This does seem to be a very short list of rejections from my perspective as a current CS student at a decent state university in the US. During applications season in the fall it's not uncommon for my peers to apply to between 20 and 100 job postings. This tracks for students seeking internships and those seeking full-time employment. This past year I applied to less jobs than I ever have and still applied to 16 postings (all of which I was reasonably qualified for, no FAANG) before landing my current internship. The year prior I applied to far, far more.
All my career rejections
211–220 of 224 posts
Re: All my career rejections
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some delta between these two is true of all professions. How is the employer supposed to know what your skills are? Assessing this is a skill and there are only badly flawed tools available.
Every time this kind of argument is made, I am tempted to remind people that all other professions do without this kind of thing (except finance I think). But then I remember only FAANG type companies require skills, bridges are built by randomly selected people.
And those fields will have plenty of capable people who don't get a shot with the best firms because they didn't go to the right schools, or know the right people, or use the right buzzwords on their resume.
The coding screen is a less dirty shirt in a pile of dirty laundry. At least it's an objective measurement, even if it doesn't measure precisely the right thing.
Re: All my career rejections
#213Re: All my career rejections
#214Funniest rejection I've gotten: I once applied to mid-size company and during the phone screen helped them understand the role they wanted/needed was actually a senior program manager position.
They later contacted me to thank me for helping them understand the role they needed to interview for. They adjusted the listing but said that they would not be bringing me in for an interview...
Re: All my career rejections
#215Success may only come once out of every 100 times you try. So you better get over failing and iterate quickly if you want to make it. Fail fast so you can move on. Interviewing is a skill just like talking to women. you need practice before you will succeed. And practice necessarily means rejection. People who are afraid to fail will never succeed. They put too much weight on a particular thing and then are crushed w…
This is such a hostile system. It keeps the market from clearing, both for jobs and for women. No wonder people drop out and play video games. I eventually got pushed past the fear of rejection when my failure-free factory job went sour, but my successful career since then shows it was a waste to put so much rejection in my way. The real world is Nintendo-hard, and that sucks.
Re: All my career rejections
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
Am I supposed to forget that the vast majority of companies find me unhireable?
In a sense, yes. The trick is to analyze the event (i.e. the attempt and the failure) to learn lessons for improvement and not allow it to be a reflection and definition of you . Are you applying for the wrong type of jobs, are you preparing for the interview properly, how do you distinguish yourself from the crowd, are your expectations too high, are you willing to settle for lower pay, are you networking properly e…
Tips to distinguish from the crowd?
Re: All my career rejections
#217I did something similar last year after getting rejected by FAANGs and few more other tech companies. - Google rejected 3 times. - Facebook 2 times. - Amazon(AWS) 1 times. - Adobe 1 Times. - Twitter, Github, stripe and others won't even consider me good enough for an interview. - Dozens others companies, who do FAANG style interviewing. I fear rejections, no matter how much I "try" to act normal. I was looking forwar…
You think that’s unbelievable? I’ve literally had a company recruiter tell me that I should probably spend a few hours on leetcode and hackerrank before the interview. That turned out to be predictive, because they rejected me mostly based on my inability to do well on those kinds of tests. I got a life people. Between taking care of my son, wife and work, where am I supposed to find ‘a few hours’ to spend on somethi…
Reduce your daily TV watching and/or social media interaction by one hour, and you now have one hour a day to do this. Aim to get a remote job so that you save another hour or two from the daily commute. I did this. It works.
Re: All my career rejections
#218Reading the post and comments I realise that I have been very lucky so far in my 25+ year career. It’s good and humbling to see how hard it can be in general.
Re: All my career rejections
#219I get it, and I think we've all been hurt. But why keep this list? I remember when I had a stellar year at a big corp. My manager said `nothing bad to report, wow`. I was ready for that S - a Special automatically meant a promotion. A few weeks later, when the whole R&D got the performance letter, I received mine with a C. D usually meant `demitido`, or fired in portuguese. I couldn't believe it, and I kept that lett…
> I remember when I had a stellar year at a big corp.
What made the year stellar?
Re: All my career rejections
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
In a sense, yes. The trick is to analyze the event (i.e. the attempt and the failure) to learn lessons for improvement and not allow it to be a reflection and definition of you . Are you applying for the wrong type of jobs, are you preparing for the interview properly, how do you distinguish yourself from the crowd, are your expectations too high, are you willing to settle for lower pay, are you networking properly e…
Tips to distinguish from the crowd?
Do a google search for "how to stand out from the crowd in the job market". Among the ones which came up https://www.job-hunt.org/ , https://www.job-hunt.org/job-search-navigation/job-search-na... seem more relevant.
You have to work on your ability, specialize in something and advertise it strongly. There is something i call "increasing the surface area of your luck". It is not enough to just know a language/framework/tool/etc. but you need to go "under the hood" which a "normal" engineer would not bother about eg. knowing how to write multithreaded code but not knowing how SMPs/Caches/Memory Barriers etc. work is not good. You also need to phrase your CV in such a manner (i.e. not a simple list of what you know/done) that you grab the reader's attention eg. instead of saying "i am a experienced C++ programmer" say something like "C++ multi-paradigm programmer with the ability to span all levels of abstraction". Finally, you will be surprised what wonders engaging persistently with Recruiters/Companies/Clients can get you i.e. don't take an initial "no" for a final answer.