Hello there! I appreciate it has been a very long time since I posted anything into the huge void. But working multiple jobs takes its toll a little bit.
However!! I have some (I think) interesting insights for you – given the world is falling to pieces right now and a whole mass of us have been laid-off unexpectedly, pushing us all into a very real version of Hell that is the endless cycle of applications, interviews (maybe), and then being left on read.
I am conscious of my having multiple fall-backs as lots of safety nets, and am over-aware of this advantage. So given the bullshit I see happening around me, I decided to pull a social experiment. I’m not in need of another job, but I am in a position to be on both sides of the interview table – I have been both interviewer and interviewee – and so can provide insight into what I’ve learned along the way. I am going to attempt to be helpful with some of what I have learned but, as always & whether I say it or not, I want to hear your questions and what you would like to learn more about. So if there’s anything I can add to on top of what I am going to share, please give me a shout.
Starting with Sankeys
The use of Sankey diagrams has become quite popular to show the absolute circus that is today’s job market and I am not shitting you when I say that the diagrams show a very accurate display of everyone’s collective experience:
- Ghostings take the majority. Did they get the application? We don’t know. Did they hire someone else? We don’t know! Did the hiring manager die in a freak accident? We don’t fucking know! All we can be sure of, is someone somewhere has our data, and very personal data at that.
- Too many interview stages. Why can companies not be sure of if we are suited to the role after 2 interviews? I am not an advocate for more than one stage, for the record. But the norm seems to show 3,4, maybe 8 stage interviews!!!! WHO are you speaking with at stage 8 that is going to give the fucking hiring manager the fucking clarity it needs to make a decision?
- Too few offers. Out of maybe starting out with 500-1000 applications many diagrams show the severe lack of offers after interviews being given culminating to maybe 1 (or 2 if they’ve been particularly lucky!). What the fuck is going on here?
- Rescinding of offers. So this one doesn’t often make it on the Sankey diagrams but it has happened to me in my experiment over the last year. More on this later.
My Experiment
Over the last year, one of my jobs told me I would be getting laid off as they were undergoing some “restructuring”, “cutting the fat”, “downsizing due to lack of need in specific functions”, and “outsourcing in line with the company’s long-term plan” understood to be hiring people from “operational” countries, not “strategic” countries because it’s cheaper (even if the quality of the work delivered is sub-par). But still needing the strategic employees to train operational employee replacements before their leaving dates (shitty practice, I know).
A key to provide some detail:
- Operational: Not looking to disrupt anything, will follow orders, tick boxers, yes-people, will happily eat a shit sandwich if presented to them.
- Strategic: Expensive, trying to get promoted, will push-back on and call-out shitty instructions.
When I got told I was being laid-off, like anyone would, I was annoyed. I got told I took the bad news like a trooper, though. Yes, give me all the patronising compliments. I thrive on being spoken to like I’m 5 years old. *Rolls Eyes*
I’m not sure what the alternative was meant to be? Was I meant to bawl and scream? Swear at my line manager? Throw my laptop out of my window? I’m still not sure.
But I started to look for the next top-up job as a replacement. Right at the start of my search I put in a single application via a recruiter, interviewed 30 minutes, and was offered the job on the spot. I couldn’t believe my luck given the horror stories I had heard, but it happened and I was ecstatic. I was assured by the recruiter that given they were carrying out background checks and that they were asking me to pay £50 for it(!), it should give me confidence that the role was indeed going forward. Alert signals went off slightly, but given the company was a global reputable multi-billion dollar one, I took it at face value. Exactly 3 days before my start date, the recruiter got in touch to tell me he had some bad news. They were rescinding the offer because they changed their mind on the job description. And I was not going to be reimbursed the £50 either.
Lesson learned.
So the job hunt started all again. Here is the breakdown of my process over a period of 5 months:
- Applications: 712
- Ghosted: 706
- Interviews: 6
- Post-interview ghosted: 4
- Post-interview rejections: 1
- Offers: 1
That’s a 0.14% success rate for a job that pays 78% less than the role I lost.
Clearly I’m not the only person to have been extremely low-balled and a quick Reddit search will show you the complete piss-taking happening these days for people who have an immense amount of experience. But here are the stages of despair that were taken:
- Interview stage 1 – two people, basic screening/checking to see I can string a sentence together.
- Interview stage 2 – three people, more detailed questioning, standard boring interview questions I have talked about in previous posts.
- Interview stage 3 – four people, wanted to add further responsibilities to the role given my breadth of experience. I was open to considering it and negotiated at 3rd interview round the salary I would expect given they were wanting to add more responsibility, one of the c-suite level people said “yes, we can do this”, then they took the conversation offline.
