1. Prevalence of Fake Job Postings
About one in five online job postings are fake, filled, or pulled due to budget cuts, used by companies to test the market or pressure existing staff.
Hear it at 0:00 →Engineering video
16:16 · 20 January 2025
most developer job posting are FAKE (how to fix it)
Chapters 6 sections
Key concepts in this video:
2. Avoiding AI-Generated Applications
Using ChatGPT to mass-create resumes and cover letters results in obvious nonsense that causes hiring managers to immediately discard applications.
Hear it at 2:02 →3. Recalibrating Expectations and Commitment
Developers must scale their commitment alongside the company's commitment, avoiding wasted effort on unverified take-home tasks and unprofessional processes.
Hear it at 4:28 →4. Maintaining Focus on Core Skills
Job seekers should stick to their primary tech stack rather than chasing unrelated technologies or getting distracted by market negativity.
Hear it at 5:49 →5. Tracking Application Metrics
Treating the job search as a linear pipeline by tracking metrics helps identify bottlenecks like resume rejection or interview performance gaps.
Hear it at 8:22 →6. Ineffectiveness of Open Source and Content Creation
Spending time on open source contributions, blog posts, or personal branding rarely helps secure a standard engineering job compared to a strong resume.
Hear it at 10:36 →7. Signaling Through LinkedIn Profiles
Publicly broadcasting unemployment or desperation signals weakness; profiles should instead be set visible to recruiters only while projecting high professional value.
Hear it at 13:42 →Transcript
one in five online job postings are either fake or never failed and working with software Engineers who are looking for new positions I can tell you this is a reality that software developers looking for a job in 2025 and Beyond have to face okay there's a lot of fake postings uh jobs are posted even if they were already filled or the company just puts a job posting out there and then they pull it out because of budget cuts or whatever happens and the question is how can software engineers deal with that because it involves a lot of wasted time and a lot of frustration B across your career You' probably been applying
to around 800 900 jobs what's your take on that there's definitely a lot of fake jobs or there's definitely a lot of jobs like as you mentioned where they're not really wanting to hire they just put an offer out there but they're not really serious about it they just like going to interview a bunch of people and then hire no one three months later there's many reasons why companies do this sometimes it's because they change priority sometimes it's because they just want to test the market and see what they can get so they we want to see you know should we give some promotions or can we place our staff with someone
uh for a lower salary that's why we we know for a fact that most salary increases come not from promotions it's extremely hard to get even a 5 10% increase but from switching jobs because companies also use this kind of pressure to make sure that the people that have a job and are hired um do not ask for more right because they're scared they won't find something I think it's very true and I think it's even more true in today's market for developers you one that's uh working with a lot of our mes kind of when they go on hit the market what are the strategies that they typically use to to work around this and
make sure that they don't they don't get just demotivated the first thing I would say it's manage your expectations so understand that you know the job market it's what it is companies do these things and you cannot really control it the question is how can you work around it and how can you get through these fake job postings as efficiently as you can and move on with actually serious companies that are you know putting serious things out there and are willing to hire you candidates are also guilty because when they Char GPT launch everybody jumped in and they write emails using CH GPT they write their CVS
they write their applications so you have to understand yes companies are a bit merary on these things but do not make the situation worse and by the way I've seen a study where 80% of hiring managers would descri you or rate you negatively as a candidate if they found that you used AI in your application which doesn't mean you shouldn't use AI at all but what it means is you should edit everything you are posting out there yourself I mean I I see people who have like degrees and master degrees and phds and I'm like you can't write a freaking email yourself you need CHT for that you need CHT to write your CV
you've been four years studying un right so don't don't use it yourself don't make the situation worse by using Ai and saying hey I'm going to apply to a th jobs in 60 minutes like these people posting on by the way you can immediately tell if the CV is get with AI we we got some of those and and usually you get you know three paragraphs for something they could say in one or they use vocabulary like spare headed or kind of like nonsense totally English nonsense and then you feel like they don't respect the time and you just like discard the whole CV immediately because you're like okay this was
generated but yeah back to you because they don't respect your time right you are giving human time your time that you don't you will never get back your time is very the most finny thing and you're reading that that resume and the candidate didn't even put the effort to to write it right so it is an insult that's why if people get this negative emotion because it's true they are wasting your time right and number two it says nothing about you as a candidate it's just something chig out about you but it's not you okay in the end okay so don't use it now let's see how can you let's suppose you're not using AI you've
done your homework you have a great developer CV uh you have a great LinkedIn profile you don't waste your time like everybody does with uh open source or with portfolios because they don't work right then if you doing this stop doing it focus on your resume and focus on your LinkedIn so let's say you have this things how can you deal with fake postings well you have to spend time on these platforms you have to spend time on LinkedIn you have to spend time on inded and you have to do the applying yourself that's why we say don't use AI because when you when you see jobs and you keep seeing like 500
job posting as you search for jobs to apply you will develop an eye hey is this company actually serious or not and that's when you start cherry picking right try to spot these things and don't waste your time on them right don't send the CV the second thing it's a changing mindset I see developers definitely have the own mindset because they believe that if you make an application and they get a message back for an interview they think that's actually something that's some kind of commitment and I would say developers have to recalibrate number one their expectations and number two recalibrate your commitment okay so
