In 2019 I made a visualization showing my process of applying to a new job as a Web Developer. I wanted to show just how long it took, how many applications I made, and how many places simply never responded.
Well in May of 2020 at the height of the covid pandemic in the U.S. I was laid off from that new 2019 job, along with around 40% of the company, so back on that search I went!
As with
last year, there are a number of factors to consider with
reading this data.
Having seen the rate of companies that never respond from last year, I was not surprised much by the ghost rate this year. As well, though there is certainly not enough data to make a definite conclusion, in general smaller companies were more likely to ghost, which is understandable given their team size. I applied to 19 small companies (< 50 people), 26 medium companies (< 500 people) and 30 large companies (> 500 people), and their ghost rates were 84%, 65%, 57% respectively. That said, larger companies usually had longer processes, including the longest application process, which took 4 months just to get to the onsite interview, though I can only imagine covid hiring freezes must have had something to do with it.
Overall, my main takeaways are much the same as last year: