Pretty incredible to see how tight the market is right now.
Do they at least have some kind of redeeming character? Or is it literally at the point where being able to write some kind of code is sufficient?
(Am 1yr junior in Melbourne that should probably be looking around, it sounds like..)
1. We have to use recruiters to find candidates, we barely get any hits on our job ad, even though we are a pretty innovative company with a modern tech stack and pay quite well. The recruiters field us the most woeful candidates, but at least it's someone rather than no one. The pool for qualified senior engineers is low, so we're all competing for a shrinking pool of candidates relative to the jobs on offer.
2. Hiring for fit is important to me, so it's not so much that they aren't stellar in their interview technically, but the fact that people don't realistically state what their strengths and weaknesses are, and sometimes outright lie to you, means that I don't want to work with them. Humility is the bedrock of real growth, how can you really grow if you're lying to people around you about how competent you are? I've hired weaker candidates technically purely because they had an on honest approach to their abilities, and demonstrated a keeness for learning.
If you're at the junior level, my advice is to job hop as mad as possible until you have a few years/companies under your belt. Get a breadth of experiences at a few different places, it will help you contextualise everything you learn/don't know Once you hit 5-10 years experience, that's the time to start slowing down and really honing in on your experience and stay at places for longer. Completing projects end to end, and crucially, learning how to plan, estimate and deal with change over time.