#JobHuntStruggles #ResumeAdvice #TechCareers
Hey everyone! π I’m diving into this whole job hunt thing and honestly, it’s a lot more confusing than I expected. I often see folks here discussing how the job market is tough, but I can’t shake the feeling that maybe it’s not just the marketβmaybe thereβs something about my approach that’s off. π€
Here are some pain points that Iβve been wrestling with:
- Overwhelming competition: With so many applicants for each role, do recruiters even have the time to give detailed feedback on resumes? It feels a bit discouraging, especially when I hear that my resume is great from folks in my circle.
- Feedback fluctuations: Iβve posted my resume on r/EngineeringResumes only to either get no responses or harsh critiques about my experience. Is it just me, or does that seem a bit harsh? π
- Relevance of my experience: Iβve completed three internships and worked on three projectsβbut is that enough to stand out, especially if I want to branch out to bigger cities?
- Application strategy: Should I apply en masse to various cities? Or focus on quality over quantity? Is it worth my time to learn new technologies or grind on LeetCode for hours?
A possible solution? Maybe itβs time to refine my personal branding. I could:
- Seek specific mentorship from someone in the field and get tailored advice.
- Focus on enhancing a couple of key projects rather than cramming tons of experience.
- Network in relevant communities or meetups to get insider insights! π
I’m really curious to hear from you all! Have any of you faced similar challenges in your job search? What did you do to overcome them? Letβs chat! π€
For an NCG, its 100% the market.
I am getting 20x the applications I normally get, and I have Sr. Devs available in spades.
All those things are a scapegoat. It’s just very competitive right now.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a good hire. You need to be the BEST hire.
This is the worst market since 2001 and it has no real signs of getting better. I know seniors with more than 350 applications who are still out of a job, and these are folks smarter than me who I wish I could hire, but my company is hardly hiring anyone. Why? Interest rates made engineers expensive because tech has a long time horizon of profitability.
I got banned from engineering resumes for pointing out to a poster who had a great resume that itβs unfortunately the market lmaoo.
You only need one job, not all of them.
Why does Google say the job market is growing fast if the market is so bad? Someone is gaslighting us. Since I got hired twice in the last 4 years with under 30 apps, I gotta side with Google. I also know bootcamp devs that are gainfully employed. It’s your fault.
Itβs the _fucking_ market. Itβs clearly the fucking market
UHHHH JUST GRIND HARDER BRO UHHH
bro shut up have you spent one second on CNBC?
Literally everyone has gotten knocked down a few pegs in terms of opportunities.
Jesus Christ bro I HATE posts like this
UHHH JUST GRIND HARDER BRO THEREES A JOB FOR EVERYONE UHHHH
So most people says it is you or skill issues or LC harder are mostly hunkered down survivors in FAANG whose names haven’t come up yet on the layoff list. LC harderzzz is the give-away because most people outside of FAANG don’t recommend you to LC , but recommend you to go to career fairs, networking, do targetted searches and take sacrifices to get foot in the doors.
It is to your best interests to ignore those distractions. Maybe soon you won’t hear from them. I checked back some old threads and many of these people already deleted their posts, accounts or comments. Likely got laid off lol.
I used to think the job market was inefficient, arbitrary, and unfair, but after getting a great job I know realize that the market is totally fair and entirely efficient.Β /sΒ Β
A lot of this sub is just survivorship bias. It’s a combination of the two, but luck plays a massive role.
If you arenβt applying to big cities outside of your city that is definitely holding you back.
No u
Job hunting can be frustrating with all that competition. Try tweaking your application game a bit. Check out Top 2025 U.S. Internships; itβs a tool that can help you find fresh opportunities. Google βintern listβ for real-time updates on roles that fit you.
>but do recruiters even have time to get that in-depth with a resume if there are 1000+ applicants to a position?
No. Eye tracking surveys show HR spends less than 10 seconds before making a decision. Most common interview question is the engineer asking me to summarize my work experience.
>Is my resume even competitive enough to be considered in big cities outside of my city?
Depends on the brand name / strength of your university. But you’re good for the same geographic area even if low tier.
>Am I supposed to work on projects that cover new technology? Would that even help me rise in the candidate pool?
No and no. Projects are crap resume filler. No one going to read your code and no proof it’s your own original work and it’s not even work experience. They’re just easy to do so people say to do them. I didn’t do any. If you’re rusty on coding then, okay, stay fresh doing something.
>Am I supposed to grind LeetCode 24/7?
No, this is dumb advice spread by FAANG cultists. I never practiced coding in my free time in my life. I pass coding exams. They are practical like count recurrences of words in a paragraph of text. Hm use a map and make all words upper or lower case and remove white space. Okay…if you apply to Microsoft they probably will ask you to pull DFS or BFS out of your ass and code it on the spot. Leetcode for you! If you get an interview. Not at 595 out of the Fortune 500.
Just stay fresh. I remembered the API call to reverse a string…peer coding interviewer said I wasn’t allowed to use it lol. If you like Leetcode, okay, I like probably so coded some combinators stuff. If you want to do a project, okay. Not helping your resume.
My coding jobs…the majority had no coding exam at all. Lots of design questions I have to answer on the spot. Can study that. Cloud crap is good to know in the form of AWS, Azure or GCP. Just know one, they’re similar enough to pick the others up on the job. I keep getting asked how to scale.
If your university was low tier like not (US) 1st or 2nd best in your state, consider grad school. Georgia Tech’s OMSCS is legit, as in, not everyone passes and is super cheap.
Also….I asked my coworkers if they knew what Leetcode was. 1 in 5 did. People who landed good CS jobs probably aren’t going around giving advice on message boards. I have no life so I did.
