There's also the problem with applying too early. I applied to Anthropic, got an interview, then unexpectedly was rejected and they said I can't interview for a whole year. I feel that I'd be able to "level up" to whatever threshold I'd need to get to the next interview in less than a year, so applying as early as I did was a mistake.
How long should you "work on yourself", portfolio-wise, before you should feel confident you could meet the standards of a company? Should you just do a direct comparison with people who work there and their online profiles/GitHubs/personal websites?
* Compatibility - If a given company is full of sucky developers they are going to look for new developers who perform at the same level in roughly the same technology. If you are too good, original, or whatever you aren't compatible. Consider whether the job is looking for super elite developers who engineer the best solutions ever just to put text on screen. If you don't drink that kool-aid you probably aren't a good fit for that team/employer.
* Surviving resume death - Many companies have been getting so many resumes this year they have started ignoring resumes submitted to their own job portals. You have to bypass this by knowing somebody on the inside, having a recruiter with a strong internal relationship, or something else like this.
* Tools - Some employers over invest in external third party tools. In this case you also need to be a tool loving monkey if you wish to be hired. Your resume should scream about this and you should be able to speak to your passion of using external solutions during an interview. All of this tool over compensation must be explicit and not some implicit hints. If instead your first inclination is to write code and solve the problem with code you may not be compatible with a tool obsessed employer.
After being laid for several months this year I got tired of the hiring game. As a long time JavaScript developer everything now feels like an industry focused on entertaining over paid entitled beginners who need massively huge applications to do the most trivial things. I gave up for awhile before doubling down on my strengths and ignoring the trend nonsense of open positions and recruiters trying to fill those positions. I dropped so much of this trend stupidity from my online resume and job portal profiles like frameworks, fullstack, and whatever. Instead I did a 180 and focused on my military background with my security clearance and security certifications. I went from no resume responses over several months to quickly receiving multiple interviews and several competing job offers.
Unless you're a specialist in a narrow technical area, there's an essentially infinite number of potential employers. Not applying often enough is a more common mistake than "applying too often / applying too early."
"Market forces" and "below the standards" are not independent. Market forces influence supply, and demand (the interview standard) has to respond.
By far the best way to get a job at any company is by having a recommendation from someone who works there. (Specifically, this trumps meeting the written job requirements.) I'm not saying it's easy, but ... use your network.
You can't know if you'll succeed by trying, but you can be certain you'll always fail when you never try. This applies to far more than the job market.
As for working on yourself, I'd say do that constantly, improve continuously and keep applying. Your idea to do a comparison with people who work there is a good one, you might also message them, might find more answers that way
- how good am I in my current team/company? How good was I in my former teams/companies? I can then extrapolate to: how good I think I am for company X
It’s not an objective metric, but it works for me.
I mean if a fresher has a good profile and understanding, do companies consider giving a chance?
What’s the difference?