The job hunting market has evolved approximately like this:
- In the late '90s, a few bright entrepreneurs began creating online job seeking websites like Monster and Indeed.
- This made it easier to apply for jobs, and companies became awash in applications.
- To keep from going mad, HR departments started employing automated screening technology.
- The job boards fought back by promoting "One Click Apply."
- This made things worse, and HR departments began tightening their screening even more.
- Job seekers responded with AI-driven services that allowed them to game the screening services.
- HR departments deployed AI in return.
- Etc.
Obviously this war of all against all kind of sucks, and the Wall Street Journal does a pretty good job of describing the resulting employment hell here. But it also says things like this:
The result: a bot versus bot war that’s leaving both applicants and employers irritated and has made the chances of landing an interview, much less a job, even slimmer than before.
This can't be true. Irritating or not, hiring figures are crystal clear: practically everyone who wants to be employed is. One side clicks a button and applies to a thousand jobs. The other side clicks a button and discards 99% of all applicants. But in the end, there's one job and one person who gets the job. It is no harder to land a job than it's ever been, and no harder to find qualified applicants.
Still, it really does seem like the whole thing is a gigantic waste of time. But maybe not? Is it possible that this arms race has produced better overall job matching? Or just lots of angst and extra work to accomplish no more than ever?
Tell me you haven’t been only the job market lately without telling you haven’t been on the job market lately.
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Indeed! My brother is struggling at age 62 to find a survival job, he was designing store layout for Walgreens but they laid off his team as they closed a ton of their stores. Sadly my brother cannot drive anymore so that's hampering his prospects, some design built firms nibbled but were a firm no when he said he could not drive.
Yeah, seriously.
Kind of like how teetotalers are not great sources of information about what bars are fun, retired folks should probably refrain from commenting on recent changes in job seeking.
If you find you're reasoning from first principles in an econ101-ish way about something like this, that's probably a pretty good signal that you lack useful context. (Of course, this is when you insist, but what about the numbers? And now we have a good ole' fashioned internet flamewar.)
I guess this is fine if you're applying for a job that specifically involves trying to game algorithms. But if you won't need that particular job skill, it means that the primary filter employers use is 100% irrelevant to the position they're hiring for.
I don't have a 10,000ft view of the job market, so my story is just anecdotal. After being laid off, I've been applying for jobs and 99.9% don't even get a response. Recruiters say they're overwhelmed with applicants, many unqualified. Is this because of people using AI to apply? I don't know. I apply the old fashioned way, so I'm not sure how well AI matches applicants to jobs. But something is making my job search way harder than before. My LinkedIn feed shows a lot of others are just as frustrated, across different fields.
I've also noticed new job postings getting hundreds of applicants within an hour, then being taken down and reposted a week later when the posting has well above a thousand applicants. The job market, at least in some fields (including mine) appears to be not only hyper-competitive but also somewhat dysfunctional.
Anything remote us getting hundreds of applicants. I'd be happy to see 100% remote positions go the way of the dodo bird since that would limit the applicant pool to people who are either local or willing to move.
I get calls from recruiters all the time. We don’t apply for jobs until the deal is done.
Every job I've ever had was by networking, beginning with painting houses in high school. Six post graduate jobs in technology resulted from networking. 50-60 applications via job boards resulted in one phone interview, and one in person 2nd interview.
I don't think networking works any more. When I ask people I meet about their jobs and work places, they often say "Sorry, I can't help you get a foot in the door. They don't let employees make recommendations any more." Even recruiting firms no longer seem to have much of an inner track with firms.
Kevin, if you want to know what it's like to be a job seeker, I suggest seeking a job. It's not that hard - throw up a resume, put yourself on LinkedIn, etc. Boom, you're a job seeker. Let us know what happens in a journalistic way. I predict nothing happens at all.
Doesn't that depend on your experience, qualifications, and the kind of job you're seeking?
This goes back more than ten years and maybe things now are different. But my one experience with job sites was when I got a new boss. We talked about my (justified) disgruntlement with his boss and he suggested I post my resume on Monster. He said I might get ten queries by the end of the week. Actually, I got more than twenty before noon the next day. I went through the interview process for a few openings, but opted instead to stay with the company and take a new job in a different org.
In 2006 the firm I worked for went bankrupt and I put my resume on a couple job sites, My phone rang with inquiries constantly. I had a temp job in less than a week and when that job proved unsatisfactory (to me) I found another one promptly. It took three months to find a new permanent job. My experience since last year could not be more different. I'm only contacted by the occasional bottom feeding foreign recruiters, there seem to be no temp jobs at all, I've had just six (online not in person) interviews in fourteen months and no offers. Some of that is age discrimination (and never mind I've got 18 years more experience, which should make me even more employable in any rational world), but there's also been a huge sea change in the job market and how hiring works.
In the tech business it's quite common to not take down jobs, even if they have been filled or are "frozen". HR types tell me this is to project a positive image of the company. We're hiring! We're growing! What macro headwinds?
When I ask them about reputational hits when they don't respond to applicants, they're like "meh. there are always people looking for jobs".
