Typical number of job applications nowadays before being offered a job?
- Thread starter Pawnless Endgame
- Start date
For me.. I am very good at interviews. I take a very honest direct and confident position.
It seems to work as I get over 1 in 2 of the jobs I interview for.
The last interview asked me "do you see yourself working here after the year contract if we extend it?"
I said:
"I can't really say right now as we haven't worked together but if you are happy with me and I'm happy with you, yes, I can't see why not".
I think too many candidates just try to say what they think the interviewer wants to hear. In this case.. "yes absolutely".
Getting an interview is harder. And going though a recruitment agency really helps here.
My last 4 jobs have come this way.
I'd echo others and say don't go into IT now. Learn a trade if you're 16.
Graduate IT roles seem to be evaporating away from what I read/hear.
It seems to work as I get over 1 in 2 of the jobs I interview for.
The last interview asked me "do you see yourself working here after the year contract if we extend it?"
I said:
"I can't really say right now as we haven't worked together but if you are happy with me and I'm happy with you, yes, I can't see why not".
I think too many candidates just try to say what they think the interviewer wants to hear. In this case.. "yes absolutely".
Getting an interview is harder. And going though a recruitment agency really helps here.
My last 4 jobs have come this way.
I'd echo others and say don't go into IT now. Learn a trade if you're 16.
Graduate IT roles seem to be evaporating away from what I read/hear.
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I had a few CVs land on my desk (figuratively of course).....I hadn't realised how insane the hiring market has got. The games industry is pretty straightforward, you look at what studios a candidate has worked at, which projects they were on, and what job titles.....and you've got a decent summary of their experience.
Got a collection of Python CVs the other day....just ROFL. They look like an absolute joke word salad. Made me really miss working in C++ where people actually have to build **** and not just pull in endless reams of dependencies and call themselves a software engineer. Python Package Manager is probably more apt, and I doubt many of them are good that.
There was one decent CV in the pile that actually wrote out their experience in plain english and hadn't run it through an AI service.....but it was eye opening. No wonder people are struggling to get interviews if that was any way representative.....just one pile of meaningless tech stack words next to another hundred piles of meaningless tech stack words.
Pro Tip : Your CV is supposed to give me an idea of YOU, not be just a massive list of keywords. That's not how hiring works.
Got a collection of Python CVs the other day....just ROFL. They look like an absolute joke word salad. Made me really miss working in C++ where people actually have to build **** and not just pull in endless reams of dependencies and call themselves a software engineer. Python Package Manager is probably more apt, and I doubt many of them are good that.
There was one decent CV in the pile that actually wrote out their experience in plain english and hadn't run it through an AI service.....but it was eye opening. No wonder people are struggling to get interviews if that was any way representative.....just one pile of meaningless tech stack words next to another hundred piles of meaningless tech stack words.
Pro Tip : Your CV is supposed to give me an idea of YOU, not be just a massive list of keywords. That's not how hiring works.
It works to get through the ATS which is a problem on its own these days.
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I think if you’re getting filtered out before you speak to a human being, then you’re doing it wrong.
You need to not just be a name on a system among a list of other names.
There’s already stuff out there to a degree.I hear a company has started offering AI interviewer services. How long before we see AI interviewee services?
We’ve been trying to hire for a number of roles for the last couple of months, the amount of candidates we interview who are very obviously using AI is astounding. There are a few tell-tale signs, and it’s honestly quite disheartening and a genuine shame that people feel the need to rely on this type of stuff in the first place.
For context - we’re hiring in the Indian market at this stage for a specific cloud platform, so can’t comment on UK candidates.
Edit: I’m referring to using AI during the actual interview, not within their CV.
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To be frank, that's a problem for a lot of people at the moment that work in tech.
A hell of a lot of stuff is being outsourced to places like India, and I don't buy the idea that they're magically better at things as I've seen some claim. They just do whatever needs to be done for a lot less money (arguably poorly), and that's not just specifically tech related either. Any sort of customer support that gets outsourced, I've yet to meet anyone in the west that actually needed to call customer support for literally anything that was happy to be put through to an Indian call centre. Not that I'd wish working in a call centre on anyone, and in fairness most UK companies have incredibly high staff turn over in that particular area, but then they could also make them more palatable places to work rather than hyper-focusing on the bottom line.
That aside, a lot of companies screen C.V's and applications for "buzzwords" so people are forced to counter in turn just to get through the door. We're talking more entry-mid level work here granted, but you're not going to get many people fresh out of education that have a social network and the experience the average old fart on this forum has.
