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Keep in touch means "keep in touch".
It also means - "I need more skill than you're bringing for my immediate hire, but you're a good cultural fit. I've been at this hiring thing long enough to know you're not going to still be in the job market when my next role opens. But I'm hoping you think of me and reach out when you get fed up with your next job and start looking again."
Source: I hire developers.
This one. It might feel huge at first but that world is small. Your paths will likely cross again.
It sounds like he is suggesting you develop your skills and knowledge a fair amount from where you are now, and is open to you applying in the future… like, maybe 6 months to a year would be my guess.
It means maybe apply again in the distant future after you are more established as an experienced dev with a "better grasp of the fundamentals." But you didn't get the current job and they were trying to be polite about it.
You didn't get the job. Move on.
Keep in touch means: Update me if anything changes. Don't update him on your progress towards what you agreed on, only if you won't make it or gave up or something.
Normally I would agree with people here that he was just being nice, it may happen in a call where the recruiter is awkward and got caught off guard. Generally you would end the interview and wait for feedback by email instead of getting it directly in the call, it may have been a inexperienced recruiter or a tiny company with no process. 3 weeks does sound short to clear any gaps in your knowledge.
What I know for sure in 20 years in the industry is that companies will tell you "sorry it's policy to wait X months before applying again" instead of making you waste your time applying in a few weeks. I'm not really buying he was being nice if he agreed to chat again. I would advise writing to him again in a few weeks, telling him you had a go and feel much more confident. Tell him you understand that the opportunity may have passed but that you wanted to make good on your agreement to get back to him, and that you appreciate his feedback either way. This implies of course he agreed to check back in a few weeks
You may not get a reply at all, but it's worth a shot given he specifically agreed to chatting again in a few weeks. You have nothing to lose. While the job may have passed, there are more and I've often made connections in interviews for jobs I didn't get, that ended up paying off later when meeting them again.
Yea, for the most part I would have agreed with everyone else as well, he was just being nice. But it was a much less formal interview then normal, and at the end he made a point to add me on LinkedIn during the call because he wanted to stay in touch. That was the only thing that gave me enough confidence to ask about meeting again in a few weeks. I'm still focusing on applying elsewhere and not putting all eggs in one basket but I'm hopeful to have this at least in the backburner.
If you said: Hey can I email you in a few weeks and he said yes, then do it.
If you asked "can i poke you in 3 weeks" and he just ambiguously replied "let's keep in touch", then I would not write again.
Most people will connect even if they don't expect to hear
I think he wants you to message him every day with a little "hi, how's it going? Hope you're having a good day"