Companies posting the same positions daily, but they're in no big hurry to hire people? (employees, credit)

[KnowerOfThings]

This perplexes me. I've seen Microsoft and Amazon reposting the same positions every day since I graduated 5 months ago. They basically spam the job boards. I sometimes have to scroll through 10 pages of Microsoft postings on LinkedIn while I'm doing my daily scan through the Greater Seattle Area listings. They either haven't filled those positions (which means they're in no hurry, since it's been 5 months) or they are constantly filling those positions and needing even more people.

I know some extremely talented people who got burned trying to apply for software engineering positions. One had interned at Amazon and then they made him go through the formal interview process and they shut him down for his response on a particular coding question. The solution they expected was, arguably, worse than the solution he gave, but I'm not sure arguing would've got him anywhere. This guy is extremely talented, a double major in Computer Science and Finance with an overall 3.9 GPA. He ended up working at Facebook instead. The other guy interviewed at Microsoft and didn't get beyond the first interview, in which he was asked such questions as "Why are manholes round?"

Am I right in feeling that getting a job is like trying to enter an exclusive club or something?

[jaypee]

MS has 100,000 employees and Amazon has 90,000 so I don't know why you'd be "perplexed" at the number of openings they might have on any single day at their corp HQ -- especially for generic SW dev roles. For a more accurate picture of their openings, visit MS and Amazon's website directly and not the potentially stale listings on some "job board" or aggregator.
Also, not doing well on a job interview is not "getting burned".

[Hemlock140]

Both of those companies post many openings in the Sunday Seattle Times, and they are filling those positions. When an interviewer asks a seemingly unrelated question it's because they are trying to determine something about you that's important to them and they have found that question to be useful. In many cases it's to see if someone is creative, or thinks outside of the box. A person who fails such an interview is not getting burned, they are just not what the company is looking for to fill that opening. It's their right (and obligation) to use whatever screening methods they find is working for them, as long as it doesn't break hiring discrimination laws. People who don't know why a manhole is round are not a protected class.

[ccm123]

The job market (especially for highly skilled positions) has become very selective, since the recession ended. They focus on specific skills and if the candidate does not have those specific skills, they usually pass on the candidate(s). Big fundamental change, from say, just 5 years ago.

[KABurke]

It's not just the big companies, it's the mid-size and smaller companies, too. I don't know if they do it to get a "bank" of applications to pull from "just in case" they need someone, or if they get some kind of monetary credit from the Dept. of Labor for posting available jobs. It puts me in the mind of how temp agencies behave. I hate to think legitimate companies do this, too.

[Wry_Martini]

I work for one of the big companies with a scary interview/hiring process.

Please keep in mind the number of resumes these companies get when a position is posted, then the number of interviews they do. While neither of your friends got the position, that doesn't mean they didn't hire someone else. It's possible they interviewed 3, 6, 10 people for each of those positions, and hired the person who was the best fit.

Another thing to keep in mind is that sometimes it looks like you're seeing the same job posted over and over again, but it's actually a similar job. The external job postings are often a bit more brief and vague that the internal postings (available only to employees). Or the team is growing and they are able to hire 3 people over the course of a year... for the same position.

Incidentally, anyone who was interviewed at Microsoft (or anywhere, really) and wasn't prepared for the "Why are manhole covers round?" question hasn't done much to prepare. That question is so famous it's even the title of a book. It's also pretty well known among the various articles about wacky interview questions.