We would like to but we won't - huh!

Mitechniq

Normally when you do not get picked for a position, you evaluate the stage of the hiring process and proceed to re-do your resume, maybe change some of your talking points in the interview. My frustrations, however, are how do you fix something that does not seem to be broken.

I have applied to 4 positions, and all of them have gone through the complete hiring process.

HR/Recruiter interview -> Tech Review -> Hiring Manager

This means my resume is solid, I can speak Security with the best of them (in fact, in my most recent interview, we talked for 20 minutes about 'low entropy' on EC2 instances in AWS.) and apparently I can talk company culture, business enablement to the Hiring manager. Then comes the frustration:

Company 1: This was 2 months ago.

He said he thinks highly of your skill set and personality and that you are his preferred candidate for the role and he wants to stay in touch. He said he's not yet ready to offer you the position because he's waiting to finalize a deal that he expected to close by now.

Company 2: This company has no one who does Security and the CIO openly admitted (No NDA) they have been hacked twice this year - which is a whole separate discussion.

Thank you very much for your interest in the Information Security Manager position at XXX as well as your time in the interview process. We have decided to not hire for this position, but I wanted to let you know that you were the top candidate.

Company 3: Frankly this could be the worst one because it is my own company.

Apologies for the delay. We were very impressed with your interview. Please allow me some time as the org shifts to find you a better-suited spot for you on the team.

I feel like I am getting the "it's not you, it's me" speech, which is driving me '16 year old - prom dumped' crazy!

koz24

Keep looking. That's really a small sample size. Have you been applying for Information Security Manager for all of them? It is possible that you were actually a top candidate in them and someone else just had a better resume.

gespenstern

But... but... security, according to another recent thread here, has 0% unemployment and many positions get unfilled!

On a serious note, there's nothing can be done about that, there will be no feedback in majority of cases and in some feedback will be totally non-related. Like, one employer told me that I don't have enough incident response experience which had be bursting in laughter as it was so stupid to say, especially after all the hiring process went seemingly well.

I was looking for a job in early 2015 and it took me half a year and >100 applications to land a good job. In the process I turned down only a few offers because they were seriously below, primarily misplacement cases from Indian recruiters which I bit still because of low self-esteem. It always hits you hard when you are looking for a job and get rejected tens of times.

Danielm7

Might just be a run of bad luck. Obviously you're biased on how well you did, but I don't think they'd email telling you that you were the top candidate if it didn't go well either.

Org shifts I can understand, I've seen that first hand in my own company. We had approval for 8 new hires, had ads and recruiters out, did some interviews, then someone in the C levels decided to pause the entire thing, that was 8+ months ago.

GSXR750K2

I feel ya.

I had a combination of 1 and 3 about a month ago, basically "Thanks for the follow-up. You're process went well and everyone you interviewed with spoke highly of your personality, but we're restructuring and won't know what we need until we're finished."

I'm thinking, "Why don't you finish restructuring first, then ask me to drive two hours for an interview when you know what you need."

TechGromit

gespenstern wrote: »

But... but... security, according to another recent thread here, has 0% unemployment and many positions get unfilled!

Well to be fair, he does currently have a job, so he's not unemployed.

gespenstern

TechGromit wrote: »

Well to be fair, he does currently have a job, so he's not unemployed.

That's right, but with real 0% unemployment one would expect landing a job to be a little easier. I was looking for a job in 2015 (i.e. after a wave of major breaches of major US companies and government structures) and yet I had a hard time, despite almost everything (besides connections) being top notch on my resume.

mbarrett

4 companies is a small sample size. Just keep trying, good things will happen.
On your 2nd case, I've seen that before - company goes through the whole resume/interview process, then somebody decides they don't need to hire anyone. Obviously there's nothing you can do, the people you dealt with even said you were the top candidate. Maybe they filled internally, or just made a decision based on funding & manpower requirements. Just chalk it up to experience and move on.

dhay13

Same here. Had 3 interviews recently that went as good as could be expected. One said they skipped the phone screen because my resume was so impressive. Interview went great. I sent a thank you the next day. After 4 weeks I emailed HR to see what the status was and no response.

Second was about 2 months ago. Hiring manager said I was fantastic but he didn't want me leaving a full-time job for a contract (at least 18 month contract at double my current salary) but that he would have a better position for me soon but I have followed up with them and got no response.

Third was a couple of weeks ago for a global corporation. Recruiter said they were extremely impressed with me. Interview went as good as could. I can't think of anything that could have went better. A few days later recruiter called and said the had one more to interview. A couple of days later the recruiter called and said it was between me and that person. A couple days later recruiter said they went with the other person. The recruiter said the only feedback was that they really liked the other guy??? How does that help me?

Not sure what to change or fix. These were all security related positions. If you do a CISSP search on Indeed within 25 miles of my zip code there are only 3 jobs that come up. Expand that to 50 and there are about 55 that come up. Makes it very difficult to land a job in this field in my area. General security searches aren't much better. I use keywords (Network, Security, Information, and Cyber). Any other suggestions on keywords?

GSXR750K2

dhay13 wrote: »

...within 25 miles of my zip code there are only 3 jobs that come up. Expand that to 50 and there are about 55 that come up. Makes it very difficult to land a job in this field in my area.

This is my biggest hurdle, which is why I drove two hours each way for what ultimately amounted to them saying "you're a swell guy".

