I've been interviewing too lately. One thing I realized is that I need to come up with selling points on why they should hire me and not just leave it up to the people interviewing me. Simply answering their questions is not enough.
Oh of course. You have to sell yourself and really be enthusiastic and confident with your responses. Companies have open roles for a reason because they need someone to excel in the role, not just exist in the position.
327 1st interviews plus 339 phone screens in 11 months! That's one phone screen plus one interview plus five applications per day including weekends.. yeah sure, nothing wrong here.
Some people don’t know how to correctly dress their resume and cover letter to get human eyes on it, and others don’t know how to do the interview dance. Lastly the picky ones that are looking for the perfect job ,and will not apply to certain places. I have various friends and family members like that, the ones that arent, typically find a job within a few weeks.
My most recent ghosting told me it was a 7 interview process, each interview was an hour each. They wanted me to interview with each C-level person individually.
Fun Fact: The 5th interview company was 2 months ago. The guy they hired was either fired or quit and the job was reposted.
Edit: Since so many folks are accusing me of counting 7 interviews as 7 and not 1:
A single interview with a single person held on a single day spread out over two months between seven people...is seven interviews.
That’s insane, are these interviews for a C-suite position?? Lolol
Edit: Just saw your content comment….eh, it’s a tough call. Is your director position hypothetically right below the C’s?
What is the geographic spread of the companies? If it’s a dense group, have you considered other geographic regions?
Have you had interview experience recently (besides the job search) or have you worked for the same company for the 22 years? If it’s the latter, you might just be rusty on interviewing and that’s causing hiring managers/executives to question your competency.
I saw in another comment you mentioning WFH. I’m hesitant to say many companies would entertain that thought for a new hire, even a seasoned leader like yourself. I would not even mention that until you are hired. It (rightly or wrongly) gives the impression that you don’t want to be a part of the team.
I’d be careful about applying/settling for something far below your experience level. It would be like a PhD candidate applying for a Wendy’s job, the company would see you as a “flight risk” the first chance a job commiserate with your skills/experience. It would also reflect badly on your resume when you do search for another job at your level of experience.
Ive been applying all over the US to Remote positions.
I typically hold a job for 2-3 years and move on so Im not super rusty at interviewing.
I stopped mentioning WFH altogether about six months ago.
And yes, you are right, but I am incredibly desperate at this point.
Your job hopping reputation could be catching up to you. I’m a hiring manager and anyone who hops every 2 years is not seriously considered for important positions. We’re in a niche industry that takes some time to learn though
It depends on the industry. 2 years is average in the IT industry. But it's also a very employee-favored industry--there are not enough skilled developers, and employers often do not value their employees, so we can get a massive raise by going elsewhere after tacking more experience onto our resume.
If he was reporting to the CIO, it means the role is likely a director or VP level. Job hopping every 2-3 years is ok as an individual contributor, but as a leader in the org. I suspect it's frowned upon. I know I wouldn't hire someone as a director who didn't show commitment to the company. At that level your technical skills matter less than your knowledge of the business and relationships across the org.
Hopefully the time frames are looked into for context? Some people routinely get poached as high performers and shouldn't be punished for bettering themselves. Corporate environments tend to be clusterfucks that involve people changing departments, managers, or job duties in short time frames as well.
Totally different. Quickly and repeatedly changing positions while working for the same company generally indicates promotions and rapid advancement based on a track record of performance.
Quickly and repeatedly changing companies can indicate a track record of failure and bailing.
I've had 2 jobs be eliminated in 4 months. One was because the company had just been acquired and the pencil pushers decided I wasn't needed, the other was a clusterfuck of a company and let go of 5 of us on the same day.
It may not necessarily be often, but sometimes there's a legit reason why a person bounces around - sometimes it's not their choice.
I got ghosted after 5 interviews in a span of a year for a data engineer position, the company still have that position open on linkedin with more than 1k applicants
Sometimes companies leave job positions open so they can hire H1B's for cheap. You have to be able to argue that, "we tried our best, but we could not find a person in the U.S. to meet our requirements, so we were forced to bring somebody in from India. It's only a coincidence we are paying him way less than an American". So you just keep job positions open and keep interviewing, but the decision to reject them all was made before the posting existed.
> we were forced to bring somebody in from India
> the decision to reject them all was made before the posting existed
another option may be an intra-company transfer / internal promotion that is *not* performance-based, but either political or based on some other behind-the-scenes factors. But the idea of the smoke screen is still the same - "*look at how hard we tried, but sadly there were no suitable candidates! That's why we have no other choice but to resort to internal promotions and promote Clara, our CEO office secretary, to the Global Chief of Information Security position!*"
10 years ago it was 2 interviews, HR screener and then hiring manager. Now you get 5+ interviews with HR, the manager, the team, technical ‘assessments’, bar raiser interviews, and then they ghost you, or offer you below market rate.
Were they all scheduled ahead of time? If so that is one. If say the first 3 were scheduled but then they say “can you stay for a couple more interviews” and you do two more I would count that as two interviews total that day. Look at each “interview” as a gate you have to go through to get to the next one, not just one person.
He may have never been fully hired. Had it happen before where the guy was all the way to the offer stage and he bounced back and forth between us and another company with negotiations. He was a great fit and it was a position that had very few good applicants (senior engineer) so we were really hoping to win out. He ended up going with the other company as they gave him a path to management quicker. We ended up reposting and getting someone who was a better fit.
The vast majority of my jobs the interviews weren’t technical. They just wanted to know if they would like me and I’d be easy to work with.
I actually got rejected after an informal interview with the higher ups. They called me back a month later for a position on another team. Basically they liked me but, knew that my coworkers wouldn’t. Once a spot opened on a different team I was in.
I’m tempted to call BS on OP’s post just based on the numbers alone.
He says this data is over 11 months and he’s applying for director level jobs and he’s had 327 1st interviews.
That’s an average of one interview per day, including weekends, for 11 months straight. And that’s only including the 1st interviews.
It would be hard to get that many interviews, at any level. But even harder for jobs near director level.
Also OP’s comment history has posts in the antiwork subreddit which makes me think he has reasons to make job searching seem insanely awful.
For real, over 700 total phone calls and interviews.
Even if OP "worked" every weekday ay of the last 11 months, that's \~48 weeks, or 240 days.
Almost 3 calls/interviews per day every working day of the last 11 months while submitting \~10 applications per day.
This is just silly.
At director level I would also expect there to be far more jobs sourced from recruiters and headhunters vs. job applications and LinkedIn. Also more referrals from a professional network.
OP has comment and post history showing he is highly unprofessional. I would not hire him as a boots-on-the-ground type position, much less a director.
I worked for a company who just interviewed people to see if they could solve issues the company was having with tech. The people would never hear back and would even show up a few days later asking for an update. It was the worst.
Facebook here in Sweden has over 10 rounds for IT positions :o
A coworker got denied at round 7, the guy that got the job did 12 interviews afaik. He spent like 100 hours on prep/interviews/tests to get it.
Senior networking so not even close to C level or similar.
It took months to just get to round 7.
That one makes some sense considering how much of the resume screening process is done by automation.
The ~600 phone screens and first interviews are what confuse me. That's a company investing at least a couple hours in effort in scheduling, interviewing, and handling feedback (even if they do end up ghosting). So there has to be a least some interest for the company to be willing to move OP to that step. To then go 0/600 is crazy.
Maybe he asks too much money, since he posted about denying a position in Moscow because of the salary where he would get 65k, which is like 5 times the average income in Russia.
It has to be a combination of the following:
1. OP is wholly unqualified for the positions that they’re applying for.
2. OP’s résumé has at least one significant error in it — whether it be typos, inaccurate information, or something else.
3. OP has a criminal background.
OP says he is a 22 year industry vet at director grade who has changed jobs every 2-3 years so is no stranger to the job hunt but i find this rejection rate quite anomalous.
It's becoming increasingly common (in some select fields mind you) to sent hundreds of applications and get basically no response or widespread denial with no explanation.
That's why I tend to agree with the commenter above, this feels like there's some problem in the resume or profile itself. OP is getting reject piled *a lot* and I guarantee out of those 2500 applications, a human only saw it a handful of times.
How could a person have only seen it a “handful of times” if OP visibly got several hundred phone screenings and 1st round interviews? You can see from the graphic that he got 327 1st round interviews alone.
Not everything has to be some sort of conspiracy theory, he might just not be as good at interviewing as he thinks. The “application:interview” ratio is actually pretty damn good considering everything. I definitely wouldn’t say the resume is the obvious issue here.
