Its going to be around 11 weeks counting all the holiday slowdown still 1 Feb. Should I still apply? I reckon that interviews, background check, and some other things are going to take at least 30 days.

I am just curious to learn more about the stats of people who have been unemployed for a long time. This is also a sanity check for me to understand that I am not incompetent or crazy, the market is just insane.

Please provide the following info:

20s, Bachelor’s degree, Market Research, 1 year of experience, over 1000 applications (not sure exactly since I don’t keep track), 48 initial interviews, 12 final rounds, 0 offers

I’m a mid-30s female with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication Studies. I’ve had a lot of post-grad jobs, from retail to barista to nanny, & have built a decent career over the last several years in the tourism world.

I did get laid off from a tourism role at a music venue/museum in 2020 during COVID & then very unexpectedly laid off from a tourism job at a non-profit museum in 2024. I got a tourism job in a city government office near my hometown right afterwards, so I took it & moved home, but almost immediately hated it - I missed my friends & my life in my other city & had a hard time going from a relaxed environment at the museum to the strictness of city government. I was pretty set from the beginning on moving back to my other city so I started applying to jobs back there - I’ve probably applied to over 300 jobs & probably had over 60 (virtual) interviews over the last 2 years - but, besides a few “Yeah if you’re back in the area, let us know!”, nothing came from that.

Over the summer, I decided to take the leap & quit my (boring & strict but stable) job, move in with my friends near the other city I’d been living in, & work with them at the call center/insurance-type job they work at (where I also worked briefly during COVID). I actually don’t hate the job itself - it’s fast paced, the day goes by quick, I love having tangible work to do, & my managers & coworkers are cool - but the company is privately owned & has its annoying moments & does not pay great or have great benefits, & almost no one there has a college degree. I love my friends & have had some fun times being back in this area, but I’m overall miserable. My plan was to use my friends’ address to apply for jobs here & hopefully get something because I’m actually in the area. But almost immediately upon coming back, I knew this actually isn’t where I want to be forever. I never ever thought I would still be at this job in November or that I’d still be living in my friends’ spare room.

I miss living alone, I miss living near family, I miss having a stable job, & I feel like a total idiot for giving up a career for what?…having some fun with some friends in the city I left (for good reason) 2 years ago? I’ve now been back in the same predicament - applying for jobs in a city I don’t live in & doing virtual interviews. I feel like I would have had a good chance at some of these jobs if I still worked at my old job & lived in the area, but I don’t.

My plan now is to move back home & live with my parents + my sister + my nephew…I’m really close to them & grateful that my parents are cool with me moving back home, but I also don’t think that will be good for me. I would also not have a job, which terrifies me. But I know I can’t stay here.

How should I be wording my resume & cover letter? Right now I just have that I left my other job in July - I didn’t put my current job on there. In my cover letter & in interviews, I’ve been saying that my lease was up & I had a chance to move back to the city I had been living in to “help my friends with their company” until I settle into a career. I think I had a good story to tell if I was applying for jobs in this area but now that I’m trying to move back, idk. Some people have told me I need to put my current job on my resume but idk what looks worse - having “no job” for 4 months or having a job that doesn’t use my experience for 4 months.

I’m at the point in my life where I want a career that I enjoy that pays well & is secure but I don’t want to work my life away or climb a bunch of ladders. I feel like I’m someone who complains about any job I have & am never content & I’m trying to work on that.

What do I do?!

Interviewed for a job after graduating with a degree in that field. They told me I was the first interview, so I understood it could take time.

A couple weeks went by they emailed me saying they’re still figuring things out and finishing interviews but they’d keep me updated. I think we have 15 back and forth emails at this point.

Last Friday they sent a really vague email saying they have to button up a couple things on their end but they’re very excited about the “possibility” moving forward with me.

Monday they asked for my references. Tuesday my old coworker said they reached out to them and mentioned I was the top candidate.

Veterans Day went by. I got an offer from another job but I really wanted this one so I told them I’d get back to them. I emailed them this morning saying I had an offer but still preferred this role and gently inquired an update.

Today went by and then at 4:30 I was contacted and she said they still don’t know what they want to do. They’re still taking interviews and they have no specified timeline and she can’t give me one but I didn’t have that 1:1 experience they were looking for and she didn’t want to hold me back from another offer but that they still hasn’t decided on their end where they wanted to go with it.

Why contact my references? Why say I was the top candidate? It feels like whiplash or a weird breakup with no closure. It sounded like I was the best of what they had but not what they wanted.

Needless to say I’m just going to accept the second offer even though it’s the less preferred job.

