How Top Engineers Still Get Hired When Most Get Ghosted

How do top engineers still get hired in 2026 when most applicants get ghosted, 120,000 people have been laid off this year, and hiring managers say they can't find talent? A recruiter, a hiring lead, a career coach and an open source engineer explain why your resume is dead on arrival when every CV looks the same, and what actually gets you in the room instead.

In this episode, we cover:

Why 120,000 tech layoffs and 60,000 open engineering roles exist at the same time
Why only 20% of LinkedIn messages get a reply, and how to write the ones that do
Why one hiring team bans AI tools in interviews and is building an agentic coding session instead
Adaptability and resilience: the two soft skills that keep you in the room
Getting hired through GitHub, referrals and open source when your CV can't stand out
Whether junior engineers still have a path, and which engineering cohort is at risk in 3 to 5 years
Titles vs scope: how to grow when your title never changes

For software engineers, students about to graduate, and anyone in tech who wants to know what recruiters and hiring managers are actually filtering on right now.

Timestamps:
00:00:00 - Intro: 1,000 Layoffs a Day
00:00:47 - How Bad Is the Tech Job Market in 2026?
00:02:05 - Why 120K Layoffs and 60K Open Jobs Don't Add Up
00:03:40 - Why AI Tools Are Banned From Interviews
00:06:28 - Hard Skills Get You In, Soft Skills Keep You There
00:09:20 - "I'm a University Dropout": How GitHub Got Me Hired
00:10:18 - CVs Are Too Good Now: Why Referrals Win
00:13:04 - How to Get Your Open Source PR Merged
00:15:02 - Why 80% of Your LinkedIn Messages Get Ghosted
00:16:51 - How Open Source Led to a HashiCorp Job Offer
00:19:15 - Is There Still a Place for Junior Engineers?
00:22:00 - The Engineers Who'll Be Obsolete in 3 to 5 Years
00:24:20 - Should You Contribute to Open Source at All?
00:26:05 - AI Skills Required, Algorithms Still Tested
00:27:54 - Stop Chasing Titles: Scope, Impact and Owning Your Career

#softwareengineering #techjobs #careeradvice

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