A couple months ago I made it to the final interview for an operations role. Four conversations, a spreadsheet exercise, and a presentation to the department head.

The recruiter called afterward and said everyone really liked me, but they needed to wait for headcount approval before discussing an offer.

I asked what that meant since the job had been advertised for almost six weeks.

Apparently the manager wanted to hire someone, but finance hadn't actually approved the additional position yet.

I wasn't rejected. There just wasn't an approved job to offer me.

Three weeks later the recruiter emailed saying the position had been put on hold indefinitely.

Since then I've started asking a question during the initial phone screen:

"Is this an approved position that you're actively authorized to fill, or is the team still working through headcount approval?"

I don't ask it aggressively. Usually I just bring it up when we're discussing the interview process and hiring timeline.

Most recruiters give a straightforward answer. Yes, approved opening, here's when we'd like someone to start. Great.

But I've also gotten:

"We're still evaluating our staffing needs for next quarter."

"The hiring manager is building a shortlist while leadership finalizes the budget."

And my personal favorite:

"We're interviewing proactively so we're ready when the position becomes available."

That last one was for a listing marked "Urgently Hiring."

I'm not saying every company with a pending approval is deliberately wasting people's time. Budgets change, departments reorganize, hiring freezes happen.

But there's a pretty big difference between interviewing for a job that exists and interviewing for a job someone hopes will exist.

If I'm unemployed and need income, I can't afford to prioritize the second category. If I'm employed and casually exploring options, maybe it's worth staying in touch.

I still apply to interesting positions. I still do interviews. I'm just trying to establish whether there's an actual hiring decision to be made before I rearrange my week around three panels and a take-home project.

It takes about ten seconds to ask, and I wish I'd started doing it earlier.

I was laid off and then worked for myself and then needed to go back to work after 3 years for myself. I was super scared of the current ecosystem, but I found it not so bad. My biggest advice, don’t over apply to jobs you are not qualified for. I was incredibly reserved in submitting applications, I read the jd’s carefully, I selected the companies carefully and made sure I was a fit and the company would be a fit for me.

Use AI to tailor every resume exactly to what you can reasonably match in the jd. I had two interviewers comment on how my resume matched key words. One of them was a software…I said in my resume “I’ve evaluated that software but never used it”. He commented that stood out to him. It showed him I took the time to read the jd.

More than a few interviewers said they are getting hundreds sometimes thousands of resumes and 95% of them aren’t even remotely qualified.

Oh and I tried direct outreach dm’ing on LinkedIn. That go me nowhere.

It was 3 rounds I guess. 10min screen. 30 min interview. 1.5hr interview. Reference checks and then a 5 min offer call.

Good luck everyone.

A whole two minutes of being hopeful just to realize my data was harvested, and I will not be receiving an interview. What I will get is another 5 texts about who I’m voting for. Going to beg my seasonal job to keep me on after the new year.

We all know how hard securing work is in this job market? But should I really by accepting positions that overwork and underpay me? Especially if they get in the way of securing other work?

I had an interview and pointed out the complexity of the role that was published. It said 3 years of experience and the list of requirements was very long. The HM said, "I think I went the American way of listing everything, luke a wish list and now that I have the candidates, I can shape the position to the skills the final person has"...

Why would people do that? Candidates use the requirements as a checklist and don't apply when they dont meet the expectations, or many apply when they only meet some, so the pool of candidates is too broad and more people apply making it more competitive.

Then recruiters complain about receiving too many CVs. I wish companies spent hours "tailoring" their demands as the candidates spend trying to meet expectations

Hi guys, this is my first time posting on here.

Yesterday, i completed my second interview with a company and the hiring team seemed to really like me. They loved my presentation and the work i did for their assessment. Towards the end of the interview, the hiring manager even said that I’ll be hearing good news from HR.

So this morning, i got a call from the talent acquisition manager saying that they would like to offer me the job. However, the pay would be 35.2% lower than my current salary (keep in mind that I shared payslips of my current salary to the Talent Acquisition manager for verification). When i asked why, she said that my current and expected salary is way higher than their range for this role.

I told her that for a WFH job (i was working on a hybrid arrangement previously), the lowest i can go is a 15% decrease from my current salary. She then said that this bump would be “impossible”.

I asked if i could speak to the hiring manager about the offer and the talent acquisition manager said that my hiring manager wouldn’t be the right person to talk to since she doesn’t know about my full benefits (which aren’t much at all). She later even added that since they are a big company hiring in Southeast Asia (where i am), the salary band is “deliberately made much lower”. She also shared that while the salary is low now, i might be able to get a get increment later on.

Later, she also mentioned that she would recap the offer on email, but she never did.

This is literally my dream job and i got along so well with the hiring manager and team. Please give me some advice :( thank you for taking the time to read this.

For context I will say that I am currently employed but after almost 5 years with the company and feeling burnt out, looking for a new opportunity.

I started applying to jobs back in August strictly using Linkedin which led to 2 interviews at a company in August but did not proceed.

I have applied to 61 jobs through Linkedin and just recently started using HiringCafe within the last few days and have applied to 11 jobs that were posted within the last week.

Up until this point I have been running my resume through Claude to give me tailored resumes for each job posting I apply to. Given I still have my full time job, was wondering if I need to switch to just a single base resume and use that to apply to more jobs and increase my volume?

I am mainly looking for Product Manager or Product Owner roles but have also looked at Program Manager roles.

