Yeah, Karen. No one wants to work in the first place. You think you deserve employees who will accept crackers as payment for the joy and excitement of generating value for a company so you don’t have to?
Literally, people like rslash used to exploit whenever reddit tells stories (unclear if their even real) about karens demanding labor so cheap, these ‘people’ ask coerse people to work for them for less than half of what you’d expect from a gig or office job.
I finally got to experience this from the inside. I was on the team that interviewed people to back fill my position after I was promoted. We didn’t interview 1 external candidate. Promoted someone from below and then hired a new entry level person. We realized our internal hire has less experience, but they were the safe fast option that could get started right away.
It’s so, so frustrating that so many places require a job to be posted even when there’s an internal candidate and it’s already been decided. I work in government where we’re often hard-required to post all jobs and it sucks to see so many people applying for a job when I know they absolutely will not be considered for the role.
In my experience, a majority of job postings are essentially fake because it’s already been decided, and I hate it.
Well, problem 1 is using indeed. What an obsolete site for most places. But i get the joke.
Not that prospects are much better elsewhere. Like LinkedIn for instance with their “click here for instant apply” and then you see that you’re one of 50 people (today) to apply for this open role and some AI in the background estimated based on your profile that you have 22% chance of getting the job BUT if you pay for premium you can knock that 22% up to 50% and an AI writes you a better profile…
I really do feel sorry for the crap the boomer gen and even my generation (genx) has left every generation after.
Yeah there’s that about the dead ends. Been there as well. My own field now has a lot more gains to be had from networking. Past ones, not so much. Maybe it depends on the nature of the job as well? I’m not sure. I imagine it’s a lot more helpful in sales.
I’m not great at it myself honestly. I could really learn from my spouse. She’s an SME in a niche field and literally every job after the first one, she was recruited by someone in her network. But that’s neither here, nor there.
I got a lot of this advice trying to get into academia. From what I found, knowing someone somewhere is actively detrimental to getting a job. Not only will you not get a job because of your connections, people will avoid giving you a job because hiring from a network speaks ill of the academic rigor of the institution. Whether it’s real or not, the image is maximal meritocracy, and that means the traditional advice from the corporate world is useless.
Also, if you are the “first” in your family for something (first college grad/first grad school grad, etc.), you have a HUGE disadvantage to those who have family members that can give well-informed opinions and advice. This was especially true in law school - students with lawyers in their family did far better during and immediately after law school than those students (like me) who were first to graduate college, let alone first for an advanced degree. And by “far better” I don’t simply mean “daddy got them a great job straight out of law school,” I’m talking about better academic performance, better utilization of available school career resources, better networking skills, you name it.
Dude I got a PhD and tried to get a tenure track job. I’m from a family of dirt farmers and had no advice on how to break into academia. Your words couldn’t be more true.
People who have to work 40 hours a week, plus do their own cooking and cleaning, plus all their own errands, plus taking care of the kids or pets, don’t have time to network.
There’s a reason politics is filled with rich lawyers and finance people, and it because they have the luxury of networking.
People who have to work 40 hours a week, plus do their own cooking and cleaning, plus all their own errands, plus taking care of the kids or pets, don’t have time to network.
No, networking means maintaining healthy relationships with your peers, friends, and coworkers from all your previous jobs and telling people you’re looking for one.
If there’s no luck there, then yes, you suck it up and go to the gutter pile of Indeed, classifieds, and doing work you never wanted to do lol.
Depends on your level and job. Honestly I’m still going to say LinkedIn in most cases, if only because Its the professional social network. Companies can look you up, so you need a good profile to attract those recruiters that pay to find people. It’s a sick game, but at least now there are AI profile services that can help you get ahead.
Indeed is cheap and used by cheap recruiters to get the most applicants directed to some other job board that costs them near nothing to aggregate resumes. You can’t even be sure you’re using the company job site to apply in some cases. At least with LinkedIn you can do the searching for the real job post.
Glassdoor has got to be the worst name for a job site. Evokes the phrase “glass ceiling” which is not something that anyone wants to have at their job.
Yep. Comes down to money and they can’t make big money off you if you hide behind the great LinkedIn pay wall. Look, recruiters like everyone else are trying to milk every penny out of their sale (you). You say “top” but are they exclusive? Are you applying at the company portal? Can you find this job yourself and apply direct? Top recruiters doesn’t mean as much as is used to. Right now you’re one of 30 applicants being submitted by a semi-competent recruiter that uses a tool to evaluate how much your resume fits and how much profit they can make if they bring you in under the salary range.
Indeed is a crap job site used by cheap recruiters. at least with LinkedIn you’re better armed with searching.
Yeah I’ve experienced the first one. I accepted a position somewhere else long before, but by the time one of the companies had gotten back to me, it had been 7 months since I applied.
Careful, if you talk about how the USA’s H1-B visa program is a steaming pile of horseshit designed to allow corporate America to commit fraud and give away 80,000 skilled jobs a year to underpaid imported workers instead of paying market rates to well-qualified US citizens and green card holders, you might get downvoted. Folks here have trouble with balancing their hatred of corporate America with their hatred of the word “citizen” being used unironically.
"the silence is deafening" sums up my job searching experience. I can apply to as many jobs as you'd like but I can't actually start working until the other side says yes. and they seem to not even register that my application has been sent. How am I supposed to work, if no employer ever even looks at my application?
I fucking hate that. If they need the position filled, should they not be checking each and every applicant? Why do I ALSO need to call the place after I sent in my application/resume?
