I applied to over 600, and got two interviews. Neither worked out to be anything. Then, I said fuck it and started my own freelance business.
Wow… So you are expected to feel ghosted/rejected 100 times a week, and upwards to 1500 in total? I wonder how healthy that must be for your psyche…
We didn’t have psyches back in the day. Just a can-do attitude and strong values.
And a bottle of alcohol too many here and there. And hobbies such as beating your wife black and blue in front of your kids. And fatal accidents from speeding around in our souped up cars.
Just none of that psyche shit, okay?
SLASH S.
Missing to hear about your bootstraps??? Did you pull them up at all??? I need to know!!!
Of course, everyone did it back then…
Though quite a few got it all wrong and ended up with a form of bootstrap tightly around their neck and hanging from a joist in the garage.
Or they accidentally fell off high buildings due to pulling their bootstraps up while on a roof.
Or they accidentally lassoed a bottle of vodka in to their mouths with the bootstraps, drank themselves in to a stupor, and then accidentally went driving and crashed.
BUT THERE WAS NONE OF THAT THE PSYCHE SHIT. Right, I’m off to do some wholesome beating of my wife and kids.
That “SLASH S” gives me Roy Kent’s “WHISTLE!” vibes.
And sometimes people had accidents cleaning their guns. With their mouths. But that’s just the cost of bearing arms, no mental health problems
I mean, it was normal getting a bit beaten up a kid for doing dumb stuff. It builds character! That’s why everyone ended up so funcional as adults, no? … No?
I wonder how healthy that must be for your psyche…
I went thru several months of it. Even with my anxiety meds, it felt like I was losing my mind.
Try multiple different periods of years of it… :/
Sucks, man. (got something now, though)
And people like that boss doesn’t even realize he’s celebrating his own inefficiency and incompetence when declaring they’ll go through that many applications without hiring somebody. Why do you want to be bad at finding talent and why do you want people to know you can’t recognize skill?
They’re probably not going through that many applications, they’ll be using a screening company or system that’s dropping every applucation that doesn’t have whatever the magical combination of keywords is in this particular case. I can only imagine it’s git even worse with the use if LLMs for screening.
Sounds super rough… Really hope things worked out in the end and you’re all better now!
Thanks! Things improved but aren’t good. Just less bad
Thing is its limited by geography. If I can’t physically get to the job in under 30mins, then I can’t get to the job on time, ever. Don’t have kids, folks, unless you really actually want them. Don’t just do it because you’re ‘at that stage in life’
Mate I’ve done jobs that have had a 1.5hr commute before. What are you talking about?
That is your prerogative, but it is not a wise one.
I understand, but if you have to put food on the table, then that’s what you have to do.
Congrats, but did you know that other people have problems that you don’t? And that just because you can do something doesn’t mean others can do it too?
We all have our problems in life, and you overcoming yours is meaningless to other people overcoming theirs.
But good job volunteering that your time is so worthless you’re willing to waste 3 hours of it on a commute. The only time I’ve ever driven more than 45 min for a job was to a client site, and I was getting paid and the commute was part of my 8hrs.
The person I replied to was implying they can’t commute longer than 30 mins because they have kids.
In a thread about finding jobs.
There’s a shedload of people including me for whom narrowing their job prospects down to only jobs within 30mins commute would be wishful thinking, and borderline ridiculous.
My ‘mate what are you talking about’ was based on my perspective yes, but there’s large swathes of people who would laugh at your privilege.
Nice for you I suppose. And nice of you to be so self-righteously hostile too.
Clearly he’s talking about the constraints that kids put on his time.
I also have kids.
Seems more practical to me to just sleep at the office.
Kids have to get to and from school
Oh fair enough if you’re ferrying them.
So the 30mins is essentially from latest drop off, to acceptable show up time at work then.
Exactly. My last job was great - had a 9:15 start which was more or less the perfect time when bussing in
Understood. It’s going to get a lot easier then when they can make their own way in.
A real # is probably 25 a week, which IMO is still quite brutal on mental health.
In case anyone would like a reminder, this is a market failure and doesn’t reflect on you personally whatsoever.
Also, every interview:
“So, why do you want to work with us, specifically?”
Well, specifically, I need money for housing, bills, and food.
Also, specifically, you gave me an interview so I’m now really interested in working…at wherever this place is. That’s it, really.
