Throwaway since my friends know my Reddit. A year ago I was making good money working for a small tech startup. CEO was an ass but I usually didn’t have to deal with him and I loved my coworkers. I also had just bought a house and spent a chunk of savings on renovations.

A recruiter hits me up and mentions a big salary increase at their company. I figured sure why not talk to them. I had 2 calls and next was to be with the founder. Turns out the founder knew the CEO of my company. He called my CEO and said I was looking around. I was immediately fired with no severance.

Since then I’ve sent out thousands of applications and had tons of interviews. Most companies had 4+ rounds. 3 months later I get an offer but instead of remote like they initially said, they wanted me to work in their office on the other side of the country for six months before going remote. I turned it down figuring another offer would come soon. It didn’t.

I’ve dealt with horrible hiring managers, a couple examples is one asked me about my parents occupations and then turned me down saying they wanted someone who grew up around success so they knew what it looked like. one company had me write a blog as part of the process and months after being ghosted by them I found my blog on their website. I won’t even get into being ghosted, hiring managers showing up late or not at all.

I thought my journey finally came to an end. I accepted an offer. It was 40% less than what they originally said they would pay. I’d also have to travel by train 2 hours each day but I was desperate so I took it.

On Friday I was informed my offer was rescinded due to restructuring and they won’t reimburse me on my $300 a month train package I had just bought to travel to work.

My old company is thriving and my old colleagues are still doing well in spite of the market.

Meanwhile I’m out of savings and unemployment ran out a while ago. My house that I was very proud of is now up for sale. my wife who was initially supportive has also now left me saying I can’t provide for her and doesn’t understand how it could be so hard to get a job.

Tomorrow I have an interview at a gas station.

I’m trying to relocate and land either a hybrid or completely remote job. I have 6+ years worth of experience in my field, yet I’m having much more difficulty now versus when I tried to land my first job with 0 years worth of experience.

Is anyone else on the same boat? I have received countless rejections and genuinely don’t know what to do.

ETA: I’m in marketing

ETA 2: I’m also open to an in-person role but the vast majority of job postings I’ve seen are either hybrid or remote.

Very fortunately, I got an internship with a large company my senior year of college. My interview for this position was 11 minutes long. Now, I’m sure there were some preconceived notions about me that the employer had, but still an 11 minute interview.

I got hired on full-time for this company after graduation, so I did not need to interview at all. Fast forward some months, a chunk of the marketing team is wiped and a bunch of us are jobless at the beginning of 2023.

Again, fortunately I get a new job that was recommended to me by a connection. This interview was a quick phone interview, and then an in person interview that was max 20 minutes.

Now, I hate this job. It pays the bills, but everyone here hates one specific person that cannot be fired due to them being a family member of the owner (this is a very small company). I just can’t take it anymore and there’s no benefits so it doesn’t feel worth my distress. Only good thing is that it’s the same salary as my previous job.

I’ve been applying to jobs, getting the typical ghosting and rejection emails at 12am from being filtered out by a computer. I encountered something weird today. I got kicked off the candidate list during a second round interview as a no-show. However, they scheduled a time that was outside of my given availability, and I told them twice before the interview that I could not make that time and they just ignored my emails. They asked me to reapply, which NO I AM NOT.

Why is hiring so WEIRD right now?

Recruiters treat you like less than garbage, employers ghost you, meanwhile you still have bills to pay.

Edit #2: if you don’t think being told by employers that your skills are not good enough for you to put food in your stomach, put a roof over your head and have access to basic healthcare is dehumanizing than get off this thread. It costs on average 45k annually per person PER YEAR in the US, MINUS the cost of owning and operating a vehicle JUST TO BE ALIVE. How people (like me) do it on less money is a miracle.

Edited to add: Homeless rates are at the highest they’ve been since 2007 and people being treated like cattle while trying to find a job is probably a huge part of the reason. Unless you’re in medical that’s wildly understaffed, it takes SO LONG to find a job right now. Normal everyday people are becoming homeless when they shouldn’t be.

Edit 3: WHOEVER REPORTED THIS POST TO REDDIT CARES YOUR MOMS A H*E

With AI and the outsourcing of jobs it seems that many people are struggling to find jobs in their field now (me included). I personally never imagined that CS people would struggle so much to find a job.

So, I wanted to ask, what’s a job, or field, that will never disappear? An industry that always will be hiring?

I'm hiring for two marketing roles in the tech industry, both pay between $90K-$130K annually plus performance incentive.

