1,000 Applicants Per Role
Remember the tech hiring spree during COVID? The world went Zoom-first. At the same time, interest rates crashed to zero. Companies staffed up 20-50% because they thought the demand might be sustained forever, especially as eCommerce sales almost doubled.
Things got so fast and loose that entire sub-reddits spun up to describe being "over-employed." That is, getting hired at 2+ companies at the same time. Some people claimed to be working at as many as 5-7 companies simultaneously, earning (stealing?) over $1M/year.
Things are much different now...
Most established companies have gone through one or more rounds of layoffs. If it's not direct layoffs, companies like Amazon are adopting strict return-to-office (RTO) policies, which are forcing many to quit instead of relocate their families.
At a local startup event in OKC, I chatted with a recruiter to gauge how the hiring market is going. It's terrible. It's a combination of...
High interest rates.
Everyone just went through layoffs.
AI is starting to allow companies to achieve more with less.
All applicants are applying to hundreds of positions at once.
The last bullet is worth underscoring. It's become so easy to apply to open positions that applicants are spamming every single post, resulting in almost 1,000 applications for every position.
Obviously, this is an absurd number of candidates to sift through. As someone who routinely reviews 10-25 resumes before interviewing 3-5 candidates, I can tell you this is a ton of work.
This recruiter then gave the advice we preached during my years at Contact Mapping: always go through your network first.
A warm introduction is the only way to get to the top of the heap. And if it's not you, it's someone else. You may think you still have a shot in a 1 in 1,000 situation, but 5-10 referrals from other employees will get all the interview slots.
Anyone in the job market should lean into their network... hard.
This may change as interest rates continue to fall and the new administration takes over. But for now, despite the stock and crypto markets roaring, it's rough out there.