“The average length of time it takes to hear back from a job application is one to two weeks or around 10-14 days after you submit your application materials” - Glassdoor
That seems to be the common consensus for an employer to get back to you after applying to an opening (on average). This isn’t something I’ve ever thought about, nor have I really cared, but after searching for a new role this past November to mid-December, I was really surprised with how many companies just didn’t respond at all. At one point during my search, I remember trying to find any statistic speaking to the % of applications that go entirely unanswered, but I couldn’t find anything. So, I thought that it would be interesting to create a visualization of sorts to share the results of my job hunt, seeing as I keep a detailed spreadsheet of all my applications and their dates.
Unfortunately, my report turned out very underwhelming for a few reasons:
- I only applied to 24 openings, so my sample size is very small. I tried asking my LinkedIn network if anyone kept similar information on all their applications, but no luck
- Out of respect for the companies I applied to, I chose not to share their names & other information publicly - if you’re curious to see the spreadsheet, please reach out
- Because of #2, there weren’t very many data points I can play around with to create a more interesting viz
Before I share the link to my sad looking pie chart, I want to also highlight some considerations in regards to my results:
- Seeing that my job search happened near EoY, it could have meant that teams were generally busier and general business priorities shifted temporarily
- Most of the roles I applied to were for smaller SaaS organizations - I applied to very few enterprise organizations (<4)
- I was referred to 3 roles - surprisingly the days until response for those 3 were spread out: <1 day, 5 days, and 36 days
- Not that this should affect response rate (if anything it should make it easier for them), but some of the roles I applied to had requirements that were definitely outside of my experience
The results were:
- 15/24 companies responded to my application (that’s only 62.5% - which I found pretty low)
- It has been at least 2 months since I have submitted my application to any of the roles that have not responded
- The average time it took for companies that did respond to get back to me was 9.93 days
Anyway, here’s the viz:
Thank you for making it this far! Please don't hesitate to reach out - feedback is always appreciated.
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shayanmz12@gmail.com