Frustrations with interviewing in this wild job market

In reply to SV reX :

I fully get what you are saying, and I should have added something to denote I was at least partially joking.  The position in question was in OEM brakes.  The pre 2000 experience I was referring to was OEM brake development, including running sign off testing, setting up and running mechanical tests, being a D&R engineer for brakes/wheels/tires, then experience from they early 00's including full front suspension D&R from cross member to wheel end etc.  Every bit of that experience is just as relevant today as it was when I gained it and dinosaurs still roamed the tundra.

In reply to Adrian_Thompson (Forum Supporter) :

Brake development for Stegasaurii must have been fun!!

Best of luck in your hunt!

Nothing to add except a (probably) out of date anecdote.

When I was working in a bar one of the Managers (we almost could have installed a revolving door on their office we went through so many because of the owners {which is an entirely different story}) mentioned to me about jotting either 110 or 135 on any resume that was handed in. I was befuddled so I asked what those meant and he said 'because either are easily changed to 'NO' (110) or 'YES' (135). It was a bar so physically dropped off resume's made sense, and being the business for entertainment we wanted anyone who was looking to be a bartender to be personable and of good hygiene and bouncers to at least *look* intimidating. 

I'm not really sure where he learned it from, but I can imagine it was more commonly used in the days of dropping off actual paper resumes, maybe still happens for bars or similar parts of the industry.

GameboyRMH said:

So the interview may have superficially appeared to go well but I think it actually didn't because my skills aren't a great match in the areas they really want...they seemed happy with my level of driving skill and one of the company founders said my level of technical skill for the job blew his mind, but I get the feeling that they really want someone who's at least bilingual or ideally pentalingual and that the technical skills aren't that important to what they're doing as it currently is, and with only some rusty high school Spanish and French to offer, that's not me.

Is there an outcome? Sending positive vibes. 

I've been thinking about throwing some privacy under the bus and posting a public Indeed resume stuffed with a vast amount of information that would be inadvisable for a something intended to be briefly glanced at or possibly read by a human, but could be useful for matching algorithmic searches. I already apply almost every job I would like to, but this might help me get the jump on some jobs that don't stay up for long or that I otherwise don't get to in time, or even get me in on the legendary hidden world of jobs that are never posted publicly. Plus if I can make it broad enough it might be able to get me leads from multiple unrelated industries.

Any tips? Is this a good idea?

In reply to OHSCrifle :

There's rarely more of an outcome than getting ghosted by the company when they're not interested in you, which is what it looks like so far. I'd only know for sure if the date when they're set to start accepting customers comes around and I still haven't heard from them, and that's well over a month away. I get the feeling that not being fluent in at least 2 languages makes me a last-resort option at best.

Edit: Also the job post is back online, it may be a coincidence because they've expired and fairly quickly re-posted it a few times, but they expired it around the date of my interview and re-posted it since then, no changes since before the interview.

SV reX said:

In reply to Adrian_Thompson (Forum Supporter) :

Brake development for Stegasaurii must have been fun!!

 

Best of luck in your hunt!

All down to the coefficient of friction of the 'pad' of the foot and the ground, with modulation being via curling the toe nails under to reduce the contact patch.

GameboyRMH said:

I've been thinking about throwing some privacy under the bus and posting a public Indeed resume stuffed with a vast amount of information that would be inadvisable for a something intended to be briefly glanced at or possibly read by a human, but could be useful for matching algorithmic searches. I already apply almost every job I would like to, but this might help me get the jump on some jobs that don't stay up for long or that I otherwise don't get to in time, or even get me in on the legendary hidden world of jobs that are never posted publicly. Plus if I can make it broad enough it might be able to get me leads from multiple unrelated industries.

Any tips? Is this a good idea?

What kind of information? My resume has my name, email address, and phone number. I use the Google call screening on my phone for any number I don't recognize or that doesn't pull up who it's from that isn't in my contacts. Like if the Hospital calls, it tells me it's Integris Baptist. And my email for resume/job correspondence is different than my personal email address. 

I'm also baffled you don't have a resume on Indeed and you're looking for a job. I have a resume on Monster (although that one is probably horrifically out of date), LinkedIn, DICE, Indeed, multiple independent recruiters, etc. 

