Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?

#141

Post by sn9 » Mon, Jan 15, 2024, 10:34 PM UTC

pgwhalen wrote: post #130

eek2121 wrote: post #125

You aren't. The economy is absolute garbage right now. I'm in the US and the situation is similar here. I've never had an issue finding a job before either, but I've been unemployed since the middle of 2023. Assuming you aren't under financial hardship, my advice is to spend more time on your hobbies and check back in around July/August. That is when the layoffs are projected to drop and hiring is expected to keep up…

I truly do not mean this in a snarky way - who is projecting that layoffs are projected to drop and hiring is expected to pick up around July/August?

Interviewing.io compared public data to their internal data and make a compelling argument for hiring to pick up in Q2 [0], though I don't know if the recent spate of 2024 layoffs change this calculus.

[0] https://interviewing.io/blog/when-is-hiring-coming-back-pred...

Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?

#142

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jan 15, 2024, 10:44 PM UTC

lurking15 wrote: post #124

ownagefool wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have £19m to £75m revenue in approx 20 months bootstrapped start-up CTO on my CV. In the UK market folks aren't particularly receptive to that sort of thing.

In that case, I wonder if that makes you seem overqualified?

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?

#143

Post by PretzelJudge » Mon, Jan 15, 2024, 10:46 PM UTC

It isn't you. I have a solid resume (I know because I've interviewed hundreds of people in my career), but the market is just much slower. In 2020-2022 I was getting 5-10 recruiters reaching out every week. If I thought something was interesting, I'd respond saying that I'm not really looking for anything new, but I'm open to a conversation. People would still be thrilled to speak to me, even though I was upfront that I'd only leave for something perfect.

Lately, I get maybe one person reaching out every month. I responded to one last week, even though I'm not looking, just to see what the job market is like. I was ghosted.

I think we're just not in a hiring frenzy right now. People don't want to leave their jobs and risk it on something new. Some companies are laying off. For the companies that are hiring, they are probably seeing many more applicants and a higher conversion rate.

Things will come around.

Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?

#144

Post by FireBeyond » Mon, Jan 15, 2024, 10:53 PM UTC

bmitc wrote: post #89

philipwhiuk wrote: post #37

Beware the comments here from the US that don't apply to UK CVs - which are a different style. Personal intros are not important. I can't see any job titles - which is frankly more important than the company and makes it easier to skim sections of experience Definitely go into more detail than just "Worked on" and "Used" - anything on stuff the company uses in the CV is not confidential and you can put on your CV. Fi…

> Finally put months on your CV - it's not clear if your most recent role was 12 months or 1. I've stopped doing that because it gets tiring why I changed so frequently in recent years. It's not my fault places go bankrupt, startups do layoffs, or teams just up and dissolve after you join, and it gets tiring explaining that rather than discussing my experience, skills, and interests and the role at hand. It was a tot…

I've had way too many ATS's that require day of month. Like WTF.

My automatic response there when filling out is "start date is always first of month, end date is always last of month".

Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?

#145

Post by v1l » Mon, Jan 15, 2024, 10:59 PM UTC

Why are you not freelancing in the interim?

Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?

#146

Post by da39a3ee » Mon, Jan 15, 2024, 11:02 PM UTC

freedomben wrote: post #99

I do hiring in the US not the UK, but I'm only (I'm guessing) a few years older than you so you probably had the "keep it to one page" rule pounded into your head. I get a lot of resumes, and that is definitely not the case anymore. Two to three pages is perfectly fine. I would suggest: 1. Add a list of skills and/or technologies you're particularly good in. You can include stuff you've used but aren't current in, bu…

Yes but this is misleading and missing the point: there is nothing really wrong with this person's resume/CV. There is nothing about it which is off-putting and it does the job of communicating that this person is a very experienced software engineer who can communicate clearly, and has enough attention to detail and care to produce a nicely formatted CV and that they're obviously a reasonable candidate for pretty much any programming job that's close to their centre of gravity wrt the technologies required for the job.

I also don't really understand why some people with decent CVs are getting literally no bites at all. Has the number of incoming resumes increased a lot in the last year or two? Is it because everyone across the country is applying for the same remote jobs?

Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?

#147

Post by StreetChief » Mon, Jan 15, 2024, 11:03 PM UTC

ath3nd wrote: post #70

cooper_ganglia wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with many of your points, but the comical levels of unadulterated doomerism make it hard to take very seriously. The world isn’t over because a company decided some unnecessary backend employees didn’t need to work there anymore. Standards of living have never been higher, worldwide poverty has never been lower, all hand-delivered to each of us via capitalism.

Capitalism is like a sleight of hand trick, a cheap con designed to distract with stupid toys and distractions while it robs you blind. It pretending that it's creating value, while never showing where the value comes from. Often it comes from extraction from other places. What the OP is experiencing is merely one of the many ugly heads of the very much real process of extracting value in pursuit of profit. There are…

The fact someone so skilled can't find work sets off so many alarm bells for me.

Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?

#148

Post by maerF0x0 » Mon, Jan 15, 2024, 11:11 PM UTC

One PSA - Please file for unemployment! The government won't be as incentivized to help you until you're their liability ;) In the US we've seen labor force participation decline which allows governments to claim unemployment is lower than it is.

Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?

#149

Post by elzbardico » Mon, Jan 15, 2024, 11:19 PM UTC

brianwawok wrote: post #113

elzbardico wrote: post #105

As someone else said, forget the one-page rule, you're cutting content that it takes some experience and good will to infer from what you wrote. Screeners receive a lot of resumes, and you don't want them to be left wondering if your experience is relevant or not, at least not on this market. 2 to 3 pages for someone with a few years of experience is perfectly acceptable in software development.

When I’m hiring if still prefer 1, and give negative points to anyone that goes longer.

Why?

Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?

#150

Post by hightrix » Mon, Jan 15, 2024, 11:35 PM UTC

lumost wrote: post #41

I’d suggest using a standard linear format. On first glance, it looked like there was a gap of 5 years in your experience from 2010-2015 (there isn’t, but it took me a minute). As others have noted, you need to emphasize what you’ve done. I’d eliminate every “worked on” statement with something like “solved X bugs, launched Y product, lead z engineers, improved K metric, owned B area, used d,I,g technologies of inter…

Seconded. I initially thought there were a lot of gaps in work history. In today's tech hiring climate, if I were reviewing this resume along with a pile of others, I'd see the gaps (regardless of if they are really gaps), disqualify, and quickly move to the next resume.