This is my first post of 2024, and I wanted to share my experience trying to get a job during 2023 in the US.
As usual, with this kind of post, you should take it with a grain of salt. Why? Because that was my experience in a specific situation, industry, and skills. Still, I write this because this could be a shared experience among several people and maybe could provide some comfort for those who had the same experience or are still going through it. Also, it will give us a look at what to expect for 2024 because, sadly, the job market in the field has not improved.
Context
Just so you have a bit of context on the situation at the time when I started to look for a job in the US,
I’ve been living in the US for more than 6 years now, but 2023 was the first time I was allowed to find a job. The specific reasons are not important here, but for the first 5 years, my visa didn’t allow me to get a job in the local market. I think this is important because the results could have been different if this hadn’t been my first job experience in the US.
Regarding my qualifications, I’m a software developer specializing in mobile development, lately iOS, but I have been working in Android too. Also, I have experience as a manager from different jobs. Of course, I have worn many different hats during my career, but those two titles are the ones I have more experience.
Before starting my job hunt, I paid for a CV review and update. I mention this because I don’t think it would influence the process. A better CV means better chances, but I don’t think that was the case.
My previous job before the US was in Canada for about 10 months. After that, we moved to the US in January 2023, and when I started looking for a job. I did some light job searches from Canada, but since our date for the move wasn’t exact, I just waited until we moved. It couldn’t take that long to land a job. Right?
Numbers
As I said before, I’m a mobile developer and a reasonable person. This means I didn’t apply to jobs I knew I didn’t have a chance at. I have never applied to big companies like Google or Amazon, I know I don’t have a chance. I only applied to iOS developer and engineering manager positions. Different levels, particularly in the developer positions. From plan mid-developer to staff. That was a bit too much for me, but I took the chance on some opportunities. If I ever applied to something I knew I had no chance, it was mainly driven by desperation than anything else. Also, there were really few, so it didn’t impact the numbers.
Another important note is that I applied for jobs local to my city and also those that had remote work available from anywhere. I’ve worked remotely for almost 15 years, so that is not a problem.
These numbers are 100% from LinkedIn jobs because it is the only site where I got the total applications for a job.
Getting a job in 2023 took me 10 months. I applied to 137 Engineering Manager (EM) jobs and 291 for Mobile Software Developer during this time. In total, it took me 428 applications to land a job in the US as an iOS Software Developer in 2023.
I want to share a couple of graphs for these two searches because they have interesting numbers. These graphs will show the percentage of jobs where I was rejected without an interview, the ones where I had interviews (same outcome), and the jobs where I have yet to receive a reply from a bot or a recruiter.
One note: when I said rejections without an interview, I’m referring to applications where I got rejected directly by email after the application or after the first call with a recruiter. I made this separation because, even if I got to talk to the recruiter, they rarely made any decisions; they just passed the information to the hiring manager (in their words).
Of the 137 jobs I applied for EM, only 3.7% gave me the chance to have an interview, so basically, 5 applications. The rest, all rejection. 59.6% never even sent me a response to my application. So, from 137 job applications, I had 5 interviews, 50 rejected me without even the chance to talk, and the rest have yet to respond.
For iOS jobs, they are similar numbers, but overall, I would say it is a bit worse. From 291 applications, only 2.7% were interviews, so roughly 8 applications. The number that is incredible is that 213 of those I never got an answer.
Some other stats. The average of applications for a job as EM was around 250, and for developer jobs, it was 264. The EM job with more applications, for which I have the data, was one with 1711 applications. The lowest one had 22. For the developer jobs, 1650 is the highest and 36 the lowest.
After speaking with someone, even after just the first interaction, I always asked for feedback after I got rejected. I can count on one hand when someone answered that question, and on those occasions, only once was the person a recruiter. The recruiters were, by a vast margin, the people who communicated the worst.
Reflections
This process took a toll on me for sure. It also gave me some perspective on how different the job hunt is in the US compared to other countries. Getting a job never took me more than a couple of months. For example, getting a job in Canada took me a month and a half. In my home country, Uruguay, maybe one month. I never expected to be 10 months looking for an offer.
One of the first reflections was how lucky I was to have a wife who could keep us afloat while I was going through this. I can’t imagine those people looking for a job that could take this long without economic (and psychological) support.
Another thing is how incredibly competitive the market is. Mainly because companies had the luxury of waiting for the absolute ideal candidate that meet all their expectations. So many people were looking for jobs that companies had the upper hand; one requirement was unmet, and you were rejected.
On a more personal note, I mentioned this process took a toll on me. My anxiety levels during this were high, and I’m not by any means an anxious person. Technical interviews were extenuating, mentally and physically. Even if the interview wasn’t hard, the pressure I imposed on myself, particularly after 6 months on the hunt, was immense. There were so few interviews that the feeling of failing was like you will never get another interview again. This experience also made me constantly fear of going through this again. I can’t imagine if, for some reason, I need to go and look for a job again. Just the thought of that makes me anxious.
Finally, recruiters need to be better people. I understand that the number of people applying for jobs was in the hundreds sometimes, but they still need to keep the human aspect alive. After all this, I understand why AI bots are so scary for the recruitment industry. The interaction with most recruiters was close to any other chatbot. And for me, the best experience during an interview process was when the contact person wasn’t a recruiter. In fact, in the interviews where I advanced the most, I would say a recruiter wasn’t involved in 80% of them. One exception, which I don’t think is a coincidence, was the recruiter for the company where I finally landed an offer. That guy is a great recruiter.
2024
In 2023, there were around 240.000 jobs lost in the tech industry. This includes a lot of different roles and positions, but almost 85.000 of those were in January. You can read a bit more about this here https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/18/tech-layoffs-2023-list/
So far, 2024 is not that bad in terms of absolute numbers compared to 2023. The problem is that we are still in debt of positions from last year, and companies are not hiring. They are laid off again, just in small numbers this time. Also, there is a noticeable lack of job offers compared to the previous year, at least for the positions I usually look for.
For an industry I’m passionate about, the gaming industry, 2023 was one of the worst years in history. Around 9.000 positions were lost in the industry. The worst thing is that we are not done with January, and there are already significant layoffs from big companies in the industry. Unity, Discord, Twitch, and several game studios are doing layoffs. We are close to 3.000 jobs lost so far this year. If you want to keep informed on layoffs, this site is a good source https://layoffstracker.com/
We just started the year, so we will have to wait and see how it goes. My hope is that no one has to endure anything like we had in 2023.