completely new country, and hence zero network. Strategy I used was just find 5 employers and figure out what exactly they are looking for. Be very knowledgeable about their culture, tech, people, and work. Having (some) sales background was quite useful, as doing research on prospects was a known quantity.
I used a copy writer to help me write my resume and 5 different cover letters which target these companies. All of them were a great match for me. Out of 5, I was able to get technical tasks for 5. Successfully complete it for 4.[1] Land interviews, pair programming sessions with all. I rejected two companies, and got offers from other 2.
If you are dealing with external recruiters, remember it is in their best interest for you to land the job. So ask them lot of questions on what to expect in the interviews. See if they can connect you with someone who has gone through the interview process or better yet is hired by the company.
If internal interviewer, then you can still ask lot of question. Specific questions like which skills do you expect me to demonstrate during the process? Is there any specific background reading about the interview process you can point me to?
Glassdoor also often has lot of interesting information on interview questions and process at large companies.
And do not worry about rejections. I know it feels really bad, but sometimes you have to see that they are rejecting you because you are not a match for them. And hence they are not a match for you. Creator of homebrew was rejected by google in a technical interview. :) Sometimes companies value one type of technical knowledge (say abstract/theory), and you might value different type (getting things done).
[1] The company where I failed technical task - reasoning was too many comments in the code and checked in generated files in git. Hardly something I personally would have worried about as an interviewer, but again everyone has different criteria. I have seen people give bad reviews for programming tests because formatting was un-java like, or overuse of the final keyword.
> I can't figure out what the problem is
Companies don't know what they want and are incapable of hiring the best talent.
My advise is to find the tech you want to work on, and apply to those jobs. If you're short on skills in those areas, github and personal projects with go a long way if you already have general programming experience.
> feel increasingly insecure about my ability to build a career
This is a real problem for the industry. If you're focused on the front end, you're disposable I think. That area is completely commoditized and easily done by outsourcing. Focus on the infrastructure and the backend if you want to be in high demand.
I suspect that something about your resume is throwing people off. Definitely have someone technical review it.
From your interviews, do you have some sense of what's going wrong? Is there difficulty in getting through the technical challenge? Is the code possibly messy in some way? Or maybe you aren't hitting it off well with the interviewer? If you can't figure it out, then maybe a friend will be willing to mock interview and give some suggestions.
Finally, if you perform well on the job, then interview at a place with a coworker who thinks highly of you. Their reference can help get you through any bumps in the interview process, and they might even be able to pass along more detailed feedback.
https://zety.com/blog/hr-statistics
1 in 6 candidates who applied for a job were asked for an interview.
(Jobvite 2017 Recruiting Funnel Benchmark Report)
Listings intended to show investors, current employees, and others that the company is growing.
H1B required listings that are effectively taken.
Positions that executives want filled so the manager lists them with no intention of actually hiring anyone.
I’m sure there are many other reasons why applications are not getting a serious review.
Maybe there has been a cultural shift back to viewing "job hopping" as undesirable. After all, given the generally improved market, more people than ever are quitting jobs, so maybe there is a backlash. Or maybe people just kind of implicitly feel like the job market is good for now, and it won't last, and maybe the people who are out of work or underemployed should be preferred over those who are just climbing the ladder. This could be considered exploitative [by employers looking for cheap hires], but it also could be a moralistic thing.
Everybody says applying to 50 (or hundreds) of jobs is normal, but I don't think I've ever done that, including when I graduated from college. The last time I was unemployed, it took I think ~a dozen applications and maybe 3 or 4 interviews.
I've made an effort to connect with recruiters on LinkedIn for years, but I've never gotten a job that way, although I've gotten phone screens at Google and other interesting places. Dice only produces recruiter spam these days for me, although I got two jobs from corporate recruiters finding me there in the past.
Your stats make it unclear what happened after the technical interviews. If you were not rejected at the technical interview 7 times, and you got to the next step twice, then what happened to the other 5 instances? Were there any offers that you rejected?
This is an enormous red flag to me. Submitting dozens of applications almost certainly means you're not putting the required thought and attention into each one. For any given job application, you should be spending a good amount of time analyzing the job posting and researching the company and tweaking your resume so your accomplishments and responsibilities match what they're looking for.
You did PHP and JS at your last job but you're applying for a JS job? Cut down the PHP mentions and emphasize your JS-related accomplishments. You worked on e-commerce but you want a job at a content/publishing company? List an accomplishment or responsibility related to the handling of product content.