Yeah nobody wants to hire Jr devs when there are plenty of senior devs available. Can’t really blame them since itβs much safer to hire experienced devs.Β
There’s a much smaller ramp up period and there’s no need to invest in them so there’s not much lost if they ever quit or are laid off. Their extra salary cost is peanuts compared to that when so much of the total cost is in benefits anyways.
The market is shit of course but on this sub your going to hear the miserable people alot more than the successful folks tbh
It’s a bad market right now. There are plenty of bad candidates out there, and people who post on this sub saying their resume is awesome, and when they share it, it’s a disaster. So, in some cases, it really is the candidate. But it’s also a bad market, and even perfectly capable candidates are having a hard time finding something.
The people who are being overly harsh or doling out advice like they know everything potentially have overinflated opinions about themselves. It’s not normal for people to be out of work for 6 months to a year or more.
One of the challenges in the field is that outside of FAANG/Big Tech, there are really inconsistent interview styles from company to company, so it makes it harder to hit everything a company may be looking for. You’ll just have to choose the things you think are best and hope you can find a match.
The main thing you should do, though, is not beat yourself up too much. It’s a hard time, and putting yourself down will just make things harder. Easier said than done, of course.
So first of all, “it’s not the market, it’s you” is basically a troll comment. This market has a massive impact on almost anyone in tech trying to secure a job right now. A significant percentage of my friends are software engineers, and it blows my mind how many of them have been laid off and have struggled to find jobs (many of them are fantastic experienced engineers with big-name companies on their resume). I’m job searching myself (~15 YOE), and while I’m reasonably happy with my callback rate, I’ve been in a bunch of final rounds and only once gotten an offer (a real lowball offer, too) this year despite what I’d consider some of my best interviews of my life. This might be the worst job hunt I’ve had and I’m much better prepared for interviews than I’ve ever been.
The problem is simply that there are too many developers looking for jobs. When I used to interview people, if a candidate was good enough, we would sometimes sweep them up because we didn’t know if we could easily fill the position if we waited; I don’t think that’s the case anymore, and you really are competing with more rockstars/unicorns/10xers/etc. than ever now. I’d also add that there’s this general vibe of companies not really having a “growth” outlook due to interest rates, and positions sometimes preemptively close before they can even be filled.
Take a breath and accept that a lot is out of your control right now, but it won’t always be this way.
What you can control:
* **Resume formatting and how it highlights your accomplishments.** Learn what a really good resume is, what a mediocre resume is, and what a bad resume is, and this will help you. Learn what might help you stand out in a sea of new NCGs.
* **Behavioral Interview prep.** When you finally do land an interview, make sure that you have enough STAR interview question answers (based on your own experiences) memorized to nail the behavioral portion. Otherwise, I find it helps to try to show your “best self” during this interviews and eager about the position.
* **Coding Interview prep.** Learning how to spot LC patterns, understanding how they work at a fundamental level, and being comfortable enough with them to explain them and use them on the spot under pressure will go a long way for companies that screen with LC. This requires a lot of repetition, though. Some companies do pragmatic coding interviews, so it’s good to practice those as well (ChatGPT can come up with some sample questions).
* **Upskilling.** This is really hard, because many positions want different things, but if you notice there’s an area/skill/concept that is common to a lot of postings you are looking at, try to spend the time to familiarize with it.
* **Your health and outlook.** Take care of yourself, take it easy on the booze if you drink, get plenty of sleep, and keep your mind active.
I know it’s hard to decipher when you’re in it, but two things can be simultaneously true:
1. It’s a really difficult market and plenty of talented, capable developers are going to struggle to get a job.
2. The difference between getting and not getting a job *might* be your resume.
And here is why hiring managers will harp on resumes – because you can’t control the market, but you can control your resume. So if instead of sending 1000 applications with a resume that gives you a 0.05% chance of getting a call back you use a resume that gives you a 0.2% chance of getting a call back, you just went from no calls back to 2 calls back.
And yes, some of y’all’s resume are that bad. And yes, when you apply to 900 of those jobs, your resume might go on the trash immediately. But if there’s even 10 jobs where the resume *actually* read your resume – and your resume is trash? You’re not getting the call back because there’s 10 other guys with similar experience and a solid ass resume.
TL;DR: yes, the market is brutal. No, it’s not just your fault. But yes, you should make your resume as good as it can be.
Itβs both. The market reduces interview chances and the competition makes it where you have to perform 10x better than you would if the market was better
Idk man maybe improve your projects or sumn your internships look good enough
Average new grad post
Keep coping. It’s you. I know people who have never had issues getting job offers the entire duration of their career.
I heard from my high school psychology teacher that successful people believe they’re at fault which causes them to work on themselves which is a factor that they can control that influences success. On the other side of things people who think their success depends factors out of their control do less to affect their odds. I can’t prove it and I don’t wanna google for any studies but the logic sounded good to me so this is what I’ve always gone with.
In those 1k+ application job postings probably 60% dont even meet the basic requirements. Also keep in mind on LinkedIn βapplicationsβ dont even refer to applications but rather people who just clicked on the apply button
It’s both. But you can change yourself, and you can’t change the market. Focus on what you can still change.
Straight up, the market is fucked. I finally landed a job after 7 months today (actually had 2 competing offers) and Iβm the kind of person who has never gone more than 2 months without landing a new gig.
Itβs just borderline impossible right now to get a job through blind applications. Maybe you can make it work if you luck into being the first to apply that day and have a name that starts with A, but good fucking luck for anyone else.
Your choices basically boil down to:
– Job fairs / conferences
– Networking
– Wait for recruiters to contact you (YMMV)
GL