r/CareerAdvice101

I was working in a horribly toxic environment that everyone in my company was fleeing from. My mental and physical health were declining and I needed out badly. I started applying around March, thinking I would find something very quickly. I did not. As we all know now, jobs were getting harder and harder to find. I had taken a course on resume writing a couple of years ago and continued on, still struggling. I was looking for primarily Learning & Development roles and really wanted a remote or hybrid position.

What worked: I used the filter on LinkedIn for <10 applicants. I used the filter at least once a day and applied only with fully tailored resume (used JobOwl for this) What happened was jobs that had unique names that I wasn't searching for, very small companies that lacked large followings, or companies that weren't sponsoring their posts popped up first. Also the newest postings would be mixed in there, so it also have a chance to be one of the first applicants. I landed some really solid interviews where I was in the top few candidates.

I was the first or second applicant to a role I hadn't heard of before that I had a lot of transferrable skills with. HR was contacting me by the next day. I told this to a couple of my friends who were also trying to leave and not having luck and they both landed a lot of interviews this way and were able to find a way out. I'm sure some of us have heard of this, but I figured some probably haven't and it could help. I now work almost entirely remotely, but do have to visit the office about once a month. I'm 2 months in and it has been life changing.

was venting to her about my job search going nowhere and she just looked at me and said "how do you think they're reading your resume?" and honestly I had no idea. she's been on hiring panels before so she broke it down for me.

apparently recruiters go through three stages. first they skim to check if you're even remotely qualified, we're talking a few seconds. then they scan for keywords that match the job description. only if both of those pass do they actually sit down and read the whole thing. I had been writing my resume like someone was carefully reading every word top to bottom and that's just not what's happening.

the thing that really got me was when she said a former colleague once filtered out half the applicants for a role just because a specific skill wasn't written on the resume. didn't matter if the person actually had it. if it wasn't there he moved on because he didn't have time to find out. I redid my resume that same night honestly. what's one thing about how hiring actually works that you wish someone had told you earlier?

whenever people talk about career growth, the conversation usually jumps straight to changing jobs. but one thing I've noticed is that many companies already have budgets set aside for employee development, and they often go unused.

Things like:

• Professional certifications
• Conferences
• Online courses
• Books
• Tuition reimbursement
• Industry memberships

if your company offers any of those, they're part of your compensation just as much as your salary is. Another piece of advice that stuck with me is this: if your company sends you to a conference, don't just attend it. come back with notes. share what you learned. give a short presentation to your team if it makes sense.

Not only does everyone benefit, but it also makes it much easier for your manager to justify sending you again in the future. Career growth isn't always about finding the next opportunity.

Sometimes it's about taking full advantage of the one you're already in.

Most people open a job board, type in a role, and start applying. That puts you in a pool with everyone else who did the exact same search, including AI bots sending hundreds of identical resumes per minute into the same listings. What's actually working is flipping that entirely. Make a list of 10 to 20 companies you'd genuinely want to work for, find people who work there, and reach out before anything opens up. No pressure, just expressing interest for the future.

Most companies don't hire random people off the internet when a good role opens up. They hire someone a current employee vouched for or someone the hiring manager already recognizes. By the time a role gets posted publicly it's often already spoken for and the posting is just compliance.Job searches are averaging seven months right now. The people cutting that down almost always had a relationship at the company before they ever applied.

Looking to explore options outside the usual suggestions. Curious what careers you've come across (or work in yourself) that are actually interesting, well paying, or just don't get enough attention. Bonus points if it's something most people don't even know exists. I'm at a point where I want to actually explore something different instead of just picking the safe default path. Would love to hear real experiences, not just job titles that sound cool on paper.

Long post incoming, looking for some career advice or insights.

Who I am

I’m 40 and currently an Associate Professor in theoretical/computational physics at a major university in Northern Europe. For a mix of internal reasons (scarce resources, low pay for the level of responsibility and workload) and external ones (I need more geographic flexibility), I’m starting to look around.

My research is highly computational; I’ve been heavily using compute clusters for 15+ years and I genuinely enjoy it. Thanks to this background, about 10 years ago I joined a startup that ended up having a very successful exit to a FAANG-like company around 2020.

Aside from the tech side, I also handle the standard "Professor package": team management, budget allocation, grant writing, communication, teaching, hiring, strategy with chairs in some committees, representative/board roles at university and national level.

What I am looking for

Ideally, a combination of these four ingredients:

• Technical interest & highly competent colleagues: I absolutely despise office politics and dealing with people who spend more time posturing than actually building stuff.
• Geographic flexibility: Remote work (EU) or a highly transferable skill set. For family reasons, I might need to move to another EU country in 2-3 years, and eventually back to Southern Europe (Northern Italy) in 5-10 years. Mobility in academia is complicated and impossible to plan for.
• Positive impact: I want to look back in 10 years and not regret my choices.
• Pay & Upward mobility: Currently making around €65k-70k gross. I'm looking for growth, as upward mobility in my current academic position is practically non-existent.

