[ryandrake]

Negative, ghost rider.

I’ve had a fairly consistent 100:10:1 application:interview:offer ratio for about 25 years, including bull and bear markets. It’s a numbers game. There is likely nothing wrong with his resume. You need to have a very wide top-of-the-funnel.

There are probably a few Captains Of Industry here on HN who can send 5 resumes out and get 5 offers. These are multiple-standard-deviation outliers.

[atrettel]

I've had roughly that same application:interview:offer ratio for the last 5 years. It's made me realize that it's a numbers game too.

I've gotten comments from colleagues about how putting out a hundred applications seems kinda desperate, but with the ratios that I've experienced, the only way that you can make the odds that you get a job palatable is to increase the number of applications. It's easy to run the binomial distribution analysis to prove this.

[hiddencost]

Before this round, I received a job offer for every application.

I don't need a job right now, but I'm applying to jobs because I see the writing on the wall.

Despite very strong, and publicly verifiable, bonafides, I didn't even get a response from a number of very good (but very large) companies. The smaller and more exclusive companies are responding at a much higher rate, strangely.

So if I'm making it past the harder resume screens, I have to assume that for larger companies, they're just completely failing to read my resume.

[Merad]

I've been in the industry for 10 years now. If memory serves I've applied to about 20 companies, had 8 interviews, and 5 offers resulting in 3 jobs. I don't doubt your experience, but it's not a universal truth of how the world works.

[ohyes]

I have sent exactly 3 applications in my career and been hired 4 times.

[ZoomerCretin]

Then you're either not American, very well-connected, or you graduated during a bull market and always had the "right" amount of experience.

[ryandrake]

The only way I can even imagine this to be possible is 1. Your name is John Carmack or Ken Thompson or 2. You send your application out at the top of every single hiring bubble in history. Sorry, but I almost just don’t believe OP. It seems totally ridiculous and opposite to my lived experience over decades.

Ive probably sent roughly 500 resumes out over a 25 year career and got 5 job offers. Never even two simultaneous offers allowing me to choose. The ratio has been very, very consistent for me.

[ohyes]

I’m willing to believe my experience is a statistical outlier and I’m definitely not looking forward to the next time I need to look for a job.

[ohyes]

American, not well connected, graduated right after the housing market crash, so I suppose it could be the last one.

I don’t quite believe it myself (with people proffering 500 applications just to get one position) but I had a similar experience with online dating where my success rate was probably about 50% getting a positive response (and everyone seemed to bemoan their inability to get anyone to even talk to them).

Maybe this is just luck but I’ve also never been trying to work for google/microsoft/amazon.

I don’t consider myself particularly bright so I’m definitely not Carmack, and I’ve never seen the fabled 300-500k engineering positions, so my salary has been pretty modest for the duration of my career (always been comfortable but, well-maintained Honda civic money not Mercedes money). I just kind of try to make myself useful wherever I go.

When I apply for a job it has either been because a recruiter or former coworker asked me to, or because I was interested in what the company was working on, or both. I don’t go for jobs where I’m expected to performatively solve leetcode problems.

I get nervous around new people but I can get through a technical interview by knowing my stuff. I’m not particularly charismatic or anything.

Maybe I’m just lucky with target selection? I’ve always been about quality over quantity. I’m reasonably good at writing but nothing special.

It could be a sample size issue, my number of applications is not statistically significant compared to the overall market during the last 20 years or whatever.

[Izkata]

> American, not well connected, graduated right after the housing market crash, so I suppose it could be the last one.

Maybe timing? Because your experience is roughly what I also remember in 2010/2011. Only applied to like 5 jobs and got one.