Hello,
In 2021, I interviewed for six companies and had three offers. I took one offer and used that as a means to get my next. During this year I went from making $50/y to $80k+/y.
I left my job earlier this year because I had saved enough money and they laid off 90% of my department, and I didn't want to stick around to be next.
I have recently started applying to jobs and have interviewed for twelve companies since early August. I have yet to receive an offer.
I think it's a shit time to be applying since there may be a recession looming, and it's near the end of the year, but some of this bullshit in the hiring process needs to change for the better.
2/12 have been 'video interviews' which really means I answer prompts while recording myself on video using Loom or some other application. I turned those interviews in and never heard back. I also corrected the grammar on one of the website pages for a company and they took days to fix it, then fixed it without even saying thanks.
Most of the jobs I did not get, I didn't even hear from them about my application not making the next stage. I would have to reach out to them first and the HR person would go through the motions with the 'Sorry, we went with another candidate' message.
My latest interview was with a Senior HR Recruiter who was 10 minutes late. At minute 5 I added an email to the running email thread and mentioned that I was in Zoom, but no one was there. She then joined 4-5 minutes later and was totally muted and her camera was off.
I didn't even see a picture. After 2 minutes she finally spoke, didn't acknowledge her being late, and so she didn't apologize. She proceeded to quickly ask me questions while barely engaging and left no floor open to ask questions. In the end, I had to force in some questions of my own. Afterward, she said she would send me a personality test which ended up being two sets of questions; one was 198 questions and the other was 80+. That's right, 300 questions with 'Strongly Disagree' & 'Strongly Agree' on opposite ends were to be responses to questions like 'I am a punctual person.'.
The next step was to meet with a hiring manager, but apparently, most of my responses actually disqualified me as they said they decided to pursue another candidate. I'm not sure how this could happen as I answered how they would want you to (quite obviously).
There has been disrespect like this woman being late and not apologizing. Recruiters have sucked in keeping me up to date on my application process. I have put in work before final interviews that took me 5-6 hours but ultimately didn't land me the job. I have been overqualified for some jobs and slightly underqualified for one. My resume doesn't seem to be the problem as I can get the interviews and move through different stages, but I am more unhappy with the process itself and the respect given to the applicant.
I am interviewing in the same way I did when I had a 50% success rate. Those jobs also paid more on average and were more interesting than the ones I have recently applied to. I have another interview tomorrow and one next week. I have lost a lot of motivation to continue, but I should start working again.
With all of this said, I am stressed out, and I am someone who put a lot of money away in the last 2-3 years. I was fortunate enough to leave my job this year because I wanted to. I haven't struggled this much to get a job since I graduated college. And I've sent out 200+ applications. But 'no one wants to work!'.
TL;DR:
I'm not sure why anyone respects these companies who:
1.) create lists for HR people just to work down and get the 'right' responses.
2). Don't have enough respect to respond to people who put in work for different stages of their interviews process (unpaid)
3.) don't have the decency to show up on time and acknowledge when they've fucked up
4.) Give you bullshit personality tests that everyone will answer the same way to get a job
And we're supposed to give two weeks' notice when they can let us go at will (in the USA). What a load of bullshit.