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5 Immutable Laws of Job Hunting
Today on Pete Rants About A Subject That Is Personally Annoying Him (trademark pending), we’re going to talk about all of the ways that recruiters, hiring managers, and pretty much anyone involved in the job search really needs to step up their game. Look, I get it, you’re overworked and underpaid, but sometimes extending a little human decency and kindness is all that’s needed, and it’s certainly free to do so.
So far, I’ve applied to almost 800 jobs (edit: now over 1,400!) over the last 90 days, here are some of the things I’ve learned.
Law #1: 50% of Applications Get Ghosted
As it stands right now, of the 794 jobs applied for, 421 of them have never elicited a response — a 53% ghost rate. Sure, I got the “Thank you for applying to this job” email immediately after applying, but since then it’s been radio silence. Some of these I’ll hear back from 9 months from now when some HR professional realizes they left a job opening up and hurriedly closes it out in their system. Maybe one or two it’ll be two years from now (true story, it’s happened before). But for the vast majority of the 421 job applications, I will go the rest of my life having never even heard a peep: not an email, nor a text, letter, telegram, semaphore, smoke signal, or carrier pigeon. Why is that? With automated systems nowadays it should be…
