Is anyone getting interviews right now?

SWE at Taro Community3 months ago

I just began my job search and I haven't been hearing back. I’ve sent out over 250 applications in the past month and haven’t received a single callback or online assessment. I’ve had my resume looked over by more than five Taro engineers, and I've been told its strong, competitive, and looks good.

I’ve landed interviews before, back in 2023 and 2024, so I’m really puzzled as to why I’m not getting any responses now.

I have around three years of experience and I'm targeting junior to mid-level positions and applying to only jobs posted in the last 24 hours

I know referrals are king, but trying to get some "low tier" companies in the loops first before getting referrals to bigger companies

My 1 guess is its probably the volatile economy with the tariffs, increased prices, and stock markets crashing. But not sure if its just a me problem or if others are getting

Follow up Q: Do people open links on cold emails? I have seen people send like loom recordings to HMs of their side project. But im not sure if anyone would even open them.

TL;DR: whats the best way to get noticed in this tough market? (Assuming you already have a cracked resume)

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88 Comments

Discussion

(8 comments)

2
Elliot Kang
•AI/ML Eng @ Series C startup
3 months ago
It's a skill issue. No matter how "bad" the economy gets, there are going to be people who land tons of interviews. Your job is to be one of those people.

You can still land interviews as a new grad. I even dropped out of my Master's in CS and landed 3-5 interviews a week in Fall 2023, when the economy was supposedly terrible.

There will always be a market for exceptional talent. So show that you're exceptional.

As they say at Taro:

get good

land interviews

pass interviews
- 0
  SWE [OP]
  •Taro Community
  3 months ago
  How do I show that I'm exceptional. I dont mean to self brag, but from discussions with other engineers/past interviews I've been told I am very competitive as an applicant so my main issue is showing that I am exceptional aka getting seen.
  
  I've tried cold emailing 15+ EMs with highly personalized thoughtful emails and that did not go anywhere. These emails werent even "give job" it was more so of hey I loved reading about your papers/blog. I would love to learn more as I also built something similar to what you built
  
  Obviously cold applying isnt helping
- 0
  Jonathan C
  •Employee @ Robinhood
  3 months ago
  I'd say 2 ways.
  
  Show a clear mindset around shipping for impact
  
  Have a clear track record working with other "exceptional engineers"
  
  The simplest litmus test is how easy it is for you to get a good referral and phone screen at <insert names of current hottest tech companies> (OpenAI/Anthropic/Perplexity/Cursor for our current AI boom). Exceptional people generally know other exceptional people, so it's pretty easy to get a strong vouch.
  
  (I've even heard rumors that OpenAI believes this so such that they pretty much only consider referrals).
2
Ammar C
•Software Engineer | Ex-Amazon
3 months ago
I was laid off from Amazon in 2023 and spent ~10 months unemployed (with a seed stage startup gig that fell through and a rescinded offer in between D:).

After my second rescinded offer, I committed to doing whatever it took to land a job, no matter what, including

Applying to new jobs on Otta daily and jobs on Linkedin that I thought were a reasonable fit

Following up with recruiters for open roles daily

Reaching out for referrals with tailored messages + Job IDs for people I personally knew

Posting on LinkedIn to boost engagement to my profile. Additionally, I could have built side projects in public and blogged about them if I felt my resume was not solid enough

Attended NYC tech meetups to see if I could get an outbound lead (I actually did get another startup contracting gig from this that I declined)

Contacting consulting firms like Robert Half for opportunities -> This didn't lead to anything unfortunately

Finally, I landed multiple offers and chose a Cloud Infra Engineer role in the AWS space, leveraging my prior experience at AWS.

Your job search does not need to be this intense, however, this is the approach I took to maximize the number of interviews I could get. Simply cold applying isn’t enough if you’re not getting responses.

For example, someone on Taro from NYC regularly attended meetups, and would somehow obtain the contact information of tech executives and leverage that to land interviews. I've seen it happen.
- 0
  SWE [OP]
  •Taro Community
  3 months ago
  what did you feel like was the highest ROI? Have you found referrals helpful?
0
Alex Chiou
•Tech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero
3 months ago
People are indeed getting interviews right now, but the market is rough for people who meet the following criteria:

Less than 4 years of experience

Haven't worked at a FAANG or FAANG-adjacent company before

That's unfortunately a lot of people. I shared a lot of advice on overcoming that barrier here: "How to get interviews?"

Follow up Q: Do people open links on cold emails? I have seen people send like loom recordings to HMs of their side project. But im not sure if anyone would even open them.

Almost never. Too many candidates and not enough time, especially for junior/mid-level roles.

You would need an extremely solid lead-in like "I built this project for fun and got 500,000+ users, check it out here: [LINK]" to even have a chance.
- 0
  SWE
  •Taro Community
  3 months ago
  Thank you for the advice. I unfortunately fall in the bucket you talk about.
  
  I've also unfortunately exhausted almost all the advice in that thread and that worked well for me in 2023/2024 when I was getting interviews. It's been bothering me a lot why I'm suddenly not getting interviews when I was getting them even when the market was "bad" in 2023/2024, especially now that I have more experience and a better resume
  
  I'm hoping to hear from other juniors/mid level folks currently job searching as to whether theyre getting callbacks or not
- 0
  Alex Chiou
  •Tech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero
  3 months ago
  It's possible that it's just bad luck - I would just keep applying and hopefully your luck evens itself out over time. Though maybe L3/early L4 hiring has gone off a cliff recently due to Trump doing... Trump things.
  
  This is all the more reason to build a side project with a meaningful amount of users or make a ton of meaty open-source contributions. If you're not even getting the interviews to begin with, you have a lot of spare time anyways. Might as well (and side projects are fun too if you're doing them right).
  
  In this market, you're competing with those kids who do have those side projects with 10,000+ users or have merged 100+ high-quality PRs into React. I would know because I have several junior mentees doing this and still getting interviews (including at FAANG). That's what you need to do to become cracked in this market and genuinely stand out.