I don't know what makes me happier to not have to deal with as of current year as a middle aged grumpy git, not needing to deal with the current job market as a young man or having dodged the god awful eldritch nightmare the dating scene has turned into.
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Many candidates are not using AI for CV because they are lazy. It's well-known for years CVs are filtered through a system first before a human eye sees it. Which those systems are searching for buzz words.
I remember seeing courses "How to make your CV beat the ATS" What was recruiters expecting after all these years of jumping through hoops? Now we have a out turn of CVs lacking effort.
It shouldn't be disheartening, it should be expected in 2025. So many years of automatic rejections after 5mins applying for a job and its at 2am in the morning. Clear sign nobody even bothered to read the CV you spent hours doing. We have all been there.
I remember seeing courses "How to make your CV beat the ATS" What was recruiters expecting after all these years of jumping through hoops? Now we have a out turn of CVs lacking effort.
It shouldn't be disheartening, it should be expected in 2025. So many years of automatic rejections after 5mins applying for a job and its at 2am in the morning. Clear sign nobody even bothered to read the CV you spent hours doing. We have all been there.
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The issue become applications are then mutually exclusive from each filtering stage. You (the employer) ends up with zero candidates and, paradoxically if fails you in the longer term as candidates remain on the jobless heap for longer and then rejected automatically because the fear of eroded skills prompted filtering of longer unemployment.
I've just rewritten my CV once again yesterday - changing the format slightly of the contextual achievement and skills demonstrated bullet points.
I feel like a cat burglar attempting to find the combination to the ATS lock.. perhaps I should remove my software engineering degree date as it's the only date beyond 7 years on resume.. (1992-96, so 29 years ago!). I keep my resume to 2 pages - brief intro, recent professional experience, education, certificates and published papers.
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The point of my advice was that you need to build some personal relationships with people, and not just be an application in a pile. Get in touch with people on LinkedIn, go to conferences, do some volunteer work, catch up with old colleagues and previous employers. Just get yourself out there and skip the whole ATS part.
I've gone to conferences and hackathons but I have to be selective given the cost of commuting to London, especially if it starts at 9am in the peak times. I catch up with the Oxford uni group, many of them are in the same boat.
Every time I've left a role it's been due to company restructuring, the last role the group was dissolved so my boss and I both got the boot like everyone else, he's still looking too but is theatre directing on the side as he has been for years.
The obvious step is the volunteer side of things, I'm assuming over 50 and you'll not have the option of army IT/cyber as a reservist so I'll have a look locally - ideally I want the volunteering to match and maintain my skill sets.
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I did a couple of months part-time hourly paid work at a local uni, which was really good for networking opportunities. The work was a nice change from before, and put me in touch with a whole bunch of people (and loads of graduates who are going out into industry). Pretty easy to get the work too, I just had one 30 minutes phone call and that was that. Pay can be alright depending on how much marking you do.
I'd look at charities and stuff as well. Anything to just get you out meeting people.
Just checked - reserve are under 49y11m to apply so that's a no. The local council volunteering I've had a look through their website for Surrey.. they do have digital volunteers but it's more how to use a computer and setup your smart phone which I know I will not have the patience for. If anything I'd be more interested in bringing the local university together with their volunteers and getting a public access programme for AI and cyber, then hustling for the budget.. I may contact the university and see about volunteering and perhaps providing some industry guidance/mentoring in IT and product management (I've mentored groups of grads using GROW before).
Thats perfectly fine if you are a spring chicken or work in STEM.
But if you are 50+ or part of the "Go learn a trade bro!" group. People haven't got the time or energy to be doing that sort of running around.
However I think people in those groups for the foreseeable future are, simply, going to have to suck it up, get with the programme and commit. Whatever that means needs doing.
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If you don't have the time or energy, then presumably they already have a job, and the need isn't that pressing.
If you don't have a job, then you definitely do have the time, and if you don't have the energy, well, tough.
Soldato
- Joined
- 21 Apr 2007
- Posts
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As poster above said mate, it's ATS systems that have caused this and stupid people who work in HR/hiring, and stupidest of all recruiters who are all thick as ****.
I can speak from experience being more early end of the career ladder, if you don't list the keywords, you just get binned off, what im seeing atm although I have no proof of, hiring in software now if you don't have a perfect tech stack, they bin your CV, even though realistically nobody knows all the tools they are listing well enough, so effectively you get forced to list everything you've ever touched that's what has caused this. Then I guess the hope is you actually can then have a person review your CV, the problem is then you've just created a word soup.... catch 22.
