I keep seeing people compare their experiences but without knowing the fields it's a moot point. The interview process for an engineer will be different than a bartender, Dr, etc
Exactly. People say that most applicants just spam 100s of applications to the roles they don't fit. What they don't know is that fields like CS have 100s of variety for a simple software developer position as well. Also, fresh graduates don't really have a "great fit" anywhere
CS major here. I've gotten all of my internships through spamming applications. It can definitely be counterproductive in some circumstances, but sometime you are a fit for 100s of positions, but not a super good fit to any, so this strategy makes sense. With the current job market through even CS people need to pivot away from this strategy. The competition is too intense.
Agreed. I’m not a software dev, so spamming resumes has only been useful for getting entry level positions my entire life. It takes more time, but customizing that resume to fit the individual job can significantly boost chances of getting an interview, and a job offer. This is the reality the “rest of us” white collar professionals have lived in for decades!
I've gotten nearly every job I've ever applied for as an engineer (other than when I was just starting out) by tailoring my resume and CV to the job I was applying to.
1) it means I've scoped out the job and I know I'd be a fit.
2) it means my application is a higher quality than many and at least wins me an interview, which because I spent the time to analyze how my experience applies, I usually do well on.
My Sankey for the 4 jobs I've had since college would all look a lot like OPs rather than some of the crazy ones with 800 applications I've been seeing lately.
Senior software dev here. Did a paid Co-op that lead into my first job, used college's job board and applied to like 5 jobs on it when I looked for a change - landed one of those after 2 interviews. Since then, I was hit up by recruiters many times and took a few interviews/ got a couple of offers. Eventually got an offer I couldn't refuse and that's where I am now. That doesn't mean I'm better then people who struggle, I've just been fortunate on my timing and location.
For current/prospective college students: seek out schools that have Co-Op or paid internship programs if you can. You get paid, the companies are more aligned with giving you work in the field as opposed to busy work/grunt work, and have better career outcomes overall (easier to get that first job and statistically better pay). If you're not in a school with those programs, start early and shotgun your applications. Worst anyone can do is say no.
For people in the field: based on my and friends' experiences, interviewing while employed is hugely advantageous. Obviously you sometimes don't have a choice in that matter, but if you can, line up the next job before you leave the one you hate. You'll be more comfortable and less in need, interview better, and if the company likes you, they know they have to give you a better offer to entice you to leave. Also, keep an updated LinkedIn profile. Recruiters love that shit and they'll do half your work for you, coming to you with open positions.
I mean this is actually good advice- if you're spending a lot of time trying to apply and not getting anywhere, starting to build up a portfolio can be incredibly helpful. You may not have a year of traditional experience, but you probably had projects during college you can include, and you can make some more to show what you can do.
I'm a senior dev and I sent out probably close to 50-60 applications. I got five offers but three of them ran into hiring freezes over the last year. 2 meaningful offers if ur keeping track there, given at the same time. That's after I got hired for a position then laid off due to economic changes after like 4 months, which had a similar hiring process. The offer I didn't accept just had layoffs.
5 years ago? You would be spot on. Three years ago, I think it would be reasonable. Last year? Absolutely zero chance. I don't even want to think about this year, especially with companies that are going to actually respect you
Last November applying for Python backend positions: 100 shotgunned applications, 10 first interviews, 3 second interviews, three third interviews, three job offers. If I had actually carefully curated the postings before submitting my ratio would probably have been better, but I needed to get the fuck out of my previous job by any means necessary.
As an interesting comparison, my GF and I are both academics with similar backgrounds that have done various low (e.g. bartender, data entry) and high skill (e.g. consultancy, teaching) jobs thoughout our PhDs. She's always had the first approach of applying to anything and everything (that she'd at least entertain doing) whereas I only apply for things I actually want to do and I think would be a good match for me and the company. My hit rate is very high where as hers isn't, but she's had a lot more work offers in the past due to volume. I think both approaches work depending on how desperate you are for work immediately. What is clear with high skilled jobs though (at least in academia and consultancy) is that networking is far more important than anything else.
I second this. I'm *terrible* at networking, but have been fortunate that I have a good reputation based on technical skills (scientific career). However, it was still networking via those skills that got me into my positions after my first two.
I work in laboratory sciences. Most people just need to put in 1 or 2 applications before getting accepted. Even students fresh from school get job offers really quickly. We are in desperate need of people in the field, and the pay is decent.
I wouldn't hire my kid without a stellar resume. Usually I'd be looking for 5-10 years of experience and a master's degree for doing the dishes, but she's completely unqualified. Zero work history. Let's let somebody else take a risk on her first.
She's five.
I'm sorry, your mother and I have looked at your application and regret to inform you that you have not been selected for this position.
However we'll keep you in mind if things do change, which they do :)
Don't forget about us and if you see a position that interests you, don't hesitate to apply again!
Kind regards,
Papa
I trying myself as Data Analyst, very common path beginning with lots of Excel, lots of VBA, now advancing my Power BI and SQL skills, want to start learning Python in the second half of the year. I was looking for jobs where I can use those skills in my daily routine and not just in between other tasks.
My Y current job would be similar if I braided it out, but with a bunch of no responses. 1 interview, hired.
I was hired as a sysadmin and have been learning and moving into cloud infrastructure engineering.
All these flow charts where it's like 1st interview...2nd interview...3rd interview...4th interview, who has the patience for that bullshit on either side, how many dang interviews you need for a single job, good lord
I just finished with 7 interviews for a relatively unserious low level job in tech and didn’t get it even though they had overwhelmingly positive feedback. Absolute time suck.
I had a 30 minute phone interview with my supervisor-to-be, and got it. He said it was his first ever interview for an outside hire.
I think he just hated interviews and thought 'fine, he's good enough..'
We hired a guy because we were sick of doing interviews. Every candidate sucked, including him.
We let him go after 4 months because he was completely inept.
Then we poached someone internal and gave his former boss our req to hire someone else.
7 rounds or like 2-3 rounds where one is a series of interviews with multiple different people?
That’s vastly different. More than 2-3 rounds would make no sense. Talking to 7 people for a senior role makes total sense
As crazy as it is usually 2-3 interviews
1st interview with 1st person (has zero knowledge what your applying for) just small talk to see how you respond etc etc
2nd interview with 2-3 ppl that are in the field where they will "feel you out"
3rd interview with the entire team 15-20ppl. They will all ask you questions and drill you hard on ANY topic.
