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250 applications per junior position shows how rough the market is for new grads

physicsguy 1y ago
If you think that’s bad, about 15 years ago I asked a recruiter from Rolls Royce how competitive their grad scheme was and it had over 20000 applications per year at the time.
- chr15m 1y ago
  With 250+ applications per job, does your company carry the prestige of Rolls Royce? Everything you are saying affirms the point OP is making.
  - physicsguy 1y ago
    No, though that company was a small company owned by a big corporate and working in renewables so somewhat interesting. I’m not sure it does - I was last hiring two years ago. What I am saying is that this is nothing new.
- insane_dreamer 1y ago
  how many new positions did they open annually? 20000 / 250 would be only 80 positions a year; doesn't seem like a lot for a company like RR If they opened 200 new positions a year, that's only 100 applications per position
  - physicsguy 1y ago
    Sure, but not all applications are equal right? If you get so many applications, you can basically cream off the top % for your grad scheme, even after accounting for the fact that you won't have every student accept a new grad offer.
marcus_holmes 1y ago
I was recruiting for junior devs in the UK back in the early 2000's and it was the same story then. One job we advertised had over a 1,000 applicants. 750+ were immediately ruled out because they had no right to work in the UK, another 200-ish were people from other professions trying to get into tech, but that still left us with 50+ people we should have interviewed but couldn't. We had to get down to arbitrary decisions on ridiculous grounds to cull the pile of CVs to the dozen or so we actually had time to interview. And this was a small business in rural England. I can't imagine the stack a large company in a city would have to go through. It has always been hard to get into the tech industry. There has always been a shortage of junior positions, and getting the first gig has always been the hardest step of this career. However, I can totally understand how LLMs are making this worse. An LLM fills the exact spot in the team that would normally be taken by a junior dev. Anyone trying to get into the industry these days has my sympathy.
danielscrubs 1y ago
The media have been shouting the high salaries and IQ of programmers for nearly three decades, it was bound to satiate the market one day, with or without AI. Add to that the addictive nature of programming…

If you think that’s bad, about 15 years ago I asked a recruiter from Rolls Royce how competitive their grad scheme was and it had over 20000 applications per year at the time.

chr15m 1y ago
With 250+ applications per job, does your company carry the prestige of Rolls Royce? Everything you are saying affirms the point OP is making.
- physicsguy 1y ago
  No, though that company was a small company owned by a big corporate and working in renewables so somewhat interesting. I’m not sure it does - I was last hiring two years ago. What I am saying is that this is nothing new.
insane_dreamer 1y ago
how many new positions did they open annually? 20000 / 250 would be only 80 positions a year; doesn't seem like a lot for a company like RR If they opened 200 new positions a year, that's only 100 applications per position
- physicsguy 1y ago
  Sure, but not all applications are equal right? If you get so many applications, you can basically cream off the top % for your grad scheme, even after accounting for the fact that you won't have every student accept a new grad offer.

marcus_holmes 1y ago

I was recruiting for junior devs in the UK back in the early 2000's and it was the same story then. One job we advertised had over a 1,000 applicants. 750+ were immediately ruled out because they had no right to work in the UK, another 200-ish were people from other professions trying to get into tech, but that still left us with 50+ people we should have interviewed but couldn't. We had to get down to arbitrary decisions on ridiculous grounds to cull the pile of CVs to the dozen or so we actually had time to interview. And this was a small business in rural England. I can't imagine the stack a large company in a city would have to go through. It has always been hard to get into the tech industry. There has always been a shortage of junior positions, and getting the first gig has always been the hardest step of this career. However, I can totally understand how LLMs are making this worse. An LLM fills the exact spot in the team that would normally be taken by a junior dev. Anyone trying to get into the industry these days has my sympathy.

danielscrubs 1y ago

The media have been shouting the high salaries and IQ of programmers for nearly three decades, it was bound to satiate the market one day, with or without AI. Add to that the addictive nature of programming…