In reply to z31maniac :

The information would include skills and work history - normal resume stuff - in this case, an extensive list not tailored to any one job or even any one industry...if a resume literally only had your name, email and phone number, that would just be a business card.

I'm generally able to keep up with the publicly posted jobs I would actually like to apply to, so I don't think having a public resume would make a big difference, especially with my unconventional career history and skillset that seems to just not compute for HR departments and/or their ATS system. There aren't that many jobs within reasonable commuting distance and remote jobs are rare enough to stay on top of easily. What I'm mainly hoping these might help with is getting to some jobs that don't stay up long, and if it ever gets me an unsolicited interview request I'd consider it a bonus. I'm kind of throwing things at the wall to see what sticks at this point.

I'd speak to some recruiters as well in the areas you have expertise or are interested in. You'd be suprised how many large companies hire exclusively using recruiters. 

Every job I've worked (except for one that I'd rather forget), I had some sort of personal connection to the company. I believe now that's more important than ever. Using your network of contacts and former co-workers is definitely the best way to land a new job. 
 

The vast majority of online job postings are formalities, the job is all but filled, but legal requires the company to post the position before they can hire someone. In my move to my current company, the job posting was created after I had negotiated salary, vacation, etc. They posted it for a week, and then I received my formal offer.

Two jobs ago, the company recruited exclusively through their existing employees. No one worked there who hadn't worked with another current employee, and in most cases, they had worked with several employees in the past. That strategy worked well for them, they had exceptional people and teams.

There are exceptions to this (especially for entry-level jobs), but the longer you've been working, the more difficultly it would be to find a job purely via an online posting. I would always reach out to someone I knew at the company before applying. They typically have an employee referral program, can research the hiring manager, can give you insight into the company, etc. 

In reply to dj06482 (Forum Supporter) :

I've never got a job via a personal connection and I only know a few people who might get me any inside scoops on local jobs, although not necessarily in IT...I don't think contacts are much of an option for me.

GameboyRMH said:

In reply to dj06482 (Forum Supporter) :

I've never got a job via a personal connection and I only know a few people who might get me any inside scoops on local jobs, although not necessarily in IT...I don't think contacts are much of an option for me.

Have you tried those few people that you know who might get you any inside scoops on local jobs?

dj06482 (Forum Supporter) said:

Every job I've worked (except for one that I'd rather forget), I had some sort of personal connection to the company. I believe now that's more important than ever. Using your network of contacts and former co-workers is definitely the best way to land a new job. 
 

The vast majority of online job postings are formalities, the job is all but filled, but legal requires the company to post the position before they can hire someone. In my move to my current company, the job posting was created after I had negotiated salary, vacation, etc. They posted it for a week, and then I received my formal offer.

Two jobs ago, the company recruited exclusively through their existing employees. No one worked there who hadn't worked with another current employee, and in most cases, they had worked with several employees in the past. That strategy worked well for them, they had exceptional people and teams.

There are exceptions to this (especially for entry-level jobs), but the longer you've been working, the more difficultly it would be to find a job purely via an online posting. I would always reach out to someone I knew at the company before applying. They typically have an employee referral program, can research the hiring manager, can give you insight into the company, etc. 

Knowing someone that works there definitely helps, mine has been 3 out of 7 jobs that I knew someone who worked there that helped put in a good word or had given me a recommendation on LinkedIn.

In reply to yupididit :

I figure there are 2 people who might be able to help and one of them knows I'm looking for work.

I got an interview next week for a job with a local dealership chain's marketing department, it involves a lot of media editing and some web development, also photography. The pay they're offering is insulting for the skills required, but it should be easy for me and would be a big step up from unstable gig work at least.

I also did a first-stage interview for a delivery driver + on-site technician job for a local company that could pay as much as my last tech job.

In industry news, I saw some news that the tech job market has contracted for both 2023 and 2024, although a lot more in 2023, and that something like 10% of videogame devs lost their jobs in 2024 alone. "Videogame devs" may include texture artists, who are getting straight-up replaced with LLM image generators. And videogame devs who have hung onto their jobs aren't enjoying the AI tools companies are trying to shoehorn into their work. I also saw news that purchase/payday loan company Klarna stopped hiring people in 2023 and has only used AI to address any labor shortages since then.