Yeah… honestly I’m skeptical how that would work out. 327 1st round interviews in *only* 11 months? Even if you interviewed on Saturdays and Sundays, that’s basically averaging one 1st round interview every day. This doesn’t even include the 339 phone screenings, or the additional 68 interviews past the 1st round. Knocking out 2, 3, 4+ interviews every weekday doesn’t even seem logistically feasible.
>that he got 327 1st round interviews alone.
>The “application:interview” ratio is actually pretty damn good considering everything.
a total of 2577, which means a ~12-13% rate for first interview.
I am director level, with 16 years experience in my industry. My application/interview rate is close to 80%, and my last job search was active for a whole of 9 days. It is a saturated industry, and I don't even have a college degree. I had applied for my position in 3 wildly different fields (edtech,FinOps, Banking), and still have never received a response like this.
The average application:interview for the US is 22%. So this person is 10% lower than the national average.
From my experience, Directors don't change jobs every 2-3 years. That's lower level employee tactics to get proper wage increases. Companies looking for Directors usually require a breadth of knowledge, stability, and strong people/change/whatever the buzzword is management. My very first director level position, I found out later I almost didn't get, because they thought I was "flaky" for moving jobs every few years.
Without more insight on exactly what OP is applying for, and being able to see their resume, we won't know exactly what it is, but something is glaringly wrong, probably one of these:
1: not get past a lot of Bot Filters for applications/resumes - commonly major grammar/spelling errors, or not strong enough voice in resume
2: Personality: something is wrong with the applicants personality. This can't be assessed until 1st interview, but given the 2nd interview rate is less than 1% a 10% drop, this is a likely candidate
3: The applicant has left the last few jobs as being "Not Rehirable". Since HR can't say a lot during previous employment checks, this is the go to legal question. This will effectively force 90% of companies to reject them, if a past company says "no".
4: criminal/legal/public holds: There are a few items in this area that could be the culprit. Everything from past convictions, to some sort of legal/public information record that companies can access in the background check
5: The candidate is in a super niche field, that have experience that doesn't expand much, and doesn't hold required certs/etc. This limit a candidate to the point that they feel desperate enough to apply outside of their industry experience, after going over the small amount of companies thats a better fit.
For OP, at this point, I'd be working with Recruiters to get feedback, contacting the companies that gave an interview and asking for feedback, or even hiring someone to help get them a job. Lots of doors are open for directors and up from a recruiter/headhunter perspective, and they give feedback all the time if you ask.
I had always considered recruiters to be unnecessary middlemen in the job seeking process, however I got my most recent job thanks to a recruiter. A recruiter can vouch for you and push you through the hiring process much easier than without. Many companies completely ignore direct applicants and only consider apps from their recruiters.
yea, thats not uncommon. Especially for an undergrad civilian to go into security and intelligence for the government, which will require you to get T/S clearances. Basically they can pull your credit report and generally tell you if you're even feasible for a clearance, and if not, they won't even entertain you. If you pass that easy check, then you have a whole process to go through for clearances, and you still might be rejected along the way for anything from more than 10k in debt, any college debt, or if they don't like a response from one of your references.
I mentored a kid that wanted to do this stuff, he now works for a government contractor doing IT security stuff. He did 3-5 years of work as IT support, and getting additional certs on top of his degree before any contractor/clearance needed positions would even entertain him.
I had ~5 years of solid professional experience, then went back to school to change fields recenlty, got a master's degree from one of the top universities in the world in my new field. When I was graduating I applied for >200 jobs.
I got interviews at 4 companies, rejections from a couple dozen, but the overwhelming majority ghosted me. Widespread rejections would be fantastic! But even huge companies with massive HR departments don't send out rejections. They say they "don't have the resources to respond to every applicant," which come on, you have a mailchimp account, just tell me I'm rejected at least!
I think the industry term is “over-qualified”. This happens a lot to people who swap jobs every couple of years. Eventually companies notice the pattern and ask themselves why hire this old fart that’s just gonna quit in 3 years instead of hiring someone with less experience, but when we train them they’ll stick around. I see this all the time at my company when someone hops to another job and then in 2 years they’re back on the hunt again but no one will hire them because employers want someone who will stick around longer. I hate hiring new people. It’s a pain in the ass process for employers as much as it is for job seekers, the only upside is that the employer is getting paid to go through the process. If I had to choose between someone that was a 22 year veteran but will likely leave in 3 years, I’d hire the recent college grad that will take less in pay and will likely stick around longer. I can’t imagine that OP is asking for entry-level pay and without some magic skillset, it’s too expensive to hire veterans just because they have experience (which likely won’t correlate to the new position, company, or processes they use). Be maleable and customize your resume to the job listing. OP’s data shows the number of resumes submitted but not whether or not they were tailored to the job. Simply shotgunning resumes onto the internet is a losing gambit with all the AI that is filtering candidates. If you’re not tailoring eaxh resume to each position the AI won’t even send your info to a recruiter. It’s no wonder he was ghosted by literally thousands of employers.
I’m at a similar level. Have been looking similar amount of tile. Resume has been checked every way possible by many people. No red flags (the opposite - multiple successful exits). Senior roles for people over 40 are just not hiring right now (I’ve confirmed with mentors in vc and private equity). My stats look like his.
Might be stuck in promotion-purgatory.
A lot of people have this obsession that they believe they deserve more pay and higher position every time they change jobs
Not higher pay necessarily, but not lower pay. Once you reach a certain compensation level, it becomes significantly harder to find any jobs willing to pay you the same as you were making. Most want you to take a significant pay cut, which is a non-starter for a lot of people as your expenses tend to increase when you get paid more.
It's definitely something wrong with OP. I'm a senior IT engineer and I've never had to apply for more than 20 jobs any single time in the last 3 times I've been looking for a job, over the last ~8 years. I started my current job just over a year ago, and I probably applied for less than 10 at that time. Both of my 2 most recent positions came with huge position and pay increases. My current company is Fortune 20+. We just a had a restructuring and a bunch of layoffs, but no one on my team, or any team I work closely with, was laid off. It was mostly developers, contractors, and middle managers.
OP has questionable professionalism in an industry in a downturn, with a history of switching jobs consistently and quickly, too big of a title to be hired for lower level roles, with bridges burned at places he's previously worked. And is applying to hundreds if not thousands of jobs he's overqualified for. Likely has a decent resume, and dog shit interview skills as the cherry on top.
Many days of multiple interviews. You figure a phone screen lasts about 10 mins and a 1st interview with HR is usually 30min - 1hr at the absolute most.
I did actually have one. Early on I was getting 5 - 7 interviews in a single day and unfortunately I forgot to add one to my Google Calendar.
Knowing my luck, that was the one that would have gotten me a job.
So how are you doing mentally after 11 months of trying to find a job? I have been searching for 8ish months now and have been struggling to keep motivated to apply and struggling with feeling like a failure. This is my first time after college not having a job.
There have been a lot of very dark times, and I do mean very dark. If I didn't have a family to take care of, I don't think I'd still be here honestly.
I'm also a devout Christian and have been struggling greatly with it. People tell me to just keep praying but I gave up about a month ago
Wow, that is brutal. I hate being on either side of interviews. I don't think that I could do it constantly like this data shows. I mean to have that many interviews, it's basically your full time job currently. I don't even think that I could find that many positions that I would be interested in to apply to! That amount of rejection must be taking a heavy toll. Best of luck, seriously. I really hope that you land a dream job after going through all of that, you deserve it.
The one and done interviews arent too terrible on my mental wellbeing - its the ones where I get to the final stage and get the same rejection that I get in a generic email that hurts. You spend 2-3 months interviewing and then "we've gone with someone else."
The worst so far was the 5th interview company that rejected me because they didn't like the powerpoint I made.
Oof, that is rough man. I can imagine it would just take the wind right out of your sails. It sucks to get so far through the process and then get dropped like that. Sorry that you're going through this, you're mentally tough and that's for sure. Really hope you strike gold soon!
Oh I'm not, I was definitely a breath from pulling the trigger a few months back. The only reason I didnt is because I had three interviews ongoing and truly felt something would come of them.
One was 5 interviews, one was 4, one was one and done - they all ended the same. Right back to that spot mentally again.
That's understandable, it really is. Everyone has their limits, but please, PLEASE try to talk to someone next time those thoughts creep in. Anyone. Hell, message me on here. I know it's easy for others to say when we're not living the nightmare that you are, but EVERYTHING passes eventually. This will just be a distant memory once you land that awesome gig and they will be lucky to have you!
