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Ask HN: Feeling quite disheartened about job search, any advice?

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Re: Ask HN: Feeling quite disheartened about job search, any advice?

#13

Get your CV/resume reviewed by friends/former colleagues or hell even here on HN. I have seen some ... let's say "wacky" CVs. It feels like though the market is somewhat in the doldrums now - I have no direct experience of current conditions but at my BigCo (deliberately not naming) hiring is basically stopped, even for backfill/attrition. Seems like companies are kinda spooked at the moment and not really hiring, an…

And I'll add that sometimes contracts lead to permanent jobs.

Re: Ask HN: Feeling quite disheartened about job search, any advice?

#15
The market did get tougher. It's not you. That means that you have to put considerably more effort, or a different kind of effort, to land a job.

Think about landing the job as a numbers game. There are a bunch of steps, connected into a pipeline. Roughly, it's 1. find offers 2. apply 3. prescreen 4. interviews 5. offer

At each step of the pipeline, you will have fewer and fewer offers that will remain. Your goal is to bring one through the whole pipeline.

Think about the pass rate. Say you got 3 offers, but two were bad, and you accepted one. That's 33% pass rate.

You got invited for interviews at 20 firms, and three ended in offers. That's a 15% pass rate.

You were sent 30 pre-screening questionnaires, and got 20 interview invites. 66% pass rate.

You applied to 100 jobs, and got 30 pre-screening questionnaires. 30% pass rate.

These numbers are made up. You can work on any step of the pipeline and try to do things differently to see if it improves your pass rate.

In your case, are you not getting enough interviews? Or are you getting tons of interviews but are not getting any offers (or are not getting invited to a 2nd interview).

If it's the first, maybe you need to devote attention to your resume, cover letter, LinkedIn profile.

If it's the latter, maybe better interview prep or coaching will help.

It's a numbers game. You have to keep trying, but also tweak the steps along the way.

If you have any concrete questions or would like some help, my contact info is in my profile.

Re: Ask HN: Feeling quite disheartened about job search, any advice?

#18
I feel you. I've been there a couple of months ago. Luckily it turned around and I got two offers in one week after months of nothing. I have 10 years of fullstack experience and some tech lead experience. The job market feels hard now. Few years ago it took me a few weeks to fill my calendar with interviews...
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