the last time I was applying for jobs I created a spreadsheet to keep track of all the relevant information. I applied to just shy of 2000 listings. I got 3 phone calls, only one of which led to 3 separate interviews with 12 different people and totaled about 6 hours of my time. they hired internally
this post was submitted on 13 May 2025
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jesus christ that's bleak
I think most job listings are fake. For one, I think most companies set up a job posting service and just ignore it until they actually need someone and don't have any candidates from in-person referrals. So the jobs get posted repeatedly or updated every few months and that's it. None of those positions are actually vacant. It's in the interest of job board companies to make it seem like they have a lot of jobs and information. Part of their model is collecting and selling data about jobs markets. So they're incentivized to have ghost listings everywhere because they don't investigate or discount fake listings. It all helps their internal numbers.
I wouldn't be surprised if the government got lazy and started relying on these job listing companies for market data. Which means there's a big bomb of shit data rolling around in stats, convincing people that there is more activity in the market than there is.
Linkedin job posts have a free tier which means a posting can be left up indefinitely whether the search is active or not. Indeed posts cost a minimum $5/day, so a given company would likely take the listing down if their search is not active. I've heard that Linkedin is actively resume harvesting, for what reason I don't really know (maybe training some resume AI?) so it could just be a rumor, but I have a chip on my shoulder about Linkedin anyways for trying to make a pay-to-win job search platform.
Whatever you do, don't apply at the individual job board. Go to the company's careers page to see if its even still posted and apply there. For whatever that's worth (not much in my experience).
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they hired internally
Gut punch 
We need to actually admit that laying off and terminating employees is an act of violence.
I tried to frame my layoff this way to everyone I knew while I was unemployed. Suddenly I couldn’t go to the doctor, I was draining my savings to pay rent so I wouldn’t go homeless, and every trip to the grocery store felt like an indulgence. They make you suffer and starve to make their scraps more appealing when you get hired at a shittier job six months later
Six months? Look at Mr. Employable here!
i have always seen it that way even before i became a communist i thought other people did too?
i had an ok paying job pre-covid, full benefits, gym in the office building, i was planning on working there for 5+ years. i didnt even work a year there and then i got laid off before the early pandemic lockdowns and ive struggled to get a consistent job since. gotta love capitalism!!!
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Before I deleted my Indeed account, I had filed over 8200 applications on their platform, got 5 interviews, and got a temp job that lasted for less than 6 months.
Literally hopping on a bike and just spending a month or so repeatedly going into every place in town with a Now Hiring sign in the window and demanding an interview was a better use of my time.
So it's not just me?
Yeah I'm like literally throwing my resume into a black hole everyday
A job search is one of the worst things that could befall a person outside of dismemberment.
trying to find a good partner is about as bad, especially post-app
Getting a partner and getting a job are pretty much the same thing, your require the same skills
Everything’s a market in hell
just put on your best shirt and walk on in there, ask for the manager and give him a nice firm handshake, look him in the eye and say "You may not know it yet but I'm exactly what this company needs to go to the top!"
but really idk, seems rough
It's crazy that boomers and silent Gen will unironically still say this shit. I heard it just last week.
It was kind almost true back in my day for certain industries but even 15 years ago it was 80% "oh we only accept applications online"
Unironically better than filling out an online form and submitting it into the void. Seriously.
Go to career fairs, stalk hiring manager on linkedin, go to their homes.
Submitting resumes online and expecting to hear your name called is almost akin to placing faith in a nonexistant meritocratic system. What, you think someone is going to read your resume and be more impressed by it than the resume of a guy who bullshitted everything or some person, somewhere with 3 phds in your field?
Only good jobs I've ever gotten have been from knowing someone (nepotism) or just sending resumes to everyone in the area and getting insanely lucky (unreasonable for most people)
Until i got into a trade union of course but that's got a whole set of issues in and of itself
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Hate to say it but you have to meet the right people in non-work contexts :/ it’s all a bullshit game and this is a surefire way to be handed a job
Edit Would also like to add that there are very little guardrails in place for people who struggle socially.
