Five hundred and sixty-one applications. Forty-four interviews. Twenty-five companies. Five final rounds. And no offer.
The numbers were the point, but not the whole of it. What the candidate wanted to describe was the erosion: interviews that no longer feel like opportunities but like a chore that leads nowhere. The excitement of a good conversation, a strong team, going all-out on a case study — and then nothing, again and again, until the excitement stopped arriving at all.
They have ten years of experience managing products worth over a hundred million at a major tech company. None of which answers the only question left: not whether it will happen, but whether it takes ten more interviews, or a hundred, or a thousand. Stay strong, they told the others in the same position. Never give up.