How Top Engineers Still Get Hired When Most Get Ghosted

<p>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&#39;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.</p><p>In this episode, we cover:</p><ul><li>Why 120,000 tech layoffs and 60,000 open engineering roles exist at the same time</li><li>Why only 20% of LinkedIn messages get a reply, and how to write the ones that do</li><li>Why one hiring team bans AI tools in interviews and is building an agentic coding session instead</li><li>Adaptability and resilience: the two soft skills that keep you in the room</li><li>Getting hired through GitHub, referrals and open source when your CV can&#39;t stand out</li><li>Whether junior engineers still have a path, and which engineering cohort is at risk in 3 to 5 years</li><li>Titles vs scope: how to grow when your title never changes</li></ul><p>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.</p><p>Timestamps:<br>00:00:00 - Intro: 1,000 Layoffs a Day<br>00:00:47 - How Bad Is the Tech Job Market in 2026?<br>00:02:05 - Why 120K Layoffs and 60K Open Jobs Don&#39;t Add Up<br>00:03:40 - Why AI Tools Are Banned From Interviews<br>00:06:28 - Hard Skills Get You In, Soft Skills Keep You There<br>00:09:20 - &quot;I&#39;m a University Dropout&quot;: How GitHub Got Me Hired<br>00:10:18 - CVs Are Too Good Now: Why Referrals Win<br>00:13:04 - How to Get Your Open Source PR Merged<br>00:15:02 - Why 80% of Your LinkedIn Messages Get Ghosted<br>00:16:51 - How Open Source Led to a HashiCorp Job Offer<br>00:19:15 - Is There Still a Place for Junior Engineers?<br>00:22:00 - The Engineers Who&#39;ll Be Obsolete in 3 to 5 Years<br>00:24:20 - Should You Contribute to Open Source at All?<br>00:26:05 - AI Skills Required, Algorithms Still Tested<br>00:27:54 - Stop Chasing Titles: Scope, Impact and Owning Your Career</p><p><a href="#softwareengineering">#softwareengineering</a> <a href="#techjobs">#techjobs</a> <a href="#careeradvice">#careeradvice</a></p>