> I am now in the buffer zone and have interviewed with close to ten companies to date. I have not been offered a single job
So she left her last contract job early after only 3 months, put a 4-5 month gap on her resume, waited to start interviewing until after hundreds of thousands of tech employees were laid off into an economic downturn, and she’s wondering why she hasn’t been immediately offered a job?
Look, interviewing is always tough. You have to remember that it’s not just you versus the company in an interview. It’s you versus the tens or hundreds of other qualified people who applied for the job. If you’re not the best of those applicants, you’re not getting an offer.
In an economic downturn with massive layoffs, the number of extremely qualified candidates is huge. I know people hate to hear this, but having the combination of a short 3-month job on your resume followed by a 5 month gap doesn't look good when compared to the 5 other resumes these companies are going to receive from people who are currently employed or who were recently laid off from well-known companies.
Stories like this are written to appeal to people who don’t like being rejected from interviews (See? It’s not you, it’s the system that is wrong for not hiring you!) but that’s not really helping anything other than soothing egos. It’s time we start being honest that hiring is a numbers game, there are a lot of qualified candidates on the market, and having a job cut short to 3 months followed by a long gap is a warning flag on a resume. If someone finds themselves in this situation with a limited financial runway in the middle of a huge tech recession, they need to start applying to huge numbers of jobs the moment they leave their 3-month contract job early. Waiting until the end of a sabbatical and only applying to a small number of jobs without network referrals is statistically unlikely to produce good results. It’s not really an indictment of the system, the author has just stacked the deck against themselves going into an economic downturn and is surprised that hiring has done a complete 180 since this time a year ago.
Sorry but it's not at all. How dare they not spend every waking moment wage slaving away!
People live their lives, this type of thinking shouldn't be normalized. What other subconscious biases are lurking here? I assume the follow up to this is "Hiring is hard, there's not enough good candidates".
Yea, I've never really understood that perspective. It's something I'd be curious about - maybe ask if they did something technical during it to stay sharp if it's a recent gap, but I don't see it as any more of a bad sign than if someone's been in the same role in a company for years and years without a promotion.
> People live their lives, this type of thinking shouldn't be normalized.
Okay, but hiring someone is an investment. You pay them money for month until they become productive, you'll need someone to explain things to them etc etc. "Will they stay on for more than three months?" is a valid question to ask yourself when you're making a hiring decision.
It's not all about the potential employee's self-actualization.
Short employments and gaps are a signal. Not a great one, but easy to identify. If you've job-hopped before, you probably will do it again => prefer someone who doesn't have gaps.
It's perfectly fine to have gaps and "live a little" or even a lot, but it's also perfectly fine to prefer people who you believe will provide more value to your company.
I think you're conflating short stints/job hopping and resume gaps. How does a "temporary period of non-employment" preclude someone from "providing more value to your company"?
There are infinite reasons why someone might take time off. Its arguably far more responsible to do so than continue employment and lower the priority of employment obligations in your life while you tend to other aspects.
>I know people hate to hear this, but having the combination of a short 3-month job on your resume followed by a 5 month gap doesn't look good when compared to the 5 other resumes these companies are going to receive from people who are currently employed or who were recently laid off from well-known companies.
This rarely happens. If a gap is the only differentiator between a pool of people, they've not been interviewed yet or well enough. The only way this happens is if someone views developers only as cogs with a checklist of skills to acquire and don't know how to find their differences and strengths and weaknesses as people.
But apart from that, the tide is changing around work gaps. You have an argument for a pattern of gaps, but even then, with so many bad companies out there, I don't fault someone for getting unlucky 3-5 times in a row.
It’s you versus the tens or hundreds of other qualified
people who applied for the job. If you’re not the best
of those applicants, you’re not getting an offer.
This doesn't even stand up to a quick reality check. If only "the best" out of "tens or hundreds of other qualified people" ever got hired, we'd be seeing 90%+ unemployment rates for engineers and clearly that isn't the case. The reality is clearly nearer the opposite!
Seems you've got a few incorrect assumptions there.
1. You're assuming that the people doing the hiring actually can identify "the best."
2. You're assuming there actually is one "best" candidate.
3. You're assuming that the person they decided was "best" actually accepts their offer.
The reality is that demand still outstrips supply, so most engineers do find work, but it's a highly imprecise process where nobody really knows how an engineer is going to work out until they've spent six months in the job.
> You're assuming that the people doing the hiring actually can identify "the best."
FSVO "best".
The best coder? Designer? Team leader? Co-worker? The candidate the interviwer judged most trustworthy? The people doing the hiring could have any of a number of different criteria.
I have more than one long gap, including a self-imposed 1-year sabbatical taken at the height of the pandemic. I got my first post-sabbatical job when a colleague I'd known for years emailed me about an opening.
Layoffs happen. Gaps happen. Companies that flag candidates like that will miss out on some great people. Fine, I probably don't want to work for them anyway
So she left her last contract job early after only 3 months, put a 4-5 month gap on her resume, waited to start interviewing until after hundreds of thousands of tech employees were laid off into an economic downturn, and she’s wondering why she hasn’t been immediately offered a job?
Look, interviewing is always tough. You have to remember that it’s not just you versus the company in an interview. It’s you versus the tens or hundreds of other qualified people who applied for the job. If you’re not the best of those applicants, you’re not getting an offer.
In an economic downturn with massive layoffs, the number of extremely qualified candidates is huge. I know people hate to hear this, but having the combination of a short 3-month job on your resume followed by a 5 month gap doesn't look good when compared to the 5 other resumes these companies are going to receive from people who are currently employed or who were recently laid off from well-known companies.
Stories like this are written to appeal to people who don’t like being rejected from interviews (See? It’s not you, it’s the system that is wrong for not hiring you!) but that’s not really helping anything other than soothing egos. It’s time we start being honest that hiring is a numbers game, there are a lot of qualified candidates on the market, and having a job cut short to 3 months followed by a long gap is a warning flag on a resume. If someone finds themselves in this situation with a limited financial runway in the middle of a huge tech recession, they need to start applying to huge numbers of jobs the moment they leave their 3-month contract job early. Waiting until the end of a sabbatical and only applying to a small number of jobs without network referrals is statistically unlikely to produce good results. It’s not really an indictment of the system, the author has just stacked the deck against themselves going into an economic downturn and is surprised that hiring has done a complete 180 since this time a year ago.