…
I mean, yeah, I could blow smoke up your arse if you really wan me to. But I would hope you’d have the intelligence to realise that it’s bullshit and that nowadays it’s all about money. I whore my time out and you give me money. When do I start?I had an interview recently where they spent almost half of it just trying to sell me on the company itself and how they work rather than asking why I wanted to work there. It was honestly refreshing, hope I get to work there
I hope you get it too. Its nice to find somewhere you vibe with.
The paranoid part of me warns that the company doing nothing but try to sell you on how good they are to work for may be a sign of desperation and problems hiring on their part, but I wasn’t in the room. I’m sure you got a good sense of how genuine they were in person.
Oh it was less what it’s like to work there and more the guy excitedly info dumping on what they’re building. He made it clear it would be hard work lol, but that’s fine with me if it’s actually something cool
Damn this sounds interesting! Good luck 🍀
[puts hand on sholder] They arn’t *intelligence enough to realise that it’s bullshit and that nowadays it’s all about money. * Managers specificly are paid to drink the coolaid, unless your being hired by a triple threat (can do the job, manage people, and spin it all for managment above them) your going to be stuck working for some peter principal shmuck who is probably good enough at one of those things.
Not to be too pesimistic but your job is to blow smoke, unless your working for yourself or you managed to find one of those unicorn bosses. In the latter case, do what you can to be along for their ride.
They know it’s bs and want to hire fellow people who can spew bs
Exactly. You can’t possibly submit over 100 applications per week while also using any kind of reasonable discretion about wether the job is something you actually want to do, that you can actually do competently, somewhere that you can reasonably do it. You’re just an application shotgun at that point and you’re wasting the time of everyone involved.
I hate this question.
“So why do you want to work with us?”
“Because you corpo cunts are going to steal less of the value my labor produces and help me afford teeth.”
Jesus.
Look, I already realized I was living life on easy mode, but this post drives it home more.
I’ve applied for a job exactly five times in my life. I’ve gotten five interviews. And I’ve gotten four offers, all of which I accepted. I’ve never been unemployed for even a day, nor had to settle for staying where I was working for lack of available positions/job-listings.
The one time I didn’t get an offer after an interview, the listing said they wanted “Python experience” (which I had quite a bit of), but in the interview they told me they were switching to C# (which I had never touched in my life). They passed me over ostensibly in favor of another applicant with C# experience. Kinda wasted both my and their time with that one. But it was very shortly thereafter that I landed another job. (As Java dev, which is gross, but I’ve got no right to complain in a thread about people getting interviews on less than 1% of their applications.)
Same experience, 100% hit rate. Also in the python -> C# boat but I went through with it. It’s been a breeze switching and taking on large responsibilities. C# is no Python and even more falls apart when upgrading between framework/dotnet versions in the enterprise environment but it’s all great “fun”
Deprication is great fun! /s
falls apart when upgrading between framework/dotnet versions
Maybe Framework 4.8 -> NET 5, because its a jump to a completely different code base. NET 5 -> 9 have been seamless upgrades for me.
5 is dead so we’re straight from 4.7.2 to net 8 with a sprinkling of every version of core and a lot of net standard
I’ve had more job offers than applications submitted. Industrial automation.
There aren’t more than 100 companies that could employ me in my area, so whatever the screenshot is talking about is impossible for me anyway.Almost exact same for me. My “tactic,” if that had anything to do with it, was always applying for jobs I was just a little bit overqualified for, calling before submitting my application to ask a couple questions, and submitting the application directly instead of through indeed or some other service
Edit: (past tense bc I’m self employed now)
Calling who?
The employer I was applying to work for. I would just call the office and say I have a couple questions about the job listing, and then they’d put me through to the person who knows the answer (usually in charge of hiring)
That sounds insane. I didn’t know you could just do that.
You can try, but that’s old school. Many job postings now say “WE DO NOT ACCEPT CALLS” in big letters, because people keep blowing up their phones trying this BS.
From my understanding depending on industry and geographic area “Arthur” is correct.
When I do counseling with younger people who have graduated school recently or whatever over the last 2 years or so this seems to be the situation for those that get 60-80k jobs. The search itself is an insane grind.
