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Four weeks ago I was informed that my position at QuSecure was being “eliminated”. This news came as a bit of a shock, but I suppose one of the risks you take on when you join a startup company is that your position is never perfectly stable. So now I’m back on the job market. I’ve updated my resume, and my LinkedIn profile.
Since my job was “eliminated” I have decided to be very diligent about keeping track of my job applications. I’ve been using a Trello board so I can see what I’ve applied to and I can see their progression. For anyone who is interested I’ve linked to the Trello template that I’ve used as the basis for my Job Hunt board below.
Some quick statistics:
In the last month I have applied to 184 jobs.
As of the time of this writing, of those 184 applications – I have received 35 rejection notifications.
As of the time of writing, I have labeled 48 applications as “Ghosted”. I label any application as “Ghosted” if I have not received any notice or communication after three weeks.
I have had 4 contacts from recruiters
I have had two 1st round interviews.
I have had 1 take-home technical assessment, and I currently have a 2nd-round interview scheduled for later this week (fingers crossed 🤞🏼)
From a certain perspective these are not very encouraging statistics. It can actually seem pretty bleak. I saw a recent video from CNBC (linked below) about the subject of “Ghost Jobs” or Fake job listings. Apparently as many as 4/10 companies have posted fake job listings, and 3 in 10 are currently advertising for a role that isn’t real.
There seems to be several causes for the Ghost Job phenomenon.
Companies post jobs to maintain a talent pool to draw upon. They may not want to hire now, but if and when things take an upswing, they have a database of applicants to call on.
If a company appears to be hiring, it makes the company appear to be healthier that it actually is They’re trying to look like a growing, thriving organization, to show investors or clients they’re healthy and expanding (even if they’re not).
Even if a job listing is “legit” there are other hurdles to overcome. When you send in your application, your resume gets parsed by an Applicant Tracking System (or ATS) There are dozens (if not hundreds) of ATS software platforms, and each is going to have its own quirks as to how it ranks certain keywords, how it sorts through your job history and so forth. There is no standardized format, so even if you’re able to optimize your resume for 1 ATS platform (which you can’t really) those optimizations might flag it on a different ATS platform and be automatically rejected.
Then there Human Resource representatives or company recruiters.
Now I have no data for this other than my professional intuition, but even allowing for the best of intentions, HR reps probably are not always going to be using the Application Tracking System optimally. I build software and user interfaces for a living, and I know the difficulties and pitfalls of poorly designed UIs. And I know that software that is built for corporate clients (such as ATS platforms) – very seldom have a well designed user interface. And it’s not a great leap to suspect that there are issues of false positives, or issues of filters being incorrectly configured, by an HR rep who may not be too familiar with how an ATS works.
Again, I’ve never had the chance to work in an ATS platform, so I have no first hand knowledge, but from anecdotal stories I’ve read – this is a problem. I’ve read stories where HR delivers a short list of candidates via the ATS who are totally unqualified, yet when the Hiring Manager goes through the applications manually, they find qualified candidates whose resumes were rejected or flagged by the ATS because of some formatting or content quirk.
Now, all this being said – I refuse to surrender to discouragement and despair. I know my worth. I have the support of my wife, my family, and friends. I don’t have any real solutions or recommendations apart from what you’ll find elsewhere. Keep plugging away. Even if you are only getting a 1 in a 100 response rate, keep going. Networking is difficult for many people but it can pay off, so reach out to people you’ve worked with. Don’t be pushy, be friendly and respectful. You may not get a lot of responses, but all it takes is just the right pebble at the right time to start the avalanche in your favor. I believe in you. I believe in me. We will get through this.