I had a recruiter screen a few weeks ago where I reached the usual final five minutes:

"Do you have any questions for me?"

Normally I'd ask about the team, culture, day-to-day, etc., and half the time the recruiter either doesn't know or gives me something I could have read on the company website.

This time I asked:

"When you first discussed this opening with the hiring manager, what did they say they absolutely needed in the person you send them?"

The recruiter paused for a second and then gave me a much better answer than anything in the job posting.

She said the manager was specifically frustrated because the team had good technical people, but nobody wanted to deal directly with difficult clients. They needed someone who could handle uncomfortable conversations without immediately escalating everything.

The posting had one generic bullet about "stakeholder communication."

That's it.

I happened to have a very good example from my current job involving an angry client, so when I met the hiring manager two days later I made sure that story came up naturally.

His reaction was basically: "That's exactly the kind of situation we're dealing with."

I moved to the next round.

I've tried the question twice since then. One recruiter told me the hiring manager cared much more about Excel than the posting suggested. Another said the manager's biggest concern was hiring someone who could work independently because the team lead was overloaded.

Neither piece of information was obvious from the job description.

It made me realize recruiters often have something we don't: the conversation that happened before the job was posted.

They've usually heard the manager complain about the last person, explain why the opening exists, or describe the one problem they're desperately trying to solve. The public posting gets cleaned up into ten corporate bullet points and that context disappears.

Obviously not every recruiter will share much, and some probably weren't involved deeply enough to know.

But I've stopped wasting recruiter-screen questions on things the recruiter isn't really positioned to answer.

I'm much more interested in the notes behind the job description than the job description itself.

Whew! I just got good news from HR, a company that hired me as a short term contract in September just made me a permanent employee!!! I did have to interview for the job (which happened last week).

The economy is rough, it’s rough for new grads, it’s rough for younger people, it’s rough for us 50+ adults

Don’t give up. I lost my job in January 2025. It was very unexpected. I work as a systems administrator in IT. And there is a lot of us loosing our jobs due to outsourcing, AI etc. I took a lot of financial hits while being unemployed.

I had several part time jobs, and sold my personal possessions. I had to put my personal life on the back burner and focus on the job search and making money.

Then I found a full time job in June 2026 but was downsized out 2 months later.

Applying for full time work is gruelling. Trying to tailor your resume and stand out, working with ATS algorithms, interview prep and networking is tough and mentally exhausting.

My job search hacks were researching job leads (especially LinkedIn, which is known for posting ghost jobs), networking, increasing my certifications, and tailoring my resume to every job. I was selective which jobs I applied for, because it’s impossible to apply for everything

But I did it.

I hope you do too. Best wishes to anyone looking for work.

So a company asks you to build a full marketing plan or redesign a feature for round three. You cancel your weekend plans, spend twelve hours grinding on it, send it in, and get a generic rejection email three days later. I did this twice last year as a senior designer and wanted to scream into a pillow.

Then I realized something. Senior candidates with options never spend ten hours doing free work. By submitting a finished, polished production asset, you are basically screaming that your time has zero value and that you have no other interviews going on. You think you are showing dedication, but they just see a desperate junior.

I stopped doing it completely. Now, when a company sends a take-home, I set a strict 90-minute timer. I write a clean one-page executive brief outlining the high-level architecture, list the questions I would ask the product team, and record a three-minute Loom walking through my framework. Then I write: "In a real role, I dont build production features without cross-functional alignment, but here is my strategic approach."

My pass rate went from twenty percent to over eighty percent. It is just ABSOLUTELY wild how the corporate brain works. As soon as you set boundaries and act like a consultant instead of an unpaid intern, they suddenly treat you with respect. Why should we have to play psychological mind games just to avoid working for free? Why is this even a thing?

Got laid off after four years at the same company. One of the stupidest parts of the whole experience was sitting down to update my resume and realizing I could barely remember what I'd actually accomplished.

I knew what my job was. I knew the software. I knew my responsibilities. But ask me what I improved in four years and my brain went completely blank.

"Managed daily operations." Great. Really selling myself there.

I remembered fixing a recurring billing problem, cleaning up a backlog that had been driving everyone nuts, and changing how we handed work between two teams. But I couldn't remember the numbers. How big was the backlog? How much time did the new process save? When exactly did we change it?