If you're doing it right, you should not have time to submit 50 applications. The shotgun approach is lazy and ineffective.
For the record, you're far from the only one who suffers from the shotgun approach. It seems extremely common, and as such, the "why isn't it working" question is very common.
Granted, I can at least get interviews. But with each rejection, even when I make it to on-sites that seem to go well, I just walk away feeling like I suck or should do something else.
It’s really hard to keep going like this at times... painful to see new grads out leetcode me / interview into FAANG right out of school :(
I feel like it's a numbers game. Technical interviews are a mess all over the board. It's sort of the joke where someone knows something is done wrong, so they do things differently, which is just as bad.
You'll probably have to keep trying your luck, hoping you find a company whose star developer just died or started a startup and they're desperate to fill the spot. Or someone who has this perfect vision of an engineer which fits you exactly.
I tried to optimize my job search the same way, and what worked for me were the things I hadn't optimized for. Like I've fine tuned my script for YC's job listing when I was actively searching, and yet two of them offered an interview when I wasn't searching. Maybe people who fine tune their resumes and cover letters feel 'off' somehow. It seems to work a bit like dating - the more stats you collect, the weirder you seem.
If you're a good developer you likely have developer friends who work for different companies. These can also be people you've collaborated on open-source projects with, or met at conferences. If you've made a good impression on them, tell them that you're looking for a job. Either they'll be interested in getting you hired to their company and getting a reference bonus, or they could hook you up with friends of them who are looking for developers.
1. Set up online profiles in as many "resume" websites as you can find and let it work for you, i.e. let recruiters find you and contact you.
2. Get out there and meet other people, and not just online but also through in-person activities that you enjoy. I was referred to and subsequently got hired in one company because the drummer of a band I joined is friends with the CEO.
And now that I'm an interviewer, I've made it a project to promote questions and processes that make people feel (1) they had a chance to demonstrate real skills that are important to doing the job (2) they experienced what it's like to work on my team and feel excited about it.
Happy to chat in more detail if you're interested, even if our firm is not the right fit for what you're after... contact info is in my profile.
- which country are you based in? (each country's job market is wildly different); are you native of that country?
- do you apply in response to job ads, or find companies you like and apply even if there are no openings?
If I can advise something regarding no responses: finding a recruiter (on LinkedIn etc.) and talking to them directly might yield better responses than applying via a blackbox website (although this is just my gut feeling).
For context I am 30 year old french, had my one and only job for 6 years doing PHP (sf2, postgres, redis, solr, rest), I have a 2 year degree where in europe most people have a 3 to 5 year degree.
Here is my statistics to applying to ads on indeed:
France: - application: 40 - noreply: 20 - phone screen: 7 - interview: 3 - landed: 1
Luxembourg (french speaking): - application: 18 - noreply: 9 - phone screen: 5 - interview: 1 - landed: 1
Remote (europe): - application: 7 - noreply: 5 - interview: 0
Spain(5)/Portugal(2)/Uk(2)/Switzerland(1): - application: 10 - noreply: 1 - phone screen: 5 - interview: 3 - landed: 0
My takes over are:
- Cover letter doesn't increase my chances of having a reply.
- Changing my CV after the feedback of a recruiter (he asked me to lie by omission) didn't improved my chances.
- I don't apply to company I recognize the name. If I do lots of people do too therefor there is a lots of better candidates than me and the company can afford to run me through many interviews.
- I don't apply to company that do more than 1 interview, they have too much time on their hands to find a reason not to hire me.
- I don't apply to company that specifically ask for a 3 to 5 years degree even if I fit the rest of the requirements.
This last job search (the one that landed my first job 7 years ago wasn't a bliss either) made me feel extremely under-confident in my capacity to grow my career even having a job.
Other interesting observations: one company called back for a second interview after six weeks. I thought they had ghosted me.
Another company (highly qualified) called for a second interview after three months.
There was a company that listed reasonable requirements on their ad, and then in the phone interview they wanted someone with extreme talent. Why waste my time? Why waste their time? Don't put hard requirements in the "nice to have" section please!
That said maybe the ratio is because you are aiming high, so it could be a good sign. A 1-1 ratio could show going for too easy jobs.
Regarding the companies rejecting you right away, my experience is that a lot of times it is either some particular key word that is missing or some other little detail they don't like. Hard to tell so as I don't know which companies rejected you.
The more important question is whether these have been your dream jobs and employers. If not, just keep in mind you do not need dozens of job offers but the one you really want.