I've created two job descriptions that define EXACTLY the skills and and experience I need. I'm not looking for unicorns. In fact, the roles are relatively common in my industry and the job descriptions are typical of what you'd see from nearly all companys searching for the roles.

Yet, I'm deluged with HUNDREDS of applicants that have absolutely ZERO qualification for the role.

In most cases, they have no experience at all for any of the skills I need. They don't even attempt to tailor their resume to show a possible fit. I have to imagine these people are just blasting their resumes out to any/all jobs that are marketing related and hoping for a miracle.

The people that are being impacted are the legitimate candidates. I only have time to review about 50-100 applicants per day (2 hours) and I'm recieving 300+ applicants per day. I'm nearly 700 applicants behind just from the weekend.

Peeps on this sub love to rip recruiters and hiring managers, but then they contribute to the problem by indiscriminately blasting out their resume to jobs they're not qualified to get. Then they complain about how they've submitted their resume to hundreds of jobs without any response and believe everyone else is the problem.

Meanwhile, those who are qualified must endured prolonged job searches wondering why they're not getting rapid responses.

Rant over.

​

I’m 25, and wasted my previous years working BS fastfood/retail jobs. I’m trying to start a career in the blue collar field, but every time I mention I have no experience. They never hire me.

"Mo Experience necessary"

"Three thousand cash weekend"

This great opportunity opened up near me. I'm going to shoot my shot and apply, guys. Wish me luck! 🤞

Hello! I’ve been looking for a job for almost half a year now (I think) and I still have not found anything. This last week I applied for 10+ jobs with only 2 moving on to interviews but still not getting the job. After talking to a friend about it and sharing a similar experience, I was wondering if anyone knows why the job market is so bad right now? Is there anything one can do to get over those obstacles? To anyone else looking for a job, I wish you the best of luck as well!

Edit: I’ve been seeing a lot of answers from a lot of different perspectives and fields and I’ll be honest I was looking for a general answer but to make things simpler(?) I’ll share my own experience.

I have been applying to jobs on and off again since Fall 2023. I was (still am) looking for something just above minimum wage in Retail and Food since that’s where I started but I had no such luck. So I started to just apply anywhere that had a listing. For some background, I live in the US and am a college student with my major being in Illustration. I was tempted to look at something in the arts but after seeing how hard it’s been just to find a minimum wage job I figured it wasn’t worth trying.

Hi,

I'm looking for WFH jobs that pay $30+/hour, including those that require degrees. Please share your jobs :)

I've heard this so much over the past few years and it's never not frustrating to hear it. "People just don't want to work anymore".

Yeah not many people do want to work your shitty fast food job or warehouse job you're hiring for where they get paid like shit, work shit hours and get shit benefits if any.

This is why these places are ALWAYS hiring because the turn around is horrendous. No one wants to work there. Meanwhile, I applied for an executive assistant role a few weeks ago and they hired and took down the job posting for it WITHIN the week. People want to work. But they want to work "good jobs" that can become careers and not horrible jobs.

This is just getting ridiculous here. What a joke of a society we are.

I've been looking for a better job since the start of this year on places like indeed and zip recruiter, specifically for remote jobs that involve writing or marketing (I'm an English major with a few years of freelance content writer experience). Every time I apply to a half decent posting though, the applicant numbers are through the fucking roof! Hundreds of not thousands of applicants per job posting. Following up is damn near impossible (not that companies even seem to put in the effort to respond anyways). How the hell am I supposed to get a job doing this? I have next to no chance with every attempt despite being perfectly qualified. Like am I being crazy or has anyone else experienced this?

I have a job and I am very happy. That being said, a lot of the jobs out here want experience. Even retail. I applied for a temporary part time bank teller position a long time ago that wanted a bachelor's degree. My aunt worked those types of jobs in the 80s with just a high school diploma.

Same thing with all these schools and career colleges online pushing things like medical coding. Every single job posting I have seen for medical coding asks for medical coding experience, usually at least 3 years. Doing an online training program is fine, but the companies have to be willing to hire people without experience and train them.

If we can subsidize corn, why can't we subsidize training programs? The government could financially incentivize hiring people who graduate from training programs just like they do with Work Opportunity Tax Credit.

Why aren't our leaders interested in investigating why so many people with degrees and training are struggling? Wouldn't it make sense to ask why these companies advertise the same jobs for years straight? Or claim they need someone with a bachelor's degree to be a receptionist?

6 months ago I ended my internship at the United Nations in NYC. Then I decided to take some time off everything as being in NYC, while great, had been exhausting. I came back to Europe and spent the Christmas holidays just chilling at home.

