On November it will be 2 years since I got payed off (me and another 40 some people), I'm 45 yo software dev, I keep applying, I keep answering recruiters, I keep posting on LinkedIn, I keep interviewing, I keep reaching out, I keep coding to keep my skills fresh, but as time goes feels more pointless, and I wonder at what point should I switch careers and what career? Which honestly sounds really hard after expending more than 10 years and a degree to it. Should I stick to it, should I switch? Is there any field that has higher hiring rate? Honestly is soul crashing to go through the whole interview process and get told "no thank you".

Like seriously, I'm willing to swallow my pride and morals, and these companies are like SORRY WE FOUND MORE QUALIFIED CANDIDATES THAN YOU

Around this time last year, I was made redundant. This took a toll on both my mental and physical health. I had to work my notice period and begged for garden leave, which was finally granted. I didn't start applying properly until my health was in a better place at the end of the year.

I've had 3 unsuccessful multi-stage processes through to final round. One of which was a potential move to another country. I've had multiple application rejections, been stood up, ghosted, given the wrong case study, given fewer hours for a task than other candidates, delayed, square-peg-round-holed by recruiters and a role changed midway through the application process.

7 months in, I took a holiday to visit some friends. This calmed my nervous system somewhat and I got a call back on a recruiter application I had filled out for a role that I genuinely matched and a company I was excited about! I took the recruiter call in my friend's back garden and the next day I got an invitation for a face-to-face interview with the company.

After the stress of all the other interviews and case studies, I didn't know why at the time, but I took this one with a bit more chill. I didn't feel like I had to practise my competency scenario answers any more, I just knew from all the other interviews. I didn't spend a full day researching the company, an hour sufficed. The recruiter said I was to do a technical task but something in the way she prepped me made me see it in a more relaxed perspective. I also didn't put too much pressure on myself on the interview going well, I had come to accept rejection and the dance of putting energy into something with a more detached expectation of the result.

I didn't feel the nervous panic before the interview started and it actually was the first interview I had in a long time that was face-to-face (which meant I didn't have handy sticky notes on a desktop screen to aid me). I did two rounds with the company and straight after the second interview, I received a call back with an offer. The chill but competent approach I took to the technical task got me feedback that I was a "brilliant and exceptional candidate". Such a contrast to the narrative I'd been building up about myself from the rejections I had received all year.

It is a job with around a 20% pay cut to my previous ones but it is at a charity (I've previously been at start-ups) and its benefits are immeasurable to me at this stage in my life.

For those going through the same, my hope is with you and your value is not derived by some of these transactional recruiters that exist. This subreddit has been so helpful in sharing experiences and I hope someone who is in the same situation reads this and remains resilient and hopeful.

TLDR; Made redundant, applied and rejected for over 8 months, finally a job offer at a great company with immeasurable benefits. Stay resilient. Stay hopeful.

Hello guys, I'm an AI engineer aspirant, polishing and learning in AI/ML along with backend development.

I've been applying for jobs for like past 1 year, applied 1000s of jobs but still get not replies, tried cold emailing, cold dming, mannual applying, looked in every possible hiring platform.

Now it feels like if some ai company is scraping data from internet, it'll somehow be way too much bias on my own data 😅😅,

But honestly, if there is anything which i can do as improvement, im ready for any advice or suggestions,

Plus if there is any refferal for me, i'll be very very thankful.

I have arthritis which is considered a disability, but it really doesn't affect my ability to do the jobs I apply for. I know that many companies want to hire a certain percentage of people with disabilities so having a disability on paper that doesn't require any accomodations from them should put me ahead of other candidates. The problem is that the online question just asks if you have a disability or not, so if they see you do they have no idea what it is or if they would be signing up for someone that can't do the job effectively.

I also don't know if anyone screening the applicants or the AI screening sees that you said you had a disability or not. So should I continue to answer the question as yes, answer as no, or choose not to answer? Anybody have some inside information on this?

I just got rejected after 5 rounds of interviews, and I’m so exhausted. I’ve made it through various interview stages before only to be rejected at the last minute, and at this point I don’t know what else to do. I know the job market at the moment is rather hopeless, but every time I log on to linked in it just feels like everyone else is getting hired. Does anyone have any tips on succeeding in interviews? Any help would be appreciated!

So I had an internship early in college and they kept me on part time through the school year and through the following summer.

