[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Recruiters, how bad is the hiring market for...
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Ask HN: Recruiters, how bad is the hiring market for candidates?
With so many layoffs happening simultaneously right now, and so
many companies with hiring freezes, layoffs planned, or other
prohibitive measures taken, I can imagine that the amount of
candidates applying for any one role must be a lot. Tech
Recruiters: Have you noticed that more people are applying for the
same roles? Do you have less roles to recruit for than before?
How intense is the competition presently for roles? Without going
into too much detail, I'm about to enter the job market, and I'm
terrified
Author : cgb223
Score : 45 points
Date : 2022-11-11 16:44 UTC (6 hours ago)
| comfypotato wrote:
| I'm not a recruiter but figured I'd comment to help you relax a
| bit if I'm understanding your question correctly.
|
| HN is very in touch with a segment of the tech sector that has
| seen a huge downturn. If you're asking about positions where
| you'll be making 300k in 5 years as a software engineer, I would
| say you've come to the right place and you're probably right that
| those positions are even harder to come by than they were before
| the downturn. (I don't really know, though. I'm just a code
| monkey at a normal company.)
|
| Regarding putting food on the table and living an extremely
| comfortable life as a software engineer, don't worry lol. I'd
| imagine the average hired competent programmer is starting at the
| same thing as they were before the downturn (that is to say
| Amazon, Meta, Twitter, etc. haven't had a statistically
| significant effect on the job market). Anecdotally, my fintech
| company is ramping _up_ hiring tech right now. Take a deep breath
| and relax, you're in a very safe industry. (Unless you'll only be
| satisfied by 300k and up, in which case I have no idea what's
| going on and can't really relate anyway.) Most if not every
| company has software to build; you might not be the core value
| generation, but the pay is still _way_ above what new hires are
| making outside of software.
| przeor wrote:
| Where?
| chrismeller wrote:
| The dozens of places on Indeed or LinkedIn that I still get
| emailed about multiple times a day because I'm too lazy to
| log in and unsubscribe from the alerts?
| syntaxing wrote:
| I work in tech now but started in the regular industry out of
| college. Something to keep in mind is that tech is a very small
| percentage of the US engineering workforce. Tech is great because
| of the projects, culture, pay, and benefits. But the reality is,
| there is a ton of engineering jobs in the US outside of tech. The
| US alone has about 2M engineers nationwide [1].
|
| [1] https://ira.asee.org/national-benchmark-
| reports/workforce201...
| madengr wrote:
| noodle wrote:
| I'm currently in an engineering leadership position hiring for a
| startup not impacted by this downturn. I see the numbers and do
| interviews, but not a _Recruiter_ per se.
|
| > Have you noticed that more people are applying for the same
| roles?
|
| Seeing a slight increase in qualified candidates, not much of a
| change in unqualified candidates. By unqualified, I mean, as an
| example, a fresh bootcamp grad applying to a Staff level
| position.
|
| > Do you have less roles to recruit for than before?
|
| Have the same amount. Had a hiring plan, still have it, still
| working on finishing it up for the year.
|
| > How intense is the competition presently for roles?
|
| Not very. We're on a glide path to meet our hiring plan for the
| year without the pipeline being dry or being over-full. We're
| able to consider candidates individually without needing to hire
| anyone just to make the numbers, or reject people simply because
| we have too many applicants. If you're a good fit we make an
| offer.
| clnq wrote:
| I'm an engineer. The fortune 100 tech company I work for is
| ramping up hiring, even evaluating new ways to find junior
| engineers. We struggle to fill all available roles.
|
| There's a lot of panic in the job market because everyone follows
| what happens FAANG + Twitter, and a disproportionate amount of
| engineers want to work in the top 10 tech companies. You will
| always find work in the top 500 companies in my opinion.
| carabiner wrote:
| Why don't you name your company so that OP and others can try
| to fill those roles?
| [deleted]
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| Part of the hiring freeze and layoffs happening right now are
| from companies which have been negatively by the current
| situation abroad and want to send a message before publishing
| their worse than usual Q4 numbers.
|
| If you look at the larger trend, unemployment is really low and
| current trend of bringing back manufacturing from abroad guaranty
| that there will be jobs to fill in the near future. Things should
| also get better next year. Results will have been published and
| the energy market should get back to normal. Don't worry too
| much.
| ianai wrote:
| The unemployment numbers are phenomenal. It was around 3.5%. That
| means anyone filling a seat is coming from another position.
|
| I graduated into the Great Recession. This is nothing like that.