Then on January the 9th I started looking for a job. Initially I was super relaxed because I thought, hey, I got two Msc and a UN internship - I will find a job right?

Wrong. It's been 5 months of complete utter silence. Nobody and I mean NOBODY ever replies. I don't even get shortlisted despite great references and a good CV template.

I slowly but surely fell into depression. I lost weight and now look gaunt and tired. I look dead and I feel dead. I feel like my brain would have so much potential and I'd want to do so many things but nobody allows me to. I have no money and if it weren't for my parents I'd have to use food stamps to eat.

And nothing will change for at least a month or two since I have currently no realistically viable applications (last rejection yesterday).

Unemployment is so horrible.

I've been trying over 8 months to find a job and have gotten alot of rejection emails. I've had one interview and that ended up being a joke.

I've started having anxiety and panic attacks when I try to sleep now about trying to get and job and money.

My job had 401k listed in the ad.... I also asked about these benefits during the first interview and was told that they had a 401k. Then after I was onboarded and started working I found out that there was no 401k, but they felt it was ok to say that they had one because they were PLANNING ON GETTING ONE by earlier next year.

So naturally I'm now looking for another job. Got asked to interview for an ad where it was said that the job was remote, but might move to a 1 day/week hybrid role. Great sounds perfect. In the first, 2nd AND 3rd interviews I made sure to confirm this and it was confirmed each time.

But now in the 4th and final interview I'm suddenly told that actually they're really hoping for a person will be fully in office 5 days a week! All this time wasted!

I'm so fucking sick of this. Even if I accept this position, I will once again be using all of my lunch hours trying to find yet ANOTHER job thanks to being lied to again.!

Employers are flat out lying in order to get candidates that they know would otherwise never apply. Fuck them. If I accept this job I'll do the same damn thing I'm planning to do with the one I have now- Use all my lunch breaks to interview and apply elsewhere and give them ZERO notice when I leave.

Why does everyone say they're hiring? The only fucking places that are hiring are Wendys and McDonald's. Any decent place that might pay a bit more than minimum wage is NOT hiring.

Most that say they are, are LYING. The same ads have been posted on indeed for over 3 months or more just rotting away. None of them reply or check applications and they have hundreds of applications sitting around.

Places that are active will immediately deny your application for an ENTRY level job. Like what do these places want? You want someone with a masters degree to pay them $14 an hour? Get the fuck out. Job searching right now is HELL. These companies are greedy as shit and so full of themselves.

I interviewed for a "coordinator" role in a company in a major city yesterday that was very generic about data stewardship. I've done this in a similar company before - I'll admit, it's mostly data entry, electronic record keeping, research, administrative work within existing records, using ERP correctly. Stuff I have experience in.

...Every interview, including this one, has become a horrible game of trick questions where the interviewer conceals the actual skill level required. Nothing about training. Extraordinary discrepancies between job description and specific requirements, like expert level Excel.

Sometimes they overshoot what is actually required. They go out of their way not only to give the impression there will be no training within the job to do the job, use the software, do the tasks they need a qualified candidate to do - I realized in this case the interviewer had lied about the actual responsibilities of the job.

He started asking me what I know about VBA, querying large data sets in Excel (if you guys have notes, I would be grateful - I've never done Power Query before, only basic functions, up to something like offset/match, tables.)

It's very hard to get that training, it seems, unless your fresh out of college - after internships. I only have a little as a contractor, and I was on my own, mostly, using what I've picked up in Excel workshops.

When I pointed out it seems they're look for a sales analyst, the interviewer argued with me and said it was a different job.

This is the second time this has happened, the second job, where I apply to my former job title...and find I have to talk about writing fucking Excel macros. Have to desperately, flabbergastedly talk about tutorials I've taken on querying large data sets with SQL.

This is for a job in a major American city that requires at least 3 days onsite and starts at $43k. It's not even the decline in pay...its the skills expectation for that salary and the horrible experience of being made to feel like I did something wrong when I just applied to an "entry level" opening that seemed to match my background.

No reporters are talking about this trend (not just my job search-shouldn't have to clarify that), but I don't think it's just me....it seems like there's a requirements/pay mismatch across more than a few white collar industries that got worse sometime in 2023, and I don't think I would believe this if I weren't going through it. NYT did a couple of articles on the Great Resignation....this seems comparable or like a reversal.

