Reply #56: You can often tell

[necso]

that it's going south even when it's not so obvious. For example, in the past when I applied for grunt positions, if I got a lot of questions about my leadership experience from the group manager (or the like), then (as I eventually came to realize) there was simply no chance of being hired.

Now, when I was younger (after attaining a modest amount of experience), I had a very good ratio of job offers to interviews (better than half), even when the job wasn't a particularly good match. But as I got older, I seem to hit a point where no matter what the job was, I didn't get any offers, even when the match was very good. Indeed, I got the persistent feeling that I was being interviewed simply to "fill out" (or "sweeten") the "candidate" pool (resource-squandering bastids).

And it came to the point where the only interviews I got were for jobs where they essentially had to interview you, like for government jobs where you ranked highest after testing (although I got skipped once there too -- after being number one on both tests).

I was doing some tech work (while trying to land a full-time job) at this office one time, and people were talking about choosing a new hire, and the person making the choice said (in paraphrase) "I would never hire anyone who could do my job better than me." ...

But I think there's also been a real change over time in how "horse-flesh" is chosen. (Although this may open up opportunities for those with better judgement in such matters. Not that I expect anything much to come of this opportunity; in many ways, we live in the new dark ages.)

Keep pluggin', you may get lucky.