<story><title>Ask HN: How do I understand the results of my job search?</title><text>I&amp;#x27;m in the middle of a job search. Here are some stats:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  - 50 applications submitted
  - 21 no response
  - 3 no longer hiring
  - 11 rejected without interview
  - 15 first round interviews
  - 9 technical interviews
  - 2 rejected after technical interview
  - 2 onsite
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
I have ~6 years of experience as a self-taught fullstack web developer with a bit more professional experience on the frontend, though I&amp;#x27;m comfortable with both sides. I&amp;#x27;ve had a senior level title. All of my performance reviews have been positive and I don&amp;#x27;t have trouble doing the work. My current CTO said that I was one of the smartest developers on our team of 20. I got similar feedback from colleagues at my last company and I was promoted there 4 times in 3 years. I blog regularly about programming, including posts that have been on the front page of Hacker News. I spoke at a conference this year. I have a decent amount of work on Github, including some contributions to well known open source projects.&lt;p&gt;I feel like the numbers for this job search are not good but I can&amp;#x27;t figure out what the problem is. A large majority of the companies rejected me without an interview, either sending a form letter or not response at all. There hasn&amp;#x27;t been any feedback about why they&amp;#x27;re not interested in me. This has been especially true of larger, more well-known companies. I&amp;#x27;m completely qualified on paper but there&amp;#x27;s no interest.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve also started to lose confidence for technical interviews. They feel so arbitrary. Some times I do really well. Sometimes not. But in both cases, I don&amp;#x27;t feel like my skills have been tested or demonstrated. When I do well, the stars lined up and when I don&amp;#x27;t, they didn&amp;#x27;t. The whole thing makes me feel increasingly insecure about my ability to build a career, even though I&amp;#x27;ve demonstrated that I can do the work once hired.&lt;p&gt;Is this the average experience or is there something going on here?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>brianwawok</author><text>You pay via reduced offers</text></item><item><author>definitegrunt</author><text>Interesting - I have been working with a recruiter but the results are very underwhelming. Fortunately, I am not paying for the service.</text></item><item><author>atomashpolskiy</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m in the very beginning of a search for a new job now, but already feel like things have changed a lot over the last few years, in some socio-economic sense, that I can&amp;#x27;t quite put my finger on.&lt;p&gt;I never had any problems with passing technical interviews, so that&amp;#x27;s not what bothers me. My gripe is with the job ads, that are 100% relevant to my experience on paper, and yet somehow my applications seem to go into a black hole.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not comfortable with carpet bombing 100s of companies and hoping that someone will hire me for some _arbitrary_ job. I want this _specific_ job. I have pretty specific professional interests (in an area that I&amp;#x27;m quite experienced in) and aiming high, so there is not a lot of vacancies, that I&amp;#x27;d be willing to consider. After filtering for remote-friendliness, what I&amp;#x27;m left with is just a few positions.  And yet, the seeming randomness of the process makes it unlikely, that I&amp;#x27;ll be even considered to be put into the interview loop.&lt;p&gt;One friend of mine, who happens to be a head of the HR at a medium-sized company, told me, that for each publicly posted SWE job ad they get several 100s of applications. So they don&amp;#x27;t even bother to review the submitted applications anymore (!). Instead, they merely wait for the recruitment agencies to pick up the ad and find some reasonable number of &amp;quot;vetted&amp;quot; candidates via their own channels and bring them in to an interview.&lt;p&gt;Overall, I think that the &amp;quot;market&amp;quot; for jobs depends a bit too much on the middlemen lately. Needless to say, that most of these middlemen are not interested in catering to candidates&amp;#x27; aspirations, nor are they going to spend too much time looking for a perfect match. The end result is (a) total mess with regards to matching jobs to people and (b) little hope for proper career progression, because the whole process is pretty much random.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>awinder</author><text>This is really not true, except maybe in localized situations which you don’t want to work for (and recruiters are not going to want to do work for those companies so the overlap is minuscule). It’s a one time capitalized expense that reduces time (money) spent by on-staff employees.&lt;p&gt;One thing you do have to look out for is that recruiters get paid after a period of employment (3-6 months in my experience). So that can create a perverse incentive to fire someone you’re on the fence about. This really shouldn’t happen unless you’re working for an extremely cash-strapped place though.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: How do I understand the results of my job search?</title><text>I&amp;#x27;m in the middle of a job search. Here are some stats:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  - 50 applications submitted
