[tfigueroa]

Pretty bad. I’ve got a lot of experience as an IC, manager, and leader, and it doesn’t seem to matter; companies seem much more picky (“you were great but we want someone with more tenure in <specific variant of field>”) or wedded to cargo cult methods (the leetcode places).

I haven’t extensively tapped my network for referrals, but I get a bad vibe from those, too. I’ve hit up about six folks and they all came back empty - no opportunities, even though they’d like to work with me again.

The only success I’ve heard is from folks grinding it out and playing the numbers game. It’s an employer’s market.

Edit: some data: Seven months, dozens of applications, four interviews. Two interviews were from applications, one from a recruiter cold-call, and one from networking. Applications to interview was about 4 months. Three were EM positions, one was senior engineer. Got through all rounds and was rejected at the end.

Fun fact: I have a canary in my resume that will normally raise a clarifying question during an interview. One of ~20 interviewers caught it. Hard to put effort into a resume when few people seem to read it.

[notsurenymore]

> companies seem much more picky (“you were great but we want someone with more tenure in <specific variant of field>”)

This was my exact experience. I’ve been out of work for a year and I’m more jaded than ever.

I finally got a job through what I assume was nepotism. It was the worst interview I’ve done lately, awkward, because I didn’t have any experience in the particular tech stack, but I got the offer.

What pissed me off were companies ghosting after doing the full set of rounds onsite. At one point, I was interviewing for a position a third party recruiter contacted me about. It wasn’t great, but it would pay the bill and I was desperate. It seemed like a decent fit given my last experience too. I got all the way to the final round which I had to travel hours for. At the end of the internet, one of the people even said “I imagine you’ll be hearing from us soon”. But they just ghosted me. Hell they ghosted the recruiter, who a couple weeks later was calling me asking if I had heard anything because they weren’t talking to him. If a company ghosts after an initial round or two, ok, whatever, but if I go the full distance and you don’t have the respect to even give me a yes or no, fuck you.

[breakpointalpha]

Name and shame the company, my man!

[steve_adams_86]

My network has been dry as well. I got some contract work, but nothing reliable/full time/long term.

So strange to go from too many jobs to even begin considering to nothing at all.

[hiAndrewQuinn]

> The only success I’ve heard is from folks grinding it out and playing the numbers game

I'm still early in my career despite rising rapidly, so I've never had a job search that wasn't "just" a numbers game. But it's given me reasonable success, and something I've always wondered is: instead of painstakingly cultivating your resume for each job posting you come across, why not just write 1 accurate one and put that effort into, say, finding and applying to 10 positions per day for a few months?

Maybe the only reason people don't do this is the obvious one: It's really hard to find 900 open positions to apply to without moving cities unless you live in like, Los Angeles or something.

[lylejantzi3rd]

That was my strategy for most of my career. It doesn't work anymore. AI + remote positions have changed the game. Even the feeblest job description gets 100+, or even 1000+, applications.

ChatGPT can generate a custom resume and cover letter for each position you apply to that's hard to distinguish from the real thing. This makes all 100-1000+ applications look like rock stars.

How does a recruiter filter through all of that? How does a hiring manager?

[000ooo000]

The resume canary is a great idea - thanks

[lwhsiao]

I like the idea of a resume canary. Can you share the gist of it?

[tfigueroa]

It was a random (and facetious and probably bad) idea to include a bullet point that would elicit a “wait, what?” response from anyone who would read it. My resume highlights, as an academic achievement, that a professor once suspected me of illegal research.

If someone brings it up, I’ll know they read through my resume. If they don’t bring it up, it may mean nothing. The former is a green flag, to me.

I’d suggest something more innocuous sounding, though. “Level 3 pencil twirler” or something that would elicit some conversation.

[intelVISA]

I use one that's to the effect of: migrated legacy Go project to Python2, increasing E2E service latency by 3409ms.