All the answers were buried in work emails and internal reports I no longer had access to.

I eventually found an old performance review I'd saved for myself. It mentioned that I'd reduced one team's backlog from more than 40 unresolved items to fewer than 10 by changing how requests were assigned.

That single sentence was more useful for my resume than two evenings of trying to make "responsible for daily operations" sound impressive.

So here's the thing I'd tell anyone who's currently employed: start a private record of the problems you solve at work. Not a diary, not a copy of confidential company documents. Just a few lines every month.

What was broken? What did you do? What changed afterward? Any numbers you can legitimately use?

Most of this stuff won't feel important when you're doing it. That's exactly why you'll forget it.

And if you get laid off, quit unexpectedly, or just decide it's time to move on, you won't have to reconstruct your entire professional value from memory while you're already stressed.

I wish somebody had told me this four years ago.

This is stupidly simple, but I started doing it after getting an interview for a role and discovering the job posting had already been taken down.

Now, before I submit anything, I print the job description to PDF and name it:

Company - Role - date applied

That's it.

It has been way more useful than I expected.

A recruiter called me 11 days after one application and the listing was gone from both LinkedIn and the company's careers page. Instead of trying to remember which of the 40 vaguely similar jobs I'd applied to, I had the exact original description sitting in my folder.

For the interview I highlighted every responsibility they mentioned and wrote one example from my experience beside each one.

Then it happened again, except this time the company had reposted the role with a noticeably different description. The new version emphasized management experience that wasn't in the one I applied to. Because I had the original PDF, I knew I wasn't losing my mind and could prepare for both versions.

I've also started saving the salary range, requisition number and recruiter/hiring manager names in the filename or notes. Takes maybe 20 seconds.

Bonus: when you eventually get the rejection email that only says "the position you applied for," you can actually figure out what position they're talking about.

Job searching makes you maintain enough useless admin already, but this is one tiny bit of admin that has genuinely paid off.

For context, I live in the UK and work as a public health researcher.

My first 20+ applications, I did what I thought was right, apply only to jobs I was qualified for and tailored my CV manually to each, spending 2 hours on each application. Nothing.

The next 30, I used the spray and pray method. Also nothing.

Then, after talking to someone, I revamped my strategy and did this exactly:

1. Aimed to only submit 2-3 applications per week, only the ones I was absolutely qualified for, and spent 2-4 hours per application.

2. Use AI (Paid Claude) for each stage of the application process. I would paste the JD into Claude, get a percentage of how my qualifications matched the JD, and only progress with jobs I was 85% or more qualified for.

3. Qualification was not enough. I would then go on LinkedIn to find people who had held that particular role in the past and look at their career trajectory up to getting that role (to see what was attractive to the hiring manager). Even though I knew I was qualified for that role, if the previous hires had job titles significantly different from mine or worked in different industries, I avoided the job.

4. For jobs that passed the first two stages, I messaged the hiring manager for an informal discussion. This helped a lot I should say. For the 6 interviews I've got so far, I emailed the hiring manger 50% of the time (and only 21% for the 23 jobs I got rejected for).

5. The convo with the hiring manager would be me getting them to break down the role so I'd figure out what they were looking for, but also soft pitching myself so they knew I was qualified. These calls were very helpful, sometimes I'd realise here I was not so qualified after all from what they said and stop pursuing the job from here.

6. I'd go back to Claude, get it to generate a CV for the job, and include all the details the hiring manager emphasised. I prioritised getting Claude to optimise my CV with ATS keywords but also used flashy colours and went in to change up words so it still looked human enough.

6b. Then I'd also create a cover letter, most of the time heavy with the hiring manager's focus and details from the company website.

1. I tracked each of the 30 applications to see what was working. For example, no matter how hard I tried, I never got any interview from NHS or public councils so I stopped applying to them completely.

My goal was a high interview conversion rate rather than sending many applications and using 4 hours while gaining nothing.

I hope this helps someone! Goodluck!

Hi everyone,

I'm writing this because I've been keeping a lot of things inside, and I don't know who to talk to anymore.

It's been almost two months since I've been unemployed. I've been trying my best to improve my skills, learn new things, and find a job. I've been applying to more than 200 jobs a day, but I'm barely getting any replies.

Honestly, it's really painful. I'm putting in so much effort, trying to improve myself every day, but nothing seems to be working. Seeing no results after trying so hard is mentally exhausting.