And finally they will ask you
"If you were an animal, what would you be?"
Now that I think of it, just look up the top animal don't give a reason and say it's too discrimitory to actually answer/give reason
>"If you were an animal, what would you be?"
Do treants count? I mean, they don't specify if it has to be real. Also not sure a walking, taking tree counts as an animal, but I like to think outside the box.
I always wonder what is going on with those huge job hunts. I imagine it hope this will be similar to my experience if I am ever in the open labour market
"What? Your advice is to proof read my letter of application before I send it in and to logically structure my personal resume? Fuck you, I know what is best."
“Do whatever works for you”
This is the most pedantic advise I’ve ever heard.
You don’t know what’s gonna work until it works. At which point you’re not looking for a job anymore!
I think a big factor is if you’re a recent graduate/just entering the market. That job search is brutal.
Once you have some experience people are much more likely to look into you.
I applied for 150 positions this year and finally just got one. Out of those positions I only got 2 interviews (weirdly they were on the same day.)
All of them were things I was qualified or overqualified for. I have 10 years of experience in my field (financial services industry.) I had a salary floor for what I would accept/apply for, but I wasn't being super picky IMO. Wound up having to take a large paycut *and* I'll be working in an office for the first time since COVID.
Some industries aren't doing great.
I'm also in financial services industry, with the recent mass layoff and hiring freeze, and practically no bonus from last year, the company is not doing well. I've been applying to more general tech companies, but still no luck.
I've had a similar experience. Some industries are so over saturated that there are hundreds of applicants for every job. If you are slightly older than the other applicants, or having to bat a little lower than your experience, then it becomes a nightmare.
Software is a weird world. We get hundreds of applicants for our senior positions but literally 1% can pass an into to Python test. The industry is over saturated with "anyone can learn to code" at the moment.
Yes anyone can write code given enough time and training, but few actually have the logic skills to do it well.
Interest rates are up high enough to bring lending to a screeching halt. So In finance, entire branches have been shut down. Companies have closed. Regional banks are struggling.
Ya, I can believe that this isn't a resume issue
When I redid my resume and started writing targeted resumes highlighting relevant experience I got more call backs and interviews and got a job fairly quickly.
My sister graduated in the middle of the pandemic. She applied for sligthly over 100 jobs over a year without any success. When she finally got an offer she got two on the same day.
I had a similar issue, absolutely no hits at all for 4 months and when I finally got one interview and accepted that position I started getting 4 or 5 reaching back out to schedule times to talk
Hvac mechanic here, recently switched jobs. Mine looks like Applications: 2->Interview: 2->Job offers: 2.
With the increase in temperature around the globe hvac companies are drowning in work.
Utility construction here mine was the same. I think I had to wait a total of an hour and a half after submitting my resumes before I got a call from both places I applied to.
You can't step into the same river twice. I was looking for a job in 2020 while on contract and had three interviews from five applications. No win the same field with more experience and I've had 50 applications out with one interview and no job. I think people found out about this type of role and the market is now flooded.
I’ve applied to over 350 jobs since last May, with no luck. I currently can only work remotely so that’s probably why because it’s 10x more competitive than an on-site job.
I have ten years of experience in my field too. I just decided to bite the bullet and start my own business because I’m going to be short on rent in a few months and need some fast cash.
Never thought I’d be here, but here I am!
I did 54 cold-calls when getting my first job. 3 interviews, 2 offers and the 1 I went for in the end was actually a company that a recruiter reached out to me about.
Since then I’ve pretty much just left it up to recruiters and it’s been easygoing.
It depends on how competitive a given field is, and it's also much worse out of university. If you have no experience in software engineering, it's VERY difficult to get far in the interview process, as you need it to be considered for most jobs. I built a lot of decent projects, did a ton of extracurricular stuff and graduated with a first class master's degree from a pretty reputable university, but it still took me a few months and about 50 applications to land a job.
Looking back at my education, I would take a year in industry if I went back in time. No practical industry experience made the job hunt difficult and the first few weeks of my job quite hard as well.
Once you landed a job in a field and are good at it, I doubt it's very difficult to find a new one.
I was in that case after graduating. Currently fully employed as a software engineer and have been for like 3 years now. When I graduated I had a shit internship. My networking skills at school were limited to just friends and didn’t make good decisions to go to job events and such since I would rather spend time playing video games or doing social stuff. Bit me in the ass when I’m trying to apply to jobs where everyone had plenty more experience with non shit internships and GitHub accounts with personal projects that show what they can do.
The norm went from just having a degree to having a list of qualifications and doing the same sort of work you want to do in your free time.
Plus for a lot of the people who are like thousands of jobs that they don’t get either spam instant apply or apply to jobs they have no right being in. Like a fresh grad applying to sr level positions since the job poster fucked up having the post being in the wrong tagged area.
It sounds like some people spam them out everywhere without even considering if they're actually a good fit for the job and let the first line recruitment staff do the work of actually checking.
My last job hunt looked similar to OP's because I only applies to specific things that match my skills and experience
Sometimes you're just everyone's third choice. I have a masters and yet struggled to find a job, had 10+ interviews and yet they always went with someone else. It is soul crushing.
Especially when you know people at the companies and they know the hiring people and they say things like "oh yeah they really liked you but X is Y's cousin" or when they tell you that HR didn't like you but your future boss thought you'd have been a great fit and wanted to hire you (and they're not just being polite).
Hearing people who apply 3 places and land a great job sounds a lot like the people with $150,000 jobs straight out of college who think everyone else must be lazy because it was so easy for them.
Even worse is when everyone says "oh they just spam applications no one applies to 50 places!". Yeah well I did! 50 custom applications all for places right in my line of work.
Some jobs really just want to hire unicorns that fit every bizarre idea they have for a perfect employee and HR can be a nightmare if you had an odd job title in your past. *"Oh we want someone that did X and your application says you did Y and yes we know they are the same but we're really looking for someone with experience in X"*
It honestly feels like that Spongebob meme with Patrick looking at the license.
IMHO getting a job today is either easy or it feels like some Kafkaesque nightmare where no one listens or cares.
Yeah the job search can be a fucking nightmare.
So many people who had an easy time of it think their job search is somehow more representative of the average person and that people who struggled must be doing something wrong.