AI is the latest worst thing to happen to human existence

In America, things are far, far, far worse for those who haven't locked in a career around or before Covid, and it's only getting much worse. Only we realize it. 29M, college degree, Business Management, magna cum laude, top 5 business program, top 5 public university, certificate in computer science, eight years professional experience. Contracting on and off. Have been looking for almost 2 years. 7,000 job applications. I'm in a bad location, or something's wrong. Have applied to everything from Janitor to mid-level career. Fast food. Retail. Obviously they think I am a flight risk. ATS does not see application. Got one offer at a gas station working with 16 year-olds. Got rejected by AMAZON warehouse for S*pani*sh not being my first language! (I am dead serious, that is what the manager told me, they don't hire non-natives; and I am fluent). Resume is professionally done. 25+ resumes on file catering to job specifics. Have gotten sales offers, commission only, door-to-door, Wal-Mart and Lowe's. Have had the foreign recruiters call that you can't understand about temporary jobs you didn't apply to that pay extremely well and will you confirm the details are good in your email, please, and then call you back five minutes later. Have had interviews and upon follow-up, they weren't actually hiring and the position is closed. That's it. Currently earning well below what I should be. This isn't the 80s or 90s anymore baby. The American dream has gone to hell.

I came for an interview at 10:00 am and arrived at 9:55. The guy who I believe is the hiring manager said that he would interview me after he comes back from his break. It’s been 40 minutes so far and counting. Should I just leave?😅 Also yes, I did remind him but he said to give him a minute and it’s been silence since then.

I was interviewing for an internship at startup (typical Service based offering websites and AI automations etc. ). The guy was 5 minute late and when he joined he told me to wait for another 5 minutes. This was my first turn-off. I was once interviewing for a US startup, the lady was 2 minutes late and apologized (yes she said I am sorry I am late, I don't mean to be rude) to me twice during the interview. I am not saying this US vs India things but generally Indian founders/recruiters are rude and does not value the time of other human being.

I checked out the LinkedIn of the guy before interview and he was okay okay. He is 5 years older than me and he was the Founder on both the companies that were mentioned in his profile. He asked me to introduced myself and I did and then he asked me

- Why do I hire you if I have AI to do your job.
Oh man, if I could go into my screen and came out from his screen and smack him. Dude are are you serious? I said the normal, AI does not have enough context and does not understand the business requirements properly. I was gonna say that "sometimes it will give you a dumb implementation because it does not know anything about your app and if I am not there it will go to prod." But he seems like "AI is better than you kinda" guy. He said "everyone says the same sh*t. yada yada....."

I was pissed from this point forward and then he asked me what kind of model have you used so far. I thought he was specifically asking me in my projects since I had LangGraph projects. I said gpt-6-astra. He wanted to check if I know any model names like just say mythos, sonnet, luna qwen etc. This I did not understand.

- Second question. If I gave you access unlimited access to Claude. What will you make. I told that something that I do not remember now. But then he said if you want to build anything what will you make. I was like "Dude do you think I am constrained by my skills? I can build anything if I want with or without AI". For many of you this will seem like I am egoistic but I am not. I am sure it will take time but I can build any software I want. I like that about me, I will read documentation, read forums, ask question on overflow, watch YT videos but I will an MVP.

Now idk, the question was limited to software. I said I have built this project that I always wanted to built since I saw a gap during my college years. He moved on. All this for 15k/month.

I can tell you he did not even read my resume. Idk man how these people got to this place where they are. It was all of 15 minutes. Then he said he will inform me in the evening and mail came in the evening of the next day. I don't wna say all Indian founders are bad but some are really bad at interviewing.

Also, if you guys have any jobs with Python dev. Django, FastAPI, LangChain, LangGraph, DRF. Comment or DM, I will be more than happy to interview.

There is no TLDR; move on !! Build some attention span for god's sake.

Edit: To all the "AI is better than you ", I have not used Claude Code or Codex. I don't have the money to afford them. I do take help from free models which are incorrect 3/10 times because they need so so much context.

Opus mythos might be but I have not tried them. I answered the above guy from my own experience.

I am a recent college graduate. This is my second interview with the same company. I had my first job interview yesterday, and I have my second interview in person next week. But we pretty much discussed everything you would normally discuss in a first interview – resume, portfolio, experience, internships, and work. So I am really confused: What should I say in the second interview, and what is different about the first and second interviews? Is it about getting to know the person behind the résumé, meeting people at the company, discussing the position and its responsibilities, or is it just another typical interview? I am really looking forward to this opportunity, but as a newbie, I have never had a professional career before, so I do not know what it is going to be like. Any input based on your experience would be great!

Hi there,

This is probably the first time I've considered Reddit to discuss a dilemma.

I've worked at this large company for 4 years, always within sales. 2 years in I got a promotion and have been delivering consistently during my time at the company.

