Frustrations with interviewing in this wild job market

aircooled said:

calteg said:

Having been on the other side of the interview table for two F500's, I still maintain you need 2 interviews, max, to determine if a candidate is a good fit.

Interview 1: Idiot filter with recruiter/HR/etc

Interview 2: With the position's direct supervisor

In most cases, I knew within 10 minutes if I was hiring the candidate or not.

5-6 rounds of interviews are wasteful and absolutely unnecessary. 

I would agree 5-6 rounds seems a bit extreme, but it will still depend on the job, and how you count the interviews.

We do 1 and 2 just like you, but if we stopped there, both the new hire and the people that would work with them regularly would have no concept what they are getting into and/or if they can work well together.  It also assumes the manager is fully competent in the particular area of work, which in many cases is very much not the case. 

We add a 3rd set of (short) interviews, that can involve a number of people in different interviews to cover who this person will regularly work with.  Now if you count those by interview, yes you can easily get over 5-6, but if you just count that as round 3, then no.

In our system, although it's a good amount of work / time.  I think it is good for both the hiring area as well as the applicant.  Hiring the wrong person, or taking a job you will be unhappy with because of the people involved can be very damaging, to the person and everyone involved with that person.

I interviewed with Cloudflare a year ago. I went through 5 or 6 total interviews before being totally ghosted. It was an intial HR screen, an interview with the hiring manager, then 2-3 interviews with random people within the company as a "how well do you fit in" before a second meeting with the hiring manager. At that point I'm like "No way I'm not getting this job." Nope, that was the last I heard from them. 

And as a follow up to this whole thread. My life went upside down after this post. I'm still in the same status. I finish my Master's this spring so I'll refocus my efforts on applying to jobs in the summer again. 

Following up on my own post about insanely ridiculous posted pay ranges is this gem from a cold solicitation I got yesterday:

Remote Account Manager B2B Sales Full Desk
Scottsdale, AZ Remote Available
Full-time $50,000.00 - $500,000.00

Yep. That's the salary range they list. I'm not sure how to respond, if at all. Not sure it's even worth trying to educate the person (or machine?) who reached out to me.

In reply to BoulderG :

Looks a bit like some sort of malicious compliance to me.   "We have to list a salary range eh?  Well, just list the entire range for the company."

That's the issue with many laws.  They are fine if everyone acts in the spirit of the law, but that rarely happens.  It's also how you end up with thousands of pages for a seemingly simply law to account for every possible attempt to get around it.

Anyone catch the lightning round of massive tech layoffs that happened while CES was providing cover noise? (Edit: Apparently CES ends tomorrow so it may not be over yet)

I'm not betting on being employed by anyone else in the near future but I did apply for a few jobs that looked particularly promising over the last few months, one recently at a glamorous tech megacorp in Toronto. It's expected to have 2-3 rounds of interviews (one remote) and they say they'll let you know if you get eliminated, which is nice.

GameboyRMH said:

and they say they'll let you know if you get eliminated, which is nice.

This morning I got a rejection notice for a position I applied to. Four months ago.

GameboyRMH said:

Anyone catch the lightning round of massive tech layoffs that happened while CES was providing cover noise? (Edit: Apparently CES ends tomorrow so it may not be over yet)

I'm not betting on being employed by anyone else in the near future but I did apply for a few jobs that looked particularly promising over the last few months, one recently at a glamorous tech megacorp in Toronto. It's expected to have 2-3 rounds of interviews (one remote) and they say they'll let you know if you get eliminated, which is nice.

Well that sucks, sorry if you end up being caught up in that. 

That's one of the nice things about Oracle/NetSuite, they didn't go overboard hiring during the beginning of COVID. Our salaries aren't the best, but our benefits and job security make up for it. No one was laid off in the last few years. 

In reply to GameboyRMH :

I got caught up in those layoffs.