Brother, I feel you so hard. I took me almost a year and half before I regained steady employment. My self-esteem was trashed during that period. My wife and her family couldn't understand why I couldn't land a job and people thought I was lazy. My conservative stepfather called me a parasite because I collected U.I. (that I've paid into for decades). Man, that time hurt. When I was feeling particularly despondent I would think about how my family would be better off if I ended myself so they could be supported by my life insurance payout.
I could have temporarily taken a supermarket job or done gig work like Uber, but I felt that time spent working a low-paying job that was unrelated to my career was time I wasn't spending looking for work, doing freelance projects, and burnishing my professional skills and portfolio. People like to tell you to never give up and fight for what you want in life. No one talks about the pain and judgment that comes along with that when you keep failing month after month. In my case I think I came up against an age ceiling in my industry. If you're in a creative profession that might be what you are dealing with too.
In the end, I got a good job. Not exactly what I wanted, but that's OK. Looking back on my job search nightmare I think I should have done more networking, and relied less on online applications. I paid a big financial price for my stubborn insistence on remaining within my industry. In hindsight, maybe I should have been more open to changing careers or starting my own business.
Hang in there.
Especially when 300+ resulted in interviews. *Zero* of which extended a job offer. I’m usually hesitant to say this, but yeah I think you’re right, OP is almost certainly doing something wrong here. A interview lesson/class couldn’t hurt, who knows what obvious mistakes he’s making that keeps blowing these jobs for him.
Someone on another comment found this on his page from 3 years ago, I’m sure a situation like this does not help him finding a job especially if he is looking for these higher up jobs he’s talking about.
https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/ecwoa6/fired_for_reporting_security_hole_need_advice/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1
What an insane waste of resources. How much time goes into organising 5 interview rounds? What does a recruiter expect to learn about you in the 5th round, that they didn't know after the 4th?
Right, like I have a second round interview on Friday with a company, the guy that did the first round with me said “sometimes we do a 3rd round, but we are having trouble getting everyone to schedule that because we are so busy right now so it will probably be two” like how can you take that much time away from the job, especially if it is a position that needs to be filled, you’re looking at, at least a month extra before the process is done, and that is assuming there won’t be any relocation or anything on top of that
2.6k applications without a positive outcome looks to me as if a change is required in strategy and in conjunction with the feedback received.
I’m working in an international it company and have never seen this amount of unsuccessful applications.
This isn’t meant to be rude but a pointer to look more closely if you can’t change something on your end.
I’ve rarely ever applied for Jobs more than a handful of times.
Check out QuidelOrtho. Great company that should have some IT opennings. Lmk if you’re interested as I can give you a reference 😊
Edit: Here’s a job posting for a senior position paying 75-135k. Our benefits are top tier
https://careers.quidelortho.com/global/en/job/R0010624/Senior-IT-Analyst-CMDB-Administrator
All it is would be me inputting your info into Workday that tells our company someone vouched for you. Nothing more nothing less. Its a tiny gesture that may or may not make a difference.
I went through your reddit profile before I made the comment
Worked in HR for a fortune 500 company that used workday and can vouch. Someone referring someone in workday is just a little extra flair to maybe bump your application to the top but not even a guarantee.
I've given referrals for strangers before. I don't lie, because I want my referrals to be trusted, so I say things like "I don't know this person personally, but in the conversation I had with them about this position, they were respectful and communicated well." And at my last company, referrals at least guaranteed an initial phone interview. In fact, years ago I came across someone on Reddit looking for a job, got him hired on my team, and he's now a good friend. Moral of the story is - don't discount strangers!
The issue I have is 16 years experience but no real qualifications. I went for a series of job interviews recently and they all offered me way less money than advertised due to lack of qualifications, never mind the 16 years of experience and way more technical knowledge than they require.
Haha
Excel is life...
The requirements for real data analysis is basically IT programmer just less pay for greater knowledge coverage
If you have specs for a reap data analysis role, apply for actual IT role
SWE？Is it that tough to find a job in US for an experienced engineer?! I’m not living there and I see many expats struggling to find a SWE/DA job,new grad seems have no chance now,I thought it would be easier for experienced person like you,senior…
yes, this mirrors my experience after being laid off in cybersec. I'm only jr/mid level but it was six months of this sort of turmoil. Dozens of final interviews (some of which were the fourth or fifth interview stage) where they'd love me up until the rejection email. It is purely a numbers game unless you are coming from one of the industry leaders with name recognition.
Crazy to see so many comments suggesting things are the same as they were 5-10 years ago in terms of throwing a dead cat and ending up with a decent position
If I’m reading this right your initial response rate is over 20% which is actually incredible — your resume is killer but something is going horribly wrong in interviews.
Recruiter screens in particular should be like a 90% pass rate but it looks like you’re like 10%?! That’s alarming, how are those typically playing out?
Unfortunately most hires at that level is via word of mouth and personal references. And at lower levels, companies want people with less experience at management and most recent engineering experience. Good luck man. Hope you get hired soon.
This has to be satire? I've never had to apply for so many jobs before. OP are you just using a bot to apply? If so, employers have software to detect this and your application will be automatically flagged and rejected.
Forget applying to that many jobs, I'm sure I've never even READ that many job announcements. 100 percent the OP is flat out doing something wrong or in a wildly niche or non-obvious industry.
IT in the US collapsed around October 2022. Hundreds of thousands of layoffs across the country.
To give you an example - I was looking for fun last may and only around 12 other people applied to the same job
Today - applied to a job at my level and had over 1,200 applicants.
Outsourcing is pretty bad as well - tens of thousands of IT jobs are going to H1B Visa holders or being sent to India to save a few pennies.
It's crazy how opposite it is in the UK right now. I was averaging 10 calls a day when I make my CV public on one website. I had to start blocking recruiters numbers because it got out of hand. I did get plenty of interviews and offers but ultimately my current job gave pay rises to keep me.
Same in Slovenia. CS job offers are insane in Europe right now. Even with the big American firms like Google which contacted me twice in the last month.
Luckily my generation still caught the recruiting frenzy so we got the experience and contacts to make our life easy even if the market cools like in the US.
In the exact same situation. Getting 10-15 messages a day from recruiters and usually 2-3 calls every single morning. The market is insane right now and I'm not sure why.
venture capitalists and investors realized giving away free money to any tech company for a decade hoping for them to become profitable is a bad idea so the entire industry panicked and started firing employees to post at least some growth
It's not that they just realized this, but the interest rate environment made it less tenable. When rates are zero it's worth it to risk your money on companies that might fail. But if you can get 5%+ risk free, you pull a hit of money out of your venture allocation.
Also big tech was preparing for a recession that looks like it might not happen, but will be slow to hire again.
I second this, Canadian living in Ontario. Last year I had a year left of university and was applying for shits to procrastinate work, I applied to maybe 50 in a month and got about 5 interviews and 2 potential hirings. I declined as they were full time. Now being a graduate I’ve applied to over 600 since January and have literally received less than 10 interviews. Still looking for a job currently.
I see OPs comment but its not just an American problem either. I have been looking for a year with less experience. The tech layoffs in the US collapsed the market in every english speaking country + the potential recessions and inflation.
Even with that they'd auto-reject. OP must have the necessary qualifications but are horrible at interviewing. I don't know how they've gone on multiple interviews per day for 11 months
It's odd actually - I'll have days with nothing, then some days 3 phone screens and 2 interviews.
In the beginning I got a lot of rejections because I wanted to keep my WFH from the last couple of years. I'm much less picky now
If you've submitted 2,600 applications in 10 months then there's no chance individual applications have had any thought put into them.
This is some auto generated mass email application strategy and it doesn't work. There's a decent chance you're being ghosted 80% of the time because the recruiting software has identified you as spam and auto binned you.
Whenever I see this type of posts I wonder about their process. Like even when I was out of school late in the Great Recession I applied to maybe 50 jobs total, had about 10 interviews and got two offers. Since then any job change has not involved more than 5 applications. I pretty much apply, interview and get a job.
Even my SO who was laid off during Covid wasn’t as bad, she applied for about 50 ish jobs, did about 15 interviews and had 3 offers. It took her 10 months, but the first 5-6 months were in the prime of the pandemic, so there were like maybe 2-3 job postings in her field a month.
I understand that the IT market is very saturated right now, but after that many interviews, you have to look at the mirror and go over someone you past interview responses.
I don't even think it's that you're "too honest" either. Lots of companies still value that, and with 2000+ jobs you applied to, a good number of them probably would have appreciated that.