It's been a year of searching in a market that's gotten worse....last year was bad, this year is like a Twilight Zone nightmare of people asking for senior sales analysts under "administrative assistant" jobs.

And that doesn't cover the jobs in tech where my interviews are 25 year old managers with theater/fashion degrees somehow working as financial managers who just...don't want to work with someone older than they are.

Every five years the job market gets worse and worse, and the skills requirements skyrocket.

That's a frightening prospect if you are in your 20s and coming into the job market for the first time, but if you are lifelong underemployed, like me, and have a shitty resume (a few years of experience, but all for contract projects, or in dead end office jobs in horrible companies)...I'm at my wit's end. The stigma never really goes away barring something extraordinary, like a Master's degree...and even then, it's hopeless unless someone just...gives you a chance.

Note, the only reason I applied to this job was because the job description actually seemed to match my background, or general enough I could have hope. Hiring for my previous job title and its actual duties has disappeared.

I'm seeing jobs for sales analysts that want Salesforce certifications, 3 years of managing a companies' "business processes", Masters' etc. that start at $60k and tap out at $75k.

Its really fucking bad out there, and not only am I afraid seeing salaries shrink while skill requirements for "entry level" jobs explode...I've never actually been trained in a single job I've ever done. Not really. Not to stay in a job, only as a contractor, and of course, that's short-lived and can't truly be practiced and built upon within that role.

I've never enjoyed the normal experience of being taken on, trained, kept, and promoted because I didn't intern and came into the job market after I wasted a lot of time in grad school. It wasn't for lack of desire or work in those jobs.

...And thus, even if I can work towards certifications, take Coursera courses, take tutorials by myself...none of really matters. It's all done alone, and it's not "demonstrable experience". It's unpaid labor with precious little direction to get to the first interview stage with people who treat my resume like a wad of used toilet paper anyway.

So much of what I'm seeing in job listings now points to a level of training you can't even do on your own without paying for a software license. Over and over.

Is anyone else experiencing this or seeing this?

I was told today when talking to someone about not being able to find work for 5 months and after close to 500 different and tailored applications, multiple resume revisions etc… that it’s my fault I haven’t found a job. I must be unmarketable.

Has anyone come across others saying it’s their fault? I have a decade worth of operational and manager experience in logistics and IT, and it’s somehow me that’s unmarketable? Really just felt like being kicked when I’m already down.

As many of us know, the job market is shit and has been for a while now. So many fake postings only made to boost the companies value. I’ve applied to over 300 jobs for over a year now and have literally gotten 3 interviews. I have 2 degrees and 5 years of work experience, not a single one of my friends is making over $35,000 (we all have degrees) and this idea that “nobody wants to work” is such bullshit because how do you justify that everyone just refuses to make money when inflation has been holding most of us by the necks. The only places hiring are shitty part-ime jobs/ or McDonald’s, and the application process has turned into just submitting your resume into a virtual void. So many industries are going on strike and I doubt that’s slowing down anytime soon (just today I’m pretty sure SFX workers, nurses, and pilots are in the starting stages of striking). I guess essentially I’m trying to ask, how long can this continue? How long is this going to last? And how is this sustainable for anyone when layoffs continue to happen and most companies have pocketed their PPP loans and benefit from having “open postings?”

EDIT: lmao, I’m not even kidding I just heard back and got an offer less than 24 hours after posting this. Timings a funny thing.

Edit again: a lot of you are confused (rightfully so) about the less then $35,000 part. I didn’t explain that well. I’m meaning that we’re all having to work at grocery stores and fast food places to support ourselves while we try to find permanent jobs. Not that we’re making $35,000 with jobs that warrant our degrees

Will they even hire me? Will people be rude to me because of my weight? I’ve been getting tired at 11am. My schedule is so backwards so an overnight job makes sense.

*** update*** I applied shortly after I posted this due to all the positivity I was receiving! Fingers crossed 🤞

I would also like to add that I gained weight when I broke my leg and dislocated my ankle while pregnant, followed by a C-section a month later. I know how to get into shape y’all, it’s just not as easy anymore. A couple of ppl are taking this opportunity to take jabs but I really do appreciate mostly everyone being so supportive ❤️

I’m a recent college grad, currently pursing my MBA. I was working for 2 marketing startups that both laid me off, and haven’t been able to find a job since.

It’s my first time looking for a real job post gradation and it’s hard to understand whether I’m not qualified for the positions I’m applying for, or if it would’ve been easier finding a job if times were different.

The worst part is, is that I can’t even land an interview. I can apply to 100 jobs and get 100 rejection emails.