At my last job I applied via Work at a Startup and.... Never heard back. I went to work for another company and when I was done there the CEO posted on bookface for me. A high up employee at the startup I applied to saw the post and forwarded me to the recruiter. I got a blind call (the person doing recruiting was so out of touch with how devs like contact) and he was amazed I knew a bunch about the company. I then explained I applied a year ago!

My resume at the time wasn't as impressive but I was obviously more than qualified for the role and they were unable to fill the role for a year.

Yeah the front door sucks.

It’s all referral or brand name (Stanford, mit, FAANG). If you didn’t go to a famous school make friends with someone who works where you want to be and get a referral through them.

I would be interested to know the stats on percent of resumes even opened.

I'd imagine it varies a lot by company.

I, or somebody else on our team, look at every single CV/resume that comes in, regardless of whether or not the HR team have looked at them.

We also aim to respond to every single applicant (i.e., beyond the initial automated acknowledgement), even if it's a straight no thanks. Every now and again somebody will slip through the net, but that's a mistake rather than the norm.

Lots of companies don't do either of those things. In their defense they probably get a lot more applicants for their roles, which makes it harder to keep on top of. Still, with half-decent modern ATSs it's generally pretty easy to quickly review and either reject or progress applicants, so it is infuriating if you apply for a job and just hear... nothing.

Another thing we do that a lot of companies don't is give feedback for applicants we've interviewed who haven't been successful. You know, sometimes it's the case that someone was decent and there wasn't anything specifically wrong, it's just that we spoke to someone else with more experience, or more relevant experience, so they didn't get the job, but we do try to give (hopefully) helpful feedback to rejected applicants as often as we can.

Occasionally that bites us in the ass because somebody will argue with the feedback, but not often enough that I'd want to stop doing it. The point I always try to remind people of is that they're never interviewing in a vacuum: we always have a cohort of applicants to consider so, whilst you might disagree with us that X is where you fell down in the interview, we're seeing that in the context of talking to half a dozen others about X, and how they performed, as well.

Thing is many companies post job ads that aren't actually available. It's a way to promote their supposed growth to clients, wanna be buyers. Quite often it is just regulatory as promoting internally requires them to open up the role to external candidates. Correct a good portion of CVs are never looked at.

During my last job search, I applied to about 15 jobs, heard back from 5, interviewed with 3, took the job from 1.

One of the other employers who interviewed me had not contacted me for a couple months. Then, out of the blue, they contacted me again asking if I'd like to continue the interview process.

Unsurprisingly, I turned them down. I was already a few weeks into my new job. The long delay gave me a bad impression too.

I had a lot of this last time I was looking for a new job! I applied to about 15 as well, heard back from a few quick no's but had only one interview which led to an offer.

Literally months later I then received about 6 interview requests! It blew my mind how so many companies were months behind.

Ebay (used to be) really, really bad for this. Over the course of 2-3 years I changed jobs twice.

On all occasions, a recruiter from Ebay reached out a month or two after I'd started my new job to ask me if I wanted to interview there.

Remember too that reminding companies that they’re in a competitive environment can be effective. Telling them when you’re in an offer stage with another company often makes them hit the gas.

Note: You don't actually have to have a competing offer . You can just tell them or imply that you do.

This happens to me all the time. In addition. Interviewing for multiple roles at once. I’ll get an offer, but am also awaiting a response from another company. Maybe I’ll get it, maybe I’ll get ghosted. In theory, the internet tells me I can use it for leverage, but more often the offer responses will almost never line up and I’ll have to take what I get first, or reject the offer m, betting on something else that may be coming.

If you don't mind, what's the high demand skillset?

Recruiters/referrals seem to have a much faster process than cold resume drops.

Incentives matter. Recruiters get paid when someone accepts an offer and referrals often get a bonus at the same time. Many other people in the process get paid for every hour they spend in interviews, or going through resumes, or attending job fairs..

I think you missed the sarcasm (or I'm reading something into that article that doesn't exist).

I don’t think so, parent is providing an anecdote which supports the article’s first section