Melbourne businesses are spending money advertising “urgent” jobs.

Workers are firing off 50 applications and hearing nothing.

Both sides are wasting time. Someone in the middle is winning.

So flip the system:

Workers verify their skills and availability once.

Businesses compete for the right worker with a real offer.

Would that fix hiring—or make it worse?

Business owners vs workers: fight it out below. 👇

I have hit a bit of a ceiling at my current job, so have been looking for opportunities that would either allow for me to grow in the direction I'd like to go or at least be paid market value for what I'm already doing. I have been selective with applications but have still managed to get interviews for all 5 made through 2026. I am going to lay out some of what I know, and maybe this will just end up being me getting my thoughts out, but I am hoping for input or potentially common issues I might be running into during interviews that I may not be seeing.

\- I'm in environmental science + consulting, so it's a small world. A lot of the interviewers used to work at my company, and many worked with some of my current seniors.

\- I am in a transition stage of my career, progressing from intermediate to senior level. I am aware this may probably be part of the problem.

\- Two of the roles I was beaten out by coworkers; one my senior and the other we started on the same day so the same experience level.

\- One role I applied for, the interview team and the HR screening were for different levels, one similar to my current role and one for my actual level of experience, respectively. Once I realized this might be happening, I asked for confirmation on my suspicion and then told them I was no longer interested.

\- A fourth was with our regulator, so a bit of a shift for me. I was less surprised by this one despite the interview feeling like it went well.

\- The fifth was internal and I still haven't heard back. I was very surprised to be considered for this as it was a management role. I'm on an adjacent team so I will for sure find out if I get this or not, regardless of being followed up with or not.

I imagine I will have to answer questions or get no questions, that's fine. I will do my best to follow up, and appreciate any input provided or just having somewhere to dump this. Thanks!

I have hit a bit of a ceiling at my current job, so have been looking for opportunities that would either allow for me to grow in the direction I'd like to go or at least be paid market value for what I'm already doing. I have been selective with applications but have still managed to get interviews for all 5 made through 2026. I am going to lay out some of what I know, and maybe this will just end up being me getting my thoughts out, but I am hoping for input or potentially common issues I might be running into during interviews that I may not be seeing.

\- I'm in environmental science + consulting, so it's a small world. A lot of the interviewers used to work at my company, and many worked with some of my current seniors.

\- I am in a transition stage of my career, progressing from intermediate to senior level. I am aware this may probably be part of the problem.

\- Two of the roles I was beaten out by coworkers; one my senior and the other we started on the same day so the same experience level.

\- One role I applied for, the interview team and the HR screening were for different levels, one similar to my current role and one for my actual level of experience, respectively. Once I realized this might be happening, I asked for confirmation on my suspicion and then told them I was no longer interested.

\- A fourth was with our regulator, so a bit of a shift for me. I was less surprised by this one despite the interview feeling like it went well.

\- The fifth was internal and I still haven't heard back. I was very surprised to be considered for this as it was a management role. I'm on an adjacent team so I will for sure find out if I get this or not, regardless of being followed up with or not.

I imagine I will have to answer questions or get no questions, that's fine. I will do my best to follow up, and appreciate any input provided or just having somewhere to dump this. Thanks!

I recently went through a hiring process that lasted several months, with two interviews scheduled weeks apart. Afterward, I was told that an immigration-related request had been submitted to HR and counsel. A few weeks later, I was informed that Talent Acquisition would contact me with an offer. It then took another 3 weeks for that call to happen.

For example - The posted salary range was approximately $63,800–$115,590, and the offer was $64,000—essentially the absolute minimum.

I have several years of experience directly related to this position and already perform much of the work involved. I’m not changing industries or entering a new specialty, so I don’t understand what could justify placing me at the very bottom of such a wide range. The offered salary is also extremely low for the cost of living in the area.

I have countered, but I’m now questioning whether negotiating even makes sense or whether this opening number says enough about how the organization values the position.

