Technically jobless growth/ghost recession... but at least he has a better shot for being a good boi

Saw a guy standing outside our building this morning, overdressed for the weather, on his phone. Security mentioned he'd just come from an interview. Asked him how it went, he said "not really" and gave this half laugh that wasn't really a laugh.

Later found out from my assistant that a coworker had interviewed him for a junior analyst opening and rejected him for not being "technical enough."

That role has zero technical requirements. It's literally listed as entry level with no coding or technical skill needed anywhere in the description.

Pulled his CV out of curiosity. Normal fresh grad resume. One internship. Nothing that would explain a rejection like that.

Asked the coworker what he meant by technical. Got a vague answer about wanting someone who could hit the ground running, which isn't the same thing at all.

Still bothers me a little. Not my department, not my call, but I keep thinking about that half laugh.

Been using the same résumé format since like 2019 and I literally just go into Word and edit. I despise generative AI btw.

Also is the goal to find a suitable candidate or someone who can stand out with designs on a piece of paper?

Anyone else dealing with this?

9 months, 140 applications, 3 onsites, 0 offers. ranked by how much time i wasted:

1. custom cover letter for every single app, zero measurable difference

2. "networking" via linkedin dms to strangers

3. following up after exactly one week

4. the video intro thing

5. paying $180 for a resume writer

6. applying within 10 minutes of a posting going up

7. career fairs

8. a portfolio site nobody opened

9. careerflow, after multiple rewrites(7+) got 2 recruiter dms the week after.

10. cold emailing hiring managers

11. certifications

12. "just be persistent"

what's on your list

What do we call this relationship - JOBYGAMY?

Entry Level Jobs - requiring 5+ Years experience.
Entry Level Jobs - asking 4 Years exp
Entry Level Jobs - demanding 3 Years exp
Entry Level Jobs - requiring 2 Years exp.
Entry Level Jobs - asking 1 Years exp.
Entry Level Jobs - looking for Recent Grads.

How can all be same?

What's better to call this than Polygamy?
- The JOBYGAMY?

Entry-level pay. Senior-level demands.
Can't get hired without experience.

Can't get experience without getting hired.
Companies are killing their own pipeline.

I (25m) had a stable job, but it was destroying my mental health. As in I was coming home from work every day drinking 3-4 beers and getting anxiety attacks at my desk kind of destruction. I was paid barely above the poverty line to do what amounted to two separate job's worth of work, on top of being bullied by my boss.

After months of intense searching (over 40 applications) I found what felt like a great job. I had a great, supportive manager for the first time in my life. I had great colleagues that I actually enjoyed being around and working with. Best of all, the manager promised me a career opportunity, to grow with the company as he spearheaded the new department that I was hired to work in.

Six weeks later the business owner decided for obscure reasons that she had spent too much money on setting this up, and fired my manager. I'm lucky that I got re-hired, but now I work in this business's store front as a clerk, and I lost about half my salary because the business owner won't give me full time employment even though she's posting offers on Indeed to hire more clerks.

I can't even try for a second part time job because they publish the schedule the day before the work week starts.

I'm legit crying looking for jobs and applying. It's a desert out there...

Like are you kidding me.

Edit: since a lot of people in the comments have mentioned that apparently this is a common saying in the military, I want to clarify that this job wasn't even military affiliated LOL

Thanks for the email, I know already I didn’t get it lmao

A solid 1.5 year job hunt, countless applications, referrals, final rounds, networking, resume tailoring, career fairs, and whatnot (Im sure everyone here already knows all the must-do’s), I got severely depressed this July and reduced applying as crazily as before. I just didn’t have it in me anymore, I went through weird ups and downs in motivation so some days I would do 20 apps while other days just 5 or something. Now, towards end of August, I have admitted defeat indefinitely. This job hunt has completely destroyed my self worth, confidence, and any semblance I had of an identity. If it weren’t for family I would’ve been on the streets by now. Im only in my mid 20s and I have a strong feeling my career is over before it even began properly, I don’t see any hope of getting employed. I just wanted to let this out of my head. I wanted to write it somewhere that Im just done, I don’t know what to do anymore. It isn’t seeming like this will get better anytime soon, if anything it keeps getting worse.
I’ve never seen this many of my peers/friends out of a job simultaneously and day by day I see them get as hopeless as I am.

I have been depressed for these past few days, but today I truly feel like shit and decided to post here.

I live in Portugal and I have a masters degree in psychology. Since january, I have been sending my CV left and right, trying to land myself a mandatory internship to become a *real* psychologist. So far, I have sent it to exactly 151 places and I managed to go on 6 interviews. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any of the internship positions. 

