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Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

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Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

#61

Post by pokepim »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #21
zer8k wrote: post #20

My linkedin views are basically rock bottom and the twice-daily recruiter spam has stopped entirely. From my assessment of my network anyone who lost their job is looking, or has been looking for a long time. The market is effectively dead. Even if you set your sights extremely low. Even corporate suit-and-tie programmer jobs are drying up. I don't know what I'll do if I lose my job. Construction, maybe. I can't be w…

Feels like the market is good in Sydney but alas you get lower wages and the high and rising cost of living. Stagflation is rampant!

I think the market is shit only in certain HCoL places like US or west europe, everywhere else seem to be normal maybe slightly wordless than last year (but last year was crazy good)

Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

#63

Post by firefoxd »

I hate to say this, stop applying.

Find a recruiter on LinkedIn. This is what it has come to. There are thousands of resumes being sent at my company, yet the recruiter can't find anyone. Why? Because no one is applying through her link. The regular resume channel is reserved for bots at this point. Contact a person and you have more chances.

Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

#64

Post by hnaccountme »

My sense of the Tech industry is almost all the companies just jump to the new flashy hyped up buzz word "Thing". There is no real expertise any more. So its more sensible for companies to hire inexperienced people at a lower salary or offshore.

If you have to learn the "new tech" every few years there is no point of your experience.

Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

#66

Post by randomuser23423 »

For what it's worth, I'm in a 'hot' area and my application response rate is something like 3%. I've also had this bad luck where a lot of the larger companies I've been interviewing with have rejected me without giving a reason, and then a month or two later (or one time, the day after the onsite!), I'd see that they were having layoffs.

edit: and just as an aside, I'm a minority in tech, and I feel a bit like I'm more likely to get an interview (some recruiters have told me as much... wanting to increase diversity on their teams) while also more likely to get a "technical rounds were great, but not a culture fit" final decision.

Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

#67

Post by a_t48 »

jameshush wrote: post #46

Reach out to people you've worked with in the past. After having five years of experience, you should have worked with at least a handful of people who need someone to fix another broken website. These could be managers, people on your team, people on OTHER teams, vendors, salespeople you've spoken to, anyone. Ideally, you should ALWAYS keep in contact with people you've worked with, even if it's just emailing them "…

So much this - nearly every job I’ve gotten in tech has been due to knowing someone working there, or knowing someone who knows someone.

Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

#68

Post by yosito »

When you say "applying constantly", what do you mean? A few years ago, when tried cold-applying to jobs, I had to send several hundred applications to get a few good interviews, and I have a very strong resume (15 years of experience and worked at NASA). During the pandemic, I was hiring for an engineering role at a fairly unknown startup and we had to filter through over 500 applicants and interviewed only 15-20. Now, with LLMs, I imagine those numbers are an order of magnitude worse and applications are looking more and more personalized. A few bits of advice:

- Don't focus your efforts on cold applications, the numbers are against you

- If you must do cold applications, use LLMs to customize applications and aim to send out >50 per day

- Focus on your personal and extended network, reach out personally to people you know and ask them if they have any opportunities they can connect you with. Personal connections are always going to trump sitting in a stack of 1000 cold applications

Re: Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?

#69

Post by nelsonfigueroa »

Are you on LinkedIn? I am not currently looking for a job but I still get a lot of recruiters on LinkedIn reaching out to me. I get the impression that there are still a lot of opportunities out there. But then again this may not be the case in your location.
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