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[–] 125 points 1 month ago (52 children)

I've been job hunting for months and you won't believe how often I've had the exact same reply of "ohh this doesn't reflect your skills we just wanted someone who matches our expectations more" ITS INSANE.
Don't fucking sugar coat it just tell me what's wrong so I can improve further applications ongg. But if you're searching for someone with 5 years experience with <specific technology/field> and I bring 8+ and I'm still not good enough, I don't believe you.

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  • [–] 51 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    I’ve been job searching for 2 years (I was employed) then I got canned. The job market sucks even with the experience they’re asking for.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 month ago

    The job market isn't nearly as bad as the job-seeking process. Hiring managers don't actually know what they want or what their businesses need done. Software is so hyper-specific and skills so conditional that you either needed to be onboarded straight out of college or get incredibly lucky in your job rotation to land on the one critical bit of information all the demand revolves around. Automated tools and services ingest a ton of spam that HR still needs to sift through. Recruiters are as happy to lure away your staff as help you find new people.

    The jobs are out there. But it's an absolute fucking mess to find them.

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  • [–] 30 points 1 month ago (19 children)

    There was a job I applied to that wanted the exact thing I had done at my last job. Same tech tech. Same early startup. Same kind of project. They rejected me without even a phone screen for "someone more in line with their needs".

    There's no incentive for them to do a better job.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 month ago (10 children)

    Had the almost exact same thing happen. They wanted me especially because of the knowledge from my previous company. 3 interviews. Then, riight before they were gonna give me a coding challenge, I got the "uhm akschually naww" email.

    There's something especially soulcrushing about that. Makes you prefer the ghosting or the "we went with the better candidate" bullshit

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  • [–] 8 points 1 month ago (9 children)

    Honestly even coding challenges now... Do they even make sense anymore? You can teach people if they don't have the right stack, but if they are a dick...

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  • [–] 15 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    Most coding challenges are stupid. You'll have a job that's just working on a basic ass API in front of the database, and they'll be like "can you solve the traveling salesman problem?". You don't need to know if I can pull fancy algorithms out of my ass. You need to know if I can cover the basics and take feedback.

    Though the last code challenge I had was "can you remove duplicates from this list of integers?". I was like, "can I just convert it to a set?' and they were like "...ok". Didn't get the role, but the pay was bad, it was in office, the company is surprisingly politically conservative, and they're rewriting their codebase "to support AI development". So maybe that sas for the best.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago

    Our interview process has the candidate implement a couple (extremely simplistic) API routes, with the specific approach left up to the candidate. It's more about having something they can talk through and evolve than it is about us looking for any specific approach.

    Basically it exists as a way for us to have a starting point for talking about scalability topics, asking the candidate how they would evolve their implementation as we scale up the system. Does a pretty good job of giving us an idea of how they think through system design problems.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 month ago (6 children)

    They might be using monitoring services to reveal your recent salary, and rejecting you based on what they imagine you'll accept relative to another person

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  • [–] 12 points 1 month ago (5 children)

    A friend of mine is convinced they all feed into sketchy private data broker systems, and reject candidates based on personal and political stuff. Algorithm determines you're kind of a lefty? Reject.

    We have like no rights here in the US with regards to labor, so they can basically do what they want so long as they cover half of their ass.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    Damn that's a conspiracy theory I'll believe.

    Also, I know for a fact they look you up on social media. I wonder if I keep getting rejected because I'm not active on any of that Facebook crap.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Yeah I'm probably suffering a little because I don't have any real social media, and my GitHub is all private contributions for work. I should probably do some free work to show off there but I resent that

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago

    I did free work on GitHub once. I made a porn mod for a video game and released the code on github under an alt account.

    Sometimes I seriously think about whether I should tell employers:

    "Have you contributed to any open source projects?"

    "A little bit of Piefed stuff, but mostly gooning."

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago

    I applied for a job that asked for a very specialized, specific skill set, that at the time, literally only maybe 3 people in the world could have had (new endangered species stuff) I got rejected with an auto reply. One of those listings they have to do even though they had a candidate. I should have pressed the issue because looking back, I think they would have been required to interview anyone qualified.

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  • [–] 28 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    What they probably meant was "we already decided who was going to get the job before the recruitment process began. It's someone we already know and like."

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  • [–] 7 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    when i was last searching so many people told me how nice my resume is and yet i was still passed over.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago

    I always tailor my resume to a specific job application, but then I habe mever had to fire off more than a handful of resumes at a time. Incredible how different job markets are for different professions!

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  • [–] 7 points 1 month ago

    just tell me what’s wrong so I can improve further applications

    Generally, they are terrified of giving more feedback than absolutely necessary. They might incur an accusation of unfair hiring practices. Similar story on 'references', confirm only employment dates, never provide a qualitative assessment, good or bad.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Seriously. I got rejected and I'm thinking I have 10 years of experience and a master's degree in this shit and that's not good enough?? It'd be nice if they told us what else we were supposed to put on the application.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

    I interviewed at a place I have actually worked at before. Twice. I applied to a position on one of the teams/project that I contributed to significantly. Seemed like a safe bet to get me out of my current toxic job. In the end, I was rejected for not having the experience they were looking for. Like what?? I literally wrote a good portion of the code in that project. What does that even mean?

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    What helped for me was to talk to people/companies with whom I wasn't applying for a job. I'm looking for a junior swe role (in this market). I've learned a few things from replies I got from actual applications, but I learned most by networking. For example, I went to this agency that only works with seniors, but I had a really great conversation. The guy was interested in me as a developer, but he couldn sell my lack of experienve to his clients. We had a great conversation about software, careerpaths and also about my job hunt. He gave some tips te rewrite my cv and how to stick out during applications. Since that day, I've gotten twice as many callbacks. No job yet, but i've got good prospects.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago

    I hear you; I've been looking for a new job since December, and increased the range of my search since I was forced out of my old job in May. The market is hella rough out there.

    However, there was one position I interviewed for where the recruiter actually gave me feedback on where I fell short compared to other candidates. It was incredibly refreshing compared to the form letter rejection.

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    [–] 38 points 1 month ago

    Well one is "shit. Time to apply to another 500 jobs to get another interview"

    While the other is "hurray, I won't be going homeless this year. Time to sell my soul for barely enough to live"

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  • [–] 23 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    I was looking for a job and then I found a job

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  • [–] 15 points 1 month ago (3 children)

    Ha ha, both are bad news. We need to make our own businesses and shun corporations.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 month ago (6 children)

    Have you picked the right career for you if you get sad when you land a job? I was over the moon when I got my current job

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