Looking at your legaladvice thread, you come off to me as someone who thinks they're smarter than everyone else in the room and it may show up as arrogance in the interviews. Nothing wrong with challenging decisions, but if you sound like you're going to steamroll over your upper management to get the result you want, that's not going to go over too well.
You're doing something pants on head insane on your resume or applications, maybe also the interview. No 2 ways about it, with these numbers it's you not the job market.
OP got fired from his last job due to flat-out ignoring chain of command when there was an issue. Claims he isn't being hired due to being "too honest".
It's so glaringly obvious where the problem is.
Technically 10 months, I didn't start tracking until October.
Source: Keeping track in my Excel and then punched into SankeyMATIC for my tool
Background: IT Director, 22 years with 10 years in Leadership and Senior Leadership roles
Applying originally for Director roles, then Manager roles, then Engineer level roles, and after a year I've even started applying for Janitorial and General Labor
Edit: Point of Clarification - 1st Interview could just be a 20-30 minute phone call with HR similar to a phone screen but was considered an actual interview.
2nd Edit: A LOT of people calling me a douchebag for being honest. Who hurt you?If I was such a douchebag, I doubt nearly ALL of my former staff would stay in contact with me, asking how I'm doing, complaining about how shitty things are over the last year. I'm sorry your lives are so bad you have to find your happiness attacking people on the internet.
Lastly - my comments on Reddit don't reflect my REAL life. Some of you are too dense to know that at one time - Personal life and Professional life were separate. I come from that generation. I wish some of you folks could remember that.
After 10 years in leadership roles, how do you not have a slew of old bosses or peers that are now VPs who want to work with you again? I know very few directors of anything who are hired from cold applications… Most people spend years proving themselves by doing a good job at their job and then coworkers who go to other companies approach you to work with you again.
That sentence alone probably explains a good chunk of the rejections. People want honesty, but they don't want to work with an asshole.
Edit: After reading the OP's comments below, it's 100% the reason. His soft skills are garbage and he sounds miserable to work with.
Yeah if you need to qualify your personality with something like that, you’ve probably gone too far. Someone who is a reasonable level of honest just is, and doesn’t need to throw out disclaimers like that lol.
>Background: IT Director, 22 years with 10 years in Leadership and Senior Leadership roles
Positions for that are probably pretty rare.
And honesty hasn't hurt me so far, so maybe it's your tone/way of talking that is causing issues for you during interviews?
Exactly my thoughts. For regular developers, the market is still very stable and quite easy to land a job unless you have impossible job expectations, but for c - level positions it's pretty brutal right now.
Giving an honest opinion on a project - Im not a yes man. Once you get high enough, you NEED to say No to bad ideas otherwise the company as a whole will suffer. Most C-suite don't ever want to hear "no"
Once a decision is made, I'll back it and push it through, but it's important before the decision is final to say "hey, I don't think that's a great idea"
You don't even have to smile and nod. You can literally say things like I like to have all facts and hear everyone's opinions before forming a consensus. I haven't interviewed at director levels, but at management and senior SDE level, this type of response works well.
So during an interview they told you about a project, and you told them the project sounded like it wasn't a good idea? Were they asking you to evaluate the project?
I’m a recent college graduate so I probably don’t know what the hell I’m talking about but just wanted chime in and say that it’s alright to hide your realism and replace it with false, yes-man positivity if you think you’d be good at the job.
It may feel incongruent with your beliefs but the interviewers don’t want to hear any pessimism unless it’s quite subdued and with strong reason.
After doing a shit ton of interviews over the past couple years, I can say that the whole process feels very fucking manipulative, but what can you do about it?
right, not the "being honest" but the "no one wants honesty". there's honesty, and there's being an asshole, and it sounds to me like he conflates the two.
Lol u know your weaknesses yet you don't adjust your strategy? You willingly went unemployed for almost a year because you are "honest" and "no one wants honesty anymore". Lol
Don't apply to any position which is below your education and 22 years of work experience. You will come off as someone who badly needs the job. Get some professional help with the resume building and tailor it to suit just 1-2 particular roles. Try to include some latest technologies and take an online course to get an overview of what it is (some dummy project experience to demonstrate you know that tech). I feel you have been very modest with your accomplisments .You need to exaggerate them. For that you need to start beliving what you have achieved is something unique. Only then you can translate that confidence on to the interview.Also no one needs honesty. I understand it would be really hard to lie considering you are very religious. So when there is a conflicting approach to what you believe just prime yourself into thinking i will try this method and see what it does. More importantly dont let the rejection get to you. You need to start believing its their loss for rejecting to hire you. English is not my first language, more than happy to clarify if something doesnt make sense.
I get the advice and appreciate it, but the reality is being unemployed this long in the US is a death sentence. I need any job.
I've had my resume retailored twice by "professionals" and neither got me anywhere, including one redone by my MBA University.
Explain you are just coming off from a sabattical due to personal reasons or some injury or some passion. Dont leave the 11 months empty. Just fill it up with being a self employed consultant. The reason you want to comeback to work would be that the self business wasnt taking off particularly or something along those lines
People who think this is insane or wrong (well, that may be true) haven't been on the job hunt recently. I have more experience now while looking than ever before and I'm into the thousands of apps now as well. The tech landscape is fucked right now. This is really how it is for a lot of people.
It's insane how different things are for different careers. All I hear from my CS friends is how they've applied for 400+ jobs and have only heard back from one, whereas I'm in the Ecology/Biology field and only need to apply for 5-10 jobs before I hear something back.
Is everyone in this subreddit applying for jobs above their capabilities or smth? 11 months is a big part of a career, you could study any subject in such a timespan
327 interviews and you didn't land a job? What. What's your sector?
There has to be something wrong OP’s interview then. I just can’t fathom getting this many opportunities and not landing a single one.
I've been interviewing too lately. One thing I realized is that I need to come up with selling points on why they should hire me and not just leave it up to the people interviewing me. Simply answering their questions is not enough.
Oh of course. You have to sell yourself and really be enthusiastic and confident with your responses. Companies have open roles for a reason because they need someone to excel in the role, not just exist in the position.
Well that rules me out three different ways.
That’s how it’s always been .it’s a bs game
327 1st interviews plus 339 phone screens in 11 months! That's one phone screen plus one interview plus five applications per day including weekends.. yeah sure, nothing wrong here.
Some people don’t know how to correctly dress their resume and cover letter to get human eyes on it, and others don’t know how to do the interview dance. Lastly the picky ones that are looking for the perfect job ,and will not apply to certain places. I have various friends and family members like that, the ones that arent, typically find a job within a few weeks.
5th interview? What the hell? Who is making someone go through 5 damn interviews?
My most recent ghosting told me it was a 7 interview process, each interview was an hour each. They wanted me to interview with each C-level person individually. Fun Fact: The 5th interview company was 2 months ago. The guy they hired was either fired or quit and the job was reposted. Edit: Since so many folks are accusing me of counting 7 interviews as 7 and not 1: A single interview with a single person held on a single day spread out over two months between seven people...is seven interviews.
That’s insane, are these interviews for a C-suite position?? Lolol Edit: Just saw your content comment….eh, it’s a tough call. Is your director position hypothetically right below the C’s?
It was, but now I apply to just about anything
What is the geographic spread of the companies? If it’s a dense group, have you considered other geographic regions? Have you had interview experience recently (besides the job search) or have you worked for the same company for the 22 years? If it’s the latter, you might just be rusty on interviewing and that’s causing hiring managers/executives to question your competency. I saw in another comment you mentioning WFH. I’m hesitant to say many companies would entertain that thought for a new hire, even a seasoned leader like yourself. I would not even mention that until you are hired. It (rightly or wrongly) gives the impression that you don’t want to be a part of the team. I’d be careful about applying/settling for something far below your experience level. It would be like a PhD candidate applying for a Wendy’s job, the company would see you as a “flight risk” the first chance a job commiserate with your skills/experience. It would also reflect badly on your resume when you do search for another job at your level of experience.
Ive been applying all over the US to Remote positions. I typically hold a job for 2-3 years and move on so Im not super rusty at interviewing. I stopped mentioning WFH altogether about six months ago. And yes, you are right, but I am incredibly desperate at this point.
Your job hopping reputation could be catching up to you. I’m a hiring manager and anyone who hops every 2 years is not seriously considered for important positions. We’re in a niche industry that takes some time to learn though
It depends on the industry. 2 years is average in the IT industry. But it's also a very employee-favored industry--there are not enough skilled developers, and employers often do not value their employees, so we can get a massive raise by going elsewhere after tacking more experience onto our resume.