This week was a whirlwind. Utilized my network and got interviews with the C-suite for a startup in my niche. I'm an absolutely perfect candidate. Interviewed with CFO, CRO, CEO, and the principle investor that's backing them. All of them loved me. Got an email this morning saying they don't have an open position or the budget to hire me. What?!?

calteg said:

In reply to GameboyRMH :

I got caught up in those layoffs.

This week was a whirlwind. Utilized my network and got interviews with the C-suite for a startup in my niche. I'm an absolutely perfect candidate. Interviewed with CFO, CRO, CEO, and the principle investor that's backing them. All of them loved me. Got an email this morning saying they don't have an open position or the budget to hire me. What?!?

That stinks!  Unfortunately this seems to be a trend.  I've been at a large tech company for about 4 years, and we've been on a hiring freeze for at least 3.5 years of my time here.  I'm sure we've actually hired people over the last 4 years, but my guess is that we've let go of many more.  Our management made a concerted effort not to hire a bunch of people when everyone else was doing it, and I'm sure that saved 1,000s of jobs alone.  This was an article that surprised me, as the headline news is that we've dodged a recession (I'm not so convinced..), but that 38% of companies thought layoffs were likely for next year.

AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:

GameboyRMH said:

and they say they'll let you know if you get eliminated, which is nice.

This morning I got a rejection notice for a position I applied to. Four months ago.

2 months here without any notification.

CES 2024 is over and a few more companies got their layoffs in on the last day. It seems like for every 2 headlines about a new gadget being shown off at CES there was 1 about a tech company, game studio, or tech company's movie studio lopping off a big chunk of its workforce. But apparently even though there was a heavy burst of layoff news that might feel like all of last year compressed into less than a week, so far tech industry layoffs are happening at about half the pace of 2023:

https://layoffs.fyi/

GameboyRMH said:

CES 2024 is over and a few more companies got their layoffs in on the last day. It seems like for every 2 headlines about a new gadget being shown off at CES there was 1 about a tech company, game studio, or tech company's movie studio lopping off a big chunk of its workforce. But apparently even though there was a heavy burst of layoff news that might feel like all of last year compressed into less than a week, so far tech industry layoffs are happening at about half the pace of 2023:

https://layoffs.fyi/

If that website was made by the teams who got laid off...well..doesn't look like a huge loss to the company.

Update on the tech layoffs, they're now on pace to exceed last year's:

https://qz.com/tech-layoffs-might-surpass-2023-1851198088

"...with companies shifting investments to generative AI..."

So, the guys who invented AI are being replaced by AI. Hmm...

calteg said:

In reply to GameboyRMH :

I got caught up in those layoffs.

This week was a whirlwind. Utilized my network and got interviews with the C-suite for a startup in my niche. I'm an absolutely perfect candidate. Interviewed with CFO, CRO, CEO, and the principle investor that's backing them. All of them loved me. Got an email this morning saying they don't have an open position or the budget to hire me. What?!?

So, they were looking at you to volunteer to be an investor (work for free)

BoulderG said:

Following up on my own post about insanely ridiculous posted pay ranges is this gem from a cold solicitation I got yesterday:

 

Remote Account Manager B2B Sales Full Desk
Scottsdale, AZ Remote Available
Full-time $50,000.00 - $500,000.00

 

Yep. That's the salary range they list. I'm not sure how to respond, if at all. Not sure it's even worth trying to educate the person (or machine?) who reached out to me.

 

Something similar happened to me. I'm working with an internal recruiter and she knows what I'm making now and that I'm fully remote.

She tells me about a position that she feels would be a good fit. I look it over, see the pay range and that it's hybrid with a long commute a few times a month to be in the office. If they paid me something close to the middle of the pay range, it would work. I tell her that I'm interested and she goes to the hiring manager with my resume. I hear nothing for close to a month. Then the recruiter reaches out and asks what my salary expectations are. I tell her midpoint in their range is what I expect and that it's fair based on what similar jobs in the area are paying.

She tells me that they prefer to bring in people for this position at the bottom of the pay range.

WTF? That's less than I make now, plus adds a long commute to an office which brings its own expenses. 

