This is not a rant post or I am not trying to blow some steam (I did that already tons of other related posts). I wanted to understand some things logically and try to make sense out of the whole situation.
I got laid (off) from my 'nicely' paying software engineering job a few months ago and to this day I am struggling to find a new one. Backed by 12 years of experience with several in demand technologies, and professional experience with known tech companies, I would consider myself as a strong candidate.
I can see several job openings related to my field, I apply to most of them, several of them respond back and I had countless initial calls. The most common failure happens in this initial screening round where I would have a really nice chat with the recruiter where we discuss several things like what am I looking for in a new role and why am I looking to switch. Even if I assume I am messing up my answers here, I think I am improving and I just cannot accept the fact that I am screwing up in most of them. There is always a positive lively chat that happens here and never ever any immediate feedback of any sort, let alone any red flag I would have noticed. Yet, they would decide to not proceed any further. Many of those jobs postings where I interviewed for the initial screening are still being reposted several times.
Then, for some companies, I would get into the later stages. Here I had interviews where I performed from decent level to excellent. The most common cause of rejection stated is that other candidates are better aligned for this role. I would still see the same role being re posted still.
Can someone please try to help me comprehend the reason behind the whole situation. I am sure that the whole system is not f*cked up and this is not a political conspiracy or whatever negative reason we like to think to comfort ourselves. There are reasons for this situation and I am trying to understand them.
Here are some common reasonings and speculations, any comment on these ?
– Most common conspiracy theory is that companies are deliberately rejecting candidates from high wage areas like Germany and prefer 'cheaper labor' from eastern European countries
– Companies exhaust their budgets for the year by the last quarter and during this time, they essentially keep the recruitment process running w/o actually hiring new candidates
– Many companies have laid off their recruiters and since managers are running the recruitment themselves, it is all just chaotic
– There are just too many candidates in the market and because of that the companies are tuning their recruitment process
– Companies are going 'Elon musk' way and hoping to cut cost by laying off people expecting the remaining 80/90% to do the job of 100% people
– Most of the job listings are ghost jobs and companies do not wish to admit problems and still keeping them these to show that they are growing
The most important thing I need to understand is that for a job listing where I fulfill more than 90% of the requirements, they are rejecting me after looking at the application only and yet reposting the job again and again – what is going on here ? For eg – Flink in Berlin has simply dominated the job notifications I have subscribed to in the last few months. The requirements match with my profile perfectly and even after applying again and again, they reject my application.
Side quest – This video is circulating in my circle a lot these days and this is the kind of frustration we are all feeling, but without any logical answers from anywhere – https://youtu.be/YAv0tNfpNH4?si=vExNLcyLJ2W8eMFy
by Noone-is-anonymous