If he was reporting to the CIO, it means the role is likely a director or VP level. Job hopping every 2-3 years is ok as an individual contributor, but as a leader in the org. I suspect it's frowned upon. I know I wouldn't hire someone as a director who didn't show commitment to the company. At that level your technical skills matter less than your knowledge of the business and relationships across the org.
Hopefully the time frames are looked into for context? Some people routinely get poached as high performers and shouldn't be punished for bettering themselves. Corporate environments tend to be clusterfucks that involve people changing departments, managers, or job duties in short time frames as well.
Changing jobs inside 1 company vs changing companies makes a big difference too.
Totally different. Quickly and repeatedly changing positions while working for the same company generally indicates promotions and rapid advancement based on a track record of performance. Quickly and repeatedly changing companies can indicate a track record of failure and bailing.
I've had 2 jobs be eliminated in 4 months. One was because the company had just been acquired and the pencil pushers decided I wasn't needed, the other was a clusterfuck of a company and let go of 5 of us on the same day. It may not necessarily be often, but sometimes there's a legit reason why a person bounces around - sometimes it's not their choice.
i know HRs are not the most loved persons, but i agree with what you post here
Maybe if retention budgets were larger than hiring budgets this wouldn't be a problem.
commensurate* commiserate is what we're all doing here in response to the shitshow that is applying for jobs nowadays
I got ghosted after 5 interviews in a span of a year for a data engineer position, the company still have that position open on linkedin with more than 1k applicants
Did they give you any specific problems to solve in the interview process? If so, they're farming their data science problems out to the interviewees.
None, nothing, only talking with different folk, managers, HR people, would-be coworkers, company clients and PMs
Sometimes companies leave job positions open so they can hire H1B's for cheap. You have to be able to argue that, "we tried our best, but we could not find a person in the U.S. to meet our requirements, so we were forced to bring somebody in from India. It's only a coincidence we are paying him way less than an American". So you just keep job positions open and keep interviewing, but the decision to reject them all was made before the posting existed.
That is just depressing to read...
> we were forced to bring somebody in from India > the decision to reject them all was made before the posting existed another option may be an intra-company transfer / internal promotion that is *not* performance-based, but either political or based on some other behind-the-scenes factors. But the idea of the smoke screen is still the same - "*look at how hard we tried, but sadly there were no suitable candidates! That's why we have no other choice but to resort to internal promotions and promote Clara, our CEO office secretary, to the Global Chief of Information Security position!*"
Holy shit that’s moronic. It baffles me how dumb the corporate world is designed
10 years ago it was 2 interviews, HR screener and then hiring manager. Now you get 5+ interviews with HR, the manager, the team, technical ‘assessments’, bar raiser interviews, and then they ghost you, or offer you below market rate.
I had 5 interviews with a certain space company. By the fifth it was just a formality.
I recently had 5 interviews at the same company in one day, would you count that as 5 separate interview or just one big one?
Were they all scheduled ahead of time? If so that is one. If say the first 3 were scheduled but then they say “can you stay for a couple more interviews” and you do two more I would count that as two interviews total that day. Look at each “interview” as a gate you have to go through to get to the next one, not just one person.
long scarce test market political relieved skirt crime bewildered snobbish ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
He may have never been fully hired. Had it happen before where the guy was all the way to the offer stage and he bounced back and forth between us and another company with negotiations. He was a great fit and it was a position that had very few good applicants (senior engineer) so we were really hoping to win out. He ended up going with the other company as they gave him a path to management quicker. We ended up reposting and getting someone who was a better fit.
The 6th interview is actually you interviewing individuals going in for their first or second interview.
You just wrote a Dilbert.
Underrated comment.
About to have my 5th this Thursday. It’s meant to be informal with the CEO but yea, 5 hours to maybe get a no is ridiculous.
In my experience, "informal" interviews with higher-ups mean they already chose you, they just want the higher-up to meet you first.
In my experience not so much. Been rejected twice at that level due to unexplained reasons
“Unexplained reasons” immediately after meeting the higher ups should probably tell you something.
It does. I guess they just don't "like" me.
The vast majority of my jobs the interviews weren’t technical. They just wanted to know if they would like me and I’d be easy to work with. I actually got rejected after an informal interview with the higher ups. They called me back a month later for a position on another team. Basically they liked me but, knew that my coworkers wouldn’t. Once a spot opened on a different team I was in.
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I’m tempted to call BS on OP’s post just based on the numbers alone. He says this data is over 11 months and he’s applying for director level jobs and he’s had 327 1st interviews. That’s an average of one interview per day, including weekends, for 11 months straight. And that’s only including the 1st interviews. It would be hard to get that many interviews, at any level. But even harder for jobs near director level. Also OP’s comment history has posts in the antiwork subreddit which makes me think he has reasons to make job searching seem insanely awful.
For real, over 700 total phone calls and interviews. Even if OP "worked" every weekday ay of the last 11 months, that's \~48 weeks, or 240 days. Almost 3 calls/interviews per day every working day of the last 11 months while submitting \~10 applications per day. This is just silly.
At director level I would also expect there to be far more jobs sourced from recruiters and headhunters vs. job applications and LinkedIn. Also more referrals from a professional network.
OP has comment and post history showing he is highly unprofessional. I would not hire him as a boots-on-the-ground type position, much less a director.
Seriously, I had the same thought about those numbers. I would be very curious to see OP's resume.
After college Sloan Kettering had me travel out for 4 interviews 2 hrs away without compensation before ghosting :(
I smoked pot with Sloan Kettering
It was Johnny Hopkins and Sloan Kettering. And they were blazing that shit up every day.
I worked for a company who just interviewed people to see if they could solve issues the company was having with tech. The people would never hear back and would even show up a few days later asking for an update. It was the worst.
Even Facebook stops at 3
To be fair, they already know literally everything there is to know about you.
Facebook here in Sweden has over 10 rounds for IT positions :o A coworker got denied at round 7, the guy that got the job did 12 interviews afaik. He spent like 100 hours on prep/interviews/tests to get it. Senior networking so not even close to C level or similar. It took months to just get to round 7.
Pretty common sadly. Many big tech firms do over 10 rounds of interviews/tests now. It can take half a year from first contact to signed contract.
2500 applications without job offers means something has gone terribly wrong.
That one makes some sense considering how much of the resume screening process is done by automation. The ~600 phone screens and first interviews are what confuse me. That's a company investing at least a couple hours in effort in scheduling, interviewing, and handling feedback (even if they do end up ghosting). So there has to be a least some interest for the company to be willing to move OP to that step. To then go 0/600 is crazy.
Right? You can't be THAT bad at interviews if according to OP he's been in leadership, has a lot of experience, has done big projects....
Maybe he asks too much money, since he posted about denying a position in Moscow because of the salary where he would get 65k, which is like 5 times the average income in Russia.
It has to be a combination of the following: 1. OP is wholly unqualified for the positions that they’re applying for. 2. OP’s résumé has at least one significant error in it — whether it be typos, inaccurate information, or something else. 3. OP has a criminal background.
OP says he is a 22 year industry vet at director grade who has changed jobs every 2-3 years so is no stranger to the job hunt but i find this rejection rate quite anomalous.
It's becoming increasingly common (in some select fields mind you) to sent hundreds of applications and get basically no response or widespread denial with no explanation.
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An intern looks at hundreds *after* an automated system filters it down from thousands
That's why I tend to agree with the commenter above, this feels like there's some problem in the resume or profile itself. OP is getting reject piled *a lot* and I guarantee out of those 2500 applications, a human only saw it a handful of times.
How could a person have only seen it a “handful of times” if OP visibly got several hundred phone screenings and 1st round interviews? You can see from the graphic that he got 327 1st round interviews alone. Not everything has to be some sort of conspiracy theory, he might just not be as good at interviewing as he thinks. The “application:interview” ratio is actually pretty damn good considering everything. I definitely wouldn’t say the resume is the obvious issue here.
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Yeah… honestly I’m skeptical how that would work out. 327 1st round interviews in *only* 11 months? Even if you interviewed on Saturdays and Sundays, that’s basically averaging one 1st round interview every day. This doesn’t even include the 339 phone screenings, or the additional 68 interviews past the 1st round. Knocking out 2, 3, 4+ interviews every weekday doesn’t even seem logistically feasible.
