Ask HN: How is/was your job search this year?

It's been really hard this year. I'm a web dev with a decade of experience (mostly frontend, but some full stack). Sent out a dozen or so applications so far (over two months, which isn't a lot, but I'm pretty selective about wanting to work in certain verticals).

Got one rejection, two "thanks but we're actually not hiring for this position anymore" and silence from the rest. In the past it's usually been no problem getting interviews and offers within a few weeks. Nothing this time. I last looked for a job just last March (2022) and it was very easy. Now it's the complete opposite.

I've also started to apply for non web jobs (in random fields) and not getting even a rejection for those either.

I'm thinking it might be time to start Doordashing.

I'm a hiring manager for UK based FTSE 100 company, hiring software engineers and data scientists. I wanted to give a perspective from 'the other side'.

I've been involved in hiring for a few companies since 2018 ish, and I've noticed a really sharp decline in the quality of candidates this year. Recently I have interviewed no end of candidates who have 5+ years experience, made redundant and seem to think they can walk into a job with zero effort.

Some recent examples that I am slightly changing for anonymity:-

- a candidate could not remember how to do a for loop in python

- a candidate told me they forgot what the job they applied for was and who we are

- the only question a candidate asked me at the end of the interview was 'can I work on my personal laptop?' We are a multi billion pound company, not a startup.

If these were graduates I can forgive some of the poor interviewing skills, but these were for mid/senior positions, sometimes leads!

I would like to stress, there are some fantastic candidates coming through too, and I am deeply sorry for anyone who has lost their job. The challenge though as a hiring manager right now is wading through the vast numbers of candidates who really put in zero effort, and there are a lot of them.

Honestly, really tough.

I'm an engineering manager with more than 13 years of experience, web dev for much longer.

I've been applying since March, as my company started showing a lot of signs of toxicity and financial troubles. Last month, less than a year from their previous layoffs, they did another round and was part of it.

The majority of the jobs I've applied for didn't answer. A mere 1-2% replied. I had the luck to go through the full interview process with a handful (4 since March) only to be discarded at the very end.

The market is definitely over-saturated. To the point that companies have become extremely picky and failing a small thing might mean getting cut off.

I'm currently on hold since August was really flat, and will resume in September. Let's see...

Terrible. Seller's market now. >100 apps, 2 HR screenings, 1 interview, 1 rejection.

I'm 7+ YoE senior engineer working in the embedded space.

I even have generic third party recruiters ghosting me these days, _after_ having me put a time into their goofy Calendly link.

You know the kind. You check their LinkedIn out and they have a B.A. in Library Sciences or something. Yeah. Those guys have the upper hand now.

Very tough. Need to have prestigious and very precise relevant direct experience in every facet of any role it seems. They won’t look at ability to learn anymore. Folks like me without degrees seem to be getting tossed without a second look even when experience directly aligns. I assume people can get whoever they want at nearly whatever price they want.

I’ve had many recruiters talk with me for 30 minutes to an hour and then go dark as they have maybe 3, 4 roles to fill and everything needs to be perfect.

Couldn’t have come at a worse time for me, as I had to take 2 (well prepared) years off for health reasons, thinking my experience which is still quite relevant would help me get back in. I’ve done a few consulting gigs but those have mostly dried up. It’s a state of constantly lowering expectations in terms of salary and role, and doing side projects as I can find the motivation.

Extremely tough. I used to get unsolicited emails/dms from recruiters all the time. Just a year ago, Meta recruiters were literally harassing me to at least give an interview saying that I don’t need to join right away. They said if I get an offer, I can join anytime within a year of having received it. I rejected an Amazon offer just last year. This year neither of them have even sent a rejection email. I’ve applied to over 300 jobs in the last three months and not a single one of them has even converted to a first round phone call with HR. My guess is that most companies want laid off FAANG employees at a discount(there are a lot of them). After cold applying to 200+ jobs, I pivoted to applying through referrals. Nada.

I got very lucky:

- Decided there was no future at my then current job in June

- Applied to a handful of places with no response

- Followed up with a recruiter who had been pinging me for a year. Turned out I was a great fit (aligned experience in math, data engineering, fintech), 3 rounds of interviews, accepted job offer in early July

Would probably still be looking if the stars hadn't aligned (new job is great so far)

It was/is rougher than in the past, for sure. Connecting with recruiters, sending tailored resumes, and the whole process is legitimately taxing. (As a minor plug, I made a tool that takes care of the resume tailoring for me because I got so tired of doing it[0])

But on the whole, the strategy of applying, reaching out to the recruiter/hiring manager, and showing up with your interest has resulted in better outcomes, at least in my experience.

[0] https://resgen.app

Very difficult. My previous company had to file for bankruptcy in March and I've been unemployed since then.

