Right now the job market for more junior people looks brutal -- too many people with little experience and the same "skills" mix chasing a reduced number of jobs. If you are still early in your career you will find job hunting tough right now regardless of contacts and referrals.
I’d suggest hitting up some tech recruiters and downgrading your past job titles. As far as your job search is concerned, you weren’t a “lead architect” using “state-of-the-art tech”, you were a Staff DevOps Engineer with experience in <insert AWS buzzwords here>. Etc etc.
So be positive, be humble, be sharp, and be willing.
Also, numbers game. 200 applications -> 63 interviews -> 12 callbacks -> 4 complete interview process -> 2 offers.
When we are hiring.
There is the rub, there are a number of companies that are either actively laying off, or just letting attrition nibble down their numbers without having to announce layoffs.
When you say it like that it sounds mean, but it's a pretty civilized way to handle downsizing if you ask me.
It is. Some companies will also offer the old timers early retirement packages. There are companies like this out there still, they just don't make headlines by being civil.
...and I got rejected by HR, because I didn't have 8 years of working experience at 23.
Still the funniest job hunting story I have.
I won't say they're worthless, but don't feel bad that you are getting the response that you are. Nearly every place I've been (and lots of places that friends are at) do an abysmal job of following up on referrals and taking them seriously.
That said, you might want to ask a trusted friend to look at your online presence (LinkedIn, GitHub) and offer some critical feedback. It may simply be the case that—despite being well qualified—you don't look that way to recruiters following up on what amounts to a ticket in a queue.
I'm a recruiting coordinator or a hiring manager, there's nothing that signals to me that this is a good lead. I assume you're just doing this as a courtesy. I might take a cursory glance, but if the resume doesn't look particularly exciting, onto the pile it goes.
The "how" part matters too. If you're referring a person who you know is amazing at their job, say so, and be specific. "I spent five years working with them at Foobar Industries and they are easily in the top 1% of all engineers at that company" is likely to get attention. "I know this person and I think they may be a fit" isn't.
A strong referral by a knowledgeable person often skips that person to the front of interview queue. I have hired a number of people based on referrals from team members, VCs and previous coworkers.
Many referral systems have a how good do you think this personal really is field and often an option for "I don't know this person that well I am just referring them to say I did".
If you are asking for a referral, make it as easy as possible for the referer to make you look great. They probably don't remember all your awesome work like you do, so make sure you give them simple impactful points.
That said, reputations are a thing too. All through my career I've had a mix of people who thought I was great to people who thought I was terrible. It is often a function of how and when you interacted with them, at one place I worked I discovered that a person I had worked with before was had been actively "anti-recruiting" in that they didn't want me to come work there[1]. I was fortunate in that the hiring manager took the time to get a number of opinions and look past the drama and into what really was going on, but it certainly delayed things significantly and would have resulted in a decline had they not been willing to do that digging. This only gets worse the more senior you become because you have more opportunities to be perceived as having limited someone else's career/choices/etc.
So 'referrals' in all forms are a net positive, some can be more positive than others.
That said, one of the more interesting hires I did was a guy who offered to come work for me for free for two weeks on the promise that at the end of the two weeks we'd either hire him or not. Was a bit challenging to get that through HR/Legal (but we did) and he turned out to be great. But it wasn't obvious from his CV that he was as capable as he was and he did not have anyone locally that could be a reference.
[1] I did reconcile what had happened with this person but they were completely accurate when they described me as an "asshole". I really was annoying early in my career, but that didn't become clear to me until later.
If the referrer walks it over to the hiring manager’s desk it means a lot more, but most of the time these days it just gets fed into the HR pipeline.
You might want to revisit your resume. Of course I haven’t seen it, this is free advice from some rando, and other disclaimers.
The actual process was something like this
1. LinkedIn message to former coworker and short conversation about what role I was looking for.
2. Meeting with hiring manager and a peer of his who I had also worked with (different than the guy I initially reached out to)
3. Long wait while hiring manager got the job description officially approved and posted.
4. Fill out application via referral program webpage so the guy I contacted first got the referral bonus
5. HR screen/interview and salary negotiation.
6. Job offer
7. Start new job
There were 4 former coworkers on the team I was hired into and we had all been part of an amazing team at a past company so take that as you will.
Spent a years getting rejected for roles that seemed a perfect fit at all stages of the hiring pipeline. These were from mostly cold apps and recruiter for jobs doing work aligning very closely with my past work, including trying to go back to a company that I had no issues getting into some years ago.
Ended up getting a referral at one place, hadn’t touched the tech they were using in years, or sometimes at all, had an awkward interview. I was just waiting for the rejection email, but what I got was a call extending an offer.
I think the market is a bit wonky at the moment. You have an exodus of talented folks from many tech companies, people competing internationally for remote positions, people using AI on the recruiting side, hiring end, and as applicants who tailor resumes and bot job postings.
Weird times.
Eventually the water is gonna separate from the oil, Stay the course, invest in yourself and keep at it.
No response from Intuit
Rejection from Atlassian
The previous job I had at a decent organization was without a referral. The one before that too, which was a mid size consultancy firm was without a referral.
Luxury.
Good luck.
1. Small company 2. He's senior and has a strong rep
In my view, the best a referral can do for you is to get eyes on your application and potentially bump it up in the stack. Unless you really know the specific hiring manager well, that seems like the best that's going to happen.
Social media-based "networking" in the industry has limited utility. I was 1-2nd degree on LI from most of Silicon Valley but with 100's of people I never talk to.
You're barking up the wrong trees combining outbound effort that has much less value, especially if it's untargeted or unfocused. In general, it's better to market yourself and let the hiring managers and headhunters find you. Although, it's entirely possible to replace the role of the headhunters if you market and convey useful business value you present to prospective employers: a cover letter exists to sell a resume to sell a phone call and so on.
If you're trying to network for work, I would check out hot and interesting tech meetups.
Remember, it's sales and dating, and therefore, a numbers and interest game.