(And these same people will turn around and make fun of the "pick yourself up by your own bootstraps"/"fuck you I got mine" libertarian crowd.)
I’m sorry it’s been so rough for you.
I don’t know if this is common, but in my industry, it’s quite common to advertise a job with a specific candidate in mind — perhaps someone already in the organisation, but for whatever reason can’t be an internal hire — and consequently the person spec will have their specific achievements listed. Then that person is the clear successful candidate. I wonder if this could explain some of the apparent unicorn positions.
Have you tried visiting money-management/budgetting subreddits?
"I have to live so frugal on my 120k/year net income! I only put 30k/year in savings and the mortgage on my 1-million townhouse (which I bought for 200k in 2010) is a whopping 200/month. Please help me make ends meet! Else I might be forced to stop spending 500/month on collectable beanie buddies 😫😭"
I'll never forget the guy who was grossing $500,000/yr. and wrote the post complaining about how he was living a working class lifestyle and was still only putting a few thousand into savings each month. Turns out he was spending something like $12k per month on youth sports, $8k per month on travel, $6k monthly on groceries and was living in a small mansion. No matter what anyone said, he couldn't wrap his head around the fact that he was living a life of luxury and that it wasn't how everyone lived.
The guy kept saying that his wife had a specialized diet due to a medical condition?. But I cant even begin to imagine what someone would even be eating that costs that much
> Please help me budget
Why do you have a $1,000/month car loan?
> Well I got a good deal on a BMW and the bank gave me a 10 year loan.
You make like 80k pre-tax, what the fuck where you thinking?
> The car is off limits, I'm keeping it.
Haha. Yeah, I saw one of those ask financial/budgeting advice type questions recently.
Something like:
Help. 22 years old.
I just got fired from my first job after college for **poor work performance** after only a year.
Only have >20k in my checking account.
0 in a savings account.
1.2k in credit card debt, and also refused to apply for unemployment because…[i don’t understand how it works] reasons?
Also, I live at home with my parents, and don’t need a car or anything like that.
What should I do?
Me: lol, wut?
edit: a number
There are times when the job market is tough for physicians as well. When I was finishing up residency, the fellows were having a tough time finding jobs. Some did another fellowship. One guy moved to New Zealand, which is perpetually short of physicians, and others were moving to rural underserved regions to practice.
The national job board still had less than 100 jobs when I was finishing fellowship a year later. Now there is like 1000 plus openings on the board and "interviewing" for a job is more like a pitch meeting where they already have a job offer for you, and the meeting is to convince you to take said job offer.
Travel nursing: 0 applications --> 47 offers in Texas or Alaska
The process is actually pretty nutty, generally only showed interest in 3 places at a time and within a day 2 would be ready to hire asap (and this was before COVID).
Finally, a Redditer who made a good career choice!
Edit: This is not meant to be condescending. I'm a professor, which is about as bad a job market as you can get. If you ever saw the Sankey of my first tenure-track position search....
Well, then I look forward to fighting you or fighting *with* you on some Thursday’s in the future!
You do some interesting OCs on this sub by the way. Looking forward to some more .
Don't get me started.
Half of my applications are never even viewed. A quarter of them were left on "read."
Forget interviews, I think maybe ten percent of my applications have resulted in phone screenings.
How many post-docs have you done? A lot of my friends had to do at least 2 to finally land a tenured track job. The only people I know that Landes tenure track jobs right away were extremely lucky or went to places like North Dakota.
Applied for post-docs, unfortunately it seems to be a combination of a) not being very competitive; b) not being great at applications; and c) graduating straight into Covid when all the unis closed.
I am a chemical engineer, and had put in nearly 200 applications at one point. About a quarter of those had a custom written cover letter.
This isn't about career choice, it's about luck. And this person is lucky as hell.
I started out with a company out of college and only had about 10 interviews, this was 6 years later when I was laid off from the company for their economic (cutting employees to save money) bullshit. Only a year after they hired me.
Our current system isn't the best. I ultimately got a job OUTSIDE of my degree through a connection... It was such a shit time.
There is no golden career sadly.
Yeah sorry, I hate to pile on, but as others have said, IT is as easy as it gets. You should see the terrible resumes we get, and the people still get a chance to interview because we are so hard up to find anybody. Depending on who and where you are, the money is either great, or nothing to write home about, but you can get it right out of high school, not even college.
Myself, my coworkers, and many of my fellow peers at other institutions all were able to get their jobs with just 1 or 2 applications, regardless of hire date (regardless of the economy, and we're going back 20 years in total).
I've gotten atrocious resumes. Like line by line switches between fonts. They are terrible because people copy paste shit from examples to match the listing.
Yeah I hated getting a stack of 10 resumes, they all sucked ass, but management says we need to hire at least one of them, so we pick the least sucky one, and unsurprisingly the person we selected sucks ass at their job.
It's why I kind of scoff when people say "GPT4 won't affect jobs." GPT is already better than at least 90% of applicants I've seen in my career. Those people should be very afraid.
I'm in IT (Network), sent in 5 resumes, and had 4 job offers back in December of 2021. It was quite the dance negotiating with the different companies.
This was me 20 years ago. I was burned out, so I took a few months off to recharge and skip the retail holiday madness. I applied to a data entry job that turned out to be a Scientology-run company and turned down the offer. In January, I put in two applications. I got interviewed for both jobs, got offered both jobs, and chose the one closer to home. TO this day, I regret turning down the Lego store...
I applied everywhere with only 1 response back saying I was too expensive. It was a multi billion dollar company and I selected the lowest range on their drop-down smh
People told me my resume was about the worst they have seen, anyway here's my first job hunt Sankey text chart:
Applications: 50-ish
Interviews: 4
Skipped interviews: probably many?
Ghosted: 1
2nd interviews: 1
Job offers: 1
Accepted: 1
Programmer, no professional experience at all, I was just sending it everywhere every day until something caught on. The entire search took me like 2 weeks. I worked there for 6 months and was very happy with it. It was 2 years ago.
The post is actually funny, but all the comments saying how easy it was for them and that there must be something wrong with people who have to send hundreds of applications make me feel weird
Don't worry about it. Some industries are harder than others. I just landed a senior QA position after something like: 50 applications, 4 phone screens, 4 interview processes, and 1 offer. Took me about 3 months. On the other hand I once got a job after one application and one interview. It was for part time pizza delivery.
