how do I accept I'll never know why any employer rejected me?

dennis5wheel@programming.dev to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 144 points –

I'm finding the hard way that finding another job is a grind: you invest time reading what they want to hire, you write a CV and an application.

Most of the time you don't get an answer, meaning you are that irrelevant to them. Most of these times it is YOU the one who has to ask if they decided for or against. On the limited times they write you back, it's a computed generated BS polite rejection letter.

I asked one of them how many candidates they considered and why they rejected me, but that only made them send me another computer generated letter.

I'd like to know how close I was and in what ways I can become a more interesting candidate, but nobody is going to give me a realistic answer.

It sucks having to need them more than they need you. And I should consider me lucky, because I have a job, but jesus christ, I feel for those who have to do this without stable income or a family that offers them a place to stay...

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There are fake job postings.

IIRC, there was one very recent (mid-2024) study of job ads that strongly suggested that 60-75% of them were never meant to be filled. As in, the company posted them for entirely unrelated reasons.

It’s why these are called “ghost jobs”: they don’t exist.

I haven't seen the numbers. I have read that they do this for a few evil reasons.

  • It makes their business look like it's thriving.
  • They can gather intel on who's job hunting.
  • They can use job application tasks to get free work out of candidates.

Recruiters are essentially salesmen. They want to have a full dossier of product (you) when they talk to a potential client. They might also job hop among agencies, and bringing a full dossier of product helps them get their new job. It’s much easier to build that product inventory with ghost jobs than it is to actually work directly with someone looking for a job.

Maybe it’s my limited experience, but I’ve never worked for an employer that did this, as far as I know. Any opening was real at the time it was posted. However we’ve held onto people if we expect another opening or we like them even though they don’t fit but can’t promise a new opening until we get it approved …… or maybe we got the ok to hire and started the process but were shut down by bad numbers somewhere but hope that will change again