unless a company is serious about inviting you to an interview and they are serious they they actually dedicate human time to you right do not think you know just because you you have some people calling you up that you're going to end up getting a job in the next two to three months okay and only commit to people that commit to you so you you scale your commitment as as they scale theirs meaning if you get a bunch of EMES back you apply to a job and you get a bunch of femails and they send you some some take-home task do not just right away jump on it ask some follow-up questions make sure you're actually
going to get back something for your time because this is where the frustration comes on the side of developers is I'm putting so much time on the job search and they are passing me around the jobs are fake the recruiters are unprofessional they are passing me around and I'm just wasting my time what I was about to ask you is how do you stay motivated I'm imagining someone that you know just got laid off maybe they're applying to 10 20 jobs a day and then sometimes you get rejected so how do you stay motivated when when you hear something like this I think people get demotivated because number
one they making no progress and number two they are putting a lot on the line without getting much back for example you just got a off and you have to go back to the market you are a JavaScript developer let's say you did a bit of python at your job you did a bit of java back in the days the first mistake people do is they do not focus right they they they try to run after five rabbits they're like hey you know JavaScript is very competitive right now so I'm going to try get a get a python job somebody talk to me about the python job and then they start you know putting so much energy into python just to get
rejected in in the tle interview because companies want a specialist they want to get the best they can for the for their buck and let's be honest if you've written python like 5 years go and your JavaScript de you're are not the best investment for them okay so number one is focus and stick to your guns I know some people that go and write you know they do a take-home task maybe in Python if they a GS developer because they think with GPT it's so easy and and they pass that do you think that's a good idea to like if I'm a Javas developer to go ahead and do like a python take on task and then try to squeeze myself into
a python interview especially if I'm not getting interviews no I I know these people and they never get an offer maybe they pass the first tle interview but then there's going to be another tle interview and a senior engineer a senior python engineer will want you to not only be able to get some stuff done in Python but they will want you to have an intimate knowledge of the platform and especially if you want to find a job fast right if you have two months or three months money in the bank to find a job do not try to learn something new you're going to suck at it you're going to be a junior Dev in Python and you're
going to be a mid-level Dev in in JavaScript stick to JavaScript those are tle gaps one thing you can do if you a front and Dev and you see that the front and Dev Market is very competitive you can add some full sex skills now you will not become a fully fledged senior back in engineer in three months but you can get a a feeling of the full second and you can learn how to do things on the full stack and if you couple that with with your client side knowledge that's very valuable but the one thing you should do if you don't want to burn out and if you don't want to to get demotivated it's number one Focus number
two it's don't watch the news these people on YouTube are telling you about how you know Zach Mike zberg is saying developers have no future and all that there's a lot of negativity online now because of the algorithm and that's not helping you so if you can shut that down and if you can just focus on your goal which is getting a new position in the things you know so let's suppose you're again the JavaScript Dev getting a new I know front engineering position that's it that's the only thing I I I'm going to do about um and I'm going to work on closing the gap on my interviewing skills and frontend skills and I'm going
to work on applying to jobs and getting interviews and then the one thing that I see lacking all developers lack it's number one they don't know their numbers like they don't know hey how many I I I've sent 100 applications how many people actually call me back from the people that called me back how many proceeded to attal interview and if you look at the numbers they are very loud and what I always tell people is finding a job it's a very linear process okay you apply with your CV and Linkedin you get you get a recruiter is calling you maybe you get an HR interview maybe you get a hiring manager interview then if
you pass those you're going to be passed on to the technical interviews those can be one two or three depending on the company usually it's at least two of them right and it can be live coding and it can be take-home challenge it's a bit like a pipeline yeah and and what I wanted to say that there's always a battl neck there's always a main battl neck and now you talked about the the resume right the resume can be a battle neck then your resume gets good but you say some some stupid answers in the with the recruiter there and you don't get passed forward to the tal interview right then when where most people get
stuck after we fix the CV and we fix the interview performance is the tal interview and that's what developers have to understand like your CV has to be good for you to get as many technical interviews as you can that's the game of getting a new job it's get as many technical interviews as you can and it has to be the same technical interview meaning it has to if you're a JavaScript developer you want to have those JavaScript technical interviews all over and over because that's when you're actually going to get good when you do the same interview over and over and over right two repetition in part that's
one way to get good but going back to to what you said you apply and you don't get any interviews that's definitely the CV and I mean we have a a full article on the blog and I can make a video about it but it's either that you don't have enough experience or if you have experence you are not communicating it properly and the biggest mistake here is that people think that their resume developers think their resume is kind of a g commit like a commit history of everything they've done and they fail to understand that you know it's actually the opposite it's from all the you know all the stuff you've been doing all the