The hardest part is thinking about my parents. I love them, and I want to make them proud. But lately, I've started feeling like I'm disappointing them and that they deserve a better son than me. I know these thoughts might not be fair, but I can't seem to stop thinking this way.

My mind has been very disturbed these days, and sometimes I feel so hopeless that I've even had thoughts of suicide. I'm struggling to handle these feelings on my own, and honestly, I'm scared of how low I've been feeling.

I'm not writing this to ask for a job or sympathy. I just need someone to listen and help me understand how to get through this phase of my life.

If anyone has gone through unemployment, repeated rejection, or this kind of mental pressure, please share how you dealt with it. I'd really appreciate hearing from someone who understands.

I don't want to give up on my life. I just want things to get better, and right now, I need some support.

Thank you for reading this.

I’ve been applying for remote positions lately, and after more than 30 applications, I’m noticing a pattern. Many companies seem to use automated screening systems, AI recruiters, or AI-driven interviews as part of their hiring process.
Even when I meet around 80% of the requirements, I often receive a rejection almost immediately or get filtered out somewhere in the automated process before reaching a human recruiter.
For those who have successfully landed remote jobs recently:
How do you optimize your CV to get past ATS and AI screening systems?
Is tailoring your CV for every application really necessary, and what do you prioritize when doing it?
How do you handle AI interviews or automated screening questions?
Are there specific strategies that have genuinely increased your chances of getting an interview?
Have you found that applying directly through company career pages, networking, or contacting recruiters works better than using Easy Apply?
I’m not expecting to meet 100% of every job description, but I want to understand how to present relevant experience effectively without spending hours on every application.
What has actually worked for you in today’s job market to get past the automated screening stage and in front of a real person?

I am curious - if companies maintain blacklists of applicants who they interviewed and found to have faked their experiences during the interview. I know companies like salesforce, meta have a time based window in which you can apply for x number of jobs.

I am not advocating blacklists but feel that AI has created so many unicorns on paper that there should be better way to handle that.

is the industry really over now? I've searched for hacks but those hacks are not as effective as most of you might think...

Hello. I'm a creative, art director, in advertising. I come up with the ideas for marketing campaigns for various brands and supervise their production. Moved abroad (looking for a job in EU) and since then been struggling with landing even an interview. I thought my work should speak for itself (at least it worked where I came from), hence I've got several portfolios for different occasions, but now here I hit the CV wall. Had several iterations (this is the latest), hired expensive recruiting consultants, all in vain. So, what's wrong with the CV. Any insight would be great.

Virtusa Technical Interview – Need Recent Experiences

Hey guys, anyone attended Virtusa’s technical interview recently?

What questions did they ask? Especially coding, Java, SQL, and project-related questions.

Was the interview difficult for freshers? Any tips on what to prepare first?

Please share your recent experience. It would really help!

I honestly need some advice because I’m starting to feel so frustrated and lost with my job search.
I’ve been trying to switch jobs for a long time now, and it feels like I’m getting nowhere. I barely get interview calls, recruiters ghost me after reaching out, applications go unanswered, and even when I do manage to attend interviews, I end up feeling like I’ve messed something up.
The worst part is that I don’t know WHAT I’m doing wrong.
When I receive feedback after interviews, it’s usually something generic that doesn’t really tell me what I need to improve. Sometimes there’s no feedback at all. I walk out of interviews knowing I could’ve done better, but I can’t pinpoint exactly where I’m lacking or how to fix it.
Meanwhile, almost all my friends are switching companies, getting better opportunities, and moving forward in their careers. I’m genuinely happy for them, but it’s hard not to compare myself sometimes when I feel like I’m putting in so much effort and getting absolutely nowhere.
I don’t want to stay at my current company forever. I want to grow, learn, earn better, and move forward in my career. I know I have to put in the work, and I’m willing to do that. But how am I supposed to improve when I don’t even know what I’m doing wrong?
For those of you who have been in a similar situation:
How did you figure out what was going wrong with your job search?
How do you identify your weaknesses when interview feedback is vague or nonexistent?
What actually helped you start getting more interview calls?
Did you change your resume, your preparation strategy, the way you answered questions, or something else entirely?
How do you deal with watching everyone around you move forward while you feel stuck?
I’m not looking for someone to tell me to just keep trying or that everything will work out eventually. I genuinely want to understand what I might be doing wrong and what I can do differently.
I’m tired of putting in effort without knowing whether I’m even moving in the right direction. I need an honest reality check and some practical advice from people who have been through this.
If you were in my position, what would you do differently?