- 4th interview stage they were stipulating the pay, no room for movement, but wanted me to take on more responsibility given their desperation to fill the role. I pushed back on this occasion; it was advertised as a part-time position, and for that pay level, I wouldn’t be interested in moving to full time nor taking on more responsibility. They agreed to this. I accepted the role.
Do not mistake me; this is a shit job, at a shit company, around shit people who are pretending to play adults. But an experiment is an experiment. I do LESS than the bare minimum, my position is reactionary AT BEST, there is no pro-activity from my side. Normally, I do not get out of bed for the pay they offered, but I did take it because of the shocking job market these days and the endless number of applications I sent with next to no responses.
My casual job-hunt is still on, I just think I am being a bit more relaxed with it, given I’ve got my replacement income ticking over while the jobs market is a mess.
Post-interview Ghostings
Here is where the experiment gets interesting. Companies that go silent on you after interviews have been a rising problem for us all. In the 5 month job-hunt I was left on read by a total of 4 other companies.
Company 1: Start-up that partnered with the company I was let go from. The interview as with just one person, online, with all the standard boring interview questions as expected, in addition to a lot of questions around the technology being developed at the company I was let go from, with digging around the application, how far along it was, and when it was anticipated to be launched. So clearly this was a scouting for competitive edge interview, that had no intention of hiring me. I got told by the interviewer I would certainly hear back after 2 weeks. I didn’t and I still haven’t. I recently checked LinkedIn and they are still “hiring” for the same role, re-posted 1 week ago.
Company 2: National organisation (one of many). This one only needed a single interview, it had four people all dialling in online and it was a standard boring interview. The only thing that stood out was they didn’t ask me for an introduction, as is usually requested at the start of these interviews. They went straight into the questions, which they ran out of eventually, had no follow-up questions and didn’t have anything else they wanted to know from me – even AFTER my prompting them. This to me shows they weren’t really interested in asking me about my skills nor background, they had a bog-standard list of questions they all asked in order. I was told I would hear back in 1 weeks’ time. Still waiting, even for the rejection email. They highly likely had someone who they’d already promised the role to (I’ve experienced plenty of those too), and were effectively going through these interviews so they didn’t get flagged for not abiding by some employment rules “fairly”. Monumental waste of time on all sides, and all this does is makes the companies look like they’re run by a bunch of chimps. We all know what’s going on here, yes it’s very obvious too, why are we all playing silly buggers then?
Company 3: Another National organisation/Government based role.This one needed a series of tests that had to be undertaken, to allow the application to be considered “complete”. If you’ve tried applying to government jobs you’ll be aware of this, and will also know that the tests are odd, some subjectivity is apparent and the mathematics tests are basic GCSE level, but go on forever if you answer the previous answer correctly. I passed the tests, but didn’t hear back from them ultimately either. I’m not sure what happened, they just didn’t respond beyond my having successfully complete the tests – I can only assume I wasn’t suitable for the position, but I was ghosted with no explanation, so I can only ever assume. This isn’t useful for applicants at all, especially if we would consider applying again, not knowing what to change to improve chances – it’s a waste of time for everyone involved.
Company 4: Parasitic company that acquires their competitors – horrible company. I’m glad they didn’t come back to me actually. I was exhausted by this point anyway, as I had the other interviews previous to this back-to-back. So it is quite likely I didn’t perform well. But the interviewer was late in turning up, so it already didn’t look like somewhere I wanted to be anyway.
They point blank asked me, “are you okay with giving people news that they are being laid off?”
Well, no, not really. But, Interview Me said – as long as it’s done in a respectful manner, with full transparency, and support is provided, I think I could carry out this uncomfortable task.
I’m not sure what the model answer would have been? “Yeah, I get kicks in snatching people’s livelihoods out from under their feet when they’re 5 years away from retirement! Fuck them, at least I got mine!”? I’m still on the fence here.
Absolutely was ghosted with this one. Not sad about it at all. Some ghostings are blessings. I won’t be looking to re-apply to this company in any future of mine.
Post-Interview Rejection
Charitable organisation/government based organisation. This required a two-stage interview. It was for a senior PM role and from talking with the recruiter the company had been looking to fill this position for a number of months, had changed the JD at the behest of the recruiter a few times, given their difficulty in hiring. It came across they were wanting someone ridiculously niche, but were being advised to open their minds a bit more. Honestly, it was just refreshing to get given some insight from a recruiter – who we all know have a terrible reputation, but this one really was helpful for me (more details shortly). They floundered about a bit with my application, took about a month from application to hearing back for the first stage interview. I accepted, did the boring dance, and was invited for second stage in person interview. They actually paid for travel expenses, too, hence I decided to go; had they not, it would have been a no from me. Anyway, after a 4 hour(!) interview which involved a simple task and then questions for what felt like forever I was told I’d hear back from them in 1 weeks’ time – and I did! It was a no, they’d decided out of the 100 people who had applied to the advert, NOBODY was suitable and that they were re-advertising, AGAIN! Here’s where I lost my shit a little – not a lot, mind. I was quite blunt with the recruiter with this outcome –
Me: Oh, so it was a scouting exercise then, rather than an actual hire?