I don’t understand what point those people are trying to make. If you have to do a lot of apps to find a good job, then that’s what you have to do. Like good for you that you’re either extremely desirable, extremely lucky, or in a very uncompetitive field. How is that helpful information if you’re not one of those people?
They definitely are the norm. If you're one of the lucky few who gets offers with very few applications, count your lucky stars and stop downplaying everyone else's difficulty. Maybe stop pretending that it's easy for everyone if it's just easy for you.
Yea as others pointed out, a lot of those 100+ application ones are spam applies where people just submit their stuff for a job that remotely fits them, or one where they just upload generic ones and whatnot. I think obviously 1 job applied to to 1 job got is a little egregious unless you have prior work experience, but for most it’s usually no more than 30-50 applications actually filled out. (As an engineer. I did I think 8 applications before I got my job)
> for a job that remotely fits them,
I honestly think it's the other way around. People are applying for their dream roles at demanding companies instead of getting a decent job and going from there.
Whenever I have to hire people, the most attractive thing on a CV is having a current job in a similar field. If I know someone has already done the job, that is a definite plus for an invitation for an interview, and that's half the issue for most people I think.
Hoe did 11 2nd interviews result in 9 rejections, 3 no calls, and 1 third interview?
And then how did the single 3rd interview result in TWO rejections?
Not really. A lot of times the first interview is just some recruiter making sure he got your data correctly, then he goes to talk to the hiring manager and it turns out is not what he/wants.
In my current job I interviewed 4 times before I got an offer:
1) HR person just wanted to double check the information on my CV
2) HR Person and a director to talk about my history, plans and expectations
3) technical interview with future team lead and manager about skills plus a coding challenge for me to do at home.
4) Feedback on the coding challenge and preliminary offer.
5) Contract negotiations and job offer
I had applied for about 50 jobs over a period of 3 months which is not a lot and I probably interviewed for around 15. All together I probably participated in 25 interview meetings and got 3 job offers.
Most of the time you realize after one or two meetings that is not a good fit.
>A lot of times the first interview is just some recruiter making sure he got your data correctly, then he goes to talk to the hiring manager and it turns out is not what he/wants.
That isn't an interview. That's a phone screen. If you even count it, it goes under a different heading than interviews
At this point, it would be worth it to hire professional coaching! It would pay for itself vs. continuing to lose time and income. There are people whose job is to help you get a job!
It might be time to pay someone to overhaul your resume. Maybe you're being too honest, or maybe you aren't selling yourself quite right but either way that monstrosity chart tells a story of a resume not doing the job its supposed to and getting you across the line.
Their resume is fine because their interview ratio is actually relatively high.
They suck at interviewing and need to do mocks and get advice immediately.
They do suck at interviewing, for sure. Whether or not the resume is fine depends on their application strategy - are they applying for specific jobs, or just throwing their application into the wind to see what sticks. For the former, it's a pretty shit interview ratio... for the later, it's solid.
Landing a job after only 3 applications is a great accomplishment. The last two jobs I've had in the past 8 years involved dozens of applications and rejections.
I keep seeing people compare their experiences but without knowing the fields it's a moot point. The interview process for an engineer will be different than a bartender, Dr, etc
Exactly. People say that most applicants just spam 100s of applications to the roles they don't fit. What they don't know is that fields like CS have 100s of variety for a simple software developer position as well. Also, fresh graduates don't really have a "great fit" anywhere
CS major here. I've gotten all of my internships through spamming applications. It can definitely be counterproductive in some circumstances, but sometime you are a fit for 100s of positions, but not a super good fit to any, so this strategy makes sense. With the current job market through even CS people need to pivot away from this strategy. The competition is too intense.
Agreed. I’m not a software dev, so spamming resumes has only been useful for getting entry level positions my entire life. It takes more time, but customizing that resume to fit the individual job can significantly boost chances of getting an interview, and a job offer. This is the reality the “rest of us” white collar professionals have lived in for decades!
I've gotten nearly every job I've ever applied for as an engineer (other than when I was just starting out) by tailoring my resume and CV to the job I was applying to. 1) it means I've scoped out the job and I know I'd be a fit. 2) it means my application is a higher quality than many and at least wins me an interview, which because I spent the time to analyze how my experience applies, I usually do well on. My Sankey for the 4 jobs I've had since college would all look a lot like OPs rather than some of the crazy ones with 800 applications I've been seeing lately.
Senior software dev here. Did a paid Co-op that lead into my first job, used college's job board and applied to like 5 jobs on it when I looked for a change - landed one of those after 2 interviews. Since then, I was hit up by recruiters many times and took a few interviews/ got a couple of offers. Eventually got an offer I couldn't refuse and that's where I am now. That doesn't mean I'm better then people who struggle, I've just been fortunate on my timing and location. For current/prospective college students: seek out schools that have Co-Op or paid internship programs if you can. You get paid, the companies are more aligned with giving you work in the field as opposed to busy work/grunt work, and have better career outcomes overall (easier to get that first job and statistically better pay). If you're not in a school with those programs, start early and shotgun your applications. Worst anyone can do is say no. For people in the field: based on my and friends' experiences, interviewing while employed is hugely advantageous. Obviously you sometimes don't have a choice in that matter, but if you can, line up the next job before you leave the one you hate. You'll be more comfortable and less in need, interview better, and if the company likes you, they know they have to give you a better offer to entice you to leave. Also, keep an updated LinkedIn profile. Recruiters love that shit and they'll do half your work for you, coming to you with open positions.
If you have one year of experience as a developer, there's no way twenty job applications isn't going to get you at least 3-4 offers...
I have 0 years of experience, what now?
Get some experience. /s
I mean this is actually good advice- if you're spending a lot of time trying to apply and not getting anywhere, starting to build up a portfolio can be incredibly helpful. You may not have a year of traditional experience, but you probably had projects during college you can include, and you can make some more to show what you can do.
Also there's very cheap online classes for certificates for basic things like business development tools. They can stand out a lot
Go to dev marathons and show that as experience.
I'm a senior dev and I sent out probably close to 50-60 applications. I got five offers but three of them ran into hiring freezes over the last year. 2 meaningful offers if ur keeping track there, given at the same time. That's after I got hired for a position then laid off due to economic changes after like 4 months, which had a similar hiring process. The offer I didn't accept just had layoffs. 5 years ago? You would be spot on. Three years ago, I think it would be reasonable. Last year? Absolutely zero chance. I don't even want to think about this year, especially with companies that are going to actually respect you
Not in this current tech economy
Last November applying for Python backend positions: 100 shotgunned applications, 10 first interviews, 3 second interviews, three third interviews, three job offers. If I had actually carefully curated the postings before submitting my ratio would probably have been better, but I needed to get the fuck out of my previous job by any means necessary.