May I ask why you want to change jobs? Seems like you are rather appreciated where you are right now.
You never mention what exactly you did, but it sounds like JavaScript and nodejs from your username. I don’t know how often you switched companies but if you switched more than 2 times in your 6 years, there might be a risk of „you build it but you don’t want to maintain it“.
I also got a similar vibe from some of your comments. Some of them sound like „I know the concepts, I build my own better React“.
It’s really not something I would like to hear in a technical interview.
There is less info in this post than on your CV, so please excuse when I read too much into it.
Also these numbers look very reasonable to me. 9 technicals out of 50 is a good rate, esp for coming from an overseas company as you said you did.
Finally, are you using the modern tools like Hired, etc? Do you have LinkedIn gold? Are you actively networking and getting internal referrals? Are you going to meetups, esp those run by companies of interest?
Getting a job is not just about sending resumes into the void and waiting.
have you been leetcoding? if not, start now. read teamblind threads on job search.
forget about your github projects, blog posts, conf talks ect. Almost noone will look at those.
good luck.
My recent job search adventures:
https://medium.com/@arctansusan/my-adventures-in-job-searchi...
Rants and Ruminations From A Job Applicant After 100 CS Job Interviews in Silicon Valley
75% of my attempts to find my own via job applications result in no response (your stats are better than mine), with zero feedback at one point or another (ghosting).
If you're not using recruiters, you should be. The discussion you get let's you sell yourself a little better than you can with a paper application only, and they often have additional info you won't find in the job descriptions
It seems like you went for quantity instead of quality. The opposite seemed to work well for me (personally, not trying to say its the only way).
I'd be happy to chat more, feel free to reach out. my email is my username at gmail.
Regarding your issue, I won’t overthink it. A lot of things can go wrong that just outside of your control.
I'm experiencing this as a college grad with 1 year web dev experience (similar accolades as you but then 1 year) and 1.5 year teaching experience.
IMO it's the interviewing thing that's completely bullshit.
Also if any company on HN is reading this, please reach out to interview this person for a frontend position.
10 years experience as Full Stack Dev, passed all the tech interviews also for some of the FAAMG group, but I was rejected after the "behavioral" interview.
I don't know what to think. I believe it is an excuse to reject candidates with higher compensation requirements.
sounds like they're doing it for compliance, so that they can hire H1B people at super low wages
Just focus your energy on the things that work, and apply for jobs where you think you get what you want.
Triplebyte is also good. Also ask around with ex-colleagues for referrals.
1. Do you have a LinkedIn profile, clearly listing your skills, accomplishments, and experience? Also with a clear, professional profile picture? Do you link to your Github page (and vice versa).
2. Do you have an account on StackOverflow careers?
3. Does your resume look crisp and clean (using a good template), with readily available information about skills and experience?
After this, remember that straight-up _applying_ to companies is well known to be the LEAST effective way to get a job.
The better way is to let companies - or at least recruiters or hiring managers at specific companies - approach you (usually LinkedIn, StackOverflow is better). This involves a lot of tending to your professional social-media profiles, love it or hate it.
The best way is of course to get hired by someone you know from prior successful professional collaboration who makes an opening at their company specifically because they want YOU.
TLDR, give a lot of attention to LinkedIn, GitHub page, StackOverflow careers profiles. Let people approach you. Don't fling out resumes to hundreds of companies like a frisbee.
Here are some tips:
- call them on the phone and pretend you have some relevant question about the job. Then slightly introduce yourself so when he/she goes through the candidates you will be remembered.
- the recruitment people are like you and me, nobody wants to see a boring CV and a application text that screams "please hire me". Sometimes I dont even upload the CV, I just link them to my github and linkedin profile and instead write short but mesmerizing applicant text. Keep it short. Its like when you read the comments section on HN or news papers. You skip the long comments because its just too much and instead read the one-liners. The same applies here.
-this is optional but having published projects are bonus. Like if you have app on appstore or websites/startups and things to show for it certainly will catch their attention.
Going off my sample size of three, yes, that looks like the average experience.
It's just a numbers game/funnel like anything in sales.
The 50 applications thing is one of the reasons I get really annoyed at people who claim software Devs have it so easy (we do) but when asked how many jobs they applied for last week it's like, oh I applied for 5 jobs over the last 6 months.
Here I am writing and sending 10 unique, researched cover letters every day. No wonder I get hired in under two weeks.