Notes on not getting hired
Source: Dev.to
The First Application
On a whim, I applied to a defense tech company. Their recruiter emailed me three hours later. We had a phone screen the next day, a coding interview the week after, and a second coding interview the week after that. Just like that I was in a final loop—one application, no networking, no LinkedIn DMs, no referral.
I nailed the coding portion and had a genuinely good conversation with the hiring manager. Then came the system‑design round. I had never done a system‑design interview before. I walked through an architecture and started second‑guessing myself out loud. It was exactly as bad as it sounds: the moment an interview turns, you can feel the key not catching. I had no idea what I was doing, and worse, I was demonstrating that fact in real time to several strangers.
The recruiter called with a rejection two days later. At least it wasn’t an automated email.
1 application. 1 final loop. 0 offers.
Scaling the Effort
The Spreadsheet
Over the next six weeks (August into September) I sent 75 applications and tracked everything in a meticulous spreadsheet: company, role, stage of the process. The responses were not. The silence was nearly total; my inbox was empty.
76 applications. 1 final round. 0 offers.
Building a Portfolio
In January I added 85 more applications while spending the fall building:
- A search engine in
C++ - A prediction‑market arbitrage system in
Python - A database in
Rust
These were concrete projects I could point to and explain. Still, nothing arrived in my inbox. The market does not care.
161 applications. 1 final round. 0 offers.
The Numbers Behind the Funnel
- An average job posting attracts ~250 applications; recognizable tech companies see even higher numbers.¹
- 75 % of resumes are rejected by ATS software before a human ever sees them.
- Running 161 applications through the funnel yields roughly 40 that reach a human. About 33 % of those are scheduled for interviews → 13. Roughly 32 % of those pass intermediate screening → 4 should reach a final loop.
When a resume reaches a recruiter, the initial scan takes around 7 seconds. The average recruiter manages 2,500+ applications across all open roles. Screening 500 applications at 30 seconds each is 4 hours of pure triage before any meaningful conversation happens. Forty applications reviewed for 7 seconds each is 4 minutes 40 seconds of human attention.
161 applications. 4 minutes 40 seconds.
A final loop at a large tech company typically runs 4–6 interviews after a recruiter screen and one or two technical screens. The loop itself contains coding, system design, and behavioral rounds—six to nine interviews per company before a decision. The onsite‑to‑offer ratio runs about 3:1, so those 4 final loops should produce roughly one offer. I had one final loop; the math says I should have three more loops and an offer.
In engineering specifically, the average number of interviews per hire is the highest in tech, meaning the conversion rate from interview to offer is the lowest of any sector. A candidate today is three times less likely to get hired for a role than three years ago. On average, it takes 20 total interviews across multiple applications to land one offer.
The Power of Referrals
The funnel above assumes a cold application. With a referral, your resume skips the filter entirely and lands in the hands of a real person. Industry data puts referred candidates at roughly a 30 % hire rate compared to under 3 % for cold applications.³ A warm introduction does more work than anything in your portfolio.
Recent Developments
Two things happened in the same month:
- A referral led to a phone screen, then a full loop.
- One of the 85 cold applications “came back to life.” No phone screen or recruiter call—just an email to schedule a virtual coding interview with a real person. I passed it, then entered a full loop.
Both companies were ones whose rejection emails I would actually be sad to receive. One referral, one cold application, both arriving at the same destination in the same month.
Both loops went well enough that I can’t tell which way they’ll land. That’s a strange thing to say after months of inbox silence. The last time I left a final loop I knew exactly how it went. Uncertainty feels better than dread.
161 applications. 3 final rounds. 0 offers?
Reflections
In college I applied to hundreds of jobs without knowing LeetCode existed. No projects, no interview experience, nothing to show. I thought I deserved a job and that someone should take a chance on me. I had a diploma and a lot of confidence in the wrong things.
Now I have the experience: a search engine, an arbitrage system, a database—things I built because I wanted to understand how they work. Yet again, my inbox is still empty.
In a few months I’ll send another 75–80 applications while continuing to build in the meantime.
I have no lessons for you. I have no job.
Footnotes
These numbers come from a quick search across general hiring reports (Gem, Standout‑CV, Shortlistd, and others). Software‑engineering‑specific data is harder to isolate cleanly and varies enough across sources that you should treat them as directional rather than precise. The picture they paint is accurate even if the exact percentages aren’t.
I like to imagine this filter as a printer directly dropping applications into a shredder.
Referral hire‑rate data comes from separate industry sources and is not derived from the funnel math above. The funnel describes a cold‑application pipeline. Referral numbers are industry‑wide averages. Both are directional.