She acted surprised when I declined an interview.

Karacticus said:

calteg said:

In reply to GameboyRMH :

I got caught up in those layoffs.

This week was a whirlwind. Utilized my network and got interviews with the C-suite for a startup in my niche. I'm an absolutely perfect candidate. Interviewed with CFO, CRO, CEO, and the principle investor that's backing them. All of them loved me. Got an email this morning saying they don't have an open position or the budget to hire me. What?!?

So, they were looking at you to volunteer to be an investor (work for free)

Very likely. The mush-mouth response from them was "we might have a position for you in the future, but you'd have to come in at entry level and work your way back up to director, but we don't have a time frame for any of it."

Cool, thanks.

SV reX said:

"...with companies shifting investments to generative AI..."

 

So, the guys who invented AI are being replaced by AI. Hmm...

Not at all, some people who work in the same general industry in the broadest sense of the term are getting replaced by AI. Most of them are writers and artists, and the ones who came closest to touching AI with a 30-foot pole were probably game developers. Anyone who can develop modern neural networks is in extremely high demand, and there's good demand for top AI trainers. The guys who invented modern AI specifically - Geoff Hinton, Yann LeCun, Ilya Sutskever etc - are still very much employed and have probably made the most money from actual knowledge work of anyone in human history.

In reply to GameboyRMH :

I think you know what I meant. 

In reply to SV reX :

Even strictly at a company level there's not that much overlap or actual replacement. The companies that both worked on AI and have had layoffs are tech megacorps that have a finger in everything tech-related rather than companies that specialize in AI like OpenAI (although it's kind of a Microsoft subsidiary, and MS did have layoffs in game development) and Anthropic, and the layoffs at those tech megacorps are probably more caused by the companies dumping non-AI-related projects to put more money into AI research than their workers being straight-up replaced by AI like videogame voice actors or texture artists.

In reply to GameboyRMH :

Like I said before, a big reason for a lot of the tech layoffs has to do with the dramatic over-hiring of employees during COVID. 

Por ejemplo:

"Microsoft's workforce expanded by about 36 percent in the two fiscal years following the emergence of the pandemic, growing from 163,000 workers at the end of June 2020, to 221,000 in June 2022."

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/microsoft-cuts-10000-of-global-jobs-about-5-percent-of-workforce

Was contacted by a recruiter yesterday for Senior Tech Writing position for a regional bank......that I have been banking with for 23 years. Unfortunately after reviewing everything, I told him not to submit me. 

The $15k/yr raise would have been nice, but $4k of it would have been absorbed in their dramatically higher insurance costs (that didn't specify if a domestic partner was covered, since my fiance and I aren't married yet), in the office 5 days per week 8-5 meaning I'd have to commute down one of the worse thorough fares in the city during rush hour both ways, smaller contributions to 401k and HSA accounts as well. 

Which was kind of a bummer, as I nailed all the exact experience they wanted and the job sounded really interesting. 

just got robo-rejections for two positions i applied for about 6 months ago, when my then-current employer filed for bankruptcy.

to be clear, i didn't lose my job as part of the bankruptcy, and 've been working all along.  just commenting because it seems crazy that it takes 6 months to say "your E36 M3 doesn't match our E36 M3."

In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :

In my book that's a pretty good reason for them to end up on your "don't bother" list.

Currently sitting at week 4 on an application I submitted.... I keep waiting on the rejection email any day now but it still hasn't shown up.

GameboyRMH said:

I'm not betting on being employed by anyone else in the near future but I did apply for a few jobs that looked particularly promising over the last few months, one recently at a glamorous tech megacorp in Toronto. It's expected to have 2-3 rounds of interviews (one remote) and they say they'll let you know if you get eliminated, which is nice.

Update: Got a rejection letter from them, just under 1 month from the date I applied. Qualifications were a pretty close match but I'm pretty far from the office.

Edit: I also have the dreaded "employment gap" now OH NOES how ever will I prove that I'm a live-to-work hustlebro!?!?