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Old 14-06-2019, 03:56 PM
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Default Views from a Hiring Manager

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Originally Posted by Unregistered View Post
Thanks for your reply. Well I hope and want to believe that I am wrong about my perception of my chances to get employed due to my worries of the lack of 'fit'. Anyway, it could be due to several objective reasons, including things that you mentioned and others such as other candidates simply being better by merit, prior relevant experience, etc - so it can only be speculated.

But being jobless for a few months more than your peers put such thoughts in your mind, especially if you have very apparently worked harder than your peers in university and in your extra-curricular activities, yet they have gotten good and comfortable jobs in a span of only a few weeks searching, while getting more interviews although they have sent markedly less applications out. (also e.g. getting invited for interviews for the same role while they are a 2nd lower but me in the higher 2nd upper range don't get a response at all).

Not trying to play the victim card here, as cultural fit is indeed a consideration for employers I feel, especially smaller departments/teams (e.g. may affect image of the team to clients, may affect team bonding activities and general bonding of a team which have never had any minority members in their team, affecting the team culture, etc - regardless if we will make the effort to integrate), so I think us minorities just have to perhaps work a little harder to stand out more. Being realistic in this sense would temper disappointment and maybe make us realise we have to buck up a bit more.

Just to give you some humble views from a hiring manager (albeit still new in the hiring process):

In average, we have received about 500 applications for an open position of junior engineer posted for 1 month+ . The filtering process is tedious without help of any software (in my case), and the best we can do is to glance through the resume, paying attention to 1) job experience relevancy, and 2) honors grade (might not apply to other hiring manager).

We have managed to interview 10 candidates, and shortlisted 2 for consideration, and eventually made an offer to 1 candidate. It is a challenging task to arrange so many candidates within a month time, considering I have a department to run, I won't be considering to have so many interviews should there be another hiring in the future.

You can imagine that in order to even be selected from the pool of resumes, your resume not only needs to be relevant, but also to stand out from the crowd (I have seen some very impressive one page resumes). After which, you also need to go through multiple round of interviews, before eventually being selected for a position with consideration of your hard & soft skill, your asking pay, your confidence, etc.

Unfortunately, there is no easy way to get a job nowadays, with so much competitions from overseas applicants (Malaysian, India, Myanmar, etc.). One strategy is to make a good (and customized) resume, send out as many as possible, in order to get a chance of interview and sell yourself in front of the hiring manager.

Some other tricks, such as thank you note and follow up email, although not as useful, are better than doing nothing. When I receive an email from a candidate, it will reminds me his/her interview performance.

All the best!

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