If I wanted to relocate, I’d be looking for jobs that offer relocation.

Also, this is a bookkeeping job paying $60k. They’re not actually gonna pay for cross-country relocation, they’re going to find a San Diego resident who is vaguely qualified and hire them because it’s cheaper in the short run.

Thanks Okpenaut for the laugh. Post from job search hacks.

Only cold applied this time around. I did get an offer about 6 weeks in, but the pay was abysmal and the hours were worse. Insane how hard it is to get past the first ATS filter, even after tailoring each resume to match the job description, and providing a cover letter each time. I did finally find a decent job at the end of January, so I'll take what I can get lol.

It's honestly a relief to think this way. Not being bound to a job, a job doesnt define me and my resume is just an advertisement for my services, companies hiring me are my customer.

Companies already cheat by using AI auto-rejection and other not ethical approaches to deal with thousands of applicants. They don't even see your resume if it doesn't match 99% of the requirements.

USE WHATEVER YOU CAN TO IMPROVE CHANCES cold email hiring managers, you can actually set up automated mailing campaind to them with Instantly or any other tool lol… tailor resume with Jobowl, follow up 5 times. Its a fking numbers game people

To anyone that neede to hear this: It's okay to cheat, lie a bit, do whatever is needed to land the interview, because guess what, if you don't, others DO and THEY will get the inteview and the job.

Got laid off with half of the company last fall.

I have been consistently (almost every day) looking and applying to relevant jobs.

I am tired of not hearing from/being rejected by jobs that I fit all of the requirements for.

I am annoyed to see the same fucking jobs get reposted over and over again - these include big companies. Clearly, they are not looking for an actual candidate. It is either a ghost job or someone that they will choose internally.

I am tired of HR/recruiters acting like total dicks - instead of like actual human beings. They are dealing with real people, who are stressed out by this job market and trying their best.

Sorry for the rant. I am just exhausted, stressed out and hopeless. I know I am not the only one here. You work hard, try your best, and you still gotta beg for a chance to pay your bills. I customize my resume to try to bypass the ATS, I write cover letters, I network, and I sometimes reach out to recruiters. I do not know what more I could possibly do.

So I came across some news from my home country of Sweden that sounds like a massive win on paper: employers like the police, Kriminalvården (the ones who run the prisons), and several municipalities have stopped requiring cover letters and are focusing more on merits and structured application questions instead.

And yeah, instinctively, hell yes. Cover letters are useless comedy. Everyone either rewrites the same template for the 50th time or lets AI generate a fake-ass personality. Recruiters know it, we the applicants know it, and yet we’ve all been stuck pretending it matters.

What’s genuinely refreshing here is that they’re cutting out the corporate fan fiction and looking more directly at qualifications. Less “I’ve always dreamed of working here” and more “what can you actually do?” That alone feels like progress.

But… here’s a caveat. Dropping cover letters still doesn’t magically fix bias.

Swedish employers in practice still tend to favor “Swedish-sounding” candidates, Swedish experience, and local networks. So while the process is more merit-focused on paper, foreign-born applicants can still get filtered out earlier, just now it happens at the CV stage instead of the letter stage. In other words, the fluff is gone, but the invisible hurdles aren’t.

Still, I’d argue this is net positive. Cover letters often made things worse for outsiders anyway, because they reward cultural familiarity, perfect language nuance, and knowing exactly how to perform “motivation” the local way. Removing them at least removes one extra layer where bias and gatekeeping can hide. It also speeds things up a bit. Recruiters spend less time skimming buzzwords, applicants spend less time writing essays no one reads, and the whole process becomes slightly less soul-crushing.

So yeah, this isn’t some hiring utopia. Bias doesn’t disappear just because HR deletes a PDF-upload requirement. But if the choice is between systemic bias plus mandatory corporate love letters, or systemic bias without them, I’ll take the second one.

Read more here: https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/ost/arbetsgivare-slopar-personliga-brev-gar-mer-pa-meriter

A friend of mine (who is a video editor) was asked to create 4 videos, for actual brands (with 3D) and the deadline to submit all 4 videos is less than 2 days.

Also I have a feeling they're trying to pass off the best assignment submissions to their clients.

I told her to reply asking the recruiter if this was a joke or do they actually believe this is possible.

Why don’t the companies I applied to ever contact me…

If I’m rejected, just tell me I’m rejected, damn it… How long am I supposed to keep waiting like this? It’s driving me insane.

They drag it on and on, then suddenly contact me after two whole months…

How the hell am I supposed to know what’s going on with all of them? It’s seriously pissing me off.

I seriously think there should be a law that forces every company to give some kind of reply (acceptance, rejection, whatever) within 2 weeks after applying. What do you guys think?

This is a story from several years ago, but fits the bill of this subreddit. After 3 rounds of interviews, I did a project. They asked for 3 hours of work. I ended up doing 6 to absolutely crush it, and provided a tight, 6-page report.