I graduated college in 2008 and it wasn’t even this bad then. It took hundreds of applications over 6-8 months but not thousands over 12-18 which is what I’m seeing now from people.
It’s that bit where as a counselor sometimes I get people who are like “it was hopeless so I just gave up” and I’m like “well, yeah, makes sense”. Like you can only grind so hard before the system breaks you
It’s not that they might be correct, it’s the fact that it got this bad in the first place, and that people accept it.
Arthur should be equally devastated, pissed, burned out, not dismissive and potentially praising some made up grind while succumbing to survivor bias.
If you’re sending out 1500 a week you have no identifiable skill set beyond existing. 1500 jobs that are relevant to 1 individual aren’t being posted every week.
That’s the thing: 1500 job listings does not mean 1500 jobs exist.
Half are companies that realized posting fake listings works as free marketing on LinkedIn. It’s a real strategy: people start subscribing to their newsletter because LinkedIn offers that by default when you apply, and when somebody looks the company up, it creates the illusion they’re booming and expanding.
Then of the remaining half, a half of that are fake listings that are actually AI companies that get you to record five minutes of audio and take a picture during your “application” and under the fine print you’re allowing them to use your voice and resell it. Not joking.
Then you do have the remainder which are the real jobs. Of that remainder, more than half will be evaluated by an AI which may or may not take your skills into consideration, understand the formatting of your resume or even fully appreciate what the position entails.
Welcome to 2025, don’t you love it? You need to answer that you love it by the way because we are monitoring your social media accounts and we have three cameras in your street and we don’t like answers that bring the spirit down.
You’re forgetting the portion that are real jobs, but they already know they’re just changing an existing employee’s job title, but HR makes them post a job for it anyway to seem fair.
Or they’re hiring a relative but have to go through the motions of pretending to do the candidate search process.
Don’t forget H1Bs where they have to ‘prove’ that there are no suitable domestic candidates first
Good point.
Dont forget the H1B ones. To hire (at half salary) a foreigner, by law they need to prove that the job cannot be done by a US employee. So they post a fake opening, with those “entry level 15 years experience in afield that existed 10 years” to justify the hiring
Oh look! Living on a couple of euros of passive income looks really enticing all of a sudden!
Right this is what frustrates me there literally aren’t that many jobs to apply for unless you’re applying to literally every cashier job around you. And for people in small towns even that option doesn’t exist. Even 10 years ago people would send me links to jobs that were obvious scams on Indeed and they’d say “see! There ARE jobs!”
Pretty sure that they would counter, that if you’re not willing to relocate to literally anywhere at no notice and at your own expense you don’t really want to work. 1500 per week is simply not possible unless you’re looking nationally if not internationally depending on the industry.
That’s true if you’re living at your parents house and not in a serious relationship, the world is your oyster. But if that’s the case you’re probably looking for entry level work and good luck paying rent on that salary.
Well you need to send 1500 out because only 30 of the 1500 exist and you have no idea which that is.
I wasn’t even reading job descriptions last time. I just indiscriminately applied to everything and only read about the positions that replied back with a maybe. If they don’t allow the LinkedIn auto-apply, then I’m not filling out a form on their special unique website.
This is their problem, not mine.
I generally agree but what that said is 100 per week.
not much better but it’s a bit of a shame that a whole thread with much attention did not notice and just copied from the first comment
Yea I noticed that I misread a little while ago but left it. The comment is still accurate, 1500 a week is way too many.
He’s right but he shouldn’t be right.
I both envy and pity those that can and need to blast out applications like this. There aren’t 1500 open positions in my field in the country. As someone who struggles with doing nothing, application grinding would resolve a lot of anxiety.
There aren’t even 1500 open positions where I live, let alone in the same field. Most common is minimum wage care work, then random assortment of skilled/unskilled roles.
If I had to spray and pray 1500 resumes I’d be suicidal.
I’m about 300+ deep and let me tell you…
Oh man, I hope you land a job soon. That sounds like hell
don’t get laid off!
Haha, not me. I’ve gone past that to casual despair.
Actual genuine nightmare fuel. This is not a lifestyle conducive to human health. Living this way is killing us.
My previous employer cut all the contracts leaving me to find a new role.
I was not in that role long enough to gain enough experience to find a similar role and it was a career change.
I estimate I put in over 750 applications and got maybe 7 interviews out of it.
