Conversion of 1 interview per 500 responses in the Western market. How did this happen and what are the risks?

Trend analysis, personal market research, charting, reading information and changes over many years in specialized Telegram channels — I painstakingly collected, studied, systematized and tried to present all this in the article. I am open to discussion and providing examples of my experience. The goal is to share experience, motivate someone, and dissuade someone from changing jobs or entering another market. Awareness is the best weapon.

So, anyone who has their finger on the pulse knows that there is an unprecedented and unprecedented decline in conversion rates in the IT sector in the West based on job responses. Increasingly, there are messages from senior managers with 10+ years of experience who submit more than a thousand applications before receiving at least one positive response (not an immediate refusal) and an invitation to an interview. In 99% of cases, even unsubscribes do not come. At the same time, previously, even without visas, in three weeks it was possible to receive several offers with a relocation package.

Severity of the problem

All Reddit is literally teeming with posts about how the situation is getting worse and worse. Here are a few examples:

And these are people who are already in the country, speak their native local language, do not need a visa and can start working tomorrow. The situation for relocators who need to first obtain work visas (which can take from 3 months in the UK to 2 years in the US) is simply dire. In these cases, the conversion can reach 2-3 thousand applications per interview!

The main reasons why this happened:

• Economic downturn: Many companies have reduced hiring due to economic uncertainty and general instability in the world.

• High competition: The number of applicants competing for the same positions has increased (thanks to all sorts of courses where in 15 minutes they make a June Signera).

• Automated filtering: HR receives 10k resumes, and in order to “chew” it, they started installing bots that automatically cut off 99% of the responses.

• Remote work opportunities: Now everything is remote, you can, sitting in Bangalore, India, quite successfully code in a California startup.

In general, the roots of all this began with the advent of COVID-19, which began in 2020, everyone settled into their homes and accessed the network and phones with computers, thereby temporarily inflating the IT content market. Social networks, streaming services and various applications have received huge amounts of money literally from the floor without any effort. Companies suddenly began to need a lot of employees at the moment and were ramping up hiring to chew up this increase in traffic. There were cases when people were hired literally on the spot, and candidates received up to five offers from the entire FAANG group (both in Google, and in Apple, and in FB) and began to counter-offer, bringing the salary to crazy amounts.

And when COVID ended at the end of 2021, the traffic dropped sharply, and those who had been hired in a rush for a year were no longer needed. Hard layoffs began in one day with zeroing out passes via email and instant cancellation of access. This led to an army of skilled workers (developers, administrators, testers, etc.) flooding the market, who already had experience working in large companies (good resume) and began to look for new jobs, someone had visas burning, and they were ready for any amount and anywhere.

Then came an even more volatile 2022, which shifted the balance even further. Due to rising inflation and unstable global situation Federal Funds Rate was raised to curb inflation, ending the era of cheap credit. As profits declined, Western companies began cutting costs — primarily on IT, which no one needed anymore. The loss of access to cheap credit exacerbated the recession caused by the end of COVID-19. This led to an immediate collapse, with massive layoffs (hundreds of thousands) and the market overheating with those who had already been laid off. And naturally, widespread freezes began, hiring stopped altogether, vacancies were filled one after another.

Let's take a look on the chart I made, which visually reflects all the above information (I am especially proud of it, as it explained a lot to me):

On the graph we see the most important points: the beginning of COVID-19 in March 2020, massive hiring growth until 2021, followed by dismissals. However, hiring continued by inertia on a huge scale, with a colossal increase in active vacancies and hiring until mid-2022, when the market boiled over completely. Hiring stopped, and layoffs came in a flurry (Google fired its staff with 21+ years of experience via letters of happiness without hello-bye). In addition, at the beginning of 2022, the “Federal Funds rate” was significantly increased due to ongoing instability (and had been unchanged for decades – which sowed confusion and panic), this further aggravated the situation of overheating that had already arisen.

What is happening now and what is the trend?

If we look at the metrics chart again, we will see that companies are still not ready to resume hiring, as the “Federal Funds rate” remains high, and there is a chance that it will go up, not down, no one is ready to pour into the IT sector. The number of open positions continues to decline and will probably return to pre-COVID-19 levels. Layoffs are slowing down, and here too we expect a return to pre-COVID-19 levels. However, this is all up in the air, but it is likely that the current situation will be the same at least until 2026, when, if all goes well, we can talk about the market returning to pre-COVID-19 levels.

But, unfortunately, this is a very optimistic scenario. The number of employees is also growing, programming and testing courses continue to attract more and more newcomers to IT, the assembly line churns out “seniors” after a two-week course with a stuffed resume and like hot cakes.

Moreover, COVID-19 brought remote work, or rather, made it commonplace from the marginal existence of freelancers, which is why being in the office became unnecessary for anyone. This led to explosion pool of applicants, and now resumes come from all over the world. I've heard from HR about receiving tens of thousands of applications in the first three days of a job opening.

