One recruiter, more than ten open roles
When I was hiring a few months ago, my internal recruiter was dealing with more than 10 open roles simultaneously. I literally had to fight for his attention after weeks of zero updates. Tech layoffs hit recruitment teams too. If you aren't hearing back, very likely they cannot keep up with the application inbox volume.
A recruiter handles the coordination with both candidates and the internal team, candidate sourcing and first-round screening. Maybe a lot can be automated, but I think it's nice to have a human point of contact for candidates, when it works.
The manager reads your CV after hours
I am often fully booked in meetings all day. Since last year, I lost my entire product team, and every manager became a single-thread leader with double hats. Reviewing resumes sometimes only happened in the last hour of the day or out of office hours.
Three weeks to publish, weeks more to approve an offer
Getting headcount approval is just the starting line. After writing a JD and filling out forms, I have to wait for Talent Acquisition, a VP, HR, and Finance to all sign off. Inevitably, someone is sick, offsite, or absent for any valid reason. If I am lucky, it will take three weeks to publish.
Same for getting the offer approved. It can take weeks to get a new offer approved by the chain of command.
It also happened to me that previously approved headcount was removed in a reorg later. I took over the director role with open headcount for one more EM, 1 PM and 5 engineers, but they were all gone in a reorg only 1 month after me taking over the new organisation.
Readers of the thread added the candidate's side of the same chain. One described a job description approved in March and posted in July because of the chaos, with the team changed in between and nobody willing to restart the approvals. Another said that getting a new description approved takes months, so managers reuse an old one, sometimes a very old one.
When the hiring manager runs the process
Because of recruiter bottlenecks, some of my colleagues have started bypassing the system entirely, driving the candidate process themselves just to keep applicants moving. So if you see the process managed by hiring managers, it's a good sign that they care about candidates' experience.
The job description was written in a hurry
Managers write JDs as fast as possible to get into the slow approval queue. They often don't sit down to write actual interview questions until the week the interviews begin, creating a potential gap between what you read online and what they actually ask during the interview.
They often don't sit down to write actual interview questions until the week the interviews begin.
Three questions that get past the posting
Try to get broader context and real expectations through conversation with the recruiter or hiring manager (usually a better fit).
- 01Is this a new role or a replacement? A replacement gives you clues about team culture based on how they speak about the former employee. A new role tells you where the team is trying to grow.
- 02What is the team's biggest immediate challenge?
- 03How will success be measured for this role in the first 6 months?
What the silence means
If you face silence after applying for a role, it's not a reflection of your talent and skills. Before you hear a rejection, you are still part of the process.
Stop taking the delays personally, don't be afraid to send that follow-up directly to the hiring manager, and use your interviews to uncover the real problems the team was too rushed to put in the job description!
Asked how long to wait when the recruiter gave no timeline, his answer was one week.
I'm happy to answer questions in the thread if you are job hunting today. When the silence comes after the interview rather than after the application, the ghosting guide is the one to read.
Before the loop
Predict the questions the posting was too rushed to include
The interview questions get written the week the interviews begin. Paste the real posting and Calibrd predicts what that team asks at your level, so you prepare for the panel as well as for the description.
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Common questions
The short answersWhy is my job application taking so long?
Usually because the people on the other side cannot keep up. In the author's last hiring round, one internal recruiter carried more than ten open roles at once, managers who had lost their product teams reviewed CVs in the last hour of the day or outside office hours, and a posting needed sign-off from Talent Acquisition, a VP, HR and Finance before it went live. Silence after applying is a sign of that load, and says nothing about the candidate.
How long should I wait before following up on an application?
When nobody gave a timeline, the author's answer is one week, and the follow-up can go straight to the hiring manager. Until a rejection arrives, the candidate is still in the process.
Why does the interview not match the job description?
Managers write the job description as fast as they can to get into a slow approval queue, and often do not write the interview questions until the week the interviews begin. Readers of the thread added two more reasons: a description approved in March and posted in July, with the team changed in between, and managers reusing an old description to skip the approval queue altogether.
What should I ask the recruiter or hiring manager to understand the real role?
Three questions. Is this a new role or a replacement: a replacement gives clues about team culture from how they speak about the former employee, a new role shows where the team is trying to grow. What is the team's biggest immediate challenge. How will success be measured for this role in the first six months.