Usually, like most devs, I imagine, I get a number of recruiters flooding into my LinkedIn account, particularly if I have my account set to show I’m open to new jobs. At first, this seemed to be the case, but I was being very selective with who’d I’d talk to. If a recruiter wanted me to jump through hoops, or refused to give me any information about the role/company/etc. they were hiring for id just ignore them.
Then around mid-December I just stopped getting any contact from recruiters. Nothing about my LinkedIn profile had changed so I figured people must just be in break for the holidays, and so I decided to just sit around for a while.
But it’s February now and I haven’t had a single recruiter reach out to me since December 16th and I have no idea why. Someone suggested reset and reapply the “looking for jobs” status on my account, but that didn’t seem to work.
There’s only a couple things I can thing of offhand.
1) Remote-status. I’ve read that looking for remote right now might be much more difficult with the flood of candidates into the market, but that doesn’t make too much sense because even though my profile was set to prefer remote, I did get some local recruiters in my inbox for a bit.
2) Weird internal ranking system. Not to sound conspiratorial, but I’ve started to wonder if LinkedIn downranks people in searches if they don’t engage, and around November I was ignoring a lot of recruiters. I’m not sure if it’s likely, but it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve heard of something like that.
For reference, I have around 5 years professional experience, mostly in the .NET enterprise world, but have worked with other things in the last and many things outside of work. Anyone noticed this before? Is there anything I can do to get recruiters to start talking to me again, or am I just in a very bad market?
Naive investors in the tech bubble forgot the hotdog stand problem: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4558508-what-hotdog-vendors... so many got burned and they aren't coming back any time soon.
Meanwhile, there's many companies in a second boat. Companies that are doing fine but are worried about choppy waters ahead. Perhaps they are hiring for key roles or to fill spots of people who leave. But on the whole, they want to protect what they have and don't see this as the time to push for major growth.
The good news is that there is definitely a third boat. Companies that are raising money because they have an outstanding product or idea. Companies that raised large amounts of money before things started going sour. And of course, profitable companies with sound businesses that see opportunities to grow further. It seems to me like there are still a significant number of companies in this third boat, so I wouldn't be too worried yet. That said, if you are swimming around in the ocean right now, the water is definitely getting cold. I'm not saying to get on any boat that comes around, but you probably don't want to wait around for a 100ft yacht.
One thing I suggest trying is applying out of North America, and look towards relocating somewhere like Germany. They've been thirsty for talent for a while, it hasn't died down as much as it has in this bubble bursting in Silicon Valley, and although they haven't exactly been attracting it given they don't pay as much it's probably a sacrifice you should be willing to consider if you want to stay in this industry. [1]
An important first step if you're considering this route is signing up here at EURES. [2] That alone will make you more attractive to recruiters out in that direction if you choose to try and go through them, although personally I don't like them taking a cut and can apply just fine on my own.
[1] https://www.itworldcanada.com/post/germany-set-to-hire-laid-...
Plenty of companies hire remote and even if they don't have an open role being advertised, this is your opportunity to reach out to hiring managers and start a conversation. If you want to be selective, you also need to be more proactive especially if you are out of a job.
The market right now is a bit cooler as you can see the layoffs happening but if you are good at what you do, you can always find a role. You just may have to look more yourself since the easy days of waiting for recruiters to approach you is over at least for now.
Market is destroyed at the moment. Everyone is working around the absolute essential/core with less resources.
Market is also flooded by hi-tech professionals at the moment. Probably thousands or more of them.
I have a bunch of other thoughts. Happy to chat or hop on a call if you're looking for some feedback (no, I'm not a recruiter). My email is in my profile.
1. Re-Adjust your reality. If you have had a very high salary with 2-3 years of experience, that was an exceptional event. You'll need to re-figure out how much you are worth.
2. Accept to work on some company that doesn't necessarily check all your boxes.
I happen to be in this particular position: I am both hiring and also looking for a job. It's very difficult to get anyone senior right now. It's also very difficult, for me, to find a position that checks my boxes and still pays a reasonable salary vis-a-vis my skill set. Part of the problem, many companies have difficulty making a value assessment of my contribution's worth.
210,000+ people in IT now lost their job since start of 2022
The important thing here is: its not you.
So, no budget means no funds to pay for new initiatives, no clear staffing requirements, hence no open job reqs and no engaged recruiters seeking to fill them. For this time of year, thats a pretty rational explanation.
Which is funny as a few recruiters called in December asking what I was looking for - even weirder was the interview loop that failed to call back after we got the interview done and was in salary negotiation phase as they were wanting to chisel me down due to lack of one skill they used but I obviously had experiences all around it and parallel to it. I said fine and came down then no communication since.
I just think that everyone is all bunched up about inflation as costs have gone up across the board.. ask anyone who does the grocery shopping or eats out all the time.
It's a good time for fintech and healthcare who've had to play second tier with all the FAANG-like companies as now there is a flood of talent who have had a long need of people who have the skills and experience - and people still need to pay bills.
So hang in there, apply where you can, up your skills - remote work isn't going away immediately but workers should be aware if mgmt uses this as a way to force their will - I think most mid-managers however also see the benefit of remote and hybrid work even if the C-Suite would rather see people being micromanaged... :)
I have noticed a period with no recruiters reaching out to me since around the start of December, too. But now I'm back to the usual volume of InMail, emails, and so on.
Recruiters are no longer in hunting mode, they are gathering. You need to take an active role and not wait for a recruiter to reach out to you if you want a dev position in this economic climate. You need to do the work now.
> I was being very selective with who’d I’d talk to. If a recruiter wanted me to jump through hoops, or refused to give me any information about the role/company/etc. they were hiring for id just ignore them.
So you burnt some bridges and are wondering why you can’t cross a river?
As others have said, the market is just not in the right place for now. How about directly applying via their websites/LinkedIn/AngelList (cant remember their new name)?
If you reply to every recruiter who contacts you, even if you mention you're not interested, you will have a higher rate of recruiters contacting you.
I thought this was a given?
I realised years ago that if I visit LinkedIn I appear in more searches and seem to get more connection requests.
I've gone through periods of not using LinkedIn, and I get nothing, then I log back in, flick through my feed and within a day I've usually got at least one new connection request from a 2nd degree connection..
LI does seem to reward engagement, so I'd suggest you start engaging and see if it helps (though as per all the other responses, there's also a few good reasons that it's quiet at the moment).
LI could be seeing a lack of activity and interpreting that you're working. For example, I browse LI jobs and occassionally apply. Eventually, I get recommendations from LI Learning that are job search oriented.
Yes, the market is different. But if you don't look active the algorithm isn't going to waste time with you either.
Also 5 years is nothing and still in +-junior category unless you are top 1% of devs but then we wouldn't be reading this. Nobody wants juniors when times are not OK, for very good reasons.
TBH this is a bit surreal read and shows how entitled some software devs are, I'm keeping it polite but it ain't easy. Maybe whole field needs some hard reset and align it more with rest of engineering.
1. Some recruiters are told to prefer candidates with jobs or newly out of jobs because on average they are usually higher quality.
2. More importantly the market has softened quite a bit.
So from my point of view, it ain't your fault.
If you're not already, start contributing to some open source projects (particularly of the high impact or popular variety). That way it doesn't look like you've forgotten everything. Who knows, you may also get a job offer through that work -- I've worked at places that have offered jobs to contributors who work on the open source code we had. It was rare, so don't exactly expect it, but you never know where opportunities come from.