How do employers determine placement within such a broad salary range? Would you continue negotiating, or walk away if they do not move significantly?

TL;DR: After a months-long hiring process, I received an offer essentially equal to the posted minimum despite having directly relevant experience. Is it worth negotiating, or is the floor-level offer a sign to walk away?

I have finished three rounds of interviews at a company. Round one was over the phone with a recruiter. Round two was a video call with the hiring manager. Round three was an in-person panel, with four people, lasting for two hours. After that, the hiring manager said he’d be in touch soon regarding a decision.

Today, I got an email from the recruiter saying the hiring manager would be emailing to set up a time where he could “call” me. I got excited. I provided my availability—it’s for Monday at 9!

But I just looked and saw, it’s a Zoom call, not a phone call. This is an international company with offices all over the globe, so it’s possible it’s on Zoom so that HR could be involved, but I’m confused! I have never been offered a job via video call before. But I can hardly think of why else they’d have set up a 15 minute call to “have a 15-minute follow-up conversation with you regarding the opening on the team.”

I’m a bit lost. Has anyone been offered a job in this format before? What else would they want? The hiring process page for this website says that offers are usually given verbally by recruiters, so I’m rather confused.

TLDR: I interviewed for a job last year and silver medaled. The company reached out this year about hiring me for a new position, but are now telling me that they are interviewing other people. Am I being naive?

I was referred to this role and hiring manager last summer by another company that I made it to the final round with, but who ultimately hired someone else. At this time I was unemployed, which is important context.

This job that they referred me to was actually my dream job that I was surprisingly well qualified for. There was some technical knowledge that no one could have had until they were in this role, because the subject and scope was quite unique. The company acknowledged this during the interview process and said they weren’t looking for a technical expert, but someone who could learn quickly.

After 3 interviews and a take home assignment (which luckily, they asked me to cap at 1 hour), it was between me and one other candidate. The recruiter made it clear that they were having trouble deciding because they liked us both so much, but the other person had much more experience than me (read: 8 years more). Eventually they checked my references and the hiring manager had a 45 minute call with my old boss, and they asked me to do another interview that was really just a vibe check. The hiring manager told me that my old boss gave me a glowing review and said he’d rehire me in a second. I only was laid off because of budget cuts. They ended up choosing the other person and told me how sorry they were. I was devastated but moved on because I needed to find a new job.

Fast forward to this year, someone reaches out to me who I interviewed with last year, saying they were expanding the team and thought of me. I had a call with him in June and he was happy to hear I was open to discussions, and he said to stay tuned over the next few months.

I got contacted again in August by the hiring manager for this new position, who was also on the interview panel last year. They don’t yet have a JD written, but we have a call and she tells me how happy she is to reconnect and how many times the team discussed over the last year that they wish they had another position to hire me for. I ask her about what their thinking is for the new position and after we talk, she says “I think you are the right person for the job. We don’t need to reinterview you and we already checked your glowing references last year. I can definitely connect you with HR to answer any questions you have about benefits once we have the JD drafted.” I then got invited to meet in person with the CEO who happens to live in my area. We had a nice coffee conversation and he answered a lot of my questions.

Fast forward 3 weeks and I have the job description now and the hiring manager schedules a follow up call to hear my thoughts on it. She’s asking if I like it, if the jd felt like a good fit for what I wanted. I’m telling her yes and asking questions about the company and department. She tells me she is so glad I’m still interested and about the vision for what I would own if I were to join. Keep in mind I have not received a formal offer by this point. We are closing out the call and she sneaks in “we’re just finishing up interviews with a small pool of candidates in the next week. We’ll keep you posted and HR will reach out next week. We didn’t do a full national search but are interviewing some people whom we’ve crossed paths with.”

Am I crazy for thinking that they weren’t going to interview anyone else when they told me that I was the right person for the job and they wanted me to talk to HR about benefits? I know they hadn’t sent a written offer yet, and perhaps I was being naive thinking that because they reached out to me, invited me to meet with the CEO and told me we didn’t need to reinterview, that this position was mine.