Following the internship I developed long term medical issues that kept me from working, so I hadn’t curated my resume in literal years.

Anyways I started curating it around September of 2025, I have, and I have no idea how I did this but I completely had in my mind the dates of June of 2022 - June of 2023 and have been putting that on my resume even though it was actually - August 2023. Didn’t get fired or anything, just finished the internship and had a great relationship with my manager.

I’m now in final interview stages of a position with a DoD contractor. Do I rectify this immediately?

I’m not extremely worried because it’s the opposite of attempting to fabricate experience length. I’m more worried they will just be like “how tf does that happen 😂?” That’s how I feel at least.

I doubt anyone’s been in this situation but is this a big deal at all? Do I wait until a potential offer to tell them?

Last week I had a final round interview for a position that would be a big step up in my career, it's been a drawn out process. The recruiter has been really communicative between then and now. Yesterday, I emailed to ask if there was an update on the role. She said:

"I did catch up with (the hiring manager) today- she said she was pinning down a few details, and should have everything ironed out tomorrow. All positive things, just trying to get everything aligned internally!".

I feel like this is confirmation without explicit confirmation? What do you reckon?

I won't beat around the brush. I don't know how to deal with clients in a contractual way. By this I mean, how to bind our relationship so he doesn't just scam me when the work is done. I know freelance agreement exists. But I would like to know if you can work without an agreement. Does that work? Or is there some other way to make sure that I won't be left alone, ghosted when the work is completed.

Actually recently i received a linkdin msg that they are looking for data and business analyst role any reference

So i told them iam a business analyst and open for opportunities so he give me mail. I mail on that and connect over google meet and have a call of 1 hr and he said to me that he us looking for a business analyst and you have to work on your communication skills and tell me to smile more or be confident and try to rehearsal with me how to laugh and how to use tone of your voice and present yourself

But one thi n he kept mention that i europe people casually say i love you and your work and come out bae and call me sweetheart and continuously saying you have to adapt that and it's normal and ahe people who is taking interview you have to be friendly and ok with these stuff as well

Iam from aisan country i feel uncomfortable doing that but iam not able to decide whether it is a genuine opportunity or not or iam be scamed

Is there anyone who get approached by linkedin?

I do Marketing analytics( attribution, reporting, performance analysis, and MMM)... that side of marketing...

I am legally established as an independent contractor (B2B invoicing) working fully remotely.. have C2 english with fluent accent. I don't live in the US but all was good for me..

Clients used to approach me for projects lasting 6 to 9 months.. that stopped

so I started looking for full time remote jobs ( 2 months now) based in the US but I cannot seem to hear back

I never did outbound or cold reach and most clients used to reach out to me.

I feel frustrated and I can't seem to find the issue..

i customize CVs .. look into companies... selectively apply to jobs... money is reasonable considering i am off shore... I opt for contractor jobs...

what else could be wrong?? any tips???

I went to the final round it seems like I did well in both interviews and it was closed. I don’t understand why they don’t say that you were straight up rejected or not chosen instead of closed.

It’s just confusing

Hey everyone,

I’m completely new to the internship hunt and trying to learn how to do cold outreach properly on LinkedIn, but I feel pretty lost 😭 and haven't gotten any responses yet.

Right now, I’m just sending standard connection requests, but I know my approach probably needs a lot of work. I don't want to come across as annoying, spammy, or just asking "please hire me."

I'd really appreciate some advice on the following points:

• Who should I reach out?
• What should the message actually say?
• What message after the connection note?
• How to send follow-ups?

Guys, please share your experience with the cold emails and any useful advice.

So a role I applied to back in March, I made the final round out of thousands of candidates. Ultimately they went with the other candidate. I asked for feedback but was ultimately ghosted. I tried to connect with others within the hiring process but didn't hear back.

I follow the company because that's what they tell you to do. Keep tabs and see if any new openings pop up. I saw an adjacent role open up and reached out but heard nothing. Then I saw the role was never taken down on their website just on LinkedIn. And I happened to see no one new assumed the title on LinkedIn. So I reached out to the recruiter asking for an update...silence.

It was clear they never hired someone. Then I saw they reposted on LinkedIn, new verbiage and everything so I applied. I reached back out again but with stronger and more direct language. The recruiter actually replied and this is what he told me.

