The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 4 (of 5) - Interviews keep coming,but no offers

Interviews keep coming,but no offers

A bit of background on myself around 4 years experience 2 in Java and 2 in C++. I'm going on my 9th interview in the last 5 months. I'm waiting on 2, with rejections from 5.
I've done mock interviews, and one place I was even called in for a 2nd interview which lasted 3 hours(have not heard back from them).I'm in Canada, and I also got 2 contract interview calls in the States, so I think my skills are in demand.
Either it's 1) A whole lot of competition or
2) I am screwing something up at the interviews, I've done mock interviews with friends, and even had one of them listen to me during a phone in. I don't think I am really doing anything wrong, what do people say, is it because of the sheer voume of unemployed people?
Some people havn't have many interviews at all, and I've had 9 with no results so far, it's really frustrating!!!
P.S - Anybody hiring, let me know.

Anon
Friday, February 6, 2004

You may just be suffering from there still being a glut of people with a few years experience. You may not be doing anything wrong at all.

If you have the nerve for it you could attempt to talk to one or more of the companies you were unsuccessful at and asking them directly if there was a particular thing that put them off.

Simon Lucy
Friday, February 6, 2004

Have you tried businessobjects formerly knows as Crystal Decisions?

http://www.businessobjects.com/Default.asp

Those guys hire hardcore C++ developers.

Farid
Friday, February 6, 2004

That's almost two interviews a month. It sounds like you're doing quite well, especially since one called you back for a second. In five months of unemployment last year I had zero interviews. Fortunately, networking paid off and I got a job via someone I know.

I read some of the 100 Best Places to Work For article in Fortune. They gave the number of hires and the number of applicants for each employer. Places like Microsoft (25th on the list) typically had 100-200 applicants per opening.

mackinac
Friday, February 6, 2004

I know that, here at least, we went through a phase where we were going to get bigger "any second now." So, we were doing interviews for the moment that extra project came in. Unfortunately, the extra project took longer than we expected to get started.

anon2
Friday, February 6, 2004

Put a link up to some code you have written.
What personal project are you doing while unemployed?

Tom Vu
Friday, February 6, 2004