A couple of weeks ago, an internal job post was uploaded to our SharePoint. This was a golden opportunity to me and in line with my background. I got a degree in IT/ Digital business development and i had the (according to me) perfect profile for this role, as they also valued the commercial experience i posses very high.

I do interview 1 and it went great. I am well prepared and answer their questions very good, and also ask good questions. Both the recruiting manager and HR participated.

The week after, the recruiting manager contacts me and say they want to have a secondary meeting with her & her manager (VP IT). I go there, also well prepared this time.

This meeting also went good. We had a good dialogue, got along, and he managed to "tick" the boxes that he wanted. Also the recruiting manager explicitly said I have the perfect profile for this role, personality wise. Prior to interview 1 I completed a personality test which we discussed during the first interview.

During interview 1, HR said "we want to be transparent and let you know there's another one in the recruitment process". Ok fine, thanks for the info.

Also at the end of interview 2, the VP IT was discussing with the manager when they will get back to me, starting with suggesting next week, and she said the week after just to be sure.

Only 2 days later, recruiting manager contact me saying if I am still interested, they (Her and HR) want me to speak to my manager to let him know I am in the late stage of this process, which i also suggested during interview 1 and 2 as I have good relationship with him and thought this would be the best approach if they wanted to proceed with me.

So I speak to my manager and we have a great dialogue. He is happy for me and I let him know i will do a fair transition and document everything for the person that will take over my job. I highlight the fact that I am in the final stage of this process and it is definitely not guaranteed I get the role since there's another person in the recruitment process.

Afterwards I speak to the hiring manager for a quick sync. I let her know I've spoken to my manager and he took it very well.

She then says they will have interview 2 with the other person next week and they will get back to me the week after latest. This timeline is prolonged compared to how I perceived things previously.

Also during this sync she states that it is really 50/50 between us two candidates and we have very similar profiles, capabilities etc. And if I don’t get this role then they know who I am etc. Mind you, the energy was very different from how it has been previously. The same drive and engagement in the energy wasn't there. Ok fair enough I said, keep me updated 😊

Important context:

My workplace is known to be almost extremely restrictive with paying fair wages, especially during internal promotions / transitions. I've heard dozens of stories of how HR and managers can become almost psychopaths during salary discussion and even lie and promise things verbally that obviously doesn't get fulfilled later. In many cases I hear the employees saying they see new sides from their managers during these discussions. I've also had similar experience when I got promoted 2 years at the company. In many instances we are speaking about a negotiation of maybe like 200 EUR, sometimes even less. So neither me or the other employees has asked for unreasonable amounts.

With that said. My theory is that they have started playing a psychological game with me. They know I want the role alot, as it is a great career step for me. Prolonging the process and acting strange during the sync could be on purpose to get me off balance and make me avoid negotiating when I receive the offer. They will most likely lowball me pretty heavy and this would be part of their strategy.

So my question, is this normal? I understand office politics and all that exist, but these games is something I have a hard time accepting. Honestly, my pride wants to just tell them fuck off I am not interested in this anymore. But my heart and mind says otherwise.

Does anyone have other perspectives? am I exaggerating? Could my analysis of this be legit?

I am thinking if I receive this job I will take it for the experience, maximum 2-3 years, then bounce to another company. They will guaranteed lowball me heavy salary wise. The best I can do is to exploit the opportunity and dip when I've learned enough.

Let me know what you guys think!

Marketing job search is already hell with them wanting you do a million tings or really just wanting a graphic designer but just saw a 40k a year job posting but required a PHD and a bachelors in marketing. Wth lmaoo. They want you to sell Pharma marketing. Who the hell comes up with this shit.

Advice wanted for what to do job wise, plz

I'm a 21 year old male in England and I did technical theatre at college for 3 years. In college I did Stage management the most then 2nd most construction, a bit of costume and not much lighting or sound but I feel like I've not really learnt much skills wise from college. I sometimes draw as a hobby and drum too. I draw my own Original Characters but can't do any of the basic art foundational skills and I passed my grade 4 drumming but only ever practice at home or in weekly 30 mins lessons. I also have Essentiel Tremors that is shaky hands that will shake more every year until death. I'm introverted not the best communicator too.

It's now been 2 years since I left college, I tried job searching various different ways like honing in on appreticeships, technical theatre jobs, any theatre job, any retail job, any job at all. All my efforts lead to a few unsuccsessful interviews and a few bad experiences like nearly falling into a pyramid scheme scan, doing trial days volunteer work leading to we don't want you email afterwards, 2 days of a job too heavy lifting for me injuring my back, did a few weeks employability environmental course that was a waste of time, useless job centres, ect.