I’ve asked for feedback after every interview. Today one of the interviewers finally replied and said that, because I have no experience working with children, I can’t work at that school. They told me I should go to a school and volunteer with kids. At 23. Looking for my first real job. Thing is: I had highlighted heavily that I worked for 2 years planning and making birthday parties for kids. So, no, it’s definitely not a clinical setting, but I do have experience with the demographic, and giving that it’s an internship and that I am supposed to learn and have supervision, I find it odd the interviewer would respond that, given that it’s not true.

Since june, when I finished an online course that I made some money with, I realised that I can’t keep on being unemployed. So I began to put more effort applying to positions outside of my field of study, in hopes I would be luckier. In Portugal, the only prospects that a psychology degree gives you is either becoming a psychologist or being in HR. I have been applying to all of the junior HR positions that I come across, and so far I have only landed an online interview and heard nothing back. 

Also, what really made me want to vent here was that today I went to an interview for a receptionist position at a well-known car company. Keep in mind, I applied through an outsourcing company. I arrived 15 minutes earlier and I was met by a young woman, who, after the deal, I think might be the new receptionist, and she tells me that I can seat myself while I wait for HR to come get me for the interview. Five minutes before the schedule, the HR from the outsourcing company calls me and says there has been an emergency and that we have to reschedule. I respond that we can do it tomorrow, and HR tells me they are going to confirm with the client and would call me shortly. Obviously, I didn’t get that call. I wasted my time and I wasted my money on an uber for the interview site for it to get cancelled last minute. And HR couldn’t even get to the reception to apologise and ask for a reschedule which is what pisses me off the most here.

I feel betrayed, frustrated and utterly stupid. I spent five years in university, I worked hard to get my degrees. I cancelled plans with family and friends, took my time and a toll on my mental health to study, to volunteer, to work, only for my efforts to mean nothing in the end. I have been waiting for 8 months to get my internship, but a lot of people in the same situation as me have been there for a year or two… 

I really wish the job market didn’t suck right now, that’s all.

I got rejected outright, and he got offered a managerial position. Ngl it really hurt. I know I’m a capable and intelligent person but I feel like I’m never given a chance to prove myself! Especially sucks because I’m the one in need of a job, meanwhile he’s already making bank. Of course I’m glad he has options, I just wish I could have options too. Welcome to my empire of dirt

I can't figure out if my name is connected to his email address somewhere or they are just playing dumb and emailing him because they see we are associated. They email him but address it to me like they think it's my email address, even though the email address is clearly his name which is clearly not my name.

I'm 37 years old, married with a different last name, and haven't lived at my parents house in over a decade. Every time he forwards me one I respond with a nasty response; it has happened at least 5 times. What gives?

As of right now, I have applied to ~55 jobs in the last couple of weeks. Over the course of this year, at least 200. Multiple interviews, multiple rejection emails. According to almost all the interviewers, my CV, covering letters, screening questions and pre-interview tasks and general experience are exactly what they are looking for. Fast forward a week later, the typical email of 'we regret to inform you...' with a tacked on reason. What the hell can I do if I've done everything right and still get told no?

Interesting description!

Just finished with an interview and I am sure I didn't do very good. But I feel it was just as much the interviewer's fault as it was mine. He was asking questions in a vague weird way I haven't seen before. One question was he asked me to use objects around my house to explain OOP, which I did and I said words that would indicate encapsulation, polymorphism, etc. He then told me he was looking for the specific words, which his question was vague and he could have just said he was looking for those specific words instead of me using some object to explain things. I feel like he should have been able to interpret the answers he was looking for when he was expecting me to interpret what specific answers he was looking for through is odd explanation of asking me a question.

I understand people do things differently, but I sure do love when I get an interviewer that knows how to interview and makes the process simple. I don't care about easy and I am a dumb ass 4/3 of the time (yes I meant 4/3), but have a guy with an accent rambling for 30 seconds to ask a question where he wants just a simple specific answer. It was painful.... oh well onto the next one I go.

I just wanted to rant a bit :)

I’ve been a silent Reddit lurker for quite some time now—since December, actually, because that’s when I lost my job. I’m unfortunately an entry-level data engineer, and we all know how hard that is right now. I also recently earned my master’s degree in Data Engineering, which I thought might make the search a little easier. It has not.I think my breaking point was getting rejected by both Chipotle and Walmart. Neither one knew about my degree, so I can’t even blame those rejections on being overqualified.

After application after application and multiple résumé variations—and believe me, my résumé has come a long way because the first version was very rough around the edges—I jumped from Indeed to LinkedIn to ZipRecruiter. I mostly targeted data analyst and data engineer positions. I’ve also mainly searched for remote roles. Yes, I know that’s a stretch because the remote job market is a beast of its own, but I can’t afford to relocate before I get a job. So, for now, I’m stuck.

