[FZ1]

How many people respond to your job ads? Where I live (major US metropolis), it's about 200-700 per job (according to linkedin, anyways).

The biggest trouble for a soft. eng is getting to a real person. Once that is done, convincing them that you're median or better is the easy part. Most resumes are just screened out by a machine, or reviewed by a clueless HR dept that has no idea what a median-talent software engineer looks like.

I have taught hundreds of CS undergrads in this city, and have had some of the very brightest tell me they've put out 500-600 resumes, and never heard back a thing. Many do get jobs though - even some of the worst performers.

It's very hit-and-miss - not nearly as deterministic as you make it sound.

[sokoloff]

I totally agree with your points, especially the last, and didn’t mean to suggest it was deterministic at all.

Interviewing is a lossy, semi-random practice for both sides. Candidates and firms take different approaches to address this randomness, but it’s still ultimately not a digitally precise (repeatable) not even especially accurate system. You could be the next Jon Carmack and fail to get an offer from 10 straight interviews for relevant positions. “Too experienced; we don’t really do what he’s interested in; bad culture fit; too good culture fit-we want more diversity; simply preferred another candidate; decided to not move forward with the role; lost the budget; existing employee transferred; never was a real open position anyway but we legally had to advertise it...”

[CathedralBorrow]

Do they just sit and wait to hear back and then give up when they don't?

[FZ1]

What else are they supposed to do? Apply to the same job again? There's little you can do if you never make contact or hear back. You just apply to other positions. But what if you don't hear from those either ... ?

Open to suggestions here - but no stalker advice, please - I do not condone friending hiring managers on linkedin/fb, or some of the other creepy tactics we've seen recently.

I think the skillful students generally believe that investing effort to become skillful is all that's needed - and that doing so will eventually pay off.

This is sadly not really true as a general statement.

I have had many 'successful' students - who got more than one offer to choose from. Once, I asked one - who now works at a major investment bank - "so, great job - any advice I should pass on to other students if they ask about job-hunting?" (taking note for myself also - as I am a soft. eng mainly, and only teach part-time).

I expected something like "invest in your skills" or python, or java, or databases, or interview questions ...

The response was: "yeah - copy and paste the job description to the bottom of your resume, and turn the font color to white - so humans can't see it, but the machine will still read it and label you a good match for the job".

My point here is that the current system seems to work best for those who 'game' it to behave in unintentional ways - as opposed to filtering for actually skillful applicants.