I'm currently reviewing applications for a junior front-end position I advertised recently.
For those that applied, it's going to take a while to get back to you. I've gotten about 300 (close to 450 now, since I wrote this) applications. However, I think it would be useful to share some general feedback based on the applications I've received thus far. The goal here is honesty, so I hope it doesn't come across as harsh, but instead as a useful perspective from the other side of the hiring table.
🔥 The tech hiring space is a dumpster-fire at the moment. We need to start with the acknowledgment. It is not that you are not good enough, or doing something wrong. The market is over-saturated with junior applicants. According to Offerzen applications rose by 300% in only 12 months.
⏰ Due to the above, you only get a couple of seconds of eyeball time. There is no way someone can properly review your application. Let's say hypothetically I spend 5 minutes on each application, given that there are 300 applications, this would take me 25 hours just to figure out who I want to interview. It sucks. I hate it. I don't know what to do about it.
🔬 For the above reason, don't sweat the small stuff. In retrospect, when I started as a junior I wasted a lot of time fine-tuning my CV and cover letter to perfection. This is super subjective (I can't speak on behalf of what is common in the hiring space), but I haven't downloaded a single PDF from an application yet. If it's not in the email/DM message I'm probably not going to see it.
🤖 Also, super subjective, I recommend avoiding ChatGPT or an overly professional tone/template. Given how prevalent these tools and templates are today, every message based on them looks exactly the same. I've even gotten messages where the "Dear Sir/Madam. I'm applying for [insert position name here]" wasn't even removed. Ironically, the ones that stand out are the ones that just go "Hi Schalk. Is position-x still available? I'm interested in applying. Here is a link to my Github and LinkedIn".
👔 I often just quickly scan LinkedIn to see if someone has prior experience in the role. Where I have complete control over hiring (such as with Front-end Development South Africa), historically all our hires have deliberately been people with no prior experience - as vehicle to provide opportunity for those seeking experience. Unfortunately, when I'm hiring on behalf of a client I have a responsibility (towards said client) to consider the person that is best for the role.
👨💻 I generally also give the Github heatmap a quick look. There is no way I'm looking at any code or opening any repos on your profile. All I care about is how consistently you've been coding. Even if the heatmap can be gamed by committing some nonsensical code - this at least shows some consistent commitment to your coding journey.
👪 The most useful thing you can do right now for your career is to attend meetups, online Slack/Discord communities, open-source projects and/or conferences (email organisers to ask for free/discounted tickets if you are student/unemployed - this happens more than you think). There have been circumstances where I've bumped applicants straight to interviews just because I've interacted with them before (given they made a good impression). Investing in new hires comes with risks, and if the risks can be mitigated by knowing something about someone's character already it is a no-brainer.
🧡 In closing. I know it doesn't mean much, but I know what your are going through. There isn't much I can do, apart from just expressing sympathy - I've been in the same place in 2013, having been unmedicated up until that point, I came out of a massive depressive episode - never leaving my room for an entire year. Searching for a job with no prior experience and very little marketable skills is emotionally crushing. I was extremely lucky, and eventually ended in the right place at the right time. But things could have gone very differently. All I can say is that I hope you find your right place and right time as well.
One more thing I added after the initial feedback above, as I started getting a bit deeper into the hiring process:
🌍 Please ensure you have example projects that are deployed to a public URL. After I identified promising applicants I wanted to see if the example projects they provided aren't completely broken. While it is useful to have a link to the source code, I don't think anyone is going to clone your repository and spin up a local version of your project just to see how it works. Please ensure you have atleast one full working, deployed project online somewhere. Screenshots are also not sufficient, since it doesn't really matter how it looks, if the functionality is just barely working/or seems haphazardly glued together it is usually a good indicationg that a lot was copy-pasted/ChatGPT-ed without actually understanding the code that was written.
Thanks for the kind words everyone!