Mentor
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I have a few theories.
1. The ‘real’ white collar market has been in recession going on two years now. It’s been only the last 6 months or so I’ve started to see sporadic news articles on this but check your valid/suitable LinkedIn or other reachouts over time. I went from 20 or more a month to a 3 month period of - zero.
2. Trump isn’t improving things here as not even his own party knows what he’ll say or do next. Ignoring the fact he went after Obama and Biden both about ‘abusing executive orders,’ well…. ‘Total unknown’ is a difficult business environment and not conducive to expanding hiring.
3. It’s not just the US - ongoing as well as recent convos with peers and former employees of mine paint a not-so-great picture in the UK and India.
4. A lot of projects/products/initiatives are being cut or reduced as a result, which is putting a squeeze on salaries and many jobs are seeing 200+ applicants within days. I saw this personally with > 200 submissions within 3 days 1.5 years back, versus almost no applicants a year prior.
5. There are a lot of more junior PMs out there, while companies are pressing for ‘more with less’ - whether its by using AI to try to augment staff or just ‘deal with it, but we cant hire now..’ doesn’t matter. A decent portion of companies (let alone HR and recruiters!!) can barely if at all explain the differences between Product, Marketing, Project and Program Mgmt - they’re all going to hire cheaply and ‘best of the good enough.’
So, what can you/we do?
1. Differentiate yourself if possible.
Get publishable LI references, do some free certifications on LI or Coursera and add to your LI. Make LI and your resume like an elevator sales pitch - add media where possible and focus on the numbers and your strengths. Review your skills list while you’re at it. Then feed it through multiple AIs for feedback given the type of role you’re pursuing.
2. Network.
A good number of us may find this bit painful, but IMO the best path to success right now is to play up your top skills, domains, etc. to bypass the ‘submission 279 or 426’ path. A colleague can get you in the door along with a personal recommendation, while ‘fixing’ your LinkedIn and resume will help HR and recruiters find YOU - they absolutely are still doing searches.
The ‘specialty skills’ combination worked out well for both myself and one of my direct reports. He had submitted to a handful of semi-specialty jobs needing domain and regulatory experience he had, 2 of 3 submissions led to interviews and offers. I had a reachout based on having specific successful industry experience 1 job back, followed working in a very ‘hot’ field - the combination of which was difficult to find. When our long-standing predictions came true (expected layoffs and political maneuvering), I was in final round interview literally a few hours later. Ironically, I had JUST finally updated my LI for the recent company and set the open to work flag, then the reachout a couple of weeks later.
It’s an absolute mess out there right now. In the worst case, doing the above won’t hurt, and it MAT help. Good luck!
Mentor
This was super helpful.
Yes
One of those two