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Ask HN: Recruiters have stopped contacting me? What could have happened?

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Re: Ask HN: Recruiters have stopped contacting me? What could have happened?

#44

Been "looking" since November. I'm still averaging 1 recruiter message every few days on LinkedIn, but 95% of them are from agencies with vague pitches for contract roles I'm not interested in. The daily messages I used to get from recruiters hiring directly for permanent positions at medium-to-large US tech companies dried up sometime last year. I'm applying directly to open roles on those companies' websites instea…

Yeah that sounds pretty close to what my experience has been recently. The most disheartening part so far has been getting ATS-rejected from a job, only to see the same job freshly posted again a few weeks later.

Yeah, it's been an interesting emotional experience to flip from years and years of "I should have no problem getting a job at any tech company if I don't screw up the leetcodes" to "I'm not even worth a 30 minute recruiter chat for this role, let alone a technical phone screen or a full interview loop" :)

Re: Ask HN: Recruiters have stopped contacting me? What could have happened?

#45

The tech bubble is bursting, did you miss the memo? Even after the recent dead cat bounce, FAANG stocks are down 30%+ with their revenue growth collapsing and they are laying off workers, and it's a whole lot worse for all the non-profitable zombie companies that have been surviving solely on ZIRP and Quantitative Easing absurdly loose financial conditions that have come to an abrupt halt. Naive investors in the tech…

> dead cat bounce I’m not following the analogy here. What is a dead cat bounce - does it describe the stock curve?

People closing short positions causing causing a small bounce in an otherwise dead asset

Re: Ask HN: Recruiters have stopped contacting me? What could have happened?

#46
It's a recession and still happening. I think expecting things to improve in Q2 is too optimistic. It will probably take at least 9 months before a bottom. And probably a couple of years before a blooming job market again. (Obviously this is just my personal opinion)

Re: Ask HN: Recruiters have stopped contacting me? What could have happened?

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> dead cat bounce I’m not following the analogy here. What is a dead cat bounce - does it describe the stock curve?

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/deadcatbounce.asp "if you throw it out the top floor window, even a dead cat would bounce". I shouldn't use the phrase though, as I'm actually very fond of cats. I think it's an example of society's bias against cats. If it were called "dead dog bounce" it would likely be taboo

To create an image, you have to use something. You can't just say 'dead thing bounce'. Maybe it's unfair to cats since I would agree that not all choices for 'thing' are equally acceptable. No 'dead baby bounce'. But still it must be something actual and not purely abstract, else it's not an image and does not do the job an image does.

Re: Ask HN: Recruiters have stopped contacting me? What could have happened?

#48
post #41

On LinkedIn you have to reply to the recruiters to get more to contact you. 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.

Devs are the 'product' on LinkedIn, I think this could be possible. It could make sense de-rank "inactive" profiles in recruiter searchers to better connect recruiters to candidates that will engage.

I could also see LinkedIn tweaking the algorithm to respond to the changing labor market. When the labor market is tight, get the recruiters any dev profile that meets their criteria, even if it's unlikely to engage. When the power shifts to the employer, it could make sense to de-rank inactive profiles and focus on getting recruiters in-touch with candidates that will engage.

As a side note, I know that LinkedIn gives me a lot more engagement when I engage with other people's content, and it gives me less engagement when I don't engage with my feed.

Re: Ask HN: Recruiters have stopped contacting me? What could have happened?

#49
post #33

I don't think it's 1 or 2 at all. I know that you probably don't want to hear this right now, but there's just not nearly as many companies looking for candidates right now as compared to a year ago. There are many companies who are actively laying people off right now. Public companies are doing it, whether they need to or not. Even more so, startups and any other yet-to-be-profitable companies are not sure when the…

Another benign explanation: all the recruiters have been laid off.

Re: Ask HN: Recruiters have stopped contacting me? What could have happened?

#50

Yeah, it's like seventh time is the charm; this time the Amazon goons might finally have meant it when they said "this will be our final attempt to contact you".

It took seven goes for Google recruiters to leave me alone!
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