Note on compromises: I am willing to sacrifice some points if the pay multiplies, just as I’d happily take a significant pay cut for a role in an NGO or institution where I see a clear, non-profit purpose. I don't want to be exploited or undersell my skills, but I don't strictly need a big salary (maybe not even a salary) if the mission is right. My backup plan is high school teaching which is Italy is around half my current salary, but where I see a clear positive value. But I would not go into trading for less than 100k+ obviously.

The Catch / Why I'm asking for help

Honestly, I don't quite know where to look. I’ve explored several options, but there’s often a huge mismatch between my profile and the job market:

Entry-level/Mid roles don't satisfy my needs and ignore my background.

Senior corporate roles often require heavy "stakeholder management" and traditional corporate experience, which I lack. During my startup days, we weren't playing the corporate game I was the happy-go autistic in chief. I was basically pulling and writing algorithms out of a magic hat until we got bought out.

I’ve looked into quantitative finance and energy markets. While there’s some overlap with my computational background, the trade-offs (especially regarding work-life balance and impact) don't always seem worth it. Pure CS/Dev play seem suicide at this point, and I would need to seriously grind leet code. Everyone and his uncle are doing AI right now, I already did plenty of relevant linear algebra, tensors, statistics and learning theory, but few people seem to understand it.

CV I sent occasionally in the last couple of years for technical roles have fallen in deaf ears.

What do you think of this situation? Do you have any suggestions on specific industries, niches, or exact job titles that might fit my weird hybrid background? Has anyone made a similar jump?

TL;DR: 40yo Physics Professor with heavy computational experience and a past tech startup exit. Want to leave academia for better flexibility and upward mobility (EU/Remote). Finding it hard to match my unconventional senior profile with standard corporate roles. Looking for industry/title suggestions

Hi, I'm a BBA student who wants to earn something to cover my expenses and get some work experience beforehand so I don't graduate empty-handed. Applied to more than 30 companies, and only 2 called for an interview. I make resumes as per experts' advice, following proper formats, and even taking help from AI. I don't know what am I doing wrong.

P.s. I only apply for jobs I am qualified for.

😬 SO IRONIC

What should a fresher do

been going back and forth on this for way too long and i'm no closer to an answer. i don't have a passion, i don't have a dream job, i just want something stable that i won't dread waking up for every morning, what did people here do when they had absolutely nothing pulling them in any direction? did you just pick something and figure it out, or is there actually a way to narrow it down without already knowing what you like?

When it comes to job boards applying through them means your application passes through an intermediary before it reaches anyone, as in formatting gets stripped, fields get auto-populated incorrectly, and what arrives on the other end sometimes looks nothing like what you sent, applying through the company's careers page removes that, they get what you give.

A role on linkedin gets seen by everyone scrolling their feed, the same role on the company's website gets found by people who went looking for it, who searched the company, went to their careers page, and applied there which is a smaller pool.

some roles never make it to job boards at all, companies post on their own site first and the listing reaches linkedin later, sometimes after the position is already close to filled, checking careers pages directly on companies you're actually interested in is worth doing for this reason alone.

the friction of applying through a company site, such as making an account, filling out fields manually, filters out people who won't bother, it's useful when you think about who you're competing with.

the job board is fine for finding roles, it doesn't have to be where the application comes from.

I am in service-based company, and started on this project of developing ans application from scratch. It's been more than 1 year now and no one have really done any coding in heirarchy including freshers till Tech lead. Everyone uses Claude and other models, even for analysis, requirement understanding through LLD, HLD and writing actual code.

Is it good for career switch? I mean I can still code well without these models, but it's preety fast and even gives some good approaches, so for that reason everyone in my team is using. but downside you reduce thinking over problems and and mostly rely on these models, which doesn't seems to be a good thing. All we do is review code and then again TL reviews it before pushing it to main branch. I want to understand what should I do as I am looking for switching company with 2YOE. Any suggestions?

Talked to someone who used to manage and train recruiters and the thing that stuck with me is how often qualified people get rejected simply because the recruiter reading their resume doesn't understand the industry at all. Someone in finance gets compared against a recruiter who's never worked in finance. Someone in IT gets screened by someone who's never touched the technology being described. If the resume doesn't translate clearly enough, the recruiter doesn't ask questions, they just decline, because admitting they didn't understand it looks worse to them than rejecting a good candidate.

That changes how a resume needs to be written. It's not about impressing someone in your field, it's about being understood by someone outside of it. If you're in sales that means leading with revenue increases and awards because that's the proof a non-sales recruiter can recognize. If you're in finance it means showing how you saved the company money in plain terms instead of technical detail. If you're in IT it means explaining what a tool actually did for the business instead of assuming the acronym speaks for itself.

The keywords and buzzwords recruiters search for aren't filler, they're often the only bridge between what you actually did and whether a non-expert screening your resume can recognize that it mattered.

It's not that the system is testing your competence accurately. It's testing whether a stranger with no background in your field can understand your value in about six seconds.