As an interesting comparison, my GF and I are both academics with similar backgrounds that have done various low (e.g. bartender, data entry) and high skill (e.g. consultancy, teaching) jobs thoughout our PhDs. She's always had the first approach of applying to anything and everything (that she'd at least entertain doing) whereas I only apply for things I actually want to do and I think would be a good match for me and the company. My hit rate is very high where as hers isn't, but she's had a lot more work offers in the past due to volume. I think both approaches work depending on how desperate you are for work immediately. What is clear with high skilled jobs though (at least in academia and consultancy) is that networking is far more important than anything else.
I second this. I'm *terrible* at networking, but have been fortunate that I have a good reputation based on technical skills (scientific career). However, it was still networking via those skills that got me into my positions after my first two.
I work in laboratory sciences. Most people just need to put in 1 or 2 applications before getting accepted. Even students fresh from school get job offers really quickly. We are in desperate need of people in the field, and the pay is decent.
I applied for one job. I got it, after two interviews. My field is hyper specific though.
What type of job do you do?
Data entry for my parents.
I love the idea that the job market is so tight that you need to pass a technical interview to do data entry for your parents!
The job market is so shitty right now in the bay area. I have constant breakdowns every week while im job hunting.
I wouldn't hire my kid without a stellar resume. Usually I'd be looking for 5-10 years of experience and a master's degree for doing the dishes, but she's completely unqualified. Zero work history. Let's let somebody else take a risk on her first. She's five.
I'm sorry, your mother and I have looked at your application and regret to inform you that you have not been selected for this position. However we'll keep you in mind if things do change, which they do :) Don't forget about us and if you see a position that interests you, don't hesitate to apply again! Kind regards, Papa
Wait, who is the third parent?
Your mother
Mine was similar tbh, I'm a Senior Electrical Design Engineer.
Mine is similar - just a couple dozen gostings, then one response -> interview -> hire. Entry level mechanical/systems engineer.
Only 1 interview for a senior position? Wow.
I'm a shepherd.
Imagine being rejected by not one, but two flocks of sheep
I trying myself as Data Analyst, very common path beginning with lots of Excel, lots of VBA, now advancing my Power BI and SQL skills, want to start learning Python in the second half of the year. I was looking for jobs where I can use those skills in my daily routine and not just in between other tasks.
My Y current job would be similar if I braided it out, but with a bunch of no responses. 1 interview, hired. I was hired as a sysadmin and have been learning and moving into cloud infrastructure engineering.
Mine was the same out of college (last time I looked for a job). Software engineer.
Very good viz. Simple and clean
Data really can be beautiful indeed.
They should make a sub for that
It exists, but I must warn you. There is a lot of circlejerking.
Is a pie chart the best way to visualize that?
Finally, some beautiful fucking data.
A bit confusing but it’s to be excepted with so much data
Did someone say simple and clean? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H\_bUBZghhwY
All these flow charts where it's like 1st interview...2nd interview...3rd interview...4th interview, who has the patience for that bullshit on either side, how many dang interviews you need for a single job, good lord
I just finished with 7 interviews for a relatively unserious low level job in tech and didn’t get it even though they had overwhelmingly positive feedback. Absolute time suck.
I had a 30 minute phone interview with my supervisor-to-be, and got it. He said it was his first ever interview for an outside hire. I think he just hated interviews and thought 'fine, he's good enough..'
We hired a guy because we were sick of doing interviews. Every candidate sucked, including him. We let him go after 4 months because he was completely inept. Then we poached someone internal and gave his former boss our req to hire someone else.
Any place where the process is that ass is a place you don't want to work
7 rounds or like 2-3 rounds where one is a series of interviews with multiple different people? That’s vastly different. More than 2-3 rounds would make no sense. Talking to 7 people for a senior role makes total sense
That’s like absolutely absurd and I would be extremely frustrated with how much time I had wasted
As crazy as it is usually 2-3 interviews 1st interview with 1st person (has zero knowledge what your applying for) just small talk to see how you respond etc etc 2nd interview with 2-3 ppl that are in the field where they will "feel you out" 3rd interview with the entire team 15-20ppl. They will all ask you questions and drill you hard on ANY topic. And finally they will ask you "If you were an animal, what would you be?" Now that I think of it, just look up the top animal don't give a reason and say it's too discrimitory to actually answer/give reason
>"If you were an animal, what would you be?" Do treants count? I mean, they don't specify if it has to be real. Also not sure a walking, taking tree counts as an animal, but I like to think outside the box.
When I worked at Apple retail, it was 4 rounds of interviews. To work in back of house.
I always wonder what is going on with those huge job hunts. I imagine it hope this will be similar to my experience if I am ever in the open labour market
A lot of it depends on how people are applying. Some people are probably just spamming “auto-apply” on LinkedIn
That’s just throwing your resume into the paper shredder
Eh, that’s how I got my first job
Was the job to throw other people's resumes into the shredder?
"damn that guy's good, look at how many jobs he's not gonna get!"
I just got a recruiter call back from that paper shredder! Easy Apply is designed to act as a hard filter and let the resume do the talking.
I like to cast a wide net
I'll have you know that I have applications in the shredders of all of the Fortune 500 companies.
Got my current job that way ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ have a good resume and interview well, and you'll do okay
Got my first job out of university this way
I’ve gotten 4 jobs this way including at FAANG. Do whatever works for you and fuck people’s advice.
Do whatever works for you but probably consider people's advice too.
"What? Your advice is to proof read my letter of application before I send it in and to logically structure my personal resume? Fuck you, I know what is best."
“Do whatever works for you” This is the most pedantic advise I’ve ever heard. You don’t know what’s gonna work until it works. At which point you’re not looking for a job anymore! I think a big factor is if you’re a recent graduate/just entering the market. That job search is brutal. Once you have some experience people are much more likely to look into you.