| You'll probably be able to get in at the entry level for whatever
| you're going into professionally (or better).
| ianai wrote:
| It's been a bit so I'll reply to myself.
|
| I do know the fear of entering the market. Heck, also the fear
| of graduating into the workaday world in my early twenties with
| not really anything other than a degree. So I'd say be on the
| lookout for an entry point into whatever. If you're going into
| tech then Help Desk/Service Desk work is a standard starting
| point. Programming, making sure you have a portfolio on GitHub
| and do your leetcode prep. I don't know your exact point. But
| that first job can last as little as 6 months, even less, or
| even more. But once you're hired you're "off the ground" and
| that's the key.
| apohn wrote:
| >I'm about to enter the job market, and I'm terrified
|
| You're getting a highly biased view of what is really going on in
| the job market because some high profile Tech companies laid off
| people. Their leaders are not liked so everybody has an opinion
| about it.
|
| I've been at companies in the past that had huge layoffs, but
| they were boring companies that nobody cares to talk about on HN
| or Social Media. If Cisco, Oracle, Siemens, Coca-Cola and a bunch
| of boring companies laid off 50K+ people over the course of a
| year the news would not care and nobody would realize a ton of
| people just landed in the job market.
|
| Is the job market worse than Jan 2022? Sure. Is it bad? I don't
| think so.
| jstx1 wrote:
| How did you determine that the market is fine if layoffs at
| smaller/boring companies wouldn't be visible anyway?
| apohn wrote:
| >How did you determine that the market is fine
|
| I didn't say the market is fine. I said it's not as bad as
| one might think based on social media.
|
| I lived through the .com crises and the mortgage bubble.
| People in my neighborhood were getting laid off across
| industries and jobs. People in my family and extended network
| were getting laid off. If you didn't get laid off, you'd know
| people who got laid off. Most of my career has been large
| boring companies and a lot of people I know work for large
| boring companies. My org in my company has slowed hiring, but
| still has openings for "critical" jobs.
|
| That's absolutely not my experience at all right now. I know
| people who are jumping jobs and getting large pay bumps.
| Granted, some of that is slowing, but it's not like 2000 when
| the only response you'd get on a job site was somebody from
| an insurance company asking you to be an "entrepreneur" by
| becoming an insurance agent.
| okdood64 wrote:
| > Is the job market worse than Jan 2022? Sure. Is it bad? I
| don't think so.
|
| That's subjective.
|
| What if you want to work for a large unicorn or FAANG? Yea, the
| job market is pretty bad right now then.
| rnk wrote:
| so work somewhere else. My company is interviewing people
| (some have jobs and only look at us as a fallback in case
| their job dies, no panic), other companies are trying to hire
| me. I got 4 pings on linked in this week. I still get random
| "companies looking for senior or principal java developers"
| emails. I got one today.
|
| I could imagine it's harder on early in stage career people,
| because that first job can be harder to get. My resume helps
| I'm sure.
| someguy212 wrote:
| Only some are doing layoffs, but the vast majority are doing
| some kind of hiring freeze.
| wideroots wrote:
| Probably worse for recruiters since they are the first ones to go
| in markets like this.
| genmud wrote:
| Not a recruiter, but have had experience on both sides of the
| table in good and bad economies.
|
| First things first, take a deep breath and realize it will all
| work out one way or another. The worst thing you can do right now
| is lock up, so put together a plan and just put one foot in front
| of the other.
|
| Right now, start talking to everyone you can, leverage your
| personal network and hit up everyone you can to see if they have
| open gigs. That guy that you worked with 10 years back, hit them
| up. Ask them if they know anyone who is hiring and if they can
| intro you to them. The person you met at a conference last year,
| hit them up too.
|
| If you are getting laid off, just think of your new job as
| finding something new, gaining new skills to be more marketable
| and connecting with as many people as you can.
|
| As someone who is looking at the moment, straight up, it isn't a
| great time to be looking for something new, but you will find
| something eventually, even if it's just a placeholder until the
| market comes back around.
| ericmcer wrote:
| A side question: Have these periods of large layoffs and
| restructuring been followed by periods of large hiring? It feels
| pretty natural that companies would use this environment to clean
| house with the idea of rebuilding some stagnant parts in the
| future.
| apohn wrote:
| Boom and Bust in everything, including hiring. It's just that
| nobody knows how long the boom and bust last, but when you're
| in the boom take advantage of it.
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(page generated 2022-11-11 23:02 UTC)