My fortune cookie on Saturday had a very generic and open-ended remark about happiness, which I took to mean that I should move within the next six months.

GreaterNinja

These guys are right. The # of places you applied to being 4 is a super small sample size. Your number of applications should be 50-100+ at least.

When I'm hunting for jobs I usually set an objective to run a mile each day for mental health and to apply to at least 20-30+ jobs a day. Expect variance in pay and the best advice is to not care about getting the job. Some hiring managers can smell desperation and they don't find it challenging to hire even highly qualified individuals.

cyberguypr

Wait, did I read that right? You used to apply to 30 jobs per day and are recommending he send 50-100 applications? ? That sounds like spray and pray to me. I don't think I've ever applied to that many in one year. I am curious if other use this approach or rather target specific positions that seem in line with what they are looking for.

NetworkNewb

cyberguypr wrote: »

Wait, did I read that right? You used to apply to 30 jobs per day and are recommending he send 50-100 applications? ? That sounds like spray and pray to me. I don't think I've ever applied to that many in one year. I am curious if other use this approach or rather target specific positions that seem in line with what they are looking for.

That sounds pretty crazy to me as well. I'm usually pretty specific in when I apply to positions. Not to mention I have zero intentions in ever applying to companies that are more then a 30 minutes away from me (I'm talking during busy driving times too). When I apply, I go in assuming there is a good chance I should get this job.

Also, with tailoring a resume to each company and their job ad, sending out that many resumes would be a second job!

As far the OP, that just sounds like a lot of bad luck, I've only gotten a reply like that once before.

CIO

I did that when I moved to a new city without a job lined up. Lesson learned

I did end up finding a great position within 2 weeks though

Dojiscalper

I've had several times in the past year where I was top candidate and the job fell through for what ever reason.

cmztech

HR is being too nice, imo. They need to change their verbiage to something more generic that simply says:

"Thanks for taking the time to apply, but there were many competitive candidates and you were not selected."

GreaterNinja

cyberguypr wrote: »

Wait, did I read that right? You used to apply to 30 jobs per day and are recommending he send 50-100 applications? ? That sounds like spray and pray to me. I don't think I've ever applied to that many in one year. I am curious if other use this approach or rather target specific positions that seem in line with what they are looking for.

Yep, you read that right. I live in the the Bay Area and there are hundreds of IT positions nearby. Applying to more roles that you are interested in will lead to the potential of better opportunities. A higher sample size will provide better and more accurate data of what companies are willing to provide for employees in a respective position. It will also allow one to confidently negotiate a higher compensation package. Hell, sometimes I just do it for the interviewing experience.


Using this approach, I've started to receive written offers 150k-220k/yr. This is at least 210% more than the sub-100k compensation I use to make 4 years ago.
So yeah, I recommend increasing sample size.

devilbones

GSXR750K2 wrote: »

This is my biggest hurdle, which is why I drove two hours each way for what ultimately amounted to them saying "you're a swell guy".

My fortune cookie on Saturday had a very generic and open-ended remark about happiness, which I took to mean that I should move within the next six months.

I base all big decisions that affect my life off of fortune cookies ​(srs).

devilbones

Mitechniq wrote: »

Normally when you do not get picked for a position, you evaluate the stage of the hiring process and proceed to re-do your resume, maybe change some of your talking points in the interview. My frustrations, however, are how do you fix something that does not seem to be broken.

I have applied to 4 positions, and all of them have gone through the complete hiring process.

HR/Recruiter interview -> Tech Review -> Hiring Manager

This means my resume is solid, I can speak Security with the best of them (in fact, in my most recent interview, we talked for 20 minutes about 'low entropy' on EC2 instances in AWS.) and apparently I can talk company culture, business enablement to the Hiring manager. Then comes the frustration:

Company 1: This was 2 months ago.



Company 2: This company has no one who does Security and the CIO openly admitted (No NDA) they have been hacked twice this year - which is a whole separate discussion.



Company 3: Frankly this could be the worst one because it is my own company.



I feel like I am getting the "it's not you, it's me" speech, which is driving me '16 year old - prom dumped' crazy!

Maybe you are too expensive.

Mitechniq

There is, of course, many deciding factors I might have failed to mention. I work remote, and I am about 35% above local market value for my position. The IT Security Manger position was a local position, and before I received the email from the hiring manager, I was asked the day before what my salary requirements were. So that could have been the reason for the sudden change of heart.

I haven't applied for many positions because the work I am interested in doing is very specific to Cloud Security, API integration, Security as Service (Service Now (SOC)), IAM, and Migration to CSP's like AZURE, AWS, and RACKSPACE. From my review of Indeed, Monster, and other job boards - there is not a lot of positions that are remote and meet my aspirations.

I am also not desperate in finding a new job, just disappointed with my current company. The VP of Global Business made a promise that he would evaluate our positions if we were to pass the AWS PSA certification. There is currently 14 of us in the company with the cert; I am the only one in CyberSecurity that has the cert, the remaining of them are in our cloud division. I am also the only engineer with the cert; the remaining are all architects. I have had several billable projects given to me based on my AWS knowledge, my manager has made several attempts to reclassify my position with no luck.

Which means I will continue to casually look for a new job, just thought it was rather strange the responses I was getting after these interviews.