Ask HN: Recruiters have stopped contacting me? What could have happened?
Usually, like most devs, I imagine, I get a number of recruiters flooding into my LinkedIn account, particularly if I have my account set to show I’m open to new jobs. At first, this seemed to be the case, but I was being very selective with who’d I’d talk to. If a recruiter wanted me to jump through hoops, or refused to give me any information about the role/company/etc. they were hiring for id just ignore them.
Then around mid-December I just stopped getting any contact from recruiters. Nothing about my LinkedIn profile had changed so I figured people must just be in break for the holidays, and so I decided to just sit around for a while.
But it’s February now and I haven’t had a single recruiter reach out to me since December 16th and I have no idea why. Someone suggested reset and reapply the “looking for jobs” status on my account, but that didn’t seem to work.
There’s only a couple things I can thing of offhand.
1) Remote-status. I’ve read that looking for remote right now might be much more difficult with the flood of candidates into the market, but that doesn’t make too much sense because even though my profile was set to prefer remote, I did get some local recruiters in my inbox for a bit.
2) Weird internal ranking system. Not to sound conspiratorial, but I’ve started to wonder if LinkedIn downranks people in searches if they don’t engage, and around November I was ignoring a lot of recruiters. I’m not sure if it’s likely, but it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve heard of something like that.
For reference, I have around 5 years professional experience, mostly in the .NET enterprise world, but have worked with other things in the last and many things outside of work. Anyone noticed this before? Is there anything I can do to get recruiters to start talking to me again, or am I just in a very bad market?
77 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 131 ms ] threadLI could be seeing a lack of activity and interpreting that you're working. For example, I browse LI jobs and occassionally apply. Eventually, I get recommendations from LI Learning that are job search oriented.
Yes, the market is different. But if you don't look active the algorithm isn't going to waste time with you either.
Have you made your profile meet the LinkedIn guidelines.
Job title in headline. Tagline. Summary. List of technologies you have worked with. Have you filled your experience because the search can drill down further now.
Do you have your certificates listed. Those are also filterable with other add-ons.
Market is destroyed at the moment. Everyone is working around the absolute essential/core with less resources.
Market is also flooded by hi-tech professionals at the moment. Probably thousands or more of them.
210,000+ people in IT now lost their job since start of 2022
If you're not already, start contributing to some open source projects (particularly of the high impact or popular variety). That way it doesn't look like you've forgotten everything. Who knows, you may also get a job offer through that work -- I've worked at places that have offered jobs to contributors who work on the open source code we had. It was rare, so don't exactly expect it, but you never know where opportunities come from.
edit: parent removed part of their comment I was replying to
I also haven't landed work via recruiters since probably ~2001 but have worked the entire time.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34609741
The important thing here is: its not you.
I have a bunch of other thoughts. Happy to chat or hop on a call if you're looking for some feedback (no, I'm not a recruiter). My email is in my profile.
Naive investors in the tech bubble forgot the hotdog stand problem: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4558508-what-hotdog-vendors... so many got burned and they aren't coming back any time soon.
I’m not following the analogy here. What is a dead cat bounce - does it describe the stock curve?
> A dead cat bounce is a temporary, short-lived recovery of asset prices from a prolonged decline or a bear market that is followed by the continuation of the downtrend. Frequently, downtrends are interrupted by brief periods of recovery—or small rallies—during which prices temporarily rise.
> The name "dead cat bounce" is based on the notion that even a dead cat will bounce if it falls far enough and fast enough. It is an example of a sucker's rally.
"if you throw it out the top floor window, even a dead cat would bounce". I shouldn't use the phrase though, as I'm actually very fond of cats. I think it's an example of society's bias against cats. If it were called "dead dog bounce" it would likely be taboo
Oh, about last night's date: she looked nothing like her profile picture. Total cat!
"The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy cats."
The trouble here is that the sentence no longer fulfills its cat-given goal of representing every English alphabet letter.
