Company reputation hurts prospects?

Felon

Felon

Felon

Soldato
Joined
29 Dec 2014
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Location
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Background, I was knackered and came out of Amazon AWS (L6 network engineering) back in June after covid and being isolated overseas, ended up interviewing for a bunch of places - never had a problem getting interviews, to be arrogant but frank - normally it's me turning them down.

Long story short, I ended up working for a small(ish) company, who I basically accepted as they just offered a lot of money and outbid everybody else (3 other offers at the time)

Cut 6 months later, I hate it, absolutely hate it - it's the crappest place I've ever worked, complete waste of time, full of idiots, total dead-end and I regret ever stepping foot into the place, regardless of the money and I've been trying to get out since September.

My CV is really good, I've had it professionally reviewed, I know the industry, I have 20 years experience and skills to boot.

I'm being turned down for literally ******* everything, as in - not even getting interviews, it's really messing with my head.

Then I spoke to a recruiter who laughed, "Yeah, we don't normally take people from there"... and ever since it's left me a bit rattled.

I'm considering deleting every aspect of this role from my CV and linkedin, as I've started to wonder whether being associated with this place is hurting my prospects, and it might just be easier during any interview to say "I decided to take 6 months out" or something...

Am I being paranoid? :/
 
Yeah I mean, I was just wondering has anyone else ever had this problem, or done this? Or, am I just being a nob? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I did wonder if it might cause me problems at some point, but apparently not - apparently it's not fradulant or "naughty" to remove a job from your CV.
 
Must have an impressively bad reputation, but if it's really damaging your hiring prospects that much, just remove it.

6 month gap on your CV? Just say you took some time off after the covid years to travel the world, spend time with family/pet gerbils or whatever.
 
I never heard of this but good to know this can happen. The company must be really that bad:eek:

I would also would removed it as suggested.
 
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Trifid said:
How can a small place have such a bad reputation?
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Yeah it's interesting, technically it's not that small, (I think about 1000 employees) I shouldn't really have used the word small, technically their medium sized.

In terms of them having a bad reputation, it wasn't really something I wondered about until at least 2x other recruiters mentioned it to me, out of the blue.

It's just odd, and I think because I'm struggling maybe I'm looking for things to blame.

On the other side of the coin, the tech job market is a bit weird at the moment, lots of roles are on hold, people are being laid off and some jobs I've looked at have been deleted due to budget cuts and costs..

I was on Discord with a former colleague in Australia who I worked with, the company currently has all roles on hold and nothing new on the horizon..

Maybe I'm overcomplicating things and it's just the environment which is a bit *******.

I have one opportunity on the go at the moment, if that doesn't go anywhere, I think I will remove the current job from my CV and see if there's a difference!
 
Yeah I wouldn't worry too much - Christmas is a weird time for recruiting people as lots of people are ooo. I've seen loads of agents spamming the same roles at the moment so maybe just need to wait a bit for the market to pick up as it's slow. Personally I wouldn't NOT interview someone based on where they worked and would be more interested in their role there and experience to date.
 
Screeeech said:
.....

Then I spoke to a recruiter who laughed, "Yeah, we don't normally take people from there"... and ever since it's left me a bit rattled.

I'm considering deleting every aspect of this role from my CV and linkedin, as I've started to wonder whether being associated with this place is hurting my prospects, and it might just be easier during any interview to say "I decided to take 6 months out" or something...

Am I being paranoid? :/
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One single recruiter said that? You respect this recruiter? That's from the opinion of a recruiter though, who get paid on commission and want to deal with the best candidates who would give them the best opportunity to be successful in providing for the end client who has gone out to market. Said clients themselves probably don't care where you come from and are extremely unlikely to have seen a pattern of poor candidates from a single small company surely?

In short, and with respect, yeah I think you are being paranoid and you've become a little bit big headed based on previous success and ease of finding work now that things dried up a bit. :)
I'd probably be the same based on my past experience as finding work when I have needed to has always also been easy for me, but that might just be right time right place, rather than me being awesome.
My company aren't recruiting currently. I feel like after the end of November, things tend to go quiet until financial year end of March, as we all have deadlines/budgets and no time to recruit.
 
jaybee said:
In short, and with respect, yeah I think you are being paranoid and you've become a little bit big headed based on previous success and ease of finding work now that things dried up a bit. :)
I'd probably be the same based on my past experience as finding work when I have needed to has always also been easy for me, but that might just be right time right place, rather than me being awesome.
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I think you're probably right to be honest.
 
Not this exact scenario but I have found that there is a tendency (by some) to judge people by whatever their most recent position is. I went from a moderately senior management role into a 'lesser' role within consultancy and am sometimes met with surprise when I talk about the experience I have from the prior roles (despite it being stated on my CV). Or I just get a flat rejection without even speaking to them for roles I believe I have the right skills and experience for. It's almost like people are pigeon-holes based on their current role "this person is an X" rather than "this person has experience of X, Y and Z over the course of various roles". Or in terms of their employment history "this person works for Honest Dave's Quality Used Car and Pay Day Loan Emporium" rather than "this person has worked at various places including Amazon".

That said, I'd take it with a pinch of salt, not everyone views the world that way and there's been a slight cooling off in some areas of tech since you last switched jobs. Part of the problem could be if you joined six months ago and by September were firing out applications, that may ring alarm bells for some, if someone is looking to change jobs after two months they get nervous about whether they would be a flight risk and/or don't have a clear idea on what they want.
 
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