Why everybody’s hiring but nobody’s getting hired | Hacker News Reader

Why everybody’s hiring but nobody’s getting hired

vox.com

49 pointsgmays19 comments

> the average number of applications for a job at a publicly traded company is about 250; the average number of people interviewed is five.

This sums up the problem. As an interviewer, you're practically DDoS'd by applicants. There's a lot to do and you don't have time to vet the applicants.

Anecdotally, it seems the only way to get to a human is to have referrals or the perfect resume. Ironically, the internet has made people in my life more reliant on who they know IRL to get a job.

It's not even only interviewers. I get at least one proactive job application per week at my small 2-people company. I'm not sure why these people do it, but most of them seem to have spent effort researching my company, so they mention relevant skills. But I'm not planning to hire anyone and I haven't had a job opening posted in years, so in a way it's just manually-written spam to me. In the beginning I still replied to the emails but a few of them started being argumentative or tried to call me, so now I just delete em without reply.

> Anecdotally, it seems the only way to get to a human is to have referrals or the perfect resume. Ironically, the internet has made people in my life more reliant on who they know IRL to get a job.

Third-party recruiters will also work, if you get the "headhunter" variety as opposed to the "I've got a 1099 job in Nowhere, Alabama and it pays $3.50 an hour. Interested?" type.

The headhunter recruiters also often have jobs from multiple cool places to work. It's super nice to have one point of contact for 2 or 3 different interview processes. Plus more line-skipping.

As an interviewer, you don't have time to vet the applicants. A recruiter who's going to get paid 20% of that person's salary does.

My experience in software is that finding a good headhunter is as hard, or harder, than finding a good candidate. Most lack the skills to actually make a good assessment and just spam you with resumes. Good headhunters seem to leave the industry or move up to hunting more valuable talent (high six figures and above) after a few years, as far as I can tell.

> He estimates he applied for hundreds of positions, relying on nearly a dozen jobs boards, researching potential employers, and writing personalized cover letters to accompany his résumé. For the most part, he heard nothing back, regardless of how qualified he was.

I’ve worked on and off as a mentor in some programs that do resume review and interview coaching. I’ve never seen anyone apply to “hundreds” of jobs and get zero responses without also having serious issues with their resume. In one case someone produced a PDF resume from some obscure program that wouldn’t load on standard PDF viewers, so none of the companies could even open it. More commonly, people fire off rough draft quality resumes that are full of typos and half-finished sentences that would send their resume to the bottom of any hiring manager’s pile.

The good news is that most of them respond well to coaching. Even 30 minutes if resume proofreading, advice, and practice interview can be a game changer in these cases. The tough part is getting these people matched up with these services, as many of them have become very disgruntled and convinced that the problem lies with employers, not with their application style.

If employers really were desperate for workers, wages would rise. But wages haven’t risen. The only reasonable conclusion is that there isn’t really a shortage of workers.

Or too many businesses that are only viable if they’re paying less than what their employees need to live a stable lifestyle in their area (housing, food, transportation, health care)

Those businesses aren't sustainable then. A recent example given here was 24/7 gas station workers. The only reason they were working overnight was because wages have become cheap enough to capture the few overnight customers.

A higher wage means that the business is forced to have the employee on more productive work.

Do we really need higher wages, or do we need cheaper housing?

I wouldn't say those are mutually exclusive.

Both, certainly. One alone does not fix the other.

Or just the endless rounds. A friend is in a 10 round hiring process. In 10 rounds they will find some annoyance.

A 100 applications got me 10 phone calls, and 10 phone calls would lead to 1 onsite.

So I just need to apply to a thousand places to get a job.

Oh and before anyone jumps in with "are you just applying to FAANGS?", no. Categorically, absolutely not.

What do you do? Im in no way a great developer yet have 100% success rate so far (5 interviews, 5 offers, 5 landed jobs).

I'm in cyber security, DFIR, mid-career. Know enough code to script and automate, but not SWE. I Can't pass leetcode hards or whatever the programming gamut interview is now. This year I'm got 5 interviews (after passing phone screens), with 5 different companies. I've submitted hundreds of applications. 1 BAD offer. Interviewing is literally just not worth my time.

Are you applying cold to the online job application portal or are you applying through previous coworkers or other contacts?

SWE

Its all bullshit I have a very good resume and skillset and I am tried of H.R and endless rounds of interviews . I have to go my own way!

I'm sick of just being ghosted. Especially if its after an interview.

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