“There is one thing that is absolutely certain about throwing a dead cat on the dining room table […] they will be talking about the dead cat – the thing you want them to talk about – and they will not be talking about the issue that has been causing you so much grief.”
Also, don't expect working from home to be your choice anymore. Now companies will gain the upper hand on the working from home debate since there's going to be many people looking to fill the same position. It was nice while it lasted.
I'm not sure why this is such a common take. Many functions in a typical business, overstaffed or lean, could be greatly pared back without an immediate impact. UX, UR, product, legal, HR, design, recruiting, infosec, analytics, marketing, sales, facilities, etc. The question is will it have a negative impact 6 or 12 or 24 months down the road.
I have no personal knowledge on whether Twitter was overstaffed but the "we got rid of X, Y, Z and the business hasn't collapsed yet so must not be needed!" is a bad take.
People quit all the time and they get replaced. It's the same thing with layoffs. Another thing is that a lot of positions are filled by people that are over educated or experience for the job they hold. They do it simply because that person wants to work for a FAANG and are open to getting any position they can. My suspicion is that a lot of people are going to move jobs as jobs become available and some positions will be merged from say 2 to 1. I'm sure it's crazy now but they will be fine.
Also 5 years is nothing and still in +-junior category unless you are top 1% of devs but then we wouldn't be reading this. Nobody wants juniors when times are not OK, for very good reasons.
TBH this is a bit surreal read and shows how entitled some software devs are, I'm keeping it polite but it ain't easy. Maybe whole field needs some hard reset and align it more with rest of engineering.
One thing I suggest trying is applying out of North America, and look towards relocating somewhere like Germany. They've been thirsty for talent for a while, it hasn't died down as much as it has in this bubble bursting in Silicon Valley, and although they haven't exactly been attracting it given they don't pay as much it's probably a sacrifice you should be willing to consider if you want to stay in this industry. [1]
An important first step if you're considering this route is signing up here at EURES. [2] That alone will make you more attractive to recruiters out in that direction if you choose to try and go through them, although personally I don't like them taking a cut and can apply just fine on my own.
[1] https://www.itworldcanada.com/post/germany-set-to-hire-laid-...
[2] https://eures.ec.europa.eu/index_en
Meanwhile, there's many companies in a second boat. Companies that are doing fine but are worried about choppy waters ahead. Perhaps they are hiring for key roles or to fill spots of people who leave. But on the whole, they want to protect what they have and don't see this as the time to push for major growth.
The good news is that there is definitely a third boat. Companies that are raising money because they have an outstanding product or idea. Companies that raised large amounts of money before things started going sour. And of course, profitable companies with sound businesses that see opportunities to grow further. It seems to me like there are still a significant number of companies in this third boat, so I wouldn't be too worried yet. That said, if you are swimming around in the ocean right now, the water is definitely getting cold. I'm not saying to get on any boat that comes around, but you probably don't want to wait around for a 100ft yacht.
I have noticed a period with no recruiters reaching out to me since around the start of December, too. But now I'm back to the usual volume of InMail, emails, and so on.
So, no budget means no funds to pay for new initiatives, no clear staffing requirements, hence no open job reqs and no engaged recruiters seeking to fill them. For this time of year, thats a pretty rational explanation.
As others have said, the market is just not in the right place for now. How about directly applying via their websites/LinkedIn/AngelList (cant remember their new name)?
If you reply to every recruiter who contacts you, even if you mention you're not interested, you will have a higher rate of recruiters contacting you.
I could also see LinkedIn tweaking the algorithm to respond to the changing labor market. When the labor market is tight, get the recruiters any dev profile that meets their criteria, even if it's unlikely to engage. When the power shifts to the employer, it could make sense to de-rank inactive profiles and focus on getting recruiters in-touch with candidates that will engage.
As a side note, I know that LinkedIn gives me a lot more engagement when I engage with other people's content, and it gives me less engagement when I don't engage with my feed.
1. Some recruiters are told to prefer candidates with jobs or newly out of jobs because on average they are usually higher quality.
2. More importantly the market has softened quite a bit.