I've been looking for work the past few months. I've never been great at the people-networking side of the software engineering business but know enough people to get some good referrals from Staff Engineer / Director level former coworkers. Despite meeting all the requirements, and being referred by a current employee...I'm just getting simple rejection emails. Previously I thought of referrals as a great signal that someone was good candidate and was worth at least a phone call. Is that no longer the case?
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Right now the job market for more junior people looks brutal -- too many people with little experience and the same "skills" mix chasing a reduced number of jobs. If you are still early in your career you will find job hunting tough right now regardless of contacts and referrals.
I’d suggest hitting up some tech recruiters and downgrading your past job titles. As far as your job search is concerned, you weren’t a “lead architect” using “state-of-the-art tech”, you were a Staff DevOps Engineer with experience in <insert AWS buzzwords here>. Etc etc.
So be positive, be humble, be sharp, and be willing.
Also, numbers game. 200 applications -> 63 interviews -> 12 callbacks -> 4 complete interview process -> 2 offers.
When we are hiring.
There is the rub, there are a number of companies that are either actively laying off, or just letting attrition nibble down their numbers without having to announce layoffs.
When you say it like that it sounds mean, but it's a pretty civilized way to handle downsizing if you ask me.
It is. Some companies will also offer the old timers early retirement packages. There are companies like this out there still, they just don't make headlines by being civil.
...and I got rejected by HR, because I didn't have 8 years of working experience at 23.
Still the funniest job hunting story I have.
I won't say they're worthless, but don't feel bad that you are getting the response that you are. Nearly every place I've been (and lots of places that friends are at) do an abysmal job of following up on referrals and taking them seriously.
That said, you might want to ask a trusted friend to look at your online presence (LinkedIn, GitHub) and offer some critical feedback. It may simply be the case that—despite being well qualified—you don't look that way to recruiters following up on what amounts to a ticket in a queue.
I'm a recruiting coordinator or a hiring manager, there's nothing that signals to me that this is a good lead. I assume you're just doing this as a courtesy. I might take a cursory glance, but if the resume doesn't look particularly exciting, onto the pile it goes.
The "how" part matters too. If you're referring a person who you know is amazing at their job, say so, and be specific. "I spent five years working with them at Foobar Industries and they are easily in the top 1% of all engineers at that company" is likely to get attention. "I know this person and I think they may be a fit" isn't.
A strong referral by a knowledgeable person often skips that person to the front of interview queue. I have hired a number of people based on referrals from team members, VCs and previous coworkers.
Many referral systems have a how good do you think this personal really is field and often an option for "I don't know this person that well I am just referring them to say I did".
If you are asking for a referral, make it as easy as possible for the referer to make you look great. They probably don't remember all your awesome work like you do, so make sure you give them simple impactful points.
That said, reputations are a thing too. All through my career I've had a mix of people who thought I was great to people who thought I was terrible. It is often a function of how and when you interacted with them, at one place I worked I discovered that a person I had worked with before was had been actively "anti-recruiting" in that they didn't want me to come work there[1]. I was fortunate in that the hiring manager took the time to get a number of opinions and look past the drama and into what really was going on, but it certainly delayed things significantly and would have resulted in a decline had they not been willing to do that digging. This only gets worse the more senior you become because you have more opportunities to be perceived as having limited someone else's career/choices/etc.
So 'referrals' in all forms are a net positive, some can be more positive than others.
That said, one of the more interesting hires I did was a guy who offered to come work for me for free for two weeks on the promise that at the end of the two weeks we'd either hire him or not. Was a bit challenging to get that through HR/Legal (but we did) and he turned out to be great. But it wasn't obvious from his CV that he was as capable as he was and he did not have anyone locally that could be a reference.
[1] I did reconcile what had happened with this person but they were completely accurate when they described me as an "asshole". I really was annoying early in my career, but that didn't become clear to me until later.