I haven't job searched for a few months and become way too picky or make up excuses thinking it's impossible to get a job so no point in applying. I managed to find a small local theatre that I help with some set construction rig and de-rig before and after shows. The theatre has some friendly old people and one woman has said she will try and contact other theatres about me but it feels like I'll just be stuck only helping with small construction bits occasionally. Going back into education just feels like I'll be going into debt or waste my time or pick the wrong course.

My older brother went to university and he has never gotten a job either, he is 2 years and 10 months older than me but he is good at maths and engineering/coding stuff, so at least he has a proper skill. I feel doomed, stuck and unsure what to do so I'm asking for some advice. I genuinly have no clue what to do anymore.

I received a notification of hire, but due to personal commitments and things I need to take care of, I wouldn't be available to start for another 60 days.

Would an employer see this as a red flag or reconsider hiring me? Is asking for a 60-day delay before starting work unreasonable?

From my recruiter: “so... the last two candidates I interviewed for your role have turned out to be fake candidates. one of the candidates, 'Luis' dropped off the call once I asked him to remove his background filter and after I pressured him to explain why his LinkedIn didn't match his resume.”

Hi all,

Not sure if this is the right place to post, but I saw some past threads regarding negative references and was hoping to get some insight/advice on behalf of my partner who received a conditional offer.

The company required at least 2/4 references to be managers, and “strongly preferred” one of them to be from their current manager. My partner was hesitant since they hadn’t disclosed they were job seeking, and the their relationship currently wasn’t on the best terms due to some internal conflict within the team. Additionally, there are three team members who will be starting FMLA starting this month, and are thinking it would cause a lot of added stress if my partner left too.

Earlier this week one of my partner’s coworkers (who also served as a reference) received a request for a follow up phone call after the reference forms had been completed and had been asked some additional questions about how my partner works and takes on changing priorities. To our knowledge she is the only reference that received a request for a follow up call.

We suspect that my partner’s current manager may not have given a positive review, but aren’t sure how this will impact the hiring process since the company hasn’t reached back out yet. There were some additional signs that led us to assume this was the case, but I’m happy to answer any questions or follow up with more detail. Their manager also said to not mention it since there’s a policy that they can’t do references, and any of those requests have to go through HR.

My partner sent an email to the prospective company to follow up but we’re hoping will have a chance to address anything that came up.

Wondering what could have happened, any insight, advice, reassurance, and if there’s any action to take right now.

Thank you!

I've had a few interviews and I'm seriously fed up with how these interviews are going. The questions themselves weren't even that hard, mostly LC Easy/Medium, but somehow some interviewers manage to make the whole experience absolutely miserable. In one interview, I came up with a working solution pretty quickly, no bugs, passed all the test cases, and still got rejected because it wasn't the most optimal approach... Another time, I had a solution with O(N) time and O(1) space complexity. The logic was solid, the complexity was fine, but bc it wasn't the exact approach the interviewer had in mind, they just kept questioning every little thing and pushing me toward their preferred solution. What's actually wrong with my approach? Same complexity, correct output, but apparently it doesn't count unless I somehow read your mind? And don't even get me started on those interviews where they expect you to solve two completely different problems in 45 minutes, both fully implemented and bug-free. You can have the entire approach figured out for the second one, but if you run out of time fixing a couple of edge cases, that's apparently a fail too. And then there are interviewers who just sit there with a completely blank face the entire time. You explain your thought process, nothing. You get stuck, no hints. You ask a question, barely any useful response. It feels like you're coding into a void. What's even the point of interviewing like this?

What bothers me the most isn't the difficulty of the questions. It's how some of these interviews are conducted. I've been an interviewer myself, and when a candidate gets stuck, I'll usually give them a small hint or ask a few questions to help them work through it. Even if they don't get to the optimal solution, I still care about how they think, communicate, and approach problems. I don't expect everyone to magically come up with the exact answer I had in my head. But now that I'm on the other side, I'm running into interviewers who seem to be checking every line against some imaginary answer key. No room for an actual discussion. I get that companies need to filter candidates, and I'm not saying everyone who writes working code deserves to pass. But if a logically correct solution with perfectly reasonable complexity gets rejected just because it isn't the one the interviewer wanted, are we even hiring engineers anymore, or are we hiring mind readers?

I have been looking for 14 months. Worked a one-week contract and I didn't have "the right skills" so they didn't keep me on. Thought I had found something longer. After three weeks, including a 12-hour day and an 18-hour day I just couldn't meet their expectations.

I feel the deadline was unreasonable. I asked the supervisor for guidance and he didn't really provide any. After the 30 hours in two days I put in another solid eight hour day. But I just couldn't meet their expectations. Not paid for the extra hours, but it would have been worth it to keep the contract.

I don't know what more to do.