[guywithahat]

Don't take this the wrong way, but what sort of resume are you looking for at HRT?

I have sent many applications over the years with no responses. I have a masters and two bachelors from UW-Madison, which is arguably a top school in the area since UChicago doesn't have an engineering school (I also got into Michigan and Northwestern for context). I've build spacecraft for the Space Force and I've worked in latency-sensitive data and ML applications, and have plenty of C/C++ experience.

I know I sound very jealous right now (I am lol) but every time I look for SWE jobs in Chicago I see HRT paying to run ads, but I've never gotten an email back. Is this an Ivy-only company or something? What sort of stuff are you looking for?

[InkCanon]

I too am surprised by the number of ads these firms put out. Reddit, YouTube, even advent of code. I can't imagine in a world where even underpaid entry level roles at small startups get hundreds of applicants that these firms have a shortage of candidates.

What I think happens behind the scenes is similar to elite universities: there's a strong desire to maintain a high rejection rate. It's probably a KPI of the HR team to get a high number of applicants, so their HR team goes to the bottom of the ocean and the top of mountains to paste job ads. It is however not at all a sign that they need people.