experience you had it's cherry picking the one that's relevant and shaping it into a software engineering CV that's relevant to a JavaScript position I've seen a lot of people on YouTube saying when when they face this kind of Market the advice that I've seen right now in 2025 it's either um oh you should Network and just meet people personally or go and put your resumee in place or go to meetups and I also seen uh and this is what I want to ask you like doing open source get involved in projects so don't be just another application in in the pile of CVS do you think that would help the fastest way
for you to get a software engineering job is to have an amazing CV and to be good at interviewing build a lot of value in your resume and you don't do that by doing open source and GitHub and I I just had a chat a few days ago with the developer telling me Oh I'm working on my portfolio and I'm working on my trying to work on my GitHub and I as them a simple questions you know you have this hiring manager right this engine manager because HR cannot evaluate your your skills as a software engineer right so they are the ones getting the civilian if you think about this person they have eight hours in the
day they have to manage a team they have to manage a stakeholders they have to get everything done and then they have to sit down and read your amazing GitHub GitHub profile and your your resume right they probably are not going to look at your GitHub no matter what people say Okay most most HR Professionals in Tech most engineering managers don't check your GitHub number one because they don't have the time number two imagine you have some code there but code without an explanation I mean they won't understand anything okay so that won't work for sure it doesn't work and I invite you to try it and ask
how many people actually check your GitHub profile answer not many it might happen right there is there is one developer in a thousand that gets hired because of Open Source contributions now the question is can this be applied to the average Dev that wants a job and the answer is no regarding open source most open source developers are broke okay uh some of them are out of job some of them struggle to get jobs but they use this open source thing it's kind of an elitist elitis thinking and I wouldn't even pay attention to it it doesn't work like ask how many people got hired because of my open source again one in a
thousand doesn't mean you should do open source and what about I've also seen a lot of advice about either writing blog post creating content building your personal brand or doing YouTube videos I saw a lot of people saying oh you should you know whatever side project You're Building you should write a blog post about it and share your knowledge and what's what's your take on that should developers write blog post and and do YouTube content to to get a job with that help no and again I think it's you know these people say these things and because developers are kind of stuck I mean everything is as good as nothing
right so why H Let Me Maybe I haven't wrote a block post maybe I should do that and and I believe really I think it's it's getting distracted and is failing to understand the basic principles from first principles what is is about it's about getting in front of companies and showing them that you can do the job and the job is not writing blog post why do companies hire a software engineer because they want them to solve problems through code okay they want them to get a requirement refine it with the product manager and they want to ship that to production those are the only skills you should be working on
okay and there's so many people in the market a company doesn't have to go to your blog post and hire you like they are not that desperate to search online and see who which developer has a blog post it will take years for your blog to pick up to a level where it can actually help you build your brand so when you hear these things about do this do that no you need to get back to the fundamentals and the fundamental is companies hire software Engineers to solve technical problems to code my last question for you it's like what about this open to work I see a lot of people they get laid off and the next day you
see their LinkedIn and they say I'm open to work if anybody knows anyone uh please you know refer them my way do you think that's a good idea like if I get late off tomorrow to put that on LinkedIn and to set open to work in my profile I mean for recruiters yes not for everybody and uh it gets close to you know to begging and I'm not I understand people they think that will give them traction and and Linkedin added that but the problem there is signaling you are signaling to the market that number one you are kind of desperate number two you do you don't have a backup backup plan nobody likes needy people needy desperate people
nobody wants to ass associate with them so even if you're in a you know you're in a weak position there because you you need a job you you need people to hire you you should act like like You' be in a powerful position meaning that think about a very senior death they they've been at this company and they quit because they don't like it anymore they probably have five other companies wanting to hire them right people that they worked with in the past people that know they are very good right so the problem with putting this online and showcasing this to the world it's you are sending the wrong signal you're
sending the signal no I don't have that Network I don't have that confidence in myself and I'm just desperate here asking for a job okay and people do these things and they do these videos this Tik Tok videos or stuff looking for a job I do this and that will get your attention but it will not get you a job okay so you want to to project this image of a high value professional of a high value software engineer a high value software engineer doesn't you know openly uh ask people online hey just please recommend me that's that's pure desperation I understand where it comes from I don't think is the best I would
not read myself I don't think it's the best strategy I would open my profile for recruiters only because then you're going to pop up in the searches and then even there say Hey you know my last company we decided to to end things and then I I took a bit of a break and now I'm back to the market that's kind of the attitude you want to project yeah so never never show neediness okay so to to wrap it up um given that one in five job postings are fake we want to use like we want to first of all don't panic and be focused one number two use numbers number three then go ahead and just create content or write blogs number
four don't advertise the fact that you're unemployed on LinkedIn is not going to help you it's actually going to work against you yeah folks and if you if you are wondering how exactly to build that c that that resume or what I might te gaps check out the senior Dev website we have a free technal assessment there for you to find out your gaps and we have plenty of videos on this channel about how to navigate the technal interview and how to build a good quality resume that breaks through noise with that being said thank you so much and see you folks in the next one