I haven’t extensively tapped my network for referrals, but I get a bad vibe from those, too. I’ve hit up about six folks and they all came back empty - no opportunities, even though they’d like to work with me again.
The only success I’ve heard is from folks grinding it out and playing the numbers game. It’s an employer’s market.
Edit: some data: Seven months, dozens of applications, four interviews. Two interviews were from applications, one from a recruiter cold-call, and one from networking. Applications to interview was about 4 months. Three were EM positions, one was senior engineer. Got through all rounds and was rejected at the end.
Fun fact: I have a canary in my resume that will normally raise a clarifying question during an interview. One of ~20 interviewers caught it. Hard to put effort into a resume when few people seem to read it.
This was my exact experience. I’ve been out of work for a year and I’m more jaded than ever.
I finally got a job through what I assume was nepotism. It was the worst interview I’ve done lately, awkward, because I didn’t have any experience in the particular tech stack, but I got the offer.
What pissed me off were companies ghosting after doing the full set of rounds onsite. At one point, I was interviewing for a position a third party recruiter contacted me about. It wasn’t great, but it would pay the bill and I was desperate. It seemed like a decent fit given my last experience too. I got all the way to the final round which I had to travel hours for. At the end of the internet, one of the people even said “I imagine you’ll be hearing from us soon”. But they just ghosted me. Hell they ghosted the recruiter, who a couple weeks later was calling me asking if I had heard anything because they weren’t talking to him. If a company ghosts after an initial round or two, ok, whatever, but if I go the full distance and you don’t have the respect to even give me a yes or no, fuck you.
I’m just hoping I can find a way out of the industry before it’s too late.