I sometimes think companies spend too much time assessing candidates. I just spent months interviewing with a two companies. Each company had me doing a hour zoom call nearly every week with someone new until eventually rejecting me. I’d reckon if the person seems reasonably competent in the first 1-2 interviews, has work artifacts in the public domain (academic papers, patents, etc),and has a background closely aligning with the posting then just taking the risk is probably a better use of everyone’s time. Truly wild out there trying to convince people you know something.
All of this probably goes out the window in hyper-competitive fields but in my field for example (software engineering) where there's a labor shortage, I've found this to be the case anywhere outside of the companies that just want to test how well you remember your Computer Science degree.
On the flip side, the jobs I've held where the interview process is more centered around my past work, discussions about approach to teamwork & software development, and extracurriculars/interests have never failed to lead to something more enjoyable and long-term. The fastest way, in my experience, to destroy a candidate's interest in your company is to demoralize and dehumanize them by dragging out the process for weeks (I am "still waiting" to hear back on a job I applied for in December... if they end up getting back to me at this point, I just can't see myself wanting to continue the conversation.)
It's a great way not to attract talent.
Yet, California has had plenty of people moving in to the state from elsewhere, enough to cause an acute housing problem in some areas. Something feels off in your analysis.
No one does 4, 5, 6 interviews if they know what they want and are worried about losing them. No one is worried because the candidate pool is so large and the position doesn't really need to be filled.
In my experience, it's not that hard. You have up to six months to fire the new hire for whatever reason you like. They can also leave during this time, of course, but people have a tendency not to.
If you get rejected somewhere and then accepted somewhere slightly lesser, you know you pushed yourself as high as you could go.
If you apply and get accepted and just take that job... then who knows how much higher you could have aimed.
- there is an ordering between jobs
- one’s goal is to find the “highest” according to that ordering
I don’t think that either of those is true in my value system.
2) I'm not at a FAANG.
The second premise also seems to be true, though I would phrase it in a descriptive rather than prescriptive manners - the choices you make regarding job offers reveal your preferences ("the ordering of jobs").
Having no "job ordering" would result in people taking jobs based on a coin flip, wouldn't it?
No, you still don't know even that. For every person reading this comment, there exists at least one job "lesser" than their current one where, if they were to apply to today, they would get rejected (and not just on the basis that they're overqualified).
Your statement imputes way too much rationality and efficiency into society—a sort of just-world hypothesis applied to the narrow domain of the job market and those who hold the keys into any given organization. Organizations are made of people, and people can be dumb and irrational. The kinds of people who have the final say on whether to reject or hire aren't exempt from this. The decision to reject can be as uninformed and arbitrary as it is logically sound.
The same principle applies to successful hires, too. In fact, that's the reason why it's possible to get rejected even for jobs where the application process should result in a hire. Companies hire people, find them to be worse than expected, but keep them around anyway because, while the powers that be definitely wouldn't go back in time if the opportunity to do so were available and hire that person all over again just the same, it's still too much work (or it's perceived to be too much work—again, people do not make optimal decisions) to get rid of them. Good candidates who get rejected are a casualty of organizations hedging their bets to try to prevent this from happening too much to them.
I've done fine at my last two long-term jobs but I also very much got them because I knew very higher ups who answered an email right away.
It actually encourages me that a lot about the hiring system is pretty random. Otherwise the big tech employers would just skim the cream except for people who really don't want to work for those employers. As it is, there's enough randomness that lots of good people end up at other companies.
If you had never tried, the company wouldn’t know about you and this kind of reconsideration wouldn’t happen. So at least rejection gets you on their radar.
I want to be optimistic. But realistically, how often does that actually happen, even in this hot market?
But something like that has only happened one other time in the dozen or so interviews throughout my life so I would say it's pretty rare.
It's a hard job and everyone at my level is a skill a notch or two up and much younger. But we do what we can to stay fit in the industry when peers are much more experienced and sharp. I got my foot in the door. It will take a lot of effort to shake off the sunk cost of training and replacement of me so I am here to get paid to learn and soak up what I can. Definitely high work load and high turnover either upwards or outwards for better opportunities
So if they have a budget, especially if they are a vendor with a paying client who needs a minimum level assigned consultant headcount type of metrics, I am good enough and my soft skills push me through.
Previous job (hired 5-6 years ago) I actually asked to be considered for the level above the one I originally applied to as they pulled me in for interviews. They hired me that week for the tech role as they likely had worse matches until I showed up.
You can't have a full strategy around it. But when you see a possible opportunity you snipe for it. Take the minimum amount of effort and just enough to set you apart and it might just be enough. It's a draw attention to yourself and make it feel like they won't find a better candidate. Play the fog of uncertainty every desperate employer has. Desperation can come from Recruiter delaying the first round because busy with a more important leadership fill, or low recruiter count in general, bad recruiter giving bad leads, etc.
Similar opportunities to me is sometimes just being the first result in a employer's search. engine.
I've been on the other side of that conversation as well. It usually happens when someone really impresses and stands out but doesn't actually match what the role requires. If you have a limited hiring budget, you can't always squeeze in a person you'd love to hire in addition to someone that fills the critical role. Smart companies will invent a role for great talent, if they can make the budget work, but that often takes a lot of time to put together.
If you are, there's plenty of us there to keep you company. My career (10 years in) and skill has already peaked and is rapidly degrading.
This sounds like a toxic work environment. Get out while you can!
I guess my point is that one has to think carefully about their career path and what they want to do beyond "Write code and build stuff".
Overtime I've developed the rule that if I'm not failing at least half my interviews, then I'm not really pushing myself.
I recently interviewed at a company, did really well, so much so that when they rejected me, the recruiter reached out to say, flat out, "you did really well; the hiring committee spent an hour debating between you and another candidate before finally going with that other candidate". Fair enough. I applied for other roles, got into one of those, that recruiter saw the notes from the prior interview and went "why the heck didn't we hire this person?!" got me to talk to the hiring manager...who was like "nah".
It really is getting pretty much universal thumbs up, and with a large panel that is statistically hard to do.
This. And with a large panel come lots of different biases where some random shit could work against you like having the wrong accent or looks.
I once was in an interview where it consisted of a 6 people Teams call with one dialing in from their car. Got rejected despite answering all their questions correctly.
I had everything, from one application to get a job up to 8 (last time before my current job). Usually I did spend closer to 8 months than 6 to get there so. From experience, for whatever reason, I tend to be on the low end of applications. So I think around a dozen applications and 6 months seems kind of average, IMHO.
You may be below average at interviewing, but that doesn't say anything about your value as an engineer (or whatever your profession is).
The two skill sets (interviewing, real work) have precious little overlap, practically speaking.