My CV basically matched the job description for a few roles but was told no.
It’s rough out there, I had to take the first offer as my bank account was basically gone. I’m now earning less than I did 10 years ago and of course rent and prices have gone up. Going to be a rough few years.
What field are you people in that there’s even that many jobs to apply to? Everyone wants you back in office and I’m not sure there’s even that many jobs within an hour drive of me.
IT.
More specifically, networks.
I had been applying for any role I have done before and can go again, ranging from desktop support, technical support, network and server support as well as wireless surveys and design.
My contract role was network automation and I was just getting into the swing of it when we got the axe.
The bulk of my experience is wireless surveys, design and reporting work… but it is quite niche. Very few posts going for those roles. I did get some interviews for similar roles but one company wanted someone more involved in pre-sales and the other didn’t like the fact that I questioned travel (They said ha ha, UK for now but EU… maybe in the future). No mention of travel on the job description, the recruiter that contacted me also had not heard of it and it turns out the company got ‘burned’ once before after an engineer left because of the travel.
Yeah… I don’t see that as burned, I see that as they caused it themselves by not telling applicants about the travel any only let you know in the interview to cover themselves while luring people in.
The reason I was able to apply for so many roles is I cast I wide net, I applied for anything IT related in the city as well as my town and surrounding areas.
I almost landed a sweet, but strange role, where the pay was decent for the work, fully remote but a weird schedule which I was more than happy to do. Damn!
Fuck dude, that is rough. Hang in there, keep looking for other opportunities. I hope things get better
I got a CS degree earlier this year. I’m Autistic and am genuinely really passionate about it. I’ve put out hundreds of applications and got 1 interview but was ultimately rejected. I’ve tried applying to retail positions, even with a dumbed down resume so I don’t look overqualified, and they don’t want me either. I’m extremely low on money and I’ve been getting really bad panic attacks lately. I don’t even know what to do anymore.
I believe some tech companies have neuro diversity hiring programs, if you haven’t stumbled across those yet. The jobs don’t demand less, but they have a setup to be more supportive of the candidates.
Thanks. I will go look into that.
Are you applying for jr level positions or trying for positions your college said you could get after you graduate?
I am applying to entry level positions. I have a resume website I made as well as some projects. My most recent uses Spring Boot + React.
Ok that’s good, I would advise, try for anything right now in the field if IT. Shoot for an MSP and just get your foot in the door. Then network while you work there, show them your good at your field of study. The main thing right now is to get into the field first, worry about your tower after you get in and start networking with coworkers and others. Almost all of my positions and career advancement has come from networking, I get people hunting for me to get poached from my company now because of who I know.
Look for government coding positions like state level or even city or town level.
Sorry to say that you’re quite fucked. I’ve been in IT / Tech for 18 years. My company hasn’t hired jr devs for at least a year.
I am so fucking happy my own business managed to get off the ground.
Job hunting suuuuuuuuucked. I knew I was good, but no-one noticed.
Now, my customers love me.
Edit: I just realized the other side of this equation means companies are expecting to get about 1500 applicants for every position they offer?! That’s insane, and there is no chance a human is reviewing every application.
I run my own business too, and I mainly do it for job security because begging someone to give me a go was hard, but customers are just so much easier to come by
but customers are just so much easier to come by
That came as a surprise to me, too. I thought I’d have to convince customers to come to me instead of my corporate competitors. But no, within three months I had more people coming to me than I could handle, so I was able to reduce my advertising. And the customers I get are clearly happier, too.
I earn more while charging less, offering more comprehensive service than I ever would have been allowed to if working for some large company with shitty policies I’d have to abide.
Getting 5-star review after 5-star review should not be this easy. With almost every exchange I find myself thinking of ways to improve, but the customers are just utterly ecstatic to find someone who isn’t shafting them three times over every transaction.
As boomer as it sounds, people by and large still much prefer dealing with a real person they can talk to instead of a faceless corporation (even if the work is remote). The trust built from 1-to-1 interaction is hard to beat.
If there are a lot of customers, and a lot of unemployed people, and not enough jobs, do we have some kind of shortage of firms?
Under capitalism, it’s not enough for a person to be able to make a living providing a good or service to society. They need to be able to make enough to pay the people that do it for them, plus a profit for the owners. Without that profit, owners have no reason to make a corp to provide the good or service, so it doesn’t happen, or if it did happen, it gets sold to someone who thinks they can either turn it around or get more than they paid for it by liquidating everything.
