When I was starting out, the ratio I would get for callbacks was on the order of 20:1, and the conversion to offer was on the order of 50-60:1, and those are extremely generous numbers.
I think a lot of people have seen the million jobs that I've had (and the fact that I have not been unemployed for more than a month in almost a decade) and just assume that I'm some expert interviewer, and yeah I've gotten better, but in reality I still get rejected far more often than getting an offer. My ratio now is probably closer to 20:1. Obviously I'm not the pinnacle of success or anything, but I think I've done pretty well as an engineer (particularly since the first decade of me doing this I didn't even have a degree).
I think a lot of things in life boil down to a numbers game. Million-to-one odds aren't so bad if you plan on doing something a million times.
I think a lot of people have seen the million jobs that I've had (and the fact that I have not been unemployed for more than a month in almost a decade) and just assume that I'm some expert interviewer, and yeah I've gotten better, but in reality I still get rejected far more often than getting an offer. My ratio now is probably closer to 20:1. Obviously I'm not the pinnacle of success or anything, but I think I've done pretty well as an engineer (particularly since the first decade of me doing this I didn't even have a degree).
I think a lot of things in life boil down to a numbers game. Million-to-one odds aren't so bad if you plan on doing something a million times.