After months of tailoring résumés, writing cover letters, answering the same application questions repeatedly, and watching “Unfortunately…” pile up in my inbox, I decided an Excel sheet and a notepad were no longer going to cut it. I decided not to protect my peace.

Instead, I built an end-to-end data pipeline that uses the Gmail API to retrieve my emails and identify common rejection phrases. Then I turned my heartache into a dynamic Streamlit dashboard with bar graphs, line charts, automatic updates, and a button that lets me download my suffering as an Excel spreadsheet.

And that is how Unfortunately, Blah was born.

A lot of people told me not to make it because it sounded depressing, but I did it anyway because:

A) I’m curious.

B) It gives me a funny, meaningful project to discuss when recruiters ask me to tell them about something I’ve built.

And, as I’m typing this, I just received another rejection—this time for a data engineering role.So now I’m sitting here looking at my pretty, pretty graphs as they automatically update my rejection history in real time. At least the pipeline works.

Apologies for the long post but I am fuming as I’m writing this. I just had a screening video call with a recruiter from a publicly traded company with about 500 employees.

The recruiter was 5 mins late to the call, didn’t have her camera on as she “just got back from a weekend in Vegas and does not look presentable for camera”. I asked if I should turn my camera off as well but she told me to leave it on - I was already feeling uncomfortable at this point but still went ahead with the conversation.

She then asked about why I’m currently in the US since I’m from Canada, to which I replied I recently relocated here after getting married and it’s not possible to continue my previous role because it was onsite in Canada. She said she did not understand and asked me to explain? I repeated the same thing because I’m not sure what’s so hard to understand from my statement, to which she replied “Ok whatever, I think I understand” in a rude and dismissive tone??? Mind you, this is the same answer I’ve given all recruiters and nobody had an issue with it.

Moving on, she said they’re very intentional about who they hire and asked me “What’s the most interesting thing about yourself because looking at your resume, I don’t see anything that jumps out.” I was annoyed but still kept it professional, I explained my unique background and relevant skills I bring to the table, only for her to say “Ok but forget about the work, what do you do for fun?” 😬 I’m sorry what, is this a job interview or a date? I get that culture fit is important, but I expected a professional interview where I can talk about my skills and experiences, but they seemed to care more about whether I’ll fit in their clique than if I can do the job.

At this point I should have ended the call, but I still entertained her by telling my hobbies and such. She then switched gear to ask about one technical skill - finally a good sign I thought - so I confirmed I do have the skill and explained briefly what I did in my previous role pertaining to that. This woman goes on to say “whatever” a second time, and asked me “can you say what you just told me again but in one sentence” ???

WTF m’aam, do you have the listening comprehension of a 5th grader???!! It’s not like I gave her a long winded answer or anything, I spent 30 seconds explaining what I did, and somehow it’s still way over her head. In the past I’ve only had recruiters either thanking me for being specific with my answers or asking for more info/context, not made me summarize or be vague about important skills.

When there were 4 minutes left on the call, she said thanks for speaking with her and didn’t even ask me if I had any questions for her. I had to say “is it okay if I ask you some additional questions about the role” then she replied “yes but I don’t have much time”. When I asked when is her hard stop, she proceeded to answer in the most condescending tone “the more you talk, the less time you’ll have to get your answers”.

So I asked her about the whole process as a final question, and she responded “it’s an interview process. Next step is meeting with the hiring manager, then there’s an assignment and maybe a panel interview. But we don’t have a process in place and things could change last minute. We’re a billion dollar start-up, and we don’t like processes.”

You’d think that’s the end of it, but no, this lady added one last thing before we ended the call “let’s just take one step at a time first. I don’t even know if you’re moving forward to meet the hiring manager. We’re very selective and out of 100 resumes we received, we picked only 2 to interview.” So I went to check the job posting on LinkedIn again, it has already been reposted but with only 54 people who clicked apply 😬😬 I sent her an email to withdraw my application immediately after the call.

I’m absolutely floored and do not understand how this behavior is acceptable. Candidates are expected to research the company and role, dress up, be on time, professional and respectful while companies can say or do wtf they want. The hiring process is extremely broken right now and the more we condone this as candidates, the more they’ll disrespect our boundaries.

*Just really wanted to vent after a bad experience with a hiring manager last week and now an appalling interview with a recruiter.

Had an interview this week, did absolutely zero prep and ended up doing some corny appreciation sentence mid interview... It wasn't even the end.

I'm still so embarrassed lol

On a side note, I had a hiring manager screen and now am doing a recruiter screen. Is this normal? Should I be optimistic of being advanced forward?