  - 21 no response
  - 3 no longer hiring
  - 11 rejected without interview
  - 15 first round interviews
  - 9 technical interviews
  - 2 rejected after technical interview
  - 2 onsite
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
I have ~6 years of experience as a self-taught fullstack web developer with a bit more professional experience on the frontend, though I&amp;#x27;m comfortable with both sides. I&amp;#x27;ve had a senior level title. All of my performance reviews have been positive and I don&amp;#x27;t have trouble doing the work. My current CTO said that I was one of the smartest developers on our team of 20. I got similar feedback from colleagues at my last company and I was promoted there 4 times in 3 years. I blog regularly about programming, including posts that have been on the front page of Hacker News. I spoke at a conference this year. I have a decent amount of work on Github, including some contributions to well known open source projects.&lt;p&gt;I feel like the numbers for this job search are not good but I can&amp;#x27;t figure out what the problem is. A large majority of the companies rejected me without an interview, either sending a form letter or not response at all. There hasn&amp;#x27;t been any feedback about why they&amp;#x27;re not interested in me. This has been especially true of larger, more well-known companies. I&amp;#x27;m completely qualified on paper but there&amp;#x27;s no interest.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve also started to lose confidence for technical interviews. They feel so arbitrary. Some times I do really well. Sometimes not. But in both cases, I don&amp;#x27;t feel like my skills have been tested or demonstrated. When I do well, the stars lined up and when I don&amp;#x27;t, they didn&amp;#x27;t. The whole thing makes me feel increasingly insecure about my ability to build a career, even though I&amp;#x27;ve demonstrated that I can do the work once hired.&lt;p&gt;Is this the average experience or is there something going on here?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>brianwawok</author><text>You pay via reduced offers</text></item><item><author>definitegrunt</author><text>Interesting - I have been working with a recruiter but the results are very underwhelming. Fortunately, I am not paying for the service.</text></item><item><author>atomashpolskiy</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m in the very beginning of a search for a new job now, but already feel like things have changed a lot over the last few years, in some socio-economic sense, that I can&amp;#x27;t quite put my finger on.&lt;p&gt;I never had any problems with passing technical interviews, so that&amp;#x27;s not what bothers me. My gripe is with the job ads, that are 100% relevant to my experience on paper, and yet somehow my applications seem to go into a black hole.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not comfortable with carpet bombing 100s of companies and hoping that someone will hire me for some _arbitrary_ job. I want this _specific_ job. I have pretty specific professional interests (in an area that I&amp;#x27;m quite experienced in) and aiming high, so there is not a lot of vacancies, that I&amp;#x27;d be willing to consider. After filtering for remote-friendliness, what I&amp;#x27;m left with is just a few positions.  And yet, the seeming randomness of the process makes it unlikely, that I&amp;#x27;ll be even considered to be put into the interview loop.&lt;p&gt;One friend of mine, who happens to be a head of the HR at a medium-sized company, told me, that for each publicly posted SWE job ad they get several 100s of applications. So they don&amp;#x27;t even bother to review the submitted applications anymore (!). Instead, they merely wait for the recruitment agencies to pick up the ad and find some reasonable number of &amp;quot;vetted&amp;quot; candidates via their own channels and bring them in to an interview.&lt;p&gt;Overall, I think that the &amp;quot;market&amp;quot; for jobs depends a bit too much on the middlemen lately. Needless to say, that most of these middlemen are not interested in catering to candidates&amp;#x27; aspirations, nor are they going to spend too much time looking for a perfect match. The end result is (a) total mess with regards to matching jobs to people and (b) little hope for proper career progression, because the whole process is pretty much random.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>biermic</author><text>Working from the other end with recruiters, I cannot confirm this. It feels to me, the recruiter I&amp;#x27;m working with respects both parties and really tries to find a great fit.&lt;p&gt;All of the applicants he brought were better, than the ones that applied via an online job portal. Even tough some ask  20%-40% over our budget, we are still considering them.</text></comment>