Confirms my opinion that HR types are lower than whale shit. Right next to Marketing types (sorry, Kevin).
Actually, this does cause problems. One way to screen applicants is to have lots of specific requirements, e.g. college degree, certifications, etc. What used to be a position for a high school graduate, maybe an associate degree, becomes one needing a master's degree with experience. (Maybe I exaggerate a little). Then there's the problem of people being over qualified and leaving at the first chance they get.
It also gets us those "entry level position, five years of experience" job listings.
This summary of the article seems to leave out items I've heard mentioned elsewhere.
Companies gaming the system by perpetually leaving postings for positions which don't exist. The ghost jobs. If they do get an applicant who's a super star, they'll find a spot. Passive aggressive poaching from other companies.
Then there's the public shareholder view. A company with lots of postings is a "growing" company. Buy more shares.
Point to the disparity in "job postings" and whine about not enough workers. An excuse to lean on Congress for labor laws, lean on wage increases, lean into H1B visa demands and offshoring while hiding their manipulation.
I was unemployed for eight years, despite going back to school and getting a masters degree in accounting. My two "favorite" stories from this period:
1) I went to a job fair for people looking for jobs in finance. My previous job had been being an options trader for Citigroup. I went to the Wells Fargo booth, and said that I had been making markets in stock options.
He replied, "Oh, so you have experience in sales!"
2) I got an interview for a position on the trading desk at Travellers. I got a phone call saying I wasn't getting a second interview. Trying to figure out what I could improve on, I asked why I wasn't. The HR person said, "We see that you are taking the actuarial exams and won't stay in the position."
Travellers is an insurance company. They shouldn't be turning down anyone because they are taking the actuarial exams. (Yes, I realize that this was likely a lie, and that the real reasons was something else. But the people doing the hiring should at least understand their business well enough not to say something really stupid.)
I wonder how long before technology changes the college application process. Most of the talk about AI is that students should NOT use it for writing essays.
But on the college side, it seems like only a matter of time before it becomes part of the eval process. No schools get more applicants than UC campuses, with UCLA tops at 173,000 apps for the fall 2024 semester. Each app gets reviewed by two people in the admissions department. It leaves little time for a thorough review. About 6 minutes on average. Apps include HS coursework, grades, write-ups on up to 20-ish activities / awards, and four essays. The applicant pool includes a few easy yeses, a much larger group of easy noes, and another group that are qualified in every way but they can outnumber the seats available by a margin of 4:1 or 6:1. Final decisions for them are seemingly random, even with humans making the choices.
I've been looking for a permanent job for the last five years and have only been able to get short-term gigs.
AI will replace head hunters. The right application will filter thousands of submissions submitted by bots, reach out to the applicants to better vet them, and then forward a limited number of well qualified candidates to the HR department.
There was a recent Harvard Business Review article (last 2-3 years iirc) that I came across -- can't find it right now -- explaining why all these algorithm-based resume filter systems are bullshit and companies will never find the right applicants that way and advised companies to reinvest in old-school recuriting and retention programs.
Probably the lest-read, lest-regarded article in the history of the Review.
"It is no harder to land a job than it's ever been, and no harder to find qualified applicants."
strong angry boomer energy here from someone who has not tried to find a job in probably 15 year I will guess.
Most of the time if I apply to a job I get a response, because I only apply if it makes sense. But once in a while a non-response baffles me. They ask for an expert in my little niche and I apply and provide evidence of my expertise…and crickets. I’m never sure if it’s because some AI filter is ignorant of our niche, or because of some weird internal corporate reason.
Yes, I had a similar head-scratcher of a non-response. A civil engineering company was looking for an AI Engineer to take their IT to the next level etc. I am an AI engineer (highest school achievments, good references etc) with 10+ years of experience building applications for a civil engineering company same size, same kinds of projects. Didn't hear a peep!
I've applied for jobs for which I had the exact skills and background-- and either never heard back or gotten an automated rejection email. And then the same job ad is run a month later telling me they didn't hire anyone.
Your life is over. You don’t need a job. Join the resistance!
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I see. What do you see?
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It’s over, kids. Take shelter immediately.
Sure… set up your pup tent to express yourself. Good grief.
Spoken like someone who hasn't applied for a job in a long, long time.
Re: hiring figures are crystal clear: practically everyone who wants to be employed is.
This is absolutely not true. It;s vert hard ti get hired, or even an interview right now, and both myself and a significant number of other job hunters I know have been unemployed for long stretches-- and no, we are not blue collar workers with obsolete skills. AI screening by firms has a well known propensity for selecting against non-traditional workers: older workers, mid life career changers, anyone who has been out of the workforce for any reason at all, the previously self-employed, people with lots of experience but lacking the precise academic record. I would also suggest reading job ads for anything that is not strictly entry level. The requirements have exploded-- something we used to see in recessions when firms could be picky, but this is happening in a supposed tight labor market.
The reports I have been getting from my friends is that this last year has been the most difficult job market they have ever seen. Even using personal referrals is not effective as it used to be because you are still competing somewhat with the other thousand applicants who came in through the job boards.