Yet another instance of the world fucking you over if you can’t dance right
how do i make one of those people have car trouble in front of my house?
Idk it's insane, and most job application processes are designed to be as humiliating and awful as possible.
"One-way" interviews 
have you tried putting on your job helmet and squeezing down into a job cannon?
Either that or take a trip to job land, where jobs grow on jobbies.
just get a job at your dad's business
Find a recruiter. Just started working with one and she told me that companies (in my industry at least) will work directly with a recruiting company to find talent, because public job postings these days get like hundreds of applicants that might not even be qualified for the job. I am now convinced that this is how most hiring is done and just going around doing a bunch of job applications by hand is a complete waste of time and energy.
I've been wondering about this lately, as I'm unhappily employed but don't want Indeed to be the only place I window shop.
The challenge is, I'm not really sure what to look for in terms of "good" recruiters. Based on your recent experience, do you have any tips or advice you'd be willing to offer?
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It’s more like thousands. My small company had two positions posted and got something like 5000 applications in the first week or two. I think it ended at almost 10000.
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9 months in, this shit sucks.
I’ve been rejected from places for having a degree. I’ve been rejected from places for not having a masters. I’ve received literally no word from several hundred applications.
I used to keep a spreadsheet of the jobs I applied to but I gave up on that because it was adding a substantial amount of time.
It was already bad and then the NIH cuts meant my entire industry is on fire because the private biomedical industry is a fiction made up as cover for giving a handful of people a ton of government money.
Luck, lying, nepotism
Couldn’t have said it better, myself. I fucking hate the good ol’ boys system for hiring.
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18 months after losing a tech job...
This is the neat part - you dont!
It’s crazy how the tech employment scene imploded at that time when the free money machine (low interest rates) dried up. I got laid off around that same time
are we all unemployed tech workers? what the fuck
also i have this feeling that unemployement numbers are... not fudged in some way necessarily but like, even the TRU metric which is way higher than "headline unemployment" is still lower now than it was in the late 90s/early 00s pre-financial crisis. the TRU has been consistently going down barring covid but everything is getting shittier and worse for everyone. But the Numbers are still able to go up in some way bc the Numbers have lost all meaning or sense of reality. "the signs of the real have been substituted for the real" - like a zombie economy doing all the things a living economy would do while completely dead, as the cells/people that constitute it are rotting away in a perma-recession
Do your resume in markdown. Many of them are processed by automated systems and stuff made in ms word doesn't render correctly. There are sites online that can check your resume formatting for you for free, Google automated resume parsing or something
Edit: it's called ATS
I went through a whole-ass final round interview last week. Every step, they clearly all really liked me, even said they thought I was a good fit. I was two of the interviwers' #1 pick. But then they just rejectred me today because someone else had more years of experience. Why did they waste my time going through that process if they were just going to pick someone with more years of experience?
This kind of thing makes me doom so hard. I really shouldn't start transitioning until I get a full time job (family is probably an issue) and I have no idea how I'm going to do that. No college or qualifications. Fuck my life.
Just borrow some seed capital from your parents and let their home office set up a company for you.
7 months out here looking for a dev spot, state bennies just ran out. My best recruiter ghosted me and when I tracked them down they broke down and admitted that they can't get anyone hired right now, and everybody's outsourcing for everything more than ever.
I get the feeling even landing a spot isn't much of a guarantee for long at this point.
So today, I did my first day as a substitute teacher (sped para in particular), and hired on with some brown box folks doing delivery driving for the summer. Both different kinds of work than what I've gotten used to; also a lot more effort for half the pay. I'm going to be in a union though!
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I for one am gainfully underemployed as a part time bean delivery man and the only full time delivery job I applied for I never heard back from
It sucks out there
What country are you in?
I got a job through a community college by consistently arriving on time and doing all the classwork. The community college had work placements (like mini-apprenticeships).
Had to survive the course though
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