My personal record was 9 years. I had actually accepted different job with the company and they moved me across the country. I left for a role with another org after 5 years or so. A couple years later they reached out to offer me an entry level position.
I still get emails from jobs boards I put my resume up on like 10 years ago. Sorry, no I’m not interested in your part time or entry level position anymore.
I applied for a job at a restaurant at 16 (literally days after my birthday) and the phone call they gave me basically boiled down to "if you can get here in the next hour you have the job"
I was desperate so I accepted. I worked there for 3 miserable years before quitting.
I spent months searching then accepted a job and moved to another state. 3 months after starting new job, a company I really liked asked me to come interview. I laughed and told them if they wanted me they shouldn’t have waited 7 fucking months to reply. They see us like cattle.
This hits hard for me. The survey is the first thing I've heard from them. I keep a tracker of places I've applied to and when, and note when I get rejected or called for any interview. I still have applications open from a year ago.
Yesterday I got an "application experience" survey from a company I applied to last October. When they asked me "is there anything else you'd like to share" I told them that they need to get a little more disciplined about following up with candidates.
When I hear back from a recruiter, and they sound desperate, and I've already moved on with my life and gotten much better work than a recruiter could possible give me, and I get to sit down, take a deep, cleansing breath, and write them a very long-winded and formal rejection letter.
I've got a form letter that I always leave one <insert company name here> in to reply because I'm petty and want them to know that I'm out here rejecting offers. They all want me to work on printers.
I applied for some temp work, doing building work (among other things). At the time I was at university, so wanted to make money in my time off. I never heard back from that particular agency, and wrote it off as a bust.
Cut to a decade after finishing uni. I get a random call, to see if I am available. I'm now a veteran freelancer, in a highly specialist field, so I'm used to being cold called with work offers. It quickly becomes apparent that they are not talking about my field however.
I eventually got enough info out of them to realise where the info must have come from. Even funnier was how annoyed she was that I hadn't made them aware I was no longer available! I don't know which is more impressive/disturbing, that they kept my application for that long, or that they were so short handed that they managed to get that deep into the pile of old applications!