For a backend c# role for example really you just need SQL, asp.net, C# and some cloud knowlege for someone early in their career, but they ask for insane requirements.
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Up until my current (senior management) role, it was always 1 since I only applied for Jobs that I was a very good fit for. These days I have given up after 4 failed interviews because it turns out I am very much not suited (and personally can't stand) large org senior management which is a different challenge anyway.
I can see many issues with this article and the modern graduate:
1. The world has long awoken to the fact most graduates simply turned up and were spoon fed and coached by modern teaching techniques which means you effectively have someone with no experience with a questionable degree of education demanding higher and higher starting salaries.
2. We've simply created huge money making behemoths of our universities that just cram as many sub-standard people in as they can, get them debted to the eye balls with numbers an order of magnitude more than the known opportunities in the industry.
I did a day release part time degree 25 years ago, everyone 'passed' with at least a Desmond (2-2), I literally spent all my time in the pub playing pool and managed a 1st.. I felt all I had to do was turn up and that was it..
- One lecturer came in and said "OK, today we'll be doing some mock questions for your exam.. Question 1, or Question 4 as you'll be having in two weeks time...."
- They 'leaked' last years papers on to the past papers system despite using the same paper that year... us part timers didn't know this so found the exam a normal level of difficulty and couldn't understand full time students coming out with "I've aced that, every question was exactly as per the past paper".. All results ended up being moderated down, which put us at a disadvantage, on digging deeper and finding out the root cause, we complained and they covered it all up by just moderating us individually back up..
And lastly, the art of application/CV tailoring to maximise your chances from these high volume roles is crucial and I rarely come across people who are good at it.. As I recruit people myself, some CVs/Applications are horrendous.. I do look beyond the words and try to find those key people and its worked out well, so many intelligent people can be overlooked because they haven't played the game and you know if we had a more traditional hiring process, HR would be filtering them first based on supplied keywords.. I know how bad it is because recruiters pretty much do that, keyword searches, to which they get frustrated when I keep pointing out their searches aren't remotely getting candidates that meet my stated criteria which is not keyword based.
I can see many issues with this article and the modern graduate:
1. The world has long awoken to the fact most graduates simply turned up and were spoon fed and coached by modern teaching techniques which means you effectively have someone with no experience with a questionable degree of education demanding higher and higher starting salaries.
2. We've simply created huge money making behemoths of our universities that just cram as many sub-standard people in as they can, get them debted to the eye balls with numbers an order of magnitude more than the known opportunities in the industry.
I did a day release part time degree 25 years ago, everyone 'passed' with at least a Desmond (2-2), I literally spent all my time in the pub playing pool and managed a 1st.. I felt all I had to do was turn up and that was it..
- One lecturer came in and said "OK, today we'll be doing some mock questions for your exam.. Question 1, or Question 4 as you'll be having in two weeks time...."
- They 'leaked' last years papers on to the past papers system despite using the same paper that year... us part timers didn't know this so found the exam a normal level of difficulty and couldn't understand full time students coming out with "I've aced that, every question was exactly as per the past paper".. All results ended up being moderated down, which put us at a disadvantage, on digging deeper and finding out the root cause, we complained and they covered it all up by just moderating us individually back up..
And lastly, the art of application/CV tailoring to maximise your chances from these high volume roles is crucial and I rarely come across people who are good at it.. As I recruit people myself, some CVs/Applications are horrendous.. I do look beyond the words and try to find those key people and its worked out well, so many intelligent people can be overlooked because they haven't played the game and you know if we had a more traditional hiring process, HR would be filtering them first based on supplied keywords.. I know how bad it is because recruiters pretty much do that, keyword searches, to which they get frustrated when I keep pointing out their searches aren't remotely getting candidates that meet my stated criteria which is not keyword based.
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Not using AI takes effort. You expend time in researching the company (even if using AI) as part of the cover letter.
You can "Vibe-Apply using AI"(tm) but then, as mid_gen has found, the output is so similar and difficult to differentiate. I've seen jobs specs that explicitly reserve the right to reject AI written applications. The AI doesn't understand how the company research aligns with the role you're applying for other than cross referencing word salad.
I agree that the market has changed to spit out as many CVs as possible with 99.9% being filtered.
I've sent an email to the local Uni HR seeing if they have volunteering, mentoring or outreach programmes.