“Nobody is replying to my applications”
If this is you, keep reading. This post was written for you. It is plain advice, on how to find a job when it seems like nobody is hiring.
If you are only going to work for companies that reply to your Indeed applications, then it is important to understand how you are seen by the recruiter. You are the lowest common denominator candidate, the scraps, leftovers. I apologize that this is written so condescendingly, if I had more time I would have edited further.
How you job hunt defines your market value.
When you say nobody is responding to you, are you referring to individual people or hiring managers, or unnamed recruiters at companies?
And if it is the former, did you send a follow-up email, or 2, or 3, or 5, or 7? Tristan Walker sent 8 emails to one co-founder at Foursquare to land an internship (and went on to become director of Business Development shortly therefafter)
Did you do this for 3 different people at 15-20 companies?
There is a massive difference between sending 1 email to 21 different companies and 21 emails to 1 company.
Psychologists have demonstrated the human mind needs to see a fact 3 different times to start registering its validity. The former approach of 1 email to 21 companies feels safer but risks no-response. The latter approach feels risky but almost guarantees a response.
Know that job hunting is like fighting battle, and your enemy is not rejection, but the no-response.
A rejection from a human opens the door to feedback, you can always respond to a rejection saying “can you be brutally honest with me - what about my candidacy turned you off”. And use their answer to improve. There is nothing learned from a no-response.
But I do understand that there is a strong visceral negative reaction to sending one person seven different emails. I think it must be emotional baggage that most of us carry from high school, where being seen as irritating among our peers can get us ostracized from the entire student body. Piss one person off and risk getting mocked by the entire school. The key to surviving high school is to be invisible.
At our root, the human brain is wired through the amygdala, the prehistoric part of our brain, to be hardwired against threats. As ridiculous as it may sound, we carry this primal instinct into modern life, fearing being the target of attack for not understanding basic social etiquette. Our thought process goes as follows:
If I message someone too many times to the point of pissing them off, then I will be added to some shadow list in the company to never hire, and then I won’t be able to get a job anywhere because my reputation will carry over and I will be unemployable, and starve on the street, and die. And so it is just better to be patient and look for the company that replies on my first try.
It’s a myth, not true, bullshit, fable, falsehood, untruth thats undermining your journey through life. Persistence is polite.
How you job hunt determines your market value. When recruiters reply to your application, know that you are their last option, they couldn’t find anyone in their network for the role, all the good people were taken. If they treat you like you are dispensable, it’s because in their eyes you are, and that is because that is how you presented yourself.
Meeting a hiring manager through job application is a really bad first impression, and the rest of your job interview you will be fighting an uphill battle to show them you are unique.
It is a military axiom not to advance uphill against the enemy, nor to oppose him when he comes downhill.
In the Art of War, Sun Tzu wrote that great leaders excel at picking the terrain on which they choose to engage in battle. You never want to be offense against an enemy fighting uphill. You want to be the army fighting downhill.
When you get an interview through a recommendation from the CEO or from a hiring manager, you have already established out the gate that you are of high value. You no longer need to jump through hoops to prove it, just keep that image in their head and you will be able to demand the upper-end of any salary range without question. That is because how you job hunt determines your market value.
So when people try to give you pity, don’t accept it. Job hunting in a bad market is an advantage, not a disadvantage. It forces you to become stronger and more resilient out of necessity, not even by choice. Build the muscle of creating relationships from thin air and you will never be without fulfilling work in your life. And then when the economy recovers, you will have the tailwinds behind you once again.
Job Hunting Further Reading
References