Just today I saw a story on what the tech companies holding their breath on hiring have to look forward to. The supposedly programmer-replacing AI suite Devin, which costs $500/mo, is apparently pretty terrible at actually getting things done, succeeding at only 3 of 20 tasks (one being a common programming challenge it could probably regurgitate a complete answer to) and sometimes spending a full day (24hrs, not just a work day) on a basic task, and apparently also failing to spot impossible tasks and instead spending 24hrs+ on trying to find a way to do it:

https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/23/ai_developer_devin_poor_reviews/

(I could see some managers paying for this and saving it for tasks that all their human workers assure them is impossible...had a similar experience once with a department hiring an outside company for a photoshop job that I assured them was impossible. The company sure did put the two images together, but the result was meant to be convincing, and instead it was hilarious)

I also ran across a story of a cybersecurity company trying to work through an interviewee's test where a honeypot system gave a response that seemed inexplicable. Apparently some genius thought he could ChatGPT his way through the test (and then presumably the job), and when at one step he got some base64-encoded text (for the non-techies, you can think of it as being sort of like the ROT13 cipher), instead of using a common base64 conversion tool to see its contents, he recognized it as base64 and asked ChatGPT to convert it...to which it hallucinated a bunch of nonsense instead, thus creating the mysterious response.

GameboyRMH said:

 My strongest advantage might be that few other qualified people would be willing to work for so little,

GameboyRMH said:

 

I got an interview next week for a job.... The pay they're offering is insulting for the skills required, 

If this is how you feel before the interview, maybe they are picking up the "I don't want to work here" vibe. The last 6 months of posts mentioning an interview are followed by reasons you don't want to work there. As an employer, it's easy to see who wants an opportunity and who will just be more hassle than it's worth. 

In reply to Steve_Jones :

I would've been glad to get the motorsports job even though the pay is crap. I'd also be glad to get the delivery driver+on-site technician job. I've probably mentioned a few others I would've been glad to get, there have been a few...the marketing job, I could take it or leave it and I kind of hope nobody takes it at the advertised wage. I am planning to point out that the advertised wage is awful during the interview if the issue comes up and they don't make a better offer first.

GameboyRMH said:

 I am planning to point out that the advertised wage is awful during the interview if the issue comes up and they don't make a better offer first.

I'll just say it now, sorry you didn't get this one, better luck next time. 

GameboyRMH said:

I am planning to point out that the advertised wage is awful during the interview if the issue comes up and they don't make a better offer first.

That's a monumentally terrible idea. 

In reply to GameboyRMH :

What do you hope to gain by doing that?  Other than showing them that you're a person they shouldn't hire?  That's an incredibly stupid thing to do, they have something you want, which is a job.  You don't get them to offer you that by insulting them.  If you don't want the job because you think the pay is too low, do yourself, and them, the favor of not wasting anyones time with the interview.

6 months?? My man you need to start working anywhere immediately. Home depot, fast food, literally anything. You'll still have plenty of time to keep applying for the big one but you'll have less time to doom-scroll the internet looking for reasons why the world sucks. Sure it probably does but focusing on that ain't good for you. You gotta get out there and make the best of your situation for yourself. Really wishing you the best. 

My reason for pointing out that the wage is trash is that I'm thinking they're either not really planning to hire someone at that rate, or could be fairly easily negotiated up to a higher wage. It's kind of hard to believe they really expect to hire someone for a skilled tech job at a wage where they can't not worry about losing that worker to a more lucrative career at a gas station or something.

In reply to GameboyRMH :

Make sure you use the word trash, as that will help them see it your way.  I'm sure they will be grateful you pointed it out. Let us know your start date.

"He's holding out for a management position." -Clark Griswold.

In reply to Steve_Jones :

I could find much nicer ways to say it, maybe something along the lines of "I assume that's the starting rate for an entry-level candidate and that you might offer more to a well-qualified and experienced candidate such as myself" but I don't think it's in anyone's best interest for me to pretend it's OK when it clearly isn't.