[donovanm]

So according to this article, most jobs aren't posted and most jobs are filled through referrals. Even if you somehow make it through the arbitrary automated tracking system gatekeeper you're still really unlikely to get the job from a random application. Any hiring managers here that can share if this matches their experience?

[hectormalot]

As a department head I've hired almost 100 people over the last 12 months (We are growing very fast at the moment). The majority of these are applications that come in through a normal application, although I'm not sure how many resumes never make it past recruiting.

Next to this, we have grown the team by moving over employees from other departments asking for internal transfers, these have about the same success rate as external applicants.

And then there are referrals from people who already work in the department (can be for people who already work for the company). The success rate on these candidates is indeed higher. I think this is because the person referring them has already thought about whether the person referred is a fit or not. We give them the same interview process, and don't always tell the interviewer that the candidate is a referral.

That said, I see 3 things that might push the reality closer to what you said "most jobs are filled through referrals".:

1. If you're hiring only a few people, the statistics will probably bias towards referrals. It is easy to get a few referrals for a specific position if you need them.

2. Referrals might end up on the desk of the hiring manager earlier (e.g. from employee to hiring manager) compared to an official application (webform to recruiting to manager). Sometimes we can close a position before the first resumes from recruiting even land on my desk.

3. As jobs get more senior, a hiring mistake becomes more expensive, and in that sense hiring a strong referral is on average going to reduce this risk. So, for higher level jobs I think indeed that many are filled through networking or targeted reach-outs rather than open applications.

[lojack]

Completely agree with your points.

> I'm not sure how many resumes never make it past recruiting

I've asked the recruiters at my company about this (we hired roughly similar numbers). Their response was that they filter a surprising number of applicants, but they are almost always from people who are completely unqualified for the job. The referral helps fast track them through this, but it doesn't provide much more than getting their foot in the door.

[mrgordon]

From my experience at startups, I feel like causality is backwards here. We get very few leads through our website compared to referrals and recruiters, so naturally most of our hires don't come through cold website leads. Its not like we get thousands of website resume submissions that we then just ignore. I do think referrals (including from a good recruiter) are likely to have a higher quality since they are pre-vetted a bit, but I'm more than happy to hire direct and save $20,000+ in recruiter fees.

[amorphid]

When I was recruiting, a generic application wasn't an automatic deal breaker, but it wasn't good. If you can't take the time that you're applying to a specific job for a specific reason, that's usually a sign that you've basically "swiped right" on a job that sounded interesting. Usually a generic application for a qualified person goes to the bottom of the pile of people worth considering.

[watwut]

What specific reason would you expect me to cite when I apply for senior developer position?

[amorphid]

Anything that makes you a strong fit or that makes you really like the position. Even if you don't have much to say, anything that makes your application not look like spam, and spamming out a resume is exactly what the author of this article is doing, is a good start.

"I wrote one of the open source packages you use!"

"You make software used in my toaster!"

"Your office it two blocks from my house!"

[alexashka]

This'd imply your company is so interesting, that it warrants a cover letter. When I job hunt, I email literally every posting, as does everyone I know. When you're looking for 'strong fit' - what you're really selecting for is desparation.

When I was a junior, I wrote cover letters for every job. Now that I'm senior, I haven't written one in years and get more callbacks than ever before.

[amorphid]

And I bet you don't need to write a spam bot to spam your resume out to N * 10^50 job postings. It sounds like you've outgrown the need to seeks answers to questions you might have asked earlier in your career. That is a nice position to be in :)

Still, one could argue that flirting w/ the company a bit at the point you make a first impression, possibly in a cover letter, is in your best interests. If someone needs you, they'll offer to pay what they need to. If someone wants you, they'll pay whatever it takes to retain you. Sometimes those numbers are the same. But if a company would be willing to go the extra mile to make you happy, and you give them no reason to feel that way, you're leaving money on the table.

[icebraining]

I'm curious, what are you expecting to read?