My company was sold last August, and I’ve been unemployed ever since. My savings are running out, and as a mom, I have a baby to feed and a family to support.
I’ve been actively looking for work on Upwork, but I’m starting to wonder if my profile needs better optimization or if the platform has simply become too saturated. I do get interviews occasionally, which gives me a little hope, but I haven’t landed a job yet.
I’m from the Philippines, and honestly, the job search has been really challenging. I have 4 years of experience as an Insurance Virtual Assistant and 3 years of customer service experience, so I know I have valuable skills to offer.
I’m doing my best to stay positive, but it’s difficult when financial pressure keeps building. For those who have been in the same situation, especially fellow Filipinos working remotely, what helped you finally land a client? Should I focus on improving my Upwork profile, sending more proposals, or trying other platforms?
I’d really appreciate any advice or guidance. Thank you. ❤️

I'm planning to purchase Naukri 360 Pro, mainly for better recruiter visibility, instant job alerts, and other premium features.

However, I noticed that it includes an Auto-Apply feature that automatically applies to jobs matching your profile.

My concern is that I don't want it to automatically apply to companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, or other top product-based companies just yet. I want to save those applications for later when I'm better prepared and apply manually.

A few questions for anyone currently using Naukri Pro:

1. Can we completely disable Auto-Apply while still using the other Pro features?
2. Is there an option to blacklist/exclude specific companies from Auto-Apply?
3. Does Auto-Apply start automatically after purchasing Pro, or do we have to enable it manually?

Would really appreciate insights from anyone who has actually used this feature. Thanks!

I am no longer looking but was so disturbed by Linkedin when they reposted jobs even after I ignored them using their ignore feature. I am not sure if it is the HR team reposting or Linkedin doing it because they get paid by eyeballs and clicks. Either way they are doing a disservice to applicants and their company openings.

Has anyone heard of worked for a company named Genpact ? Ive done my research to vet and determine whether they were a legit company with real reviews but the onboarding process has me re considering ?? Please if you're in the U.S. and have worked for them, know someone who has or have general info about the company, i would appreciate a response !

I’m a new engineering grad in Canada. After I apply, I’ve started finding the HR contact on LinkedIn and emailing them directly with my resume attached. I’m also looking at recruiters and staffing agencies. Has either of those been worth the effort for you?

If something else got you your first interview, I’d like to hear it. And if you followed up, how long did you wait before you did?

I’d also take a lower-level job at a company I want, hoping to move up from inside. Does that tend to work?

PS: I have also attached a copy of my resume, I hope for your guidance.

Guys so I am working as wordpress and Shopify developer since 2 years also somehow I got feeling in long term their is not much career growth in those field so I am scared

One of my friend is doing job as laravel developer he suggested me to do that and also I am preparing for that i got scared to get a new job which pays me good amount

Also some time I saw my seniors who did internship in python and get a good package

So guys please suggest me what to do I am 23(f)

🙂Please guys

Unfortunately, I do not speak Dutch at all

Can be anything remotely adjacent to IT, Data Analytics, SWE.
I mean, ANYTHING.
Entry-level, recent college grad.
The position needs to be international-student friendly, but don't need to sponsor.
DM me if you have anything concrete and we can come to a monetary arrangement based on the offer.

For no ones surprise I'm navigating the job market. I am an industrial designer and there don't seem to be many positions for my expertise. I see everywhere that I should reach directly to the managers and ask them about oportunities. I guess my question is not much is you have ever gotten a job but more what the hell do you write on the DM without looking too desperate (I am tho). Not that I care much about to look desperate but more as in I don't want them to be directly annoyed at me.

For context: I'm in Finland, looking for a job in Helsinki, Stockholm or Copenhagen.

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

I started work at a retail pharmacy last month, but the demand of the job and personal health reasons made me re evaluate my job. I decided to leave to focus on my health, and am hoping to find something less physically demanding - I can't stand for too long unfortunately, and a shift longer than 8 hours is exhausting for me. Any leads on where I can start my job search? I was feeling super motivated yesterday, but am not feeling overwhelmed.