I got laid off and realized how broken tech hiring is

I found applying to job postings was effectively a waste of time. The number of replies I received from a person was < 1%

What was effective was advertising my availability on LinkedIn, Indeed, and Dice, and waiting for recruiters to contact me. In other words in the current environment passive options were far more effective than active searches - the process is definitely upside down.

The only alternative approach was knowing someone at the company and in a similar role, making a referral. Unfortunately that is often a limited opportunity pool for most people.

EEO rules require that available positions be posted to the public, but in many cases there is no intention to interview outside candidates for these positions. For example let’s say a large company wants to convert a contractor into an employee. That position still has to be posted to the public, but it’s only one of many examples.

In my case I am a government contractor so candidates will not even be considered unless they exceed nearly all points of the job requirements. No exceptions.

Also it used to be all about tech stacks and tool trends. As software employment continues to shrink that is also going away. It’s more about skills and experience on a given platform or family of languages than a tool or framework. The upside to this is that while positions continue to shrink the expectations and salaries appear to be going up proportionally.

It has been going this way for some time in the US. My own story and experience was very similar to yours. Lost my position as a Sr. Engineer, and while going through that gauntlet of algorithms trying to find a new role, I found a pivot instead. Left the software world of abstractions and optimizations, and brought my skills in physical hardware and machine knowledge to the forefront. Now I work in hard technology. I may be sort of unique in that I had these parallel skillsets and experiences. But it's never too late to learn new skills. What other skills outside of software do you have?

> It feels like the system is optimized to filter people out, not to find the best ones.

It feels that way because it is that way.

Why would someone want to find the best person when most jobs don’t require the best person?

The "tech jobs" you are looking for are actually potemkin ghost jobs that are never going to be filled and are only there to give no signal to market traders and analysts whether if the company is hiring or not.

What are you looking for? Maybe I can help. We have a lot of open positions.

Tech hiring is no more broken than it’s been in my 30 years across 10 jobs - you’re doing it wrong.

If you are just spamming ATSs instead of using your network or reaching out to targeted companies, it’s always been a shit show

A lot of the roles posted are mostly focused on signalling growth. Plus a lot of companies never really learned how to hire, they just followed what ever comes out of silicon valley without thinking about it.