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.
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.
There are fake job postings.
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.
I haven’t seen the numbers. I have read that they do this for a few evil reasons.
- It makes their business look like it’s thriving.
- They can gather intel on who’s job hunting.
- They can use job application tasks to get free work out of candidates.
Great summary.
You forgot one, test runs. See what works and what doesnt.
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
There are a few benign-ish ways this happens, based on my experience from working on “the other side”. They reflect shittily on the hiring manager, but not on you:
You got no immediate rejection because they did consider you valid for the position, just not first place. Then they got a match on the first place and stopped giving a shit about the applicant backlog.
They got too many applicants and threw half in the garbage.
Upper management put a freeze, or reduction, on hiring right as they put an ad out.
They have a person already picked for the position, but they will get in legal or corporate or PR trouble if they don’t pretend to do a proper hiring process.
Their application process, human or computer, lost your CV.
You don’t get “rejected”, they just hire someone who isn’t you.
It really doesn’t hurt to keep asking. Nobody that matters is going to be offended by it. Eventually someone will tell you, but just be aware that different people may have different reasons so don’t assume feedback from one employer applies to all employers.
At the end of my interviews, before saying bye,I ask what I could have done better. Almost always received constructive criticism. I highly recommend it.
This is a seriously good idea! Employers want employees that are looking to improve themselves.
Either you fucked up and they’ll tell you so you can improve next time, or they’ll just be impressed at your desire to grow.
Whenever I’ve been on the hiring side of an interview, the people seated in the interview aren’t given any special “Keep the company safe” training, but the HR person coordinating always have been. I suspect that’s why it works much better to ask in the interview than after it.
I make sure to always assume it was nepotism and my confidence remains sky high no matter how long I stay unemployed. It just works.
Until you get rejected for a job at your own dad’s company.
I straight up ask any job I apply and interview with why they didn’t proceed. One time they were actually taken back and ended up hiring me (after some convo).
If a company cannot communicate to you why you didn’t make the cut, they’re a shitty company and not worth working for. I realize that’s easier said than done to swallow, but it’s true.
I used to work in sales and I did a lot of cold calls. The world-weary senior sales guy would always just shake his head at me when I got frustrated. “It’s a numbers game,” he would say. “It’s just a numbers game.” In the beginning I would waste a lot of time researching each individual call, but that didn’t help me make sales. The truth was a certain percentage of people that I could call would have a need for the product I was offering. Of those people who had a need, a certain percentage would choose us over a competitor, because we were the best fit.
Looking for a job is the same as sales. Your product is your labor. It can feel personal, as though the product is you, yourself. But you’re not selling yourself, you’re selling your work product. A certain percentage of buyers (employers) will need the labor that you can provide. A certain percentage of those will choose you over a competitor because you are the best fit. It’s a numbers game. It’s not personal, it’s just a numbers game.
sometimes even if you had the best application in the world you’d get ignored. Lets say HR has limited resources, X work hours to find a suitable candidate. They post an add and get 400 replies. After reading 100 of those, they are running out of work hours, and have already shortlisted a bunch of good candidates. So they toss the 300 others in the bin.
This happens all the time sadly.
Because employers are opaque and their evaluation of you isn’t something that should be important to you. They’re not giving you a clear response oftentimes because they want to avoid legal issues.
This is something that, as long as you ended up getting a job, you should really just not give a fuck about.
They probably had 1 position to fill, but got many times more applications than that, maybe 10, maybe 20, maybe 50, maybe 100. That means that they had to reject 9 or 19 or 49 or 99 people and they have better things to do with their time than to explain this to all these people, however many they may be.
Life is all about probabilities, you can do everything right and still lose (however doing everything"right" is nigh impossible). You lose if they have a better candidate, you lose if their department is suddenly not in need of the position, etc.
With that mentality, I don’t bother with CVs, and just use the time saved to apply to more jobs or maybe some kind of relevant project.
Don’t take it personally, applying for a job is a game of chance as much as a game of merits. It’s simply a numbers game and luck whether your resume even gets looked at in the first place, even if you’re résumé how all their keywords. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of other resumes also hit their keywords.
If you’re lucky enough to get through the first sifting and get an interview with the hiring person (not an HR screener who doesn’t know anything about the job), then you can ask and maybe get a response on how you could have improved. (Don’t ask why you weren’t hired.)
Some people fell better when they find fault in others. So blame them for being too stupid to see your worth and be thankful you don’t have to work somewhere with people like that. It’s their loss. You’re waiting a company worthy of your talents finds you.
So blame them for being too stupid to see your worth…You’re waiting a company worthy of your talents finds you.
Careful with this. If you legitimately feel you are entitled to be hired by a specific employer, you are almost certainly less likely to get the job. Nobody wants to deal with entitled people.
Yeah, during the interview, realistically you’re looking to see if it’s a good fit.
But after the fact, feel free to cheer yourself up by blaming their incompetence.
There’s a balance though. Not a specific company, but with a company who sees my needs and value, and meets or exceeds that, with appreciation.
My current company makes the effort to at least tell whether you’re still under consideration but I don’t think they’re allowed by legal to give any details.
At least in the US, it’s fine to not give a reason but if you do give a reason you’re liable for it. What company wants to risk that?
Looks like a major loophole to me haha
All there is to accept is the knowledge that the vast majority of employers, the wealth holding members of society, do not actually care about anyone that won’t earn them more money.
And then also that not all, but most of society will also tell you that you must be doing something wrong, it must be your fault.