Is that the case? What about companies that don't have a phone number and instead say to fill out their online form? Are you supposed to just hack them to get their number or something?
This is my experience too. I spent 5 months looking for a job on Indeed and LinkedIn but eventually got a job in a completely different field thanks to my father-in-law.
My last job was 8 hours of work and an hour commute each way, but it was by train so it wasn’t too bad since I could read my book or nap. Have to drive an hour or more each way is suicide-provoking for sure.
There’s so many other issues too, such as the fact that old job posts don’t really get removed, employers/recruiters also spam multiple websites with their job posts and forget to check them, and some of the job descriptions don’t even match what you go and sign up for.
No salaries mentioned on lots of posts, multi stage interviews that somehow demand your free time during work hours, so good luck interviewing for other roles while you have a job. Take home assignments that take multiple hours sometimes, sacrificing a whole evening.
Recruiters that will ask for all your information again, despite having found your phone number from your CV, and once you go through that, tell you they have nothing for you and that they’ll be in touch.
Questions that mean nothing in an interview, including acronyms I haven’t used or even heard of outside of interviewing for other jobs, because my job doesn’t need or use them, we just do the work.
Don’t forget the tech listings that require 5 years experience in a particular programming language when the language has only even existed for the past 2 years…
Catch-22 situations, where it’s impossible to meet the qualifications. 🤦♂️
During the interview they tell you it only requires 2 days a week in the office. You tell them you don’t have a car… they reply there are trains from where you live to where the office is located… you look it up and they’re right, it’s just a 2 hour commute each way. You start to think “8 hours a week, is like 1.5 hours a day for 5 days, could be worse…”. Then you realize their hiring process requires 3 more on-site interviews before even getting an offer.
Take home assignments that take multiple hours sometimes, sacrificing a whole evening.
Do NOT do this.
Taking a live proficiency test is one thing, particularly if you’re applying for more senior roles, but doing actual projects for free in your spare time should be a hard pass. Full stop.
Not doing a home assignment(or work test as we call them) would mean never getting a job within the industry I work in, or at least not within the country I’m in.
And as someone that have been on both sides of this they are a great tool especially as it gives something to focus on in a technical interview. Though I would say that a requirement for this is that you always give/get actual feedback.
I feel like these are the real issues - I can’t tell if OP is meant to be a joke … “You forget the check the website and you miss the time”. I mean, that’s on you. Also it seems to me very easy to know the words an interviewer wants to hear, the real danger is that the job IS NOT as advertised.
The number of interviews I used to it in on, and wonder WTF the interviewer was thinking… One asked a service designer “if you were a type of cake, what would you be?”
The only possible use I could imagine, was to test how people respond to irrelevant stupid questions, since that happens a lot in some workplaces. Do they get frustrated and make it awkward, or shrug it off politely.
Good point. So how would you say I did… was the frosting part too much? 😃
But really, I wonder if it’s also a neurodivergence test; in an actual interview setting, I’d probably tend to think about it seriously and answer sincerely, then follow up with details if prompted.
Haha, yeah you might be onto something there. It felt like a way to pull the rug from under people to see how they cope, which wasn’t nice. I try to put people at ease in interviews, rather than try to catch them out.
I was ambushed with a “so, what do you do for fun?” once and the sudden context switch made me pause for so long that I must’ve seemed like I had no life outside of work 😬
I was ambushed with a “so, what do you do for fun?” once
Same, I said “I like electronics and taking things apart”, for an IT position. Got the job, ended up on printer duty. That wasn’t what I meant by “fun” 😐
I would disagree, those issues are valid too. Why does every website needs its own account, phone number etc? I get so many spam calls when I start looking for a job because of this. Just e-mail me. I’m not going to check your website every day for 2 weeks just to see if you get back to me.
The spam calls also put less value on actually answering my phone, because half the time it is a spam call. Why does every recruiter need to call? Why does every site need a number when I just need one answer, yes or no. I have my CV, I have my skills on my CV, and with one reply I can send you a very short list of what I’m looking for in 2 minutes, not every job needs a 30 minute phone conversation only for the recruiter to decide they have nothing for me.
And yes, there are magic words the interviewer wants to hear as well. As someone who sometimes struggles in higher pressure situations (which my field does not require at all btw), and also struggles with using the correct vocabulary or recalling random phrases and key words they want to hear, it’s frustrating to no end.
Honestly, I feel this should have all been streamlined by now, especially when I’ve already worked somewhere for years and my company has been satisfied with my performance - why is this not enough? Why can’t this be quantified somehow? An alternative which very few companies do is give me a technical/practical interview that’s actually like the job as advertised. Much easier for remote roles, but can be done in person too. Let me do the job, show you I can do the job, and then you decide to hire me based on that.
I do relate to your last point though, the amount of unrelated riddles or whatever get asked to ‘see how I think’ or something is ridiculous. Even when I get the answers right, the interviewer themselves don’t seem sure. I don’t get it.
In my industry, practical interviews are very common, but they’re not always reliable. I can get as much from asking someone about their process and being talked through a case study they’ve chosen, as giving them a practical exercise to perform on the spot. I’d usually do both.
I’m not disagreeing with the overall inefficiency and frustration of the whole process, I’ve felt it on both sides. It’s messy - bad or overstretched HR teams, slow managers, unclear budgets, poor choice of tech platforms…
Poor people should just simply try working for their father’s company for a year and then taking a VP position at a small fortune 500. I don’t understand why they won’t try that, and pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Tsk tsk tsk.
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