[amorphid]

For starters, anything that indicated the person was specifically interested in the opportunity for some reason. This wasn't usually a good start.

"Dear Sir or Madam,

<generic blob of text>

Sincerely, <applicant name>"

[flukus]

Were you recruiting for a well known and respected company that was listed in the job ad or for a random generic company?

If you're someone like google or in a very specific niche that I'd like to be in then I'd write a cover letter, but that is not most jobs.

[amorphid]

My observation was that job applicants who tried to get the job by making a notable effort to show genuine interest in a specific opportunity seemed to be the one's who eventually got the job. Being interested doesn't make one qualified, but it does tend to make one stand out.

Getting a good job is hard, and you can't always tell from the outside if a job is one you'd want. It doesn't take much time to show genuine interest in any opportunity that's worth applying to, no matter how prestigious the company may be.

[wiradikusuma]

curious, if that's the case, what's their point for posting the job ads? legal?

[quickConclusion]

Article says that in many cases it is the mandatory job posting to hire H1Bs. Answers are ignored.

[cardine]

The article is incorrect - there are no mandatory job postings to hire H1Bs. That is only required when sponsoring green cards.

[outworlder]

Everyone's correct here :)

There's a mandatory job posting requirement to hire H1Bs - at the worksite -.

A Sunday newspaper job posting needs to happen for the green card process.

[chris11]

Some companies do it to just get an idea of what's available. I had a job as a contractor at a startup and when they decided they wanted to convert me to full-time they had me apply to their job ad.

[xeromal]

I saw a post the other day where a guy set up a fake job posting on craigslist. He got hundreds of applications and around 40% even had master's degrees. Like 5% were self-taught. If each job posting gets potentially thousands of resumes, you really need to stand out and the easiest way is to know someone.

[fpp]

Out of personal experience hiring many new staff members, this might be true for entry level to mid-level jobs with broad supply of candidates being a good match with their (claimed) skill set.

Unfortunately even that oversimplifies the actual situation - there is not one type of job and there is not one type of organisation hiring.

The higher up the ladder you go the less likely it becomes that you would get a job based on your resume / skills alone. You will need an endorsement of some kind that might come from inside the company or through a trusted external referrer (e.g. a specialised senior / executive placement agency aka head hunter used by the company for pre-selecting candidates - sometimes this is visible when the agency is advertising the role, sometimes not when the role is advertised under the company name).

Many of these roles are still advertised like other roles mainly to follow process - advertising every vacancy to the public is almost always a step to tick off in hiring processes.

While some companies - mostly fast growing or start-ups - are more open to "outsiders", in others the public advertising while still providing some transparency has long become a complete illusion.

My most extreme examples here would be with government agencies for permanent senior or above roles. This can be best demonstrated with United Nations post advertising.

The UN has a series of job boards where the public can apply to any of the jobs and all posts vacant should be on these (not sure if they still include the most senior ones - you normally find these in the Economist).

What they don't tell you is that a lot of them only take internal candidates and are not really open to external applicants - this can go that far that even staff members from other UN agencies wont through the first selection round when applying.

Other (non-professional) jobs might only be filled locally, e.g. if you would be in the UK and the job is in Switzerland don't bother...

After that, applying for senior posts when you are not "part of the system" is a completely useless endeavour. Here even skills seem to become secondary - with most of them you will have to be endorsed by your government. There might be a very small number of people that made it onto senior posts in the last 10-15 years without government endorsement, but tmk all of them had very strong internal / organisation support behind them. And most of them had an enormously hard time to fight off the "cronies" after they got the post - no surprise that even less survived the first 2 years.

Overall, job boards might be a good starting point for entry level positions or contract work. It helps you to identify potential opportunities, but there is normally no direct road to get a job from the advert alone.

Often you have a better chance to apply directly on the company web sites, or on sites like Kaggle or HackerRank.

Most importantly you need to find a way to stick out from the crowd.