Job Search - Never easy, even harder these days

As I’m looking for my next job, I have been checking things with my colleagues and peers. I’ve also attended some webinars for job seekers with top career experts around the world - just an opportunity for me to listen, learn, meet peers and validate my hypothesis and get useful insights. So if you're trying hard to find your next job then learning about current trends in the job market will help you better adapt and position yourself to potential employers.

Job search has never been an easy task. But it is now even harder. It came to my attention that the following issues and trends are the most actual ones happening to professionals who are looking for a job. And they’re definitely concerning.

?? Post-pandemic recovery - returning to work (or better say to a new reality) after the pandemic is still an issue for many professionals.? The older generation is having a hard time complying with the rules of the remote job. Most of them have spent the greater half of their career in an office environment where one-to-one communication and quality relations mattered. Do they still matter today?

?? Uncertainty in hiring requirements - the times when you could trust the job description given in the job ad are gone. By the time the job is posted and you apply for it (even when you have already passed 1 or 2 interviews), much may change. Not only some details in the required skills for the candidate but also the salary and the job title itself. This has happened to me and to my peers and friends around the world who are currently searching for a job. Companies fail to do proper recruitment and sourcing planning. The changing hiring landscape has made them situation-responsive which greatly affects the stability of the job market.

?? Gap between the interviewee and interviewer - being labelled as overqualified or over-experienced has now become a cliché. With Millennials now taking over most managerial jobs, it is a big challenge not to seem a professional “threat” to your hiring manager and future boss. The generation gap has always been an issue in the workplace too, yet knowledge and experience have never been so disregarded. With AI taking over all industries and with the newer generation educated on YouTube videos landing a job requiring high qualifications seems to be a “mission impossible”.?

?? Lay-offs - in these times of economic and geopolitical uncertainty, it is difficult to make any long-term plans for career growth. Google’s latest layoffs of 6% of its global workforce (equating to 12,000 employees.) in January 2023, was just the beginning. The list goes on and on leaving many with no option at hand.

Worth mentioning that most of these lay-offs are related to restructuring and reorganizations of businesses happening as a result of acquisitions and mergers. Globalization of business is accelerating too and the trend is to swallow small and mid-sized businesses. This will eventually create a league of big corporations owning each major industry without competition and diversification.

?? Remuneration rates - despite the challenging macroeconomic environment and ever-increasing inflation index the salary levels stubbornly remain at the same level as they were 2-3 years ago, sometimes even worse. Work experience vs current rates - it is a fight where the first one does not stand a chance. You might get just a bit closer to your salary needs in case you apply for or get promoted to a senior or executive role, but of course, higher rates always come with more prices to pay, which is quite fine, but hey, as long as they’re not looking for a scapegoat in the sinking ship.

?? Technologies, technologies and technologies - these days more and more employers and recruitment agencies run applicant tracking systems to do the pre-screening. If you’re a rock star with some 15 years of great track record but not that good at the wording and keyword management, then, “Sorry, my friend, you‘ve been just put into a REJECTED bucket”. Each company configures their own needs for pre-screening so even if you do a good job in structuring your profile and resume, no screening call is still guaranteed.

?? Recruitment crisis - as contemporary job recruitment practices give up their place to AI-based systems, the overall quality of recruitment is debased further. The most common issues that occur are inconsistency and inaccuracy in job requirements, as well as ill-arranged and chaotic processes. Another trending issue is "a sudden vanishing". I can understand when you don't hear back from a company that you applied for. But how to explain the phenomenon when a recruiter is reaching out to you, wasting both their and your time, claiming that you are the right candidate and asking you to give your consent to start the process, and then they're gone for good? Well, better earlier than later, because in some other instances, you may have passed 3 or 5 stages of recruitment (which sometimes takes 2 to 3 weeks) and then you never hear back from them - any sign, not even a "No". Sometimes you're not that lucky to be reached out by the recruiter himself/herself but by their assistant. This complicates and extends the process even further.

?? Job scams are on the rise - current market trends are being even worsened by the growing job scams on all major job boards and platforms across the Internet. According to HelpNet Security, cybercriminals leverage fake profiles job postings, sites, portals, and forms to attract job seekers. Victims would often undergo an entire interview process, with some even being asked to purchase supplies to be reimbursed later. They set up fake recruiter profiles that show they work for reputable companies, many of them household names such as Microsoft Google, Adobe, etc. And doing this is mostly enabled by using AI tools.

At long last, it has become harder not only for job seekers but also for recruiters and companies. And most of them fail in this task, unfortunately. The latest report by OpenView "2023 State of SaaS Talent Market Report" has interesting insights on today's SaaS recruitment practices and trends.

Of course, each of us tends to think that we are the best candidate and that we should get a chance, that’s human and quite natural. But current trends in the hiring market leave us to hope only for a better future.

You don't have to be a genius to understand that human experience and knowledge will soon be rendered useless giving way not only to automation and AI but also to narrow-focused hard skills. And it’s just the beginning…

I'll keep updating this post to share more encounters and insights on the topic as I'm moving forward through my job-seekers adventurous journey. So stay tuned.

Good luck to Everyone out there fighting for their career! It's not you, it's mostly the current market and circumstances dictated by it.

"If You're Going Through Hell, Keep Going” - Winston Churchill

What issues did you have in your job search? Anything similar or something different happened to you?

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