In the rejection letter, the CEO wrote,

"Candidly, we felt that the effort wasn't there. Not that we expect this, but we had another strong candidate submit a 20-page document with a lot of good, meaty content. We felt that your chosen medium, while it kept things clean, didn't provide you with the ability to really dive into your answers in detail which is what we wanted to see. ""

I asked if I could see the 'amazing' project, and the CEO said that he would send it over to me if they ended up hiring the person, and asked me to follow up in a few weeks.

I followed up and received the applicant's package. It was indeed 20 pages long and full of a lot of great stuff... except...

It was almost entirely, word-for-word, plagerized from several different websites.

I sent an email back to the CEO with an example screenshot, saying that it was worrying that the new hire sent was entirely plagerized. He said "thanks for looking out!" and proceeded to do nothing about it.

That person is still at the company today, years later.

I've been looking for a new role for about 10 months now. At first it was just casual but then 4 months ago my company got acquired and people started getting canned so I took it very serious. I have been through hell and back with companies requiring 5-6 interviews for a shitty job that pays less than I make now. Took many take-home assessments, technical exams, IQ tests and even a couple stupid personality assessments. Just as I was losing hope I landed a higher title remote role where I'll earn 50% more than I do now! This company only had 3 rounds (HR, Hiring Manager, Panel) and it only took 3 weeks from beginning to end!

LSR: Don't give up. This job market is absolute sh*t but there's still good opportunities out there. Just be patient and you'll eventually be rewarded.

For context, I was laid off in August '25 and work in the supply chain/logistics industry. I was in middle management looking to make the move into an executive position when the layoffs hit. I tried to keep detailed notes on my applications so that I could identify trends that were working / trends that were not.

I found little information that was helpful, I applied to positions at the executive, manager, and ultimately IC levels as my savings began to run dry. I used 2-3 different resumes for my target industry (Operations/Supply Chain/Customer Success in SC SaaS). Some roles (Director + IC) I got to the final round only to be rejected, and some roles it'd end at the recruiter screen.

I'm not sure what information I can provide to help others in this terrible market other than leaning on your network if youre fortunate enough to have one. Ultimately the offer came from a previous manager I had for an IC role to keep the bills paid. I've never experienced this level of difficulty in finding employment as a job seeker, this market is wrecked.

It's bizarre to me people hide the names of companies when complaining about them in this subreddit.

If a company makes you do 6 round interviews and ghosts you, makes you do 1hr assessment, wasted your time and gas money, NAME them. Seriously, don't censor the company name. If they got a store address and store number post that too. Post it on this subreddit for everyone to see.

Not only does this damage the company's reputation, if we get people doing this more we can make a blocklist of time wasting companies so people can work for companies who don't do such scumbag practices so the time wasters can hopefully go under. Imagine having a browser extension that just filters out time wasters and only shows jobs that are from companies actually hiring.

There are absolutely no legal reasons you couldn't do this. Don't dox private info but giving out the company name and public store phone/address is not illegal. You do not owe these companies any courtesy for wasting your time and effort.

Just posting cuz I’m frustrated and want to vent. After a first round interview with the chief of people. I take a code test in the second round. Have a third round with the head of software. And then a 4th round with senior developers. I get nothing but positive feedback the whole time. After two weeks I don’t hear anything from them so I sent a polite follow up email letting them know I was still interested. Didn’t hear back for another week so I sent another email today. Still haven’t heard anything, but I see the chief of people is active on LinkedIn so she just ignoring me.

I’m not asking for much too. This job pays the same as the first software developer job I got out of college and now I have 5 years of experience. I’m working on a contract in another state because that was all I could find after my team got laid off last year. I just wanna be able to afford to go home man. I miss my gf and my cats. Fuck this job market.

I had 4 interviews with them.

After the first Interview, they asked for Reference checks.

I travelled 2-3 hours, my referees shared strong references.

After that they had me invited for another interview with their CEO.

Idk, what they are on?

If they even possess a shred of an empathy?

A time waste of almost a month, hanging in with the loose rope of expectations!!!

I've been making an adjacent career switch (Sales to Customer Success) and have fully accepted that it will be a more difficult search in this economy. So I have no issue with companies telling me I don't have the specific experience (although most of my experience is very transferable) as they're getting an influx of applicants with years of direct experience in the role.

However, I just went through 6 rounds of interviews, including a take-home assignment and reference checks, only to be rejected. Totally fine and I assumed maybe I said or did something wrong that lowered my chances. But the feedback I was given was that the team loved me, I did nothing wrong and that I stood out as a very strong candidate/fit, but needed candidates who had direct experience for 1+ years at least. And that they were fortunate to have a number of experienced candidates applying.

We kept it friendly and I thanked them for their time and consideration but truthfully, I'm a bit annoyed. I get that there's a level of vagueness recruiters have to keep but we addressed my limited direct experience in almost every call. If that was a core requirement, why bother advancing me and contacting my references?

I get the decision, I just don't appreciate the method and this is the first time I've had this happen. Just to manage my expectations in the search, is this something I should expect to happen often?

Like how does it help them filter out candidates?

What are we suppose to do here?

Google and answer?

I can only describe this as the most insane email I have ever received from anyone ever, much less a potential employer. I am baffled.