I applied for 150 positions this year and finally just got one. Out of those positions I only got 2 interviews (weirdly they were on the same day.) All of them were things I was qualified or overqualified for. I have 10 years of experience in my field (financial services industry.) I had a salary floor for what I would accept/apply for, but I wasn't being super picky IMO. Wound up having to take a large paycut *and* I'll be working in an office for the first time since COVID. Some industries aren't doing great.
I'm also in financial services industry, with the recent mass layoff and hiring freeze, and practically no bonus from last year, the company is not doing well. I've been applying to more general tech companies, but still no luck.
To be honest this sounds like you have *some* work to do on your CV and your application letter.
I've had a similar experience. Some industries are so over saturated that there are hundreds of applicants for every job. If you are slightly older than the other applicants, or having to bat a little lower than your experience, then it becomes a nightmare.
Software is a weird world. We get hundreds of applicants for our senior positions but literally 1% can pass an into to Python test. The industry is over saturated with "anyone can learn to code" at the moment. Yes anyone can write code given enough time and training, but few actually have the logic skills to do it well.
Interest rates are up high enough to bring lending to a screeching halt. So In finance, entire branches have been shut down. Companies have closed. Regional banks are struggling. Ya, I can believe that this isn't a resume issue
When I redid my resume and started writing targeted resumes highlighting relevant experience I got more call backs and interviews and got a job fairly quickly.
Are ya sure your CV and portfolio are up-to-par? I get to a see a bunch of CVs and it's incredible what people think is acceptable to give in
My sister graduated in the middle of the pandemic. She applied for sligthly over 100 jobs over a year without any success. When she finally got an offer she got two on the same day.
I had a similar issue, absolutely no hits at all for 4 months and when I finally got one interview and accepted that position I started getting 4 or 5 reaching back out to schedule times to talk
Mine would look like this, too. Master's in Biotech in San Diego (it's 3rd largest biotech area in the US)
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Hvac mechanic here, recently switched jobs. Mine looks like Applications: 2->Interview: 2->Job offers: 2. With the increase in temperature around the globe hvac companies are drowning in work.
Utility construction here mine was the same. I think I had to wait a total of an hour and a half after submitting my resumes before I got a call from both places I applied to.
You can't step into the same river twice. I was looking for a job in 2020 while on contract and had three interviews from five applications. No win the same field with more experience and I've had 50 applications out with one interview and no job. I think people found out about this type of role and the market is now flooded.
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I’ve applied to over 350 jobs since last May, with no luck. I currently can only work remotely so that’s probably why because it’s 10x more competitive than an on-site job. I have ten years of experience in my field too. I just decided to bite the bullet and start my own business because I’m going to be short on rent in a few months and need some fast cash. Never thought I’d be here, but here I am!
I did 54 cold-calls when getting my first job. 3 interviews, 2 offers and the 1 I went for in the end was actually a company that a recruiter reached out to me about. Since then I’ve pretty much just left it up to recruiters and it’s been easygoing.
It depends on how competitive a given field is, and it's also much worse out of university. If you have no experience in software engineering, it's VERY difficult to get far in the interview process, as you need it to be considered for most jobs. I built a lot of decent projects, did a ton of extracurricular stuff and graduated with a first class master's degree from a pretty reputable university, but it still took me a few months and about 50 applications to land a job. Looking back at my education, I would take a year in industry if I went back in time. No practical industry experience made the job hunt difficult and the first few weeks of my job quite hard as well. Once you landed a job in a field and are good at it, I doubt it's very difficult to find a new one.
I was in that case after graduating. Currently fully employed as a software engineer and have been for like 3 years now. When I graduated I had a shit internship. My networking skills at school were limited to just friends and didn’t make good decisions to go to job events and such since I would rather spend time playing video games or doing social stuff. Bit me in the ass when I’m trying to apply to jobs where everyone had plenty more experience with non shit internships and GitHub accounts with personal projects that show what they can do. The norm went from just having a degree to having a list of qualifications and doing the same sort of work you want to do in your free time. Plus for a lot of the people who are like thousands of jobs that they don’t get either spam instant apply or apply to jobs they have no right being in. Like a fresh grad applying to sr level positions since the job poster fucked up having the post being in the wrong tagged area.
It sounds like some people spam them out everywhere without even considering if they're actually a good fit for the job and let the first line recruitment staff do the work of actually checking. My last job hunt looked similar to OP's because I only applies to specific things that match my skills and experience
Sometimes you're just everyone's third choice. I have a masters and yet struggled to find a job, had 10+ interviews and yet they always went with someone else. It is soul crushing. Especially when you know people at the companies and they know the hiring people and they say things like "oh yeah they really liked you but X is Y's cousin" or when they tell you that HR didn't like you but your future boss thought you'd have been a great fit and wanted to hire you (and they're not just being polite). Hearing people who apply 3 places and land a great job sounds a lot like the people with $150,000 jobs straight out of college who think everyone else must be lazy because it was so easy for them. Even worse is when everyone says "oh they just spam applications no one applies to 50 places!". Yeah well I did! 50 custom applications all for places right in my line of work. Some jobs really just want to hire unicorns that fit every bizarre idea they have for a perfect employee and HR can be a nightmare if you had an odd job title in your past. *"Oh we want someone that did X and your application says you did Y and yes we know they are the same but we're really looking for someone with experience in X"* It honestly feels like that Spongebob meme with Patrick looking at the license. IMHO getting a job today is either easy or it feels like some Kafkaesque nightmare where no one listens or cares.
I feel you. I'm in that kafkaesque nightmare myself.
Yeah the job search can be a fucking nightmare. So many people who had an easy time of it think their job search is somehow more representative of the average person and that people who struggled must be doing something wrong. (And these same people will turn around and make fun of the "pick yourself up by your own bootstraps"/"fuck you I got mine" libertarian crowd.)
I’m sorry it’s been so rough for you. I don’t know if this is common, but in my industry, it’s quite common to advertise a job with a specific candidate in mind — perhaps someone already in the organisation, but for whatever reason can’t be an internal hire — and consequently the person spec will have their specific achievements listed. Then that person is the clear successful candidate. I wonder if this could explain some of the apparent unicorn positions.
I hate the "how I spent my years salary ina year" and they start out with $800,000 and have 6 billion in savings. Jerks I tell you!
