Life has taken a challenging turn for many individuals over the past year, and I am no exception. About a year ago, I was content with my role at Twitter, contributing to a machine learning model that was bringing approximately $300 million ads revenue and had a very clear career path to the next level. However, a sudden and unexpected turn of events involving Elon Musk’s attempted acquisition of Twitter led to significant changes in the company. He has officially become the sole owner of Twitter on October 28, 2022 and laid off about 50% of all Twitter employees a week after. The whole company was immersed in absolute silence and fear, and almost everyone was looking for an exit.

As part of a downsized team, I began my job search in the midst of an economic downturn. I soon realized the job market had become fiercely competitive, with major tech companies like Meta, Google, Amazon and Microsoft all undergoing multiple rounds of layoffs since late 2022 and significantly impacting about 200k tech employees. The job market was crowded with job hunters and has become a pure employer’s market. I quickly learned the following characteristics of the job market in an econmonic downturn:

  • Most big companies has hiring freezes and even if they are still hiring, the openings are single digits and for urgent and critical positions.
  • There were hundreds of applicants hours after a job posting in LinkedIn. Although the internet has made it very easy to submit job applications as well as ineffective job applications, the large number of applicants are still good indicators that the market is full of job seekers.
  • It was hard to get an interview unless there is a really good match between your past working experience and what’s needed for the job. When the market is good, it’s fairly easy to get an interview as long as you have some related experience, however, nowadays it was even hard for someone with ads ranking experience to get an interview in search ranking.
  • Every hiring manager was looking for the best talent they can afford, so the hiring process was slower than before and it took much longer to get an offer. They may be still interviewing other candidates even if they have already extended an offer.
  • The interviewing bar was higher. For example, the technical questions were harder, and the standard for passing a coding interview is stricter. The interviewees not only needed to get the correct solution, but also needed to show fast coding speed.
  • It was harder to up-level in offers. Most people I know had moved to the same level in the new company, while a few were down-leveled due to lack of experience. Total compensation package was smaller overall.
  • The job market has started to warm up a bit since June, with more small companies hiring and some big tech companies started to hire as well. I believe the worst days has past already and the job market will get better and better with the generative AI especially ChatGPT wave and glimmer possibility of recession.

I got my first version of resume ready in mid April, and started to actively ask for referrals, submit resumes online, and talk to recruiters and hiring managers in late April. I got my first and best offer in early July.

Here are some of my numbers:

  • Applied for 33 jobs in total, with 6 referrals, 6 reach-outs from recruiters and 21 cold resume submissions.

  • Withdrawn (9):
    • 5 after recruiter chat
    • 4 after hiring manager chat
  • Rejected (22):
    • 16 without any reply (all cold applications except one referred when offer was already extended)
    • 1 after recruiter chat
    • 3 after hiring manager chat
    • 2 after passing coding interview
  • Onsite (2):
    • 1 Failed
    • 1 Offer

A couple of more lessons learned from these above numbers:

  • Cold resume submission is the least effective among all the job-hunting channels and needs to be very targeted if you have to. Try to get referrals if possible. Getting referrals starts from doing good work in your current job and establish a good reputation in your field.
  • Luck plays a very important role in job hunting. I am very lucky this time.