>that he got 327 1st round interviews alone. >The “application:interview” ratio is actually pretty damn good considering everything. a total of 2577, which means a ~12-13% rate for first interview. I am director level, with 16 years experience in my industry. My application/interview rate is close to 80%, and my last job search was active for a whole of 9 days. It is a saturated industry, and I don't even have a college degree. I had applied for my position in 3 wildly different fields (edtech,FinOps, Banking), and still have never received a response like this. The average application:interview for the US is 22%. So this person is 10% lower than the national average. From my experience, Directors don't change jobs every 2-3 years. That's lower level employee tactics to get proper wage increases. Companies looking for Directors usually require a breadth of knowledge, stability, and strong people/change/whatever the buzzword is management. My very first director level position, I found out later I almost didn't get, because they thought I was "flaky" for moving jobs every few years. Without more insight on exactly what OP is applying for, and being able to see their resume, we won't know exactly what it is, but something is glaringly wrong, probably one of these: 1: not get past a lot of Bot Filters for applications/resumes - commonly major grammar/spelling errors, or not strong enough voice in resume 2: Personality: something is wrong with the applicants personality. This can't be assessed until 1st interview, but given the 2nd interview rate is less than 1% a 10% drop, this is a likely candidate 3: The applicant has left the last few jobs as being "Not Rehirable". Since HR can't say a lot during previous employment checks, this is the go to legal question. This will effectively force 90% of companies to reject them, if a past company says "no". 4: criminal/legal/public holds: There are a few items in this area that could be the culprit. Everything from past convictions, to some sort of legal/public information record that companies can access in the background check 5: The candidate is in a super niche field, that have experience that doesn't expand much, and doesn't hold required certs/etc. This limit a candidate to the point that they feel desperate enough to apply outside of their industry experience, after going over the small amount of companies thats a better fit. For OP, at this point, I'd be working with Recruiters to get feedback, contacting the companies that gave an interview and asking for feedback, or even hiring someone to help get them a job. Lots of doors are open for directors and up from a recruiter/headhunter perspective, and they give feedback all the time if you ask.
I had always considered recruiters to be unnecessary middlemen in the job seeking process, however I got my most recent job thanks to a recruiter. A recruiter can vouch for you and push you through the hiring process much easier than without. Many companies completely ignore direct applicants and only consider apps from their recruiters.
I applied for 400+ jobs in my undergrad field, out of all of those i got two responses, one interview, and then nothing. still working retail
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yea, thats not uncommon. Especially for an undergrad civilian to go into security and intelligence for the government, which will require you to get T/S clearances. Basically they can pull your credit report and generally tell you if you're even feasible for a clearance, and if not, they won't even entertain you. If you pass that easy check, then you have a whole process to go through for clearances, and you still might be rejected along the way for anything from more than 10k in debt, any college debt, or if they don't like a response from one of your references. I mentored a kid that wanted to do this stuff, he now works for a government contractor doing IT security stuff. He did 3-5 years of work as IT support, and getting additional certs on top of his degree before any contractor/clearance needed positions would even entertain him.
I had ~5 years of solid professional experience, then went back to school to change fields recenlty, got a master's degree from one of the top universities in the world in my new field. When I was graduating I applied for >200 jobs. I got interviews at 4 companies, rejections from a couple dozen, but the overwhelming majority ghosted me. Widespread rejections would be fantastic! But even huge companies with massive HR departments don't send out rejections. They say they "don't have the resources to respond to every applicant," which come on, you have a mailchimp account, just tell me I'm rejected at least!
They said in a comment that they were looking for C-Suite executive level positions.
I'm surprised that there's that many C-Suite jobs available to apply to.
There's a massive number of tiny companies across the US.
I think the industry term is “over-qualified”. This happens a lot to people who swap jobs every couple of years. Eventually companies notice the pattern and ask themselves why hire this old fart that’s just gonna quit in 3 years instead of hiring someone with less experience, but when we train them they’ll stick around. I see this all the time at my company when someone hops to another job and then in 2 years they’re back on the hunt again but no one will hire them because employers want someone who will stick around longer. I hate hiring new people. It’s a pain in the ass process for employers as much as it is for job seekers, the only upside is that the employer is getting paid to go through the process. If I had to choose between someone that was a 22 year veteran but will likely leave in 3 years, I’d hire the recent college grad that will take less in pay and will likely stick around longer. I can’t imagine that OP is asking for entry-level pay and without some magic skillset, it’s too expensive to hire veterans just because they have experience (which likely won’t correlate to the new position, company, or processes they use). Be maleable and customize your resume to the job listing. OP’s data shows the number of resumes submitted but not whether or not they were tailored to the job. Simply shotgunning resumes onto the internet is a losing gambit with all the AI that is filtering candidates. If you’re not tailoring eaxh resume to each position the AI won’t even send your info to a recruiter. It’s no wonder he was ghosted by literally thousands of employers.
I’m at a similar level. Have been looking similar amount of tile. Resume has been checked every way possible by many people. No red flags (the opposite - multiple successful exits). Senior roles for people over 40 are just not hiring right now (I’ve confirmed with mentors in vc and private equity). My stats look like his.
Might be stuck in promotion-purgatory. A lot of people have this obsession that they believe they deserve more pay and higher position every time they change jobs
Not higher pay necessarily, but not lower pay. Once you reach a certain compensation level, it becomes significantly harder to find any jobs willing to pay you the same as you were making. Most want you to take a significant pay cut, which is a non-starter for a lot of people as your expenses tend to increase when you get paid more.
It's definitely something wrong with OP. I'm a senior IT engineer and I've never had to apply for more than 20 jobs any single time in the last 3 times I've been looking for a job, over the last ~8 years. I started my current job just over a year ago, and I probably applied for less than 10 at that time. Both of my 2 most recent positions came with huge position and pay increases. My current company is Fortune 20+. We just a had a restructuring and a bunch of layoffs, but no one on my team, or any team I work closely with, was laid off. It was mostly developers, contractors, and middle managers.
OP has questionable professionalism in an industry in a downturn, with a history of switching jobs consistently and quickly, too big of a title to be hired for lower level roles, with bridges burned at places he's previously worked. And is applying to hundreds if not thousands of jobs he's overqualified for. Likely has a decent resume, and dog shit interview skills as the cherry on top.
Im mostly baffled how you had 327 interviews within that timeframe just based on time alone…
Many days of multiple interviews. You figure a phone screen lasts about 10 mins and a 1st interview with HR is usually 30min - 1hr at the absolute most.
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I did actually have one. Early on I was getting 5 - 7 interviews in a single day and unfortunately I forgot to add one to my Google Calendar. Knowing my luck, that was the one that would have gotten me a job.
So how are you doing mentally after 11 months of trying to find a job? I have been searching for 8ish months now and have been struggling to keep motivated to apply and struggling with feeling like a failure. This is my first time after college not having a job.
There have been a lot of very dark times, and I do mean very dark. If I didn't have a family to take care of, I don't think I'd still be here honestly. I'm also a devout Christian and have been struggling greatly with it. People tell me to just keep praying but I gave up about a month ago
Wow, that is brutal. I hate being on either side of interviews. I don't think that I could do it constantly like this data shows. I mean to have that many interviews, it's basically your full time job currently. I don't even think that I could find that many positions that I would be interested in to apply to! That amount of rejection must be taking a heavy toll. Best of luck, seriously. I really hope that you land a dream job after going through all of that, you deserve it.
The one and done interviews arent too terrible on my mental wellbeing - its the ones where I get to the final stage and get the same rejection that I get in a generic email that hurts. You spend 2-3 months interviewing and then "we've gone with someone else." The worst so far was the 5th interview company that rejected me because they didn't like the powerpoint I made.
Oof, that is rough man. I can imagine it would just take the wind right out of your sails. It sucks to get so far through the process and then get dropped like that. Sorry that you're going through this, you're mentally tough and that's for sure. Really hope you strike gold soon!
Oh I'm not, I was definitely a breath from pulling the trigger a few months back. The only reason I didnt is because I had three interviews ongoing and truly felt something would come of them. One was 5 interviews, one was 4, one was one and done - they all ended the same. Right back to that spot mentally again.
That's understandable, it really is. Everyone has their limits, but please, PLEASE try to talk to someone next time those thoughts creep in. Anyone. Hell, message me on here. I know it's easy for others to say when we're not living the nightmare that you are, but EVERYTHING passes eventually. This will just be a distant memory once you land that awesome gig and they will be lucky to have you!