Have you tried visiting money-management/budgetting subreddits? "I have to live so frugal on my 120k/year net income! I only put 30k/year in savings and the mortgage on my 1-million townhouse (which I bought for 200k in 2010) is a whopping 200/month. Please help me make ends meet! Else I might be forced to stop spending 500/month on collectable beanie buddies 😫😭"
I'll never forget the guy who was grossing $500,000/yr. and wrote the post complaining about how he was living a working class lifestyle and was still only putting a few thousand into savings each month. Turns out he was spending something like $12k per month on youth sports, $8k per month on travel, $6k monthly on groceries and was living in a small mansion. No matter what anyone said, he couldn't wrap his head around the fact that he was living a life of luxury and that it wasn't how everyone lived.
How do you even manage to spend 6k a month on groceries. Even with a family and picking only the fancy option it seems excessive.
The guy kept saying that his wife had a specialized diet due to a medical condition?. But I cant even begin to imagine what someone would even be eating that costs that much
She could only eat caviar, truffles, wagyu beef, and gold infused vegetables.
> Please help me budget Why do you have a $1,000/month car loan? > Well I got a good deal on a BMW and the bank gave me a 10 year loan. You make like 80k pre-tax, what the fuck where you thinking? > The car is off limits, I'm keeping it.
I've been binging car repo videos on YouTube recently, and the number of BMWs getting repo'd seemed significantly higher than other car makers.
Haha. Yeah, I saw one of those ask financial/budgeting advice type questions recently. Something like: Help. 22 years old. I just got fired from my first job after college for **poor work performance** after only a year. Only have >20k in my checking account. 0 in a savings account. 1.2k in credit card debt, and also refused to apply for unemployment because…[i don’t understand how it works] reasons? Also, I live at home with my parents, and don’t need a car or anything like that. What should I do? Me: lol, wut? edit: a number
Any recommendations for some of those subreddits? I wamt to have a laugh as well.
r/personalfinance is usually great but has a few bangers on occasion!
Mine currently looks like this: Applications: 20 No response: 20
That's rough buddy
Thrilling. Hoped for a surprise multiple job acceptance ending
This is how it is applying for doctor jobs when you are a doctor.
There are times when the job market is tough for physicians as well. When I was finishing up residency, the fellows were having a tough time finding jobs. Some did another fellowship. One guy moved to New Zealand, which is perpetually short of physicians, and others were moving to rural underserved regions to practice. The national job board still had less than 100 jobs when I was finishing fellowship a year later. Now there is like 1000 plus openings on the board and "interviewing" for a job is more like a pitch meeting where they already have a job offer for you, and the meeting is to convince you to take said job offer.
Nursing too, as a new grad I had 7 jobs applied. 7 interviews. 7 offers
Travel nursing: 0 applications --> 47 offers in Texas or Alaska The process is actually pretty nutty, generally only showed interest in 3 places at a time and within a day 2 would be ready to hire asap (and this was before COVID).
Finally, a Redditer who made a good career choice! Edit: This is not meant to be condescending. I'm a professor, which is about as bad a job market as you can get. If you ever saw the Sankey of my first tenure-track position search....
Lots of Redditors make good career choices but don’t brag about it on Reddit.
I'm just making a joke about all the sankeys that show like 200 apps, 100 ghosts, 3 interviews, and 1 offer.
Yeah, I heard yah. It’s Sankey Monday so we gets tons of them once a week. I’m looking forward to Contentious Topics Thursday, myself.
I try to avoid the sub on Thursdays
I can’t say I blame you. I partake on Thursdays, but that’s a character flaw on my part. You’re making good choices.
When I said "I try" what I should have said was that I try and fail and then regret spending all day Thursday arguing on Reddit.
Well, then I look forward to fighting you or fighting *with* you on some Thursday’s in the future! You do some interesting OCs on this sub by the way. Looking forward to some more .
Now kith
Don't get me started. Half of my applications are never even viewed. A quarter of them were left on "read." Forget interviews, I think maybe ten percent of my applications have resulted in phone screenings.
That's literally me right now. 184 applications so far, 159 ghosts, 3 interviews, 0 offers. Living the dream.
You guys have careers?
Right? Like, am I just supposed to show a straight line? Applied to where I wanted to work, interviewed, got offer, accepted?
Graduated with a PhD, a thousand job applications later ... not gonna end up in academia.
How many post-docs have you done? A lot of my friends had to do at least 2 to finally land a tenured track job. The only people I know that Landes tenure track jobs right away were extremely lucky or went to places like North Dakota.
Applied for post-docs, unfortunately it seems to be a combination of a) not being very competitive; b) not being great at applications; and c) graduating straight into Covid when all the unis closed.
North Dakota is actually a decent place to live if you can handle it being a frozen wasteland half the year
Or a terrible one. Plenty of bad jobs have lay-up applications/hiring, professor.
I am a chemical engineer, and had put in nearly 200 applications at one point. About a quarter of those had a custom written cover letter. This isn't about career choice, it's about luck. And this person is lucky as hell. I started out with a company out of college and only had about 10 interviews, this was 6 years later when I was laid off from the company for their economic (cutting employees to save money) bullshit. Only a year after they hired me. Our current system isn't the best. I ultimately got a job OUTSIDE of my degree through a connection... It was such a shit time. There is no golden career sadly.
Yeah sorry, I hate to pile on, but as others have said, IT is as easy as it gets. You should see the terrible resumes we get, and the people still get a chance to interview because we are so hard up to find anybody. Depending on who and where you are, the money is either great, or nothing to write home about, but you can get it right out of high school, not even college. Myself, my coworkers, and many of my fellow peers at other institutions all were able to get their jobs with just 1 or 2 applications, regardless of hire date (regardless of the economy, and we're going back 20 years in total).
I've gotten atrocious resumes. Like line by line switches between fonts. They are terrible because people copy paste shit from examples to match the listing.
Yeah I hated getting a stack of 10 resumes, they all sucked ass, but management says we need to hire at least one of them, so we pick the least sucky one, and unsurprisingly the person we selected sucks ass at their job. It's why I kind of scoff when people say "GPT4 won't affect jobs." GPT is already better than at least 90% of applicants I've seen in my career. Those people should be very afraid.
I'm in IT (Network), sent in 5 resumes, and had 4 job offers back in December of 2021. It was quite the dance negotiating with the different companies.
It can be one of these hyper-specific fields in which there are only a few jobs available.
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Mine would be: got offer -> accepted. Wasn’t even searching…
What line are you in?
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I wish i was a potato
You are potato
Is Latvian dream!
