I’ve applied to between 550-600 jobs since December and hardly heard anything back. The past two weeks recruiters started reaching out to me and at this point I’m at least having early round discussions with 5 companies. They’re mostly smaller and somewhere in the health care space, but I went from virtually 0 to having something. Obviously it’s early stages so you can’t count on anything, but it looks like things may be picking up again.
Thanks for the news! Maybe I should pick the job search effort back up here in Australia
Yes they are picking up in the US. I was also looking same timeline as you, finally got a job I start next week.
Congrats!
Thank you!
I think there’s some widespread regret about AI not being good enough to replace your whole dev team with one new grad project manager who just clicks yes on 100 Claude code sessions.
Do note that December is the tail of the budget year. First and second quarter is when many companies execute the year’s strategy and burn budget. Third quarter is a bit late but still active.
For us, our clients came out hot and heavy the first two quarters, more than doubling the order totals for 2025. Hiring was hectic for most of Q1 and all of Q2. Q4 is pretty dead most of the time.
I have yet to work for a company who’s fiscal calendar year follows the normal calendar.
I cannot comment on that but anecdotally I can say that I normally do not see a lot hiring during the holidays and a lot of firings in March and Q2. I have no explanation for the March thing.
I have started getting some unsolicited Linkedin messages again about job offers instead of try out new AI software.
Same. Nothing remotely fruitfull, but it’s notable that it’s happening again. Haven’t had any in the past 2 years or so.
Went a couple months without much beyond form letter “we have decided to move forward with candidates who better align with our needs” rejections. Got one internal apply going now for the sad mega Corp I’m at (but a better team, I’m told), and one referral got a call back.
I think referrals are still the way to go. Sadly even that only goes so far.
500-600 applications!? Sounds like you are putting low effort into sending a lot of applications rather than high effort into a few.
Uh, linkedin is that way >>
not quite, I did every generally recommended approach, applying on their websites, messaging their recruiters, custom hand typed cover letters. In the past I never even needed to really apply because I was fielding so many calls from recruiters. This year’s been a whole lotta nothing
how many hours per day on avg? Just curious
I tend to go in bursts, so I might skip some days since there wouldn’t be much new and then crank out a few dozen or something. But the avg would be ~600/7mths
Yeah, I’ve been getting interviews the past couple months, but I haven’t had any luck so far. Got to the final round a couple times, but I guess they liked someone else they interviewed better.
You were too expensive
Since you don’t say, I assume you are talking US?
sorry, yes. I did try applying to EU jobs, but didn’t get anything there and friends over there told me things had been rough as well
Remember seeing an article somewhere saying people are starting to hire again.
Im seeing the same thing. Although im not really looking.
If you’re in Romania, my company is also hiring (or hired, may have stopped now).
We hired 3 people in less than a year. But applications were en masse. Most people were pretty dumb. I think we hired about 1 in 100 people. Applications closed within a week usually.
I’d move to Romania about now.