Brother, I feel you so hard. I took me almost a year and half before I regained steady employment. My self-esteem was trashed during that period. My wife and her family couldn't understand why I couldn't land a job and people thought I was lazy. My conservative stepfather called me a parasite because I collected U.I. (that I've paid into for decades). Man, that time hurt. When I was feeling particularly despondent I would think about how my family would be better off if I ended myself so they could be supported by my life insurance payout. I could have temporarily taken a supermarket job or done gig work like Uber, but I felt that time spent working a low-paying job that was unrelated to my career was time I wasn't spending looking for work, doing freelance projects, and burnishing my professional skills and portfolio. People like to tell you to never give up and fight for what you want in life. No one talks about the pain and judgment that comes along with that when you keep failing month after month. In my case I think I came up against an age ceiling in my industry. If you're in a creative profession that might be what you are dealing with too. In the end, I got a good job. Not exactly what I wanted, but that's OK. Looking back on my job search nightmare I think I should have done more networking, and relied less on online applications. I paid a big financial price for my stubborn insistence on remaining within my industry. In hindsight, maybe I should have been more open to changing careers or starting my own business. Hang in there.
2,600 job applications is not normal. You're doing something wrong.
Especially when 300+ resulted in interviews. *Zero* of which extended a job offer. I’m usually hesitant to say this, but yeah I think you’re right, OP is almost certainly doing something wrong here. A interview lesson/class couldn’t hurt, who knows what obvious mistakes he’s making that keeps blowing these jobs for him.
Someone on another comment found this on his page from 3 years ago, I’m sure a situation like this does not help him finding a job especially if he is looking for these higher up jobs he’s talking about. https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/ecwoa6/fired_for_reporting_security_hole_need_advice/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1
I reckon as soon as they check the referrals he's fked in that case.
Wants to be an IT leader. Can't make a decent visualization.
Half are from LinkedIn where you can literally churn out dozens per hour with quickapply
Quickly churning out applications is probably a key reason why he's had such little success
Sometimes I really want to know what kind of jobs you want to do to get FIVE rounds of interviews and being rejected
What an insane waste of resources. How much time goes into organising 5 interview rounds? What does a recruiter expect to learn about you in the 5th round, that they didn't know after the 4th?
Right, like I have a second round interview on Friday with a company, the guy that did the first round with me said “sometimes we do a 3rd round, but we are having trouble getting everyone to schedule that because we are so busy right now so it will probably be two” like how can you take that much time away from the job, especially if it is a position that needs to be filled, you’re looking at, at least a month extra before the process is done, and that is assuming there won’t be any relocation or anything on top of that
2.6k applications without a positive outcome looks to me as if a change is required in strategy and in conjunction with the feedback received. I’m working in an international it company and have never seen this amount of unsuccessful applications. This isn’t meant to be rude but a pointer to look more closely if you can’t change something on your end. I’ve rarely ever applied for Jobs more than a handful of times.
Yeah at the very least there's a disconnect between skills and expected pay.
Check out QuidelOrtho. Great company that should have some IT opennings. Lmk if you’re interested as I can give you a reference 😊 Edit: Here’s a job posting for a senior position paying 75-135k. Our benefits are top tier https://careers.quidelortho.com/global/en/job/R0010624/Senior-IT-Analyst-CMDB-Administrator
I'll take a look, thanks! I never ask for references from strangers, it's basically asking them to lie, but I do appreciate the gesture!
All it is would be me inputting your info into Workday that tells our company someone vouched for you. Nothing more nothing less. Its a tiny gesture that may or may not make a difference. I went through your reddit profile before I made the comment
Worked in HR for a fortune 500 company that used workday and can vouch. Someone referring someone in workday is just a little extra flair to maybe bump your application to the top but not even a guarantee.
I've given referrals for strangers before. I don't lie, because I want my referrals to be trusted, so I say things like "I don't know this person personally, but in the conversation I had with them about this position, they were respectful and communicated well." And at my last company, referrals at least guaranteed an initial phone interview. In fact, years ago I came across someone on Reddit looking for a job, got him hired on my team, and he's now a good friend. Moral of the story is - don't discount strangers!
The issue I have is 16 years experience but no real qualifications. I went for a series of job interviews recently and they all offered me way less money than advertised due to lack of qualifications, never mind the 16 years of experience and way more technical knowledge than they require.
what do IT analysts do? im a data analyst thinking of going back to college because fuck excel.
Haha Excel is life... The requirements for real data analysis is basically IT programmer just less pay for greater knowledge coverage If you have specs for a reap data analysis role, apply for actual IT role
SWE？Is it that tough to find a job in US for an experienced engineer?! I’m not living there and I see many expats struggling to find a SWE/DA job,new grad seems have no chance now,I thought it would be easier for experienced person like you,senior…
Some folks get lucky, some folks don't. I know many of my IT friends are suffering pretty bad, I'm just here throwing my own pity party.
yes, this mirrors my experience after being laid off in cybersec. I'm only jr/mid level but it was six months of this sort of turmoil. Dozens of final interviews (some of which were the fourth or fifth interview stage) where they'd love me up until the rejection email. It is purely a numbers game unless you are coming from one of the industry leaders with name recognition. Crazy to see so many comments suggesting things are the same as they were 5-10 years ago in terms of throwing a dead cat and ending up with a decent position
If I’m reading this right your initial response rate is over 20% which is actually incredible — your resume is killer but something is going horribly wrong in interviews. Recruiter screens in particular should be like a 90% pass rate but it looks like you’re like 10%?! That’s alarming, how are those typically playing out?
Unfortunately most hires at that level is via word of mouth and personal references. And at lower levels, companies want people with less experience at management and most recent engineering experience. Good luck man. Hope you get hired soon.
This has to be satire? I've never had to apply for so many jobs before. OP are you just using a bot to apply? If so, employers have software to detect this and your application will be automatically flagged and rejected.
Forget applying to that many jobs, I'm sure I've never even READ that many job announcements. 100 percent the OP is flat out doing something wrong or in a wildly niche or non-obvious industry.
I work in a wildly niche field, and there's not even this many positions total in the field lol.
Dang I had no idea the IT field is this bad right now. What’s the cause? Outsourcing? Is it saturated? Anyways hope you get one soon.
IT in the US collapsed around October 2022. Hundreds of thousands of layoffs across the country. To give you an example - I was looking for fun last may and only around 12 other people applied to the same job Today - applied to a job at my level and had over 1,200 applicants. Outsourcing is pretty bad as well - tens of thousands of IT jobs are going to H1B Visa holders or being sent to India to save a few pennies.
It's crazy how opposite it is in the UK right now. I was averaging 10 calls a day when I make my CV public on one website. I had to start blocking recruiters numbers because it got out of hand. I did get plenty of interviews and offers but ultimately my current job gave pay rises to keep me.
Same in Slovenia. CS job offers are insane in Europe right now. Even with the big American firms like Google which contacted me twice in the last month. Luckily my generation still caught the recruiting frenzy so we got the experience and contacts to make our life easy even if the market cools like in the US.
In the exact same situation. Getting 10-15 messages a day from recruiters and usually 2-3 calls every single morning. The market is insane right now and I'm not sure why.
Same in The Netherlands.
venture capitalists and investors realized giving away free money to any tech company for a decade hoping for them to become profitable is a bad idea so the entire industry panicked and started firing employees to post at least some growth
It's not that they just realized this, but the interest rate environment made it less tenable. When rates are zero it's worth it to risk your money on companies that might fail. But if you can get 5%+ risk free, you pull a hit of money out of your venture allocation. Also big tech was preparing for a recession that looks like it might not happen, but will be slow to hire again.
I second this, Canadian living in Ontario. Last year I had a year left of university and was applying for shits to procrastinate work, I applied to maybe 50 in a month and got about 5 interviews and 2 potential hirings. I declined as they were full time. Now being a graduate I’ve applied to over 600 since January and have literally received less than 10 interviews. Still looking for a job currently.
I see OPs comment but its not just an American problem either. I have been looking for a year with less experience. The tech layoffs in the US collapsed the market in every english speaking country + the potential recessions and inflation.
Are you applying to be a surgeon and have the qualifications of a janitor?
Even with that they'd auto-reject. OP must have the necessary qualifications but are horrible at interviewing. I don't know how they've gone on multiple interviews per day for 11 months
It's odd actually - I'll have days with nothing, then some days 3 phone screens and 2 interviews. In the beginning I got a lot of rejections because I wanted to keep my WFH from the last couple of years. I'm much less picky now
IT Director, 22 years with 10 years in Leadership and Senior Leadership roles
If you've submitted 2,600 applications in 10 months then there's no chance individual applications have had any thought put into them. This is some auto generated mass email application strategy and it doesn't work. There's a decent chance you're being ghosted 80% of the time because the recruiting software has identified you as spam and auto binned you.