I've 16 years of experience in IT and applied to 27 jobs since March. 17 rejections, 8 didn't respond. With the 2 remaining jobs I'm in the final stage but there are other candidates and the companies can choose the best one, I don't have high hopes.

I feel horrible, it's really taxing on me, the waiting time between interviews, checking emails hoping to get an update just to get notified that people are on vacation, everything is delayed. The companies have multiple candidates to choose from, they are not in a hurry.

Fairly tough.

I got laid off 2.5 months ago. Decided to take a 2 months to center myself. Ive dropped about 12 applications now, had 1 interview at second round. Another contact me, then ghost me, and 2 "sorry you arent a fit", the rest have been silence.

Im a Senior devops/automation engineer, 20 year career in some IT field.

I am from Sweden and I switched job like 4 months ago, and now I am switching again because I am relocating to South-East Asia to work an international company (their process lasted like 2 months but there were large caps between interviews). In Sweden maybe my interview to application rate was 60% or so, and I only applied to roles that I felt were relevant to my skillset (TS, JS, node, react, python). My background is bachelor's and master's degree in CS and 4 years of experience in what I would call a high growth startup.

Tbh I think one major reason I got this job was that I can communicate fluently in english, both written and spoken, and they want that people can communicate with the possible stakeholders because the company language is English. Many of the interviewers said my communication was very good, as I just spoke my thoughts aloud and explained everything.

They said that large portion of the candidates can barely understand what the Leetcode question asks and spend long time just reading, also most people take 30+ minutes to fill two functions that is just basically react setState (and they have react in their CV). I was quite surprised really.

Although, if I had USA salary, the decision would be more difficult for sure, but now it is obvious. My visa is being processed now, and my plan is to stay at least until I get PR in the said country.

The job market seems particularly bad in the USA from what I have read, in Sweden it is much worse than before but I would not say as bad as USA, but obviously the salary isn't as great either. We can hope the market gets better..

If nothing is holding you down and it is looking really bad, it might be worth looking abroad if you can accept the lower salary but also relatively lower costs. I also had some interviews in Japan and quite a few companies there seem to be willing to sponsor the visa and take care of that, also the interviews not as hard as American companies. The more global companies like LINE etc seem to have relatively ok salaries compared to the local companies, and the culture is not as bad.

I’m a full-stack/mobile developer who was laid off in June. Within two weeks I had another offer, which I turned down. A couple weeks later I found a fantastic job that I was very qualified for, which paid about 60% more than the job I lost. Throughout the whole process, I didn’t get turned down once during an interview. I used to be horrible at interviews, especially technical ones, but I seem to have gotten better.

I’m currently having a great time at my new position, which seems much more stable and comes with a much better compensation package (including being fully remote). My new employer is much larger, and there’s a lot of room to grow in this role. I really couldn’t be happier with how things went.

Haven't noticed any significant change to be honest (Western Europe). I switched jobs a bit over a year ago and now I'm interviewing for another company (mainly because of the salary increase). So far, so good. Let's see how it develops.

Pretty brutal. Very hard to get interviews and recruiters/hiring managers and companies seem to have gotten very comfortable just ghosting or otherwise being disrespectful (i.e. giving extremely halfassed interviews where the interviewer isn't paying attention/clearly decided ahead of time that it was a no). Also hasn't helped that I ended up moving away from a tech hub during the pandemic so the RTO push has severely limited options.

I feel very fortunate to have landed a non technical faang role early in the year. Simply applying never worked but when I was recruited I always made it to the final round if I wanted to. The whole process took a lot longer than before. I really recommend doing lots of mock interviews, drills, and other prep. Think 20 hours a week until you get the job.

I’m not looking and worked at FAANG and some recognizable companies in my resume.

I would say recruiting has dropped off 80%. In the boom times I’d get like 5-10 emails from recruiters a week, and even a couple phone calls. Now it’s down to 1-2 a week. Still not like before, but has noticeably picked up from earlier this year.

tough. took me six months. only time that seems similar was 2003 (post-dot com crash, post y2k). I was employed, but went on the job market to the sound of crickets. got nothing and sucked it up at where I was. took until web 2.0 before things returned to late-90's normal. so that was maybe 2005/6?

Weird. I am getting tons of calls from recruiters from my resume over the past two weeks but nothing by submitting my resume directly to open positions. I have my resume publicly available from the desktop version of my website.

[Finance, not tech]

New job 3 months ago was easy. Just told 2-3 recruiters that I'm looking and they sent me options.

Noticed that lately the incoming linkedin messages have slowed down though. That's always a bit of an ominous sign

Had a month of interviews with different companies back in Jan. So so.. Can't say it was very tough but the processes took like 2 months after the interviews.

I gave up.

20+ years fullstack, almost 3 months, had to take a pay cut

I've seen better times

truly remote jobs are rare now