I’m finding the hard way that finding another job is a grind: you invest time reading what they want to hire, you write a CV and an application.
Most of the time you don’t get an answer, meaning you are that irrelevant to them. Most of these times it is YOU the one who has to ask if they decided for or against. On the limited times they write you back, it’s a computed generated BS polite rejection letter.
I asked one of them how many candidates they considered and why they rejected me, but that only made them send me another computer generated letter.
I’d like to know how close I was and in what ways I can become a more interesting candidate, but nobody is going to give me a realistic answer.
It sucks having to need them more than they need you. And I should consider me lucky, because I have a job, but jesus christ, I feel for those who have to do this without stable income or a family that offers them a place to stay…
There are thousands of possible reasons and many of them won’t have anything to do with you. There are fake job postings. There are many jobs where the hiring manager already has someone in mind for the job (but they have to check the required boxes and pretend to open the position to any candidate). Another candidate may have gone to the same school or been in a frat with the hiring manager. The list goes on and on.
I had a manager who offered a promotion to our department and went through the whole process of interviewing and whatnot before giving it to someone outside of the department who had no idea what he was doing and had to be trained by us on how to be a manager. It was really cool to find out after I bailed that he had the job before we even knew about the possible promotion. Glad I bailed on that asshole, that was the same manager who was buddy buddy with the office diddler and tried to run interference for him around the office when he got a new set of bracelets.
This is a good list. Another, often overlooked is:
Sometimes we just get incredibly unlucky and interview at the same time as someone wildly unusually more qualified.
Or at least someone who lied big enough on their resume to pretend that they’re wildly more qualified.
In my experience the people who do the hiring can’t fucking tell the difference.
I really hate the whole “you need to inflate what you did on your resume” because it’s just fucking lying.
You know what’s a fucking really valuable thing in this world that gets shit on: Having a fucking sense of humility and of a keen knowledge of your own limitations. Having that being viewed as a negative is fuck stupid and how we get fuck stupid people running the show.
EDIT: I accidentally the whole word
I could list ‘works with wildly dangerous substances in a public environment’ or ‘drug dealer’ and both are technically accurate.
I work at a petrol station and between caffeinated drinks, the medical aisle and cigarettes, I sell a lot of drugs. Dangerous substances being the 100,000 litres of aggressively flammable fluid we stand on all day.
I’ve been on both sides of this and when you’ve spent the whole day talking to a dozen people who all seem competent enough to do the job, you go with the person that either has a little more (or more relevant) experience, or whoever you enjoyed talking to the most.
I’m a huge dork, so if you happened to mention something like D&D or Fallout during the interview, you’re probably going to get it. (Assuming everyone is equally qualified.)
But at the same time, I’d never mention anything like that at an interview, because I wouldn’t expect the interviewer to appreciate it.
Sure, but it’s perfectly legit to use that to put a plus next to social skills or works well with team.
I’ve definitely dinged people who were too robotic - you do have to interact to successfully do your job.
IIRC, there was one very recent (mid-2024) study of job ads that strongly suggested that 60-75% of them were never meant to be filled. As in, the company posted them for entirely unrelated reasons.
It’s why these are called “ghost jobs”: they don’t exist.
Recruiters are essentially salesmen. They want to have a full dossier of product (you) when they talk to a potential client. They might also job hop among agencies, and bringing a full dossier of product helps them get their new job. It’s much easier to build that product inventory with ghost jobs than it is to actually work directly with someone looking for a job.
Maybe it’s my limited experience, but I’ve never worked for an employer that did this, as far as I know. Any opening was real at the time it was posted. However we’ve held onto people if we expect another opening or we like them even though they don’t fit but can’t promise a new opening until we get it approved …… or maybe we got the ok to hire and started the process but were shut down by bad numbers somewhere but hope that will change again
I haven’t seen the numbers. I have read that they do this for a few evil reasons.
You forgot one, test runs. See what works and what doesnt.
Great summary.