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I have an engineering degree from a fairly respected school. The industry that most hires for it is only moderately represented where I live (at least compared to other industries), but I have had to job hunt twice in the last 1.5 years or so.
In my current job hunt, as of today I have submitted approximately 700 online applications in the past 9 months. However, about 350 of those applications have been in the past 3 weeks
This has resulted in approximately:
~11 phone screens
4 interviews (3 of them on-site)
1 job offer (declined due to a couple of factors)
Job hunting has never been an easy ordeal for me. My last 2 career jobs (and 2 of my interviews this time around) came about as a result of recruiters finding my resume and not any application that I filled out.
More or less that is a 1.5% hit rate for phone screens and less than 1% for interviews.
It is very much an employers market. If you remove the interviews and phone screens i got from recruiters making first contact then the phone screen response rate is 1% and less than 1% for interviews or offers.
Maybe 5% for phone screens even if I rewrite my resume to hit on the keywords from the job posting. A lot of submittals go into a black hole, never to be seen, after being scored by the resume scanning software and rejected.
Its tough out there for sure.
I'm trying to switch jobs right now and (stupidly) thought it would be pretty easy. My resume is well built and has some impressive names on it, so my strategy has been to target specific competitors in my industry as well as taking shots at anything in various related fields.
Damn it's hard! Out of 80 applications in 4 weeks, only one company has offered me an interview. An agency contacted me, talked to me in person for 5 minutes, and then never got back to me. So that's roughly 2.5%. Forgot how crazy it is out there!
The reason I'm asking specifically for percentages is that they give an idea of how aggressive you have to be, how many jobs you need to be applying to and directly tell what kind of time you need to be putting in to find jobs every day. In my previous jobsearches, I was unemployed and had lots of time, so would apply to hundreds of jobs every week, in my entire life, it would undoubtedly be thousands. My interview rate was something like 0.5-1%. What about you; how would you describe your experience as a percentage?
Easy? ha.
Been looking for 2.5 years and I have 15 years experience.
Furthest thing from easy.
Have my applications been successful? Considering I have not gotten a new job yet … no.
In my own defense, I do get a lot of interest … but usually after speaking or interviewing, the salaries end up being too low so they go with someone else.
People generally want to be recognized as having worthwhile insights. When that tendency runs up against truly difficult circumstances, there's bound to be a conflict. That self-focus - making the other person's problem all about how to make one's self feel important - it drives people to minimize the actual problem; it drives people to ignore the hard parts of the problem and just solve the easy parts and then blame the person looking for help for not being able to solve the hard part themselves.
This is probably one of the compactly put analysis on this topic I have seen. Superbly put in words.
I'm trying to switch jobs right now and (stupidly) thought it would be pretty easy. My resume is well built and has some impressive names on it, so my strategy has been to target specific competitors in my industry as well as taking shots at anything in various related fields.
Damn it's hard! Out of 80 applications in 4 weeks, only one company has offered me an interview. An agency contacted me, talked to me in person for 5 minutes, and then never got back to me. So that's roughly 2.5%. Forgot how crazy it is out there!
The reason I'm asking specifically for percentages is that they give an idea of how aggressive you have to be, how many jobs you need to be applying to and directly tell what kind of time you need to be putting in to find jobs every day. In my previous jobsearches, I was unemployed and had lots of time, so would apply to hundreds of jobs every week, in my entire life, it would undoubtedly be thousands. My interview rate was something like 0.5-1%. What about you; how would you describe your experience as a percentage?
When I graduated with my Masters, I applied to 423 companies (yes, I counted). Online, In-Person, Postal Mail/FedEx/UPS - used all these methods.
I believe I got a 1% interview call back, 0 offers. This was around 2010 when the economy was kind of getting back from the recession, so not entirely surprising.
Eventually I ended up working (via some networking through some friends of friends) in a non-profit for about ~2 years.
Eventually moved to a different employer. When I moved, I interviewed with about 25 companies, and my interview call back rate was ~50%, and I received 2 offers. Subsequently, I moved employers again - but this time - my current employer reached out to me, so it was 100% success rate.
I have now started thinking about applying, as I think about exploring what's out there, etc.
Interestingly, I have a few friends who have been applying for about a month now, and based on their experience, it looks like their call back rate is beginning to look like how it was in 2009/10. Fingers crossed for better months ahead.
Like with anything, job applications are like going through a bell curve. Some months you apply apply apply - no responses. Then when you get too depressed to apply again, then suddenly, there would be multiple call backs, and sometimes, multiple offers. All a cycle.
I think I applied to maybe 30 positions in the past 3 months, only highly targeted ones where I'm a really good fit. 0 responses so far. I am a currently a top performer in an F100 and very visible for my skillset on LinkedIN. Something is off and I think it has something to do with more buffoons finding their way into hiring manager roles through connections and not through aptitude and managerial experience.
I got more responses 2 years ago when I was consulting and not working full time. I think a key reason is they don't want to pay.
I have about a 90% interview rate, then about a 25% job offer rate. It seems I get a job offer for about 1 out of every 4 applications.
Massive improvement over the last several years when those numbers used to look like 20% and 5%.
Sorry to hear about the posters who have a real difficult time. You never know if its location, job field or what. The market is ridiculously unpredictable.
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