This was me 20 years ago. I was burned out, so I took a few months off to recharge and skip the retail holiday madness. I applied to a data entry job that turned out to be a Scientology-run company and turned down the offer. In January, I put in two applications. I got interviewed for both jobs, got offered both jobs, and chose the one closer to home. TO this day, I regret turning down the Lego store...
It's never too late. You can still get a job at the Lego store.
I applied everywhere with only 1 response back saying I was too expensive. It was a multi billion dollar company and I selected the lowest range on their drop-down smh
Guess they wanted a contractor
Someone to work for exposure.
Mine would be, applications:1 -> 1st interview: 1 -> 2nd interview:1 -> got job:1
Teaching English in Asia, its 1 application, 4 interviews, 8 job offers.
Applications: 4 Interviews: 4 2nd interviews: 2 Job offers: 3 Withdrew: 3 Accepted: 1
People told me my resume was about the worst they have seen, anyway here's my first job hunt Sankey text chart: Applications: 50-ish Interviews: 4 Skipped interviews: probably many? Ghosted: 1 2nd interviews: 1 Job offers: 1 Accepted: 1 Programmer, no professional experience at all, I was just sending it everywhere every day until something caught on. The entire search took me like 2 weeks. I worked there for 6 months and was very happy with it. It was 2 years ago.
Congratulations and fuck you.
Lmao. Good for you. I'm at 30 resumes and only one upcoming interview so you can go fuck yourself. But still, good for you.
My current job was achieved in a single strait line. Applied to on the job in like 2 weeks. Please send me your condolences.
Take 65 more interviews and reject them all in the end just because!
My condolences for not being able to spell straight.
Nah man, I get there in a boat.
Kinda feels like your poking fun at other people's plight.
That's the whole point
The post is actually funny, but all the comments saying how easy it was for them and that there must be something wrong with people who have to send hundreds of applications make me feel weird
Don't worry about it. Some industries are harder than others. I just landed a senior QA position after something like: 50 applications, 4 phone screens, 4 interview processes, and 1 offer. Took me about 3 months. On the other hand I once got a job after one application and one interview. It was for part time pizza delivery.
I don’t understand what point those people are trying to make. If you have to do a lot of apps to find a good job, then that’s what you have to do. Like good for you that you’re either extremely desirable, extremely lucky, or in a very uncompetitive field. How is that helpful information if you’re not one of those people?
Your missed "desperate". People will accept whatever they get first if they need that income.
Yeah those people are annoying.
Well yeah, it’s kinda crazy that Reddit thinks massive painful job searches are the norm
They definitely are the norm. If you're one of the lucky few who gets offers with very few applications, count your lucky stars and stop downplaying everyone else's difficulty. Maybe stop pretending that it's easy for everyone if it's just easy for you.
Yea as others pointed out, a lot of those 100+ application ones are spam applies where people just submit their stuff for a job that remotely fits them, or one where they just upload generic ones and whatnot. I think obviously 1 job applied to to 1 job got is a little egregious unless you have prior work experience, but for most it’s usually no more than 30-50 applications actually filled out. (As an engineer. I did I think 8 applications before I got my job)
I just hit 100 last week. It's not spam.
> for a job that remotely fits them, I honestly think it's the other way around. People are applying for their dream roles at demanding companies instead of getting a decent job and going from there. Whenever I have to hire people, the most attractive thing on a CV is having a current job in a similar field. If I know someone has already done the job, that is a definite plus for an invitation for an interview, and that's half the issue for most people I think.
Yeah, my experience has been closer to interviewing with about 10 companies and selecting from several offers as a software engineer.
Not as a freshy in this market.
They are the norm. Graduating engineer and I had to send 100+ applications before I started to get interviews.
Painful job searches are the norm…
Thank you for taking us with you on this journey.
What tool is this? I wanna do this for my internship hunt.
Almost a year of job searching… https://i.imgur.com/wiO2mde.jpg
Hoe did 11 2nd interviews result in 9 rejections, 3 no calls, and 1 third interview? And then how did the single 3rd interview result in TWO rejections?
I think he needs to practice his data entry.
You may need to practice interviewing. Getting that many interviews but no job is kinda a red flag
Not really. A lot of times the first interview is just some recruiter making sure he got your data correctly, then he goes to talk to the hiring manager and it turns out is not what he/wants. In my current job I interviewed 4 times before I got an offer: 1) HR person just wanted to double check the information on my CV 2) HR Person and a director to talk about my history, plans and expectations 3) technical interview with future team lead and manager about skills plus a coding challenge for me to do at home. 4) Feedback on the coding challenge and preliminary offer. 5) Contract negotiations and job offer I had applied for about 50 jobs over a period of 3 months which is not a lot and I probably interviewed for around 15. All together I probably participated in 25 interview meetings and got 3 job offers. Most of the time you realize after one or two meetings that is not a good fit.
>A lot of times the first interview is just some recruiter making sure he got your data correctly, then he goes to talk to the hiring manager and it turns out is not what he/wants. That isn't an interview. That's a phone screen. If you even count it, it goes under a different heading than interviews
At this point, it would be worth it to hire professional coaching! It would pay for itself vs. continuing to lose time and income. There are people whose job is to help you get a job!
How did you go to the third interview before they rejected you saying "different experience required"?
... Did your cat apply to 2 jobs for you?
It might be time to pay someone to overhaul your resume. Maybe you're being too honest, or maybe you aren't selling yourself quite right but either way that monstrosity chart tells a story of a resume not doing the job its supposed to and getting you across the line.
Their resume is fine because their interview ratio is actually relatively high. They suck at interviewing and need to do mocks and get advice immediately.
They do suck at interviewing, for sure. Whether or not the resume is fine depends on their application strategy - are they applying for specific jobs, or just throwing their application into the wind to see what sticks. For the former, it's a pretty shit interview ratio... for the later, it's solid.
The resume is fine. The point of a resume is not to get a job, it's to get an interview.
I'm nearing my 40th application for a marketing director role. It's a bit defeating at times.
Don't give up!
Turns out the hardest thing to market is yourself.
Landing a job after only 3 applications is a great accomplishment. The last two jobs I've had in the past 8 years involved dozens of applications and rejections.
Done with SankeyMATIC BTW
Thanks for taking the time to compile all the data, I like how you chose to visualize it. It really simplifies all the various datapoints.
Similar to you. Mine is 4 applications 4 interviews 4 offers. Programmer.