Ghosted by employers
Ghosted by employers — not cool. In a job market drowning with tech vacancies, why not give juniors a chance?
As a junior developer in my early 30s, I suffered certain hardships while studying at university, which unfortunately led me to graduate at the later age of 30. So, I am a junior but an older junior.
I have now been in the job-searching market for the past 2 years, approximately, but I have been working in various fields since the age of 22.
Today, we are faced with a market that requires us to have experience, to be on top of our game, be ready to improve ourselves daily, while working a full work schedule and, sometimes, with barely any supervision or training. While some of those variables are understandable, every time we go out seeking that new job, we have to compete with other candidates, sometimes hundreds of other candidates and at times only to be left in the dark with no clue what the outcome was. Even when we are proactive and ask for feedback, often we are met with silence and zero replies.
Unless we are successful in landing the position or we had a recruiter find us one, these two scenarios seem to be the only ones where employers these days actually reply to candidates about the state of their application.
Being neglected by the companies you were interviewed by, while wondering if you failed or succeeded, is not the worst part of this entire process, although it can be relatively soul-crushing at times. The worst part is that after being tenacious and trying to find a good, solid junior role to develop my career, it now seems and feels like most companies will never give a junior a sincere chance.
If you are lucky enough to find a company to interview you then you are faced with another demon: low salary and barely any training. No one is willing to “take a risk” on a young employee or a “Junior”and offer them a livable salary and that, in my eyes, is both a professional mistake and morally wrong as we are part of this community and society too. We pay rent, we pay bills, we have basic expenses and needs, struggling to make ends meet while still fighting daily to improve ourselves just so we can have a chance in the future to come, for a better tomorrow, both for us and our loved ones.
Training and investing in juniors, or even those of us that are older than new grads but still want to develop and learn or perhaps change direction, is a huge bonus. A great perk to offer candidates that will ensure they are loyal and grateful for the opportunity and will no doubt work twice as hard.
Since we keep hearing there is a talent shortage in tech, why not take us juniors and mold us?
At the very least, don’t ghost, even a junior knows that’s not ok and its not professional.
Tech enthusiast, job seeker — Andreas Panteli
