Ask HN: Those who have recently undertaken a job hunt, what was your experience?

For the vast majority of people you can tell by given name and surname.

You get around this by picking a gender-ambiguous nickname and using that as your given name. Ariel, Logan, Dakota, Drew, Jordan, etc.

Surnames are harder, but you're aiming for ambiguity. Williams, Johnson, Smith, Jones and Brown -- e.g., the five most common African American surnames. Other options like Kim and Lee will also get you far here.

I left big tech in September of last year and began my search maybe a couple of months before I quit. Talked to perhaps 6 companies, was more interested in some roles than others, all were remote however which was my goal. I didn’t have too difficult of a time engaging with companies, though it really helps to have that initial contact with a recruiter or an introduction, as applications to companies are just a blackhole I’m convinced. Ultimately found my new company and role from a HN who’s hiring thread, and reached out to the recruiter via email. Feel free to message if you have questions. Best of luck!

Uniformly terrible.

I started looking casually for a new position last July, then in earnest last October, and then my previous contract ended in middle of February and I "lucked" into a new contract in middle of March. ("Lucked" because I was contacted out of the blue by a good recruiter for a good firm, but also that contact was somewhat the result of a lot of prep work I had done.)

I'm a generalist developer with small-firm management experience, 45, still picking up new stuff all the time despite working in tech for over 20 years, and with some decent extracurriculars.

I sent out many, many applications. A percentage of them required homework of varying kinds -- tests or generating and filling out a profile that contained all the same data as my resume. Most of those never resulted in an interview, so it was all wasted effort.

I had several promising leads evaporate at some point during the interview process because the company changed their mind about the position. Other interviews never provided any feedback whatsoever.

My current contract is for a firm that needed someone with extensive PHP experience, which I have, but they were a Ruby-only shop and needed to do a technical evaluation on me. So, I spent a week preparing for that interview until I was reasonably comfortable with basic Ruby, only for it never to come up during the interview after all. And, like, these seem to be pretty good people overall -- it's just emblematic of the state of things.

I very, very nearly quit tech to start working towards becoming a personal trainer, and may still do so at the end of this contract. In my view, getting hired right now is in some ways even harder than it was during the dotcom bust of the early 2000s. If you are a specific kind of person -- 20s, maybe some college, and experience at a FAANG, and "senior" or "lead" after just a couple of years in the industry -- then you might have some options.

Hiring processes are fractally broken though. People are getting hired, there are jobs available, but there are also hundreds of applicants for any position within a few hours of the position opening, and because hiring processes are so broken, it's quite hard to stand out as an applicant.

Was laid off last April. After around 100 resumes, it took me about 5 months to land another position through a recruiter. It was contract to hire, but due to budget cuts I was laid off again in December. Found another contract gig that lasted 3 months, and just started another 6 month contract to hire gig.

10+ years experience in infra, very well rounded, lots of projects to show off my skills. Out of the hundreds of apps I've put in in the last year, maybe 5 call backs, got passed on in 2 interviews (was legitimately not what they were looking for, can't blame them).

It's brutal out there. I wouldn't waste your time tailoring resumes or cover letters. The call back ratio is so low it's just not worth it.

My experience was I was 100% ignored by companies using Lever or Greenhouse for their applications. I don't know if that's a sign of their company processes, some bit of info on my resume, or if those tools offer the recruiter girls a quick way to ignore/filter out certain people, but FYI. I don't bother with applying to those anymore.