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Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?

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Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?

#221
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there is a surplus of talent, a company would rather hire someone who has background in the current stack and can jump right in. If there is a lack of talent, companies hire whatever is even close and trains the new stuff. Seems pretty straightforward to me.

It is very short term thinking, which doesn't seem straightforward to me.

My guess is that the company's aim is to improve short-term profitability with little regard for the future.

Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?

#222
Yeah so I have many recruiters and recruitment company owners in my network. I get as many emails asking if I am hiring as I did asking if I am looking for work.

The UK tech job market is dead.

And there is more than one reason. One being brexit and an exodus of talent which was followed by jobs. Second is the increased restrictions of IR35. Third is an influx of visa bound cheap labour. I kept telling people that EU workers with equal rights increase overall pay, while visa bound people will decrease it. I know because I was at the some of the tables where this topic has been discussed and desired.

And finally, the economy. The UK is in a heavy recession and it’s not just anecdotes it’s statistics too. Poverty is at all time high with millions of people unable to pay energy bills or afford food. Sometimes these stats leak in the press. There’s a good reason why some people say it’s worse than in east europe.

None of this has a reflection on _you_. It’s merely a numbers game and identifying growth areas. Data engineering is growing and data engineers lack software development practices. Perhaps explore that area. Software security is another - there will be much more trashware written, particularly using prose generators. It will also go up in demand.

Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?

#223
currently looking for work in the uk for the first time in 2 years and having the exact same thing. 100% of the recruiters i speak to call me because they found my CV, tell me about a job, ask me if i'm interested, i say yes, they say "great, i'll send over the job spec now" and then i never hear from them again. out of curiosity i picked one recruiter and repeatedly called him back every time he said he would send it and didn't, at first he kept saying he forgot, and then pivoted to saying that he did send it and to check my spam folder etc. it can't be anything i'm saying to them because even the ones who contact me by email and ask if they can call me never respond to me when i say something along the lines of "Good morning, yes I am very interested in this role and would love to know more about it, my number is XXXXXXXXXXX."

i don't know what they get out of this but i'm getting pretty fucking tired of being interrupted by 10 minute phone calls 5-6 times a day when the recruiters have zero intention of following through on any of it in the first place.

Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?

#224
post #88

You are apparently in the UK, but the job market in the U.S. has similarly been very spooky lately. I was laid off and have received almost no interviews outside of a single previous employer. My resume was flat out rejected, even from places that I had previously worked or was made an offer from as little as a year or two ago. It was really weird. As in, previous contacts would not even reply to emails or LinkedIn m…

It’s not you. Nobody is hiring. The ones that say so are in no rush. Executives are pushing hard on doing more with less and improving profitability. Things should loosen up when the Fed and EU announce rate cuts this year. Hang on. I know this isn’t the answer you were hoping to hear. Perhaps try your luck with contracting? There is more openness to that in this climate (lower threshold to commitment).

We really need to stop assuming there's going to be rate cuts in 2024, especially from a trying to get a tech job perspective.Rate cuts aren't going to happen unless there's a weak economy

Inflation numbers came in hotter than expected this week. Consumer sentiment is improving. Employment is still high. Investment in manufacturing was massive in 2023.

these same people predicting rate cuts were the sames ones predicting a recession in 2023.

The economy is weird now.

Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?

#225
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

the "perfectly rational markets" expect the central banks to lower interest rates. which actually assumes that something economically worse happens in the meantime because as it is now, the fed is _not_ lowering.

core CPI is dropping and most of the growth in December was real-state (which is on a downward trend)

Some consumer prices deflated last month

Wider economy job data is not as hot (december was 40k higher than expected but 70k jobs were erased from octo and november payroll so its cooling)

while the fed may not cut in march i think its likely they will cut at least once or twice in '24

Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?

#226
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Jan layoffs are "normal" (cant lay off people in holidays and new financial planning for new year) and tech isnt particularly affected (city group laid off 20k people, mostly finance), whereas most tech layoffs were in the hundreds by company and were in Companies who didnt make a profit (Twitch and Unity after their controversy)

So i believe that things are getting better as data showed December '23 being the best month of 23 for tech job growth.

Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explaining how you’ve impacted the bottom line isn’t BS, it’s how business works. Failing to understand this is a common mistake made by technical people, unfortunately.

We're engineers, not MBAs. That's a good thing, and it should stay that way.

then you are just the labour force and disposable.

Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?

#228
post #214

Your CV doesn't tell me anything you accomplished, it just lists things you did. Hiring managers want to know the impact of your work, not a page of bullets that all say: "I did a thing." Picking one at random: "Worked on frontend and backend systems for this health tech company." OK... and what impact did your work have? Can you cite a qualitative improvement on the business due to your work? If not, can you at leas…

how am i supposed to measure my impact when i am one of several team members in a 50 people company all working on issues for a huge website the company is maintaining for a customer. when we are all working together to push the work forward, no individual contribution has a chance to stand out.

You don't need to measure your impact. It's enough to describe it. "Helped a large client improving their web presence for achieving increased conversion rates." Of course, you were part of a team and of course, you can't show precise statistics. But if they existed, would those stats be worth anything to a recruiter? Your next job will be different in many aspects. No recruiter will read some stats and say, "oh, that person's work increased the company's revenue by 1.5%, so we expect the same result at our company."

In a CV, the impact you made is a story to tell, not a number to calculate.

Re: Ask HN: Why am I suddenly unemployable?

#229
Because we have gone from a feast to a famine.

I took some time off my normal job/contracting roles in 2022 to create and launch an app idea I had. Then, I only started looking again last year (UK) and it was tumbleweed. I only got a decent contract this December.

I also had a brief snazzy 1 page CV and a long 3 page buzzword CV, as PDFs only. But when I did a CV workshop with a recruiter he gave me several good advice.

First, recruiters hate PDFs, especially contract ones that need to add their template headers to etc. If yours is too much effort, they will just discard it. So I have both PDF and Word versions available.

Second the top half of the first page is what matters. They will glance to see if you are relevant. So highlight what you can do. But do not give them a wall of text.

Thirdly they only really care what you have done in the last couple of years. I used to detail great roles I had a decade ago. It is in fact for the recruiter nearly irrelevant. So I made the older ones very terse and expanded the recent ones. But not too much.

I still have my 1 pager https://eray.uk/cv/ivar/short/ but recruiters now get a new 2 page CV and mostly as a word doc.

In a famine, they may get 20 or even 50 CVs/resumes per role. They will only glance at a fraction of those. Make yours stand out. But most importantly call them repeatedly to remind them who you are so that yours get added to the relevant pile.

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