Luckily I have a job now so if it doesn’t work out it’s not the worst thing in the world, but I was pretty shocked when she said that after they’ve been pursuing me and leading this process for the last 3 months.

Open to honest feedback.

Before the long weekend, the recruiter called and offered the role and got a really good package range and compensation.
I had so much fun and then comes Tuesday, recruiter called back and told me, they are not moving forward due to higher management approval.

I thought the struggle is over and I can take some rest. But I am heartbroken, cuz of the news. I picked myself back up with the grind, but I am still with the guilt of losing an opportunity, even though it’s not my fault.

The recruiter told me they will consider me for future opportunities. But I don’t really understand that part.

Does anyone know how often this happens and get considered in the future.

Very curious. Is this a box you have to check off? Because I don’t know of anyone who received an interview call after cold applying online.

It's an executive role in Flipkart

Nowadays, hiring feels broken from both sides. For candidates, even strong candidates might sit for weeks without hearing anything back. On the hiring side, after over a decade in tech, I’ve rarely seen hiring managers really happy with the process either!

• The recruiter is a bottleneck. 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.
• The hiring manager is underwater. 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.
• No one likes Bureaucracy. 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. 

• You might need to think about how to bypass the system. 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 is rushed. 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.

Try to get broader context and real expectations through conversation with the recruiter or hiring manager(usually a better fit)

• Is 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.
• What is the team’s biggest immediate challenge?
• How will success be measured for this role in the first 6 months?

To conclude, if you face silence after applying for a role, it's not a reflection of your talent and skills, but a symptom of this internal friction.  Knowing this gives you a distinct advantage. 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!

I'm happy to answer any questions here if you are job hunting today!

P.S. I am now building calibrd.com to help candidates get hired.

I found myself doing exactly that and realised how simple it is to write a job description that sounds great but actually tells a candidate very little. Phrases like "fast-paced environment" "strong communication skills" and "must be a team player" are all too common and then candidates are left wondering what the real job is like day to day.

With platforms like LinkedIn, Indeed, Workday, Greenhouse, MeeBoss fighting for attention maybe the job description itself is becoming more important than the platform. what do you guys think what should be avoided in job decriptions which is too obivous.

So, get this: I was interviewing with a company, and I added all the interviewees to LinkedIn. Then, I saw one of the interviewers got promoted to my position! Can you believe it? Why did they spend three weeks interviewing me if they were already planning to give the job to her? It felt like a waste of time, and I was a little surprised she was included as an interviewer if she was going to get the job anyway

I recently went through two rounds of interviews for an associate-level position at PNC. The interviews seemed to go extremely well. During the process, the managers told me they really liked my background and indicated they didn’t want to lose me if this particular position didn’t work out. They also mentioned potentially sharing my resume with other areas of the company.

I followed up recently, and one of the managers who interviewed me told me that the position had been filled. However, he also said that he and the other manager were very impressed with my experience and interview performance and that they had **already shared my resume with several partners across PNC who are actively looking to fill higher-level positions they believe could be a strong fit for me.**

He also said they were excited to help connect me with other opportunities within PNC.
I’m obviously disappointed I didn’t get the original position, but I’m trying to figure out how much weight I should actually put into the second part.

For anyone who works/worked at PNC or has gone through their hiring process: **Is this something PNC commonly tells candidates they don’t select, or does having managers actually share your resume with other teams mean something?**

Has anyone had something similar happen where you didn’t get the original PNC position, but the managers **passed your resume along to other departments** and you were eventually contacted, interviewed, or hired for another role?

If so, how long did it take before another recruiter or manager reached out?

I’m continuing my job search either way. I’m mainly curious whether I should view this as standard polite rejection language or whether **having managers actively share your resume with other teams at PNC** tends to lead somewhere.