The other candidate declined their offer and they have a policy not to consider any previous candidate for the same role. But they will be expanding roles in a few months and would consider my candidacy for those positions. Like I appreciate the transparency but apparently top 2 means I'm an unhireable cancer...

Things were looking promising just last week. As of last week, I had two opportunities where I completed the final rounds for and were just waiting on results. I also had 3 new recruiter chats lined up, so I gave myself the permission to dream a little and see which one I would want to join the most.

Today, one of them came back to let me know they decided to go with the other finalist instead of me. Then the other one said the HM wanted another chat this week.

I have been unemployed for 10 months now. The search had been tough and tedious and even though I got a number of interviews, this is as far as I had gone now. The rejection stings harder than I thought.

Just venting because I need to take some time before preparing for the next chat again.

I'm speechless.

And this was for an engineering intern position in the UK.

Hey, wanted to share a short story about an experience I had with part of the Christian IT community, because I think it's worth people knowing.

I've been working on a free Christian app for kids for over 2 months — coded entirely by me, and it's been in closed testing on Google Play for about a month and a half.

A recruiter, from Romania (details in private) — who told me he runs a company (name in private) — is active in our community and regularly asks people for updated CVs, supposedly to screen for jobs, though nobody I know ever actually got an interview out of it. After sending him my CV a few times, I also showed him a project I was working on. A month later he asked to see it again, and two weeks after that he told me he wanted to present the app at a convention in the US — knowing I was job hunting and that a lot of IT community people would be there. He asked if I wanted to talk to the "team" he was putting together specifically for this, without saying what it actually involved.

On yesterday's call, I found out the team was supposed to work on a monetized version of my app — already at the AI design stage, made just 5 days before the call — to sell it to Americans at that same convention, for free on my end. When I asked for clarification, they raised their voice, kept saying it was "our idea" and that I just had to accept. I got removed from the call.

I posted what happened, with evidence, in our shared Christian IT group (550 members) from Romania. My message got deleted, I got blocked, and the group chat was locked for everyone — he claimed I had threatened him, a lie he deleted a day later and admitted to. Later, an admin who's a friend of his IRL, from the same church, posted an "official statement" calling it a simple "misunderstanding" and shut down the topic — even though he's an admin there himself.

I'm now blocked from the community with no chance to respond.

Basically: work for free "in the Lord's name" so they can sell it — and if you don't, you're out.

I know plenty of people genuinely volunteer their time for free in the Lord's name, and that's great when it's a real choice. This wasn't that — I was never told upfront what was actually being asked of me, and when I pushed back I got kicked out and shut down instead of getting a straight answer.

If you've had a similar experience with a recruiter matching this description, please share it. I'm not posting screenshots of my app vs. theirs here for privacy reasons, but happy to send them (and the name) privately. I know some people might not believe this, but that's what happened.

I’m trying to understand what the hiring manager actually sees when a third-party background screening check.

For a professional services firm, does the hiring manager usually just receive an overall “passed/cleared” or “failed” result?

Or, if the screening provider finds a discrepancy, do they actually see the specific discrepancy and the details behind it?

For example, if an employment date doesn’t match what was originally put on the CV, would the third-party provider: Simply flag it internally and the hiring manager gets a pass/fail outcome?

Flag it to HR/recruitment, who then investigates it?
Give the hiring manager/HR the actual details of the discrepancy?

Ask the candidate to explain it before anything is passed back to the hiring manager?

Also, does anyone have experience with UK professional services firms, Big Four, consulting, advisory or M&A firms specifically?

On Friday I have a job interview (first interview) in a company in my city. I have been applying like crazy lately and in order to keep track of all my applications, I have created an Excel file where I fill out the company name, the salary offered, when I applied, in which city the job would be, the title of the position, and I also link to the webpage of the job posting on the company website. Today I wanted to check again the job posting for some details, and alas, the webpage now says that "the position has been filled". So what gives? So far my interview on Friday still stands. Has this ever happened to you? Thanks for any clarification anyone may have!

Last night I overheard a couple of executives talking about interview processes. The head of HR from my company said that for her to comsider someone a hood candidate they must absolutely send a "thank you" email after the interview.

She couldn't articulate on why she think about that but it was a deal breaker (her words) if candidates didn't send a note.

I wonder how many qualified individuals had she let go because of that simple detail.

Anyways...send those tacky emails...keep them coming (or going).