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Comment by LouisSayers | Hacker News Reader

I live in New Zealand, applied for 5 jobs in March 2024, got 2 offers (Atlassian, small startup - both Aus based remote jobs), the other 3 companies didn't move me past resume.

I have a CS degree and over a decade of experience as a full stack dev.

Maybe I just got lucky, but there have always been people out there that seem to apply for hundreds of companies and land nothing. I've also helped some of those people land a job.

IMO it mostly comes down to understanding and preparing for the interview process, and tailoring yourself for the position you're applying for. Sometimes people also need help with blind spots - little things like correctly referring to technologies in their CV, small talk and being personable etc.

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i suspect that a lot of people applying to a lot of jobs and not hearing back are applying via an inbound webform or even, unknowingly, through an agency or intermediary like Indeed. my experience (on both sides of the hiring process) is that inbound applications are generally considered fairly low-signal unless they are paired with a highly-specific job req or come with a referral attached. i'd be curious to know how you applied to those companies to get such good response rates.

as an anecdote, for some jobs i've applied to, i received an internal referral to a specific recruiter and it just never went anywhere (although i could often observe the recruiter looking at my linkedin profile from linkedin's own upgrade promo emails). in many cases, i would have preferred a 5 minute call to see if i was even a good fit so as to cross a job off a list.

i'm not anybody special, also degree and over a decade in, but it seems like a market where i could be connected 1-1 to an internal recruiter that is actively filling a role but where on several occasions i was ghosted is just a different sort of environment than what you're describing.

All were web forms except for the startup job which was inbound off of a hackernews "looking for work" post I commented in.

To be fair though the only online application that went through was Atlassian.

I do think it heavily depends on what kind of salary you are looking for. Not sure how it is jn NZ but perhaps they pay less than in the US, and hence it's less competitive to remote outsiders?

Quiet possibly, I'm on the equivalent of $90k USD which would be considered as the bottom of the higher (or top mid) salary over here if that makes sense!

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