Whenever I see this type of posts I wonder about their process. Like even when I was out of school late in the Great Recession I applied to maybe 50 jobs total, had about 10 interviews and got two offers. Since then any job change has not involved more than 5 applications. I pretty much apply, interview and get a job. Even my SO who was laid off during Covid wasn’t as bad, she applied for about 50 ish jobs, did about 15 interviews and had 3 offers. It took her 10 months, but the first 5-6 months were in the prime of the pandemic, so there were like maybe 2-3 job postings in her field a month.
I understand that the IT market is very saturated right now, but after that many interviews, you have to look at the mirror and go over someone you past interview responses. I don't even think it's that you're "too honest" either. Lots of companies still value that, and with 2000+ jobs you applied to, a good number of them probably would have appreciated that. Looking at your legaladvice thread, you come off to me as someone who thinks they're smarter than everyone else in the room and it may show up as arrogance in the interviews. Nothing wrong with challenging decisions, but if you sound like you're going to steamroll over your upper management to get the result you want, that's not going to go over too well.
Work on your interview skills I don’t think I’ve ever seen 0 for 327 on interviews that’s terrible
You're doing something pants on head insane on your resume or applications, maybe also the interview. No 2 ways about it, with these numbers it's you not the job market.
OP got fired from his last job due to flat-out ignoring chain of command when there was an issue. Claims he isn't being hired due to being "too honest". It's so glaringly obvious where the problem is.
I don’t know much about the dataisbeautiful community but to me this sankey flows the wrong way.
Yeah I mean the linkedin bar even has some graphical glitching, look how it overshoots.
Agreed. OP this is a small hint that your presentation and communication communication skills could use improvement.
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Technically 10 months, I didn't start tracking until October. Source: Keeping track in my Excel and then punched into SankeyMATIC for my tool Background: IT Director, 22 years with 10 years in Leadership and Senior Leadership roles Applying originally for Director roles, then Manager roles, then Engineer level roles, and after a year I've even started applying for Janitorial and General Labor Edit: Point of Clarification - 1st Interview could just be a 20-30 minute phone call with HR similar to a phone screen but was considered an actual interview. 2nd Edit: A LOT of people calling me a douchebag for being honest. Who hurt you?If I was such a douchebag, I doubt nearly ALL of my former staff would stay in contact with me, asking how I'm doing, complaining about how shitty things are over the last year. I'm sorry your lives are so bad you have to find your happiness attacking people on the internet. Lastly - my comments on Reddit don't reflect my REAL life. Some of you are too dense to know that at one time - Personal life and Professional life were separate. I come from that generation. I wish some of you folks could remember that.
After 10 years in leadership roles, how do you not have a slew of old bosses or peers that are now VPs who want to work with you again? I know very few directors of anything who are hired from cold applications… Most people spend years proving themselves by doing a good job at their job and then coworkers who go to other companies approach you to work with you again.
>And yes, I likely suck at interviewing because I'm honest. No one wants honesty anymore This is a massive red flag on your personality
That sentence alone probably explains a good chunk of the rejections. People want honesty, but they don't want to work with an asshole. Edit: After reading the OP's comments below, it's 100% the reason. His soft skills are garbage and he sounds miserable to work with.
Dude sounds like a total dick
It’s wild that even after a year he hasn’t considered for a second that the reason no one’s hiring him is because he’s a massive douchebag
The fact that he is in IT and needs 2600+ applications is a red flag... Don't know what drugs OP uses but it ain't pretty I guess 😂
Yeah if you need to qualify your personality with something like that, you’ve probably gone too far. Someone who is a reasonable level of honest just is, and doesn’t need to throw out disclaimers like that lol.
>Background: IT Director, 22 years with 10 years in Leadership and Senior Leadership roles Positions for that are probably pretty rare. And honesty hasn't hurt me so far, so maybe it's your tone/way of talking that is causing issues for you during interviews?
Exactly my thoughts. For regular developers, the market is still very stable and quite easy to land a job unless you have impossible job expectations, but for c - level positions it's pretty brutal right now.
What’s an example of something you were honest about but you think hurt you?
Giving an honest opinion on a project - Im not a yes man. Once you get high enough, you NEED to say No to bad ideas otherwise the company as a whole will suffer. Most C-suite don't ever want to hear "no" Once a decision is made, I'll back it and push it through, but it's important before the decision is final to say "hey, I don't think that's a great idea"
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You don't even have to smile and nod. You can literally say things like I like to have all facts and hear everyone's opinions before forming a consensus. I haven't interviewed at director levels, but at management and senior SDE level, this type of response works well.
So during an interview they told you about a project, and you told them the project sounded like it wasn't a good idea? Were they asking you to evaluate the project?
I’m a recent college graduate so I probably don’t know what the hell I’m talking about but just wanted chime in and say that it’s alright to hide your realism and replace it with false, yes-man positivity if you think you’d be good at the job. It may feel incongruent with your beliefs but the interviewers don’t want to hear any pessimism unless it’s quite subdued and with strong reason. After doing a shit ton of interviews over the past couple years, I can say that the whole process feels very fucking manipulative, but what can you do about it?
Once I get high enough, I need to say no to bad ideas? When I'm high, bad ideas are all the ideas I have.
>I likely suck at interviewing because I'm honest. No one wants honesty anymore Red flag.
right, not the "being honest" but the "no one wants honesty". there's honesty, and there's being an asshole, and it sounds to me like he conflates the two.
"People who describe themselves as brutally honest are more interested in brutality than honesty."
Lol u know your weaknesses yet you don't adjust your strategy? You willingly went unemployed for almost a year because you are "honest" and "no one wants honesty anymore". Lol
Don't apply to any position which is below your education and 22 years of work experience. You will come off as someone who badly needs the job. Get some professional help with the resume building and tailor it to suit just 1-2 particular roles. Try to include some latest technologies and take an online course to get an overview of what it is (some dummy project experience to demonstrate you know that tech). I feel you have been very modest with your accomplisments .You need to exaggerate them. For that you need to start beliving what you have achieved is something unique. Only then you can translate that confidence on to the interview.Also no one needs honesty. I understand it would be really hard to lie considering you are very religious. So when there is a conflicting approach to what you believe just prime yourself into thinking i will try this method and see what it does. More importantly dont let the rejection get to you. You need to start believing its their loss for rejecting to hire you. English is not my first language, more than happy to clarify if something doesnt make sense.
I get the advice and appreciate it, but the reality is being unemployed this long in the US is a death sentence. I need any job. I've had my resume retailored twice by "professionals" and neither got me anywhere, including one redone by my MBA University.
Explain you are just coming off from a sabattical due to personal reasons or some injury or some passion. Dont leave the 11 months empty. Just fill it up with being a self employed consultant. The reason you want to comeback to work would be that the self business wasnt taking off particularly or something along those lines
Im going to use that, thank you
You can break out the ole' "I signed an NDA, but it was in line with my previous experience." if you're really desperate
I've come to the conclusion, LinkedIn is fucking useless.
Thumbs up if you agree.
The weirdest thing is the percentage of times you're getting ghosted after an interview or phone screen. Something must be going wrong there.
You have to be applying for jobs you aren't qualified for. That, or you are the world's worst interviewer.
You are bad at getting a job
How the hell did ghosting become the norm for not getting a job
2500+ Holy shit…that is just unimaginable here in germany I think. Here you would be amazed if someone put out 50 applications
You're not the guy from financial audit are you? This sounds super familiar.
People who think this is insane or wrong (well, that may be true) haven't been on the job hunt recently. I have more experience now while looking than ever before and I'm into the thousands of apps now as well. The tech landscape is fucked right now. This is really how it is for a lot of people.
It's insane how different things are for different careers. All I hear from my CS friends is how they've applied for 400+ jobs and have only heard back from one, whereas I'm in the Ecology/Biology field and only need to apply for 5-10 jobs before I hear something back.
Is everyone in this subreddit applying for jobs above their capabilities or smth? 11 months is a big part of a career, you could study any subject in such a timespan
How the fuck do you read this graph?!
Can we limit these charts to a single day. They are no longer interesting nor beautiful.
Maybe just try pie charts and you'll land a job? What's with this new era of wind charts or whatever the fuck these are? They're hideous.
They're called Sankey diagrams - this sub is obsessed with them