In response to the colossal growth of resumes sent for open vacancies, HR is increasingly forced to introduce bots (which is logical), which automatically filter resumes, leaving only 10 to 100 out of 10 thousand for manual review. If there is insufficient experience, the wrong technology stack, frequent job changes, etc., anything that the bot does not like, its threshold values ​​(which HR will indicate) will remove the resume from the pool and send a rejection letter. This means that for 99% of applicants, their resume will never actually reach a person, you can send it around the world like a machine gun non-stop – it is pointless.

What to do if you are in the Western market and looking for a job?

If your situation is not critical, and you have not been fired, and it is not essential for you to work for the West, then the most reasonable approach is to stay at your current job or return to Russia. The Western market is overheated to the limit, and trash employers who could previously search for candidates for years for their bottom-of-the-road projects (like a website for a railway station sauna) are now choosing from hundreds of highly qualified candidates who are ready to do anything, just to sit down somewhere and stop sending out resumes. The wisest decision would be to wait for stabilization (as mentioned above, optimistically by 2026).

If you need to find a job, despite the current situation, and this is for some reason in the Western market (you don’t want or can’t return to Russia), you will have to make compromises on salary, interesting tasks and technology stack, and consider the possibility joining less attractive teams and locations (London will be replaced by Cyprus, etc.). The competition is fierce, and in order to somehow get anywhere, you will have to reduce your expectations to a minimum, agree to anything and tremble like a leaf throughout the entire test and for a couple of years after.

If you do not have a work permit (visa) and you are going to enter the international labor market while here in Russia, be prepared for a high probability of zero exhaustion with a probability of 101%. There will be six months of your mailing (with a waste of time), and the output will be only ignore and unsubscribe and not a single interview. As I said earlier, there are a shit ton of local candidates ready to start working immediately (they're already there, they don't need visas). Employers don't want to deal with visas and wait six months to two years for you to come to them. This is especially critical in the main IT hubs, such as the UK and the USA, where the situation has exceeded any reasonable limits – stores of panties and socks choose which seniors with 10+ years of age they will call for an interview and at low prices. In Germany, Poland and the Netherlands it is a fraction of a percent, but easier.

For example, as you can see in the image above, there are currently 144 active office-based (not remote or contract) Golang jobs in London, including duplicates (one company can have up to 10 jobs). Only a fraction of them are allowed to hire workers from other countries (75%). This means that for each job there are at least a thousand candidates!

And it is worth realizing that getting a chance to pass an interview (the notorious rate of 1 in 1000) is only a small part of a successful offer. You will face 4-6 grinding stages of interviews with tests for weeks, etc., where your competitors will definitely beat you. Out of 1000, at least one will be stronger than you for any reason: language, appearance, knowledge of some technology, whatever, and you may not even pass the first of the six stages. There is only one vacancy, and thousands of applicants. They will choose the best of the best and those who will agree to work for pennies.

Conclusion

The situation in the Western IT labor market is wild! Such unprecedented response -> interview conversions have never happened in the history of IT. There is no sign that the situation will improve until 2026. Moreover, this is all about experienced specialists with 10+ years of experience (staffs, seniors), and for juniors and middles, not to mention trainees, the situation is even tougher, with competition exceeding several thousand applicants per vacancy. As you can see from the graph, we have not yet reached the lowest point (it will get worse). The situation will 100% worsen during 2024 and early 2025 before stabilizing (maybe).

I strongly recommend you to work hard and avoid layoffs and terminations of employment contracts (especially if you work in the Western market), as there is a high probability that you will not be able to find a job, just not find one and that's it. It seems that the IT bubble that everyone was talking about has finally burst, and the true state of things has become clear. For those considering the possibility of entering IT, I strongly recommend that you weigh everything carefully again.

What do we have

Everything is the same here, it’s still a candidate’s market, wild conversions of 1k to 1 social security are not even close. The only question is, will this trend come to us too? But the fact is that in the West millions of people from all over the world and countries compete. And we have a large country, strong IT (many cool companies) and hundreds of vacancies, and the pool of candidates is limited by the country and the nearest CIS (Kazakhstan as an example) and it is replenished very slowly.

Of course, everyone decides for themselves what is important to them and what they are ready for, but it seems to me that the most reasonable option in the current conditions is to work at their current job. Now in the West there is a market of companies and unprecedented competition. The times when interviews in five FAANGs and an offer were chosen in three weeks have sunk into oblivion. We need to learn to live in a new reality. It looks like IT work in Russia is an island where you can get into top projects from the street, get a good salary and not shake like an aspen leaf at a review.

At the very end I will discreetly attach my author's channel @it_is_artur, where I try to write about the most useful practices and experiences from my career path. I hope you find it as useful as this article.