But this means that there’s pretty much a whole economy available for people to provide those goods and services without giving a profit cut, meaning they can both undercut the for-profit corps doing it while making more than the corps would be willing to pay them.
Think about this any time you see something about a failing company, because it doesn’t mean you can’t make a living doing that thing, but just that you can’t make enough to cover loan costs (which can also be a big factor since business schools like to preach leveraging to the max) and still profit afterwards, after paying all of the workers.
I think we have shortage of options people actually like.
It’s not that people need more options, but the ones that are available are starting to exploit their monopolistic/duopolistic positions.
People hate it, but they don’t have any real way out. For something to supplant these big companies in a way where it actually served customer at volume, it would have to grow as big, without becoming as bad or getting aquired.
One of customers commented that a business he used before, that was very similar to mine, recently got purchased and merged into one of the sucky local giants.
When you say your own business, do you mean you work as an independent contractor or did you build your own software application that you are selling as a service or a one time purchase?
I’m curious about this as I too want to work independently in the future but not sure which approach to take
Ive had 3 that supported me and my family - first was a computer service business, think repairs and parts. Stopped that in 2012 and moved into doing apps.
I made my own accounting system which didn’t get traction, and realised I was better off doing the thing I was good at - making software. Had 3 of us in the end but moved on from that in 2021 and started a distillery.
So no it at all anymore, or at least for now
I sometimes think getting out of tech is the dream lol. Hope the distillery business treats you well
Yeah 99% of applications are auto rejected by the ATS.
If it’s a ghost job, 100% are
You and I both. I work harder then ever now but I get out what I put in
I’m earning more than before, with more free time than before, while working more ethically than before.
I honestly can’t imagine ever working for a large company again. Modern corporate culture has made them utterly incompatible with the human facts of life, and having a desire to live a moral life is a competitive death sentence.
When you say your own business, do you mean you work as an independent contractor or did you build your own software application that you are selling as a service or a one time purchase?
I’m curious about this as I too want to work independently in the future but not sure which approach to take
Independent contractor.
I’m not sure the latter would have allowed me to get off the ground as quickly, but it certainly has the bigger income potential.
I don’t have any product ideas at the moment, but now that I’m up an running, I’m in a much better position to execute on one if I did.
Thanks for the reply. I feel a few years of contracting might build up my skills and confidence before I think of executing on any idea as well. How did you start finding clients, any particular websites or through contracting agencies or just word of mouth through your personal network?
Slick website + google ads + getting public reviews from early customers that I put on the website.
Be easy to contact. I made buttons on the website that shortcut to call, email, or whatsapp. Directly even, if on mobile.
After an initial slowness it all seems to have started to feed into itself. Search activity for my actual business name is increasing, not just the search terms for what I do.
I don’t want to rely on online advertising, tho, so I’m eventually gonna give some other forms of marketing a go.
Starting January this year, I put out aprox 400 applications: mostly online, around 30 in-person handing out resumes to anyone that’d still take one (they usually direct you to an online application if you visit in person). After 4 months, I’d had a grand total of 5 interviews. 4/5 said they had more interviews to do that day and would call me in a day or two, whether they chose to hire or not, just to follow up and let me know their decision. The 5th straight up said I’d be a fantastic fit for the team, he’s just got to confirm with another upper manager who’d be back tomorrow and they’d call me later tomorrow with a hire date and more details. None of the 5 contacted me again.
Called the last one back a couple times and got avoided for three days until the manager finally told me they’d gone with another candidate.
Finally in May I had a phone interview, then followed up with an in person interview and landed a job within walking distance of my home.
Job hunting sucks.
Yeah that’s just a psychopathic take.
Not too brag, but I walked out of uni with a nursing degree, went through one application and interview process, and have been in secure, full-time employment ever since.
COVID was a bit shit, but it turns out that was a temporary low point.
I never wrote an application. I was basically hunted down by employers, and only one job interview did not work out - because the employer die not turn up. I’m now in my 30th year in my current employment.
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I’ve gotten callbacks within 12 hours for applications I didn’t even finish and submit. It’s hard work but there’ll never be too little of it.