Rec: With all due respect, no, *organisation name* has a great reputation in having very clear and honest hiring processes.
Me: Yes, but reputation and actual practice is very different, isn’t it? So, you mean to tell me, out of the 100 people who applied nobody was suitable? How does that make sense, this is certainly a scouting exercise. And they told me they would change the way they would carry out the task, after the way I completed it. This suggests it wasn’t a real hire.
Rec: Well you can have a feedback call with them if you like. *organisation name* give very good feedback.
Me: Yeah, that would be great.
So a call was set up for 30 minutes. It went on for 1 hour instead. I agree, the feedback was quite detailed, but I wouldn’t say it was good nor useful, except one point. I was told I interviewed well, to the point where they ran out of questions, the conversation was really interesting and they told me they really liked my CV, background and experience – standard BS. They also said there wasn’t anything that I could have added to improve my chances. So, they tried the whole “we just went with someone who matched closer to the JD, that’s all”, so I said “that’s interesting, because *recruiter name* told me you didn’t find anyone suitable from the 100 who applied, I was the only one you called for second stage, and that you re-advertised, again.”
The squirm was satisfying, not going to lie, but the rebut was, “okay, full transparency then, we just promoted *person’s name who was on the interview panel* to senior position, and we just don’t know what it would look like if you were to come along, you know? What would that suggest about the person we just promoted? I suppose we decided we didn’t need someone so senior, and are looking for a junior position to fill instead.”
Aha moment? So that person on the panel was threatened by my experience and qualifications; they didn’t have a PhD, I do – and they flagged this difference in the interview too actually, they had just come back after a stint out of work, I had continuous employment with no breaks, I have quite a strong personality, they were very timid. So this is where I stopped listening to the feedback. My CV was scrutinised, but nothing glaringly obvious was pointed out; I mean short of saying the font was a bit different and that’s it really (no, it’s not comic sans). So the panel member was threatened and decided they’d rather find someone who was a bit more like them, and less like me, or at least less qualified, less threatening. Good to know I suppose.
Here’s the kicker: They are still on the hunt for someone to fill their “urgent” position – I checked they last re-posted 2 weeks ago, with no change in the JD at all. Will they ever fill the role? Nobody knows! Still it looks great that they’re advertising to hire, when there’s no actual intention for it. Investors look positively towards companies that look like they’re continually growing. Wonder how many other people’s time they’ll waste until the UK law makes this practice illegal. Or makes any kind of laws to protect the candidate.
The other side of the interview panel
While all this was happening, I had my other jobs’ duties to fill out too. I was also interviewing people for a role open in one of my jobs, after having been roped into it by a colleague who needed “a woman on the panel, for diversity purposes”. That is indeed the correct quote. Anyway…
Two people were whittled down:
- A lady who had great qualifications, experience, a strong personality and was able to handle the questions that were thrown at her with confidence during the interview.
- A gent who had great qualifications, experience, but just wasn’t able to handle the interview at all.
I chose the lady, but my vote was against two others who chose the gent. Here’s why:
- He was cheaper – asked for less salary
- He would follow orders – his personality was not strong enough to be independent (the colleague who was hiring is known to be a gate-keeping, controlling ass, so this figures.)
That’s it. Mind the gent was made to squirm during interview given a question I asked he found difficult. He fumbled about on what felt like 5 minutes. I prompted by colleague to take the guy out of his misery by cutting in, considering he was so nervous. But my colleague just said let him sweat.
Uncomfortable wasn’t the word.
So that guy is in the company now. He’s following directions as needed and is keeping his head below any radar that would make him stand out.
Why is it then that companies request people jump through every burning hoop for a role they want a mindless robot for. The interview panel I was brought on was totally pointless, didn’t do what interviews are supposed to, and chose the cheapest candidate anyway.
All this social experiment did was cement why people should not need to show loyalty to any company. Do what’s best for you, though. If that means keeping your head down, then do so.
If only there was an independent anti-trust organisation that could investigate employers.
Employers are not your friends. Never have been, never will be.
I’ll see you at the next post, yeah?
Love and laissez-faire x