How Top Engineers Still Get Hired When Most Get Ghosted

About this episode

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