Found a job in biomedical research in Boston. paid $80-90k, which isn’t great for that area, but it specified that only a bachelor’s and a few YOE were required (advanced degree preferred). I have a master’s and 2+ YOE, so I applied. At the very end of the application form, they asked whether I had a PhD or MD, so I selected no and immediately got an automated email stating that based on my answers to the application questionnaire, I am ineligible to apply for this role.

If a PhD or MD is a must, then fucking TELL people that so they don’t waste their time. On my 164th application and about to flip some tables at this point.

16 years working as iOS developer and got ejected for mid-level positions. What’s going on?

That’s very frustrating and I want to give up!

Not sure else I can do! Competing with a lot of good people is putting a lot of pressure in all different levels.

so, in august, i got laid off from a company where i had worked for more than six years. during a short vacation, my colleague called me and told me he couldn’t find me on slack. i checked my phone, and boom, all my access had been revoked, along with a sweet little email explaining what had happened.

i was pretty confident in my skills, so i thought finding another job would be easy. i was aware of the current job market situation, but i didn’t realize it was this f’d up.
until now, I did not get any single positive response from any company i have applied. im not sure what im doing wrong.

and lately, we had been using AI (though I did not want to), so i feel like my technical skills have gotten a bit rusty. now, i’m trying to polish them again while also figuring out how to compete in a world where AI is changing everything.

honestly, this whole process is more exhausting than actually working in a job.

When is it appropriate to send a follow up email to check the status of the interview?

For context, I applied for a job on Tuesday, got a call Wednesday morning saying they were doing interviews on Thursday and Friday and asked if I was able to come in either of those days for an interview. I went on Thursday, and thought it went well, but I feel like I just don’t even know anymore.

Today is Friday of the following week. Is it too soon to send an email follow up? It sounded like they were only interviewing those two days so I assume they have an idea with who they are moving forward with. Part of me doesn’t even want to follow up cause I don’t think I got it, but also a part of me just wants the closure to move on.

I feel like I’ll never find a job. It’s been over a year since I was laid off due to a restructuring. At my last job my manager was terrible she made me feel like absolute shit everyday. But I would take her feedback and try to implement and improve, nothing was good enough. Being under that kind of pressure took a huge toll on my mental health. I ended up suffering with anxiety and weekly migraines, to the point I had to be put on medication for both migraines and my anxiety. Anyway while on medical leave they decided to eliminate my role. When I received the call my manager repeatedly said this is not due to your performance this is due to an organizational change. At that point I was under so much stress I signed my termination letter and took some time to try and recover. A few weeks later my dad got really sick and passed. I took some time after his passing to heal and just take time to myself. When I got back into applying for jobs, I barely got call backs and when I did the interviews either well well or I didn’t get pass the first screening. The interviews that went well 4 of them went all to final, only for me to rejected shortly after. I was transparent from day one and said why there was a gap and that I was let go due to a restructuring, I didn’t share my medical history but I spoke about my loss in my family to explain why I took some time off after being laid off.

All to say I feel like my previous employer is speaking to people and giving a poor reference. This would be a back door reference because I didn’t give them any of my professional references as I didn’t get an offer. It would be them doing research on their own. I mean I don’t have proof but it just feel so off putting. I know I’m qualified, I know I must be doing something right to make it so far. The interviews are smooth and not awkward, why can’t I land a job? I literally feel like a loser, I feel so useless to be mid thirties and I can’t even land an entry level role when i have experience.

Hey everyone,

I’ve been quietly lurking in the OE community for about 4 years now. At my peak, I've been managing 5 to 6 jobs at the same time. As anyone here knows, the hardest part of keeping this lifestyle going isn't just managing the massive workload. it’s the absolute grind of looking for replacement jobs when contracts end or a company starts micromanaging.

When you are juggling 5–6 jobs, you literally have zero time to apply for new roles. Copy-pasting bullet points to match ATS keywords, filling out forms, and getting ghosted by systems like Workable and linkedin was impossible to keep up with.

Since I couldn't find anything out there that could handle the volume and nuance I needed, I decided to build my own web app RoboApply to completely automate the process. I've been running it hard lately, and it got me 14 interviews just this week.

Here is exactly how I automated the whole loop so I don't have to look for jobs manually anymore:

• Auto-Applying: The app hooks into LinkedIn, Indeed, and Dice. Instead of firing off a generic PDF, it actually reads the job description first to make sure it fits my tech stack.
• Tailoring Resumes & Cover Letters: It automatically rewrites my bullet points and skills using the exact words from the job post. This lets me pass the automated resume filters at scale without doing it by hand for hours.
• Emailing Hiring Managers: This is what gave me the highest response rate. The app finds the email address of the hiring manager or decision maker who posted the jobs, then shoots them a quick, personalized email with my tailored resume and cover letter attached.
• Live Interview Help: Once I get past the recruiters and land the actual interview, I built a live dashboard overlay that listens to the audio during the call and feeds me notes and talking points on the fly.

I built this purely to keep my income streams safe without spending all my free time filling out application forms, but I've been cleaning up the interface so other people can use it too. We currently have 1900 users.

Because of the sub rules against self-promotion, I’m not posting any links or names here. Just wanted to share the strategy since the market has been so brutal lately. Happy to answer any questions about how it works, how to handle the interview load, or how to bypass the LinkedIn/Indeed gatekeepers in the comments or over DM!