r/jobsearch

What i am gonna tell here is the whole truth..

I've been laid off by my previous company since August of 2025. Our savings are gone as my wife spent it on online gambling. Due to this, she has debt to more than 10 online lending apps. Now, she's working and her salary is only enough to pay her debts monthly.. I am the one taking care of our 6-year old autistic daughter.. All i need is a job.. I have been in the IT Industry for 13 years.. All i need is a job.. Please help me..

I am a Computer Engineering graduate. I am 2 years removed from school and more than 3000 applications into my job search. I have been living with my parents taking whatever gig work/unpaid jobs I can take to improve my skills. It has been apparent that I am now a burden on them and they want me out. I recently had my first technical interview, but I am pretty sure I blew it. I was so focused on learning that I didn’t memorize definitions and names of thing so my explanation of concepts were overly reliant on examples. Other times I was just flat out wrong. I am incredibly disappointed in myself and am feeling kind of lost. There’s no way I can do another 3000 applications and 2 years of waiting for just another shot at maybe landing a job. What should I do? I spent my whole life committed to becoming an engineer and I don’t know what else I could possibly do. Any suggestions?

hello all! in summary, i have been searching for a job for over a year now with no luck. not even local coffee shops or small businesses get back to you these days, and i'm definitely feeling like im confused / in a rut / unsure of what i should be looking for. im mainly looking for something that can be done remotely, but if in person i cant work much on my feet due to health issues / my disability. i have experience in customer service (8 years), retail and people management (4 years), food and beverage experience (2 years), along with various other skills. i've been applying to pretty much any role you can think of, cold calling managers / emailing businesses, creating a million different versions of my cover letter and resume, with little to no luck. ive applied to roles im qualified for like "project manager i", "project manager", "admin assistant", and even trying to go back to my roots with "barista" but have had not a lick of luck.

any advice would be so appreciated !! i know the market is just horrible for everyone at the moment, so i appreciate any advice or words of wisdom or insight that can be shed. thank you so much !! ♡

For entry level jobs (e.g. Starbucks, Chipotle, grocery stores), it used to show hustle to go in person and ask to speak to manager to see about jobs. Nowadays most hiring seems to be pushed to online.

Is coming in person still viewed as a positive?

I like contract jobs, but the problem is that I won't get the benefits, and also the chance of getting terminated in contract jobs anytime is higher than permanent jobs. Otherwise I think the contract jobs are not bad.

What you guys think?

On ZipRecruiter I usually sort by "uploaded in the last day" to find newly listed jobs but this week Ive noticed that there's been almost no new jobs posted. Has anyone else seen that or is something maybe up with my account.

I graduated in 2024 in BTech Biotechnology from an NIT and ever since I feel like I'm stuck in this loop of job searching. I'm applying and most of them are just regret mails. Even though I feel exhausted I couldn't give myself a break cuz that somehow feels illegal in this phase. I'm not interested in biotechnology and even if I wanna pursue I'll have to do mtech and I've seen my seniors getting teaching jobs and nothing more interesting and there is no scope as such in India. I've even tried for referrals none of my friends seem to even bother and I barely knew anyone else. With time I realised that I'm more interested in finance but it's been 2 years already and I'm shit scared whether I'll get any job in this economy. Can anyone help me what to do? I really appreciate it..

I have to start off by saying I’m thankful I have a job currently. I have been working in retail for almost 20 years now and have been looking to transition out of retail for the last two years. I didn’t know when I started that every position would require 3-10 years experience in that role to even get be considered for a position that would pay a whopping 50k.

Sigh

Did anyone try AI job search?!! Coz I see this in so many places, but hesitant to use it, or kinda scared to use it.

Like I don't trust it due to I don't know how it searches for job and applyes on my behalf. Kinda scary.

Any info or advice regarding this AI job search?!!

Fed up with your highly fruitless job search - you are not alone

Tried applying to several places in town for work. Everywhere I have been to has either not called me back, said they need a bit to review my application and then ghosts me, or I get rejected.

I cant take it anymore. Im losing my motivation to even continue at this rate.

I've been in the interview/hiring process with this company for more than two months. Interviews upon interviews, calls, documents going back and forth, assignmenta, a bunch of information flowing back and forth between me and the recruiter...

Finally, a CEO interview was scheduled. One final hurdle. Been preparing for about two weeks for it. Went deeply technical, learned a bunch on new stuff, prepared the best I could...

Turns out, the CEO was on holiday. The call was... weird. He asked a bunch of seemlingly random questions, none of which were pointed at assessing my skills to do the job. My prep gone to waste completely and almost instantly. I'm not sure where his questions were going and what he was trying to asses, but throughout the call he seemed very uninterested and distant. I asked questions too - he nodded, provided constructive answers, said my questions were good. But his body language told me he's done, I'm not getting this job. After it was done I assessed my chances at about 30% of landing the job.

The next day I get a rejection email, with virtually no details as to what went wrong. My gut tells me two things. 1. I interrupted his vacation, which is why he was uninterested and didn't want to even speak, and 2. I'm not even sure the guy was actually going to give me a proper chance at all. His queations and attitude were both completely random and in no way related to the job itself.

Sometimes you cannot even prepare properly, and even if you do, there are external factors completely out of your control that influence the final decision. It sucks to waste this much time, but at least the prep served me well. It's all going into my CV onwards.

I was terminated in Feb 2026. I live in a pretty small town, and have been in a fairly limited industry. I'm taking this as an opportunity to broaden my horizons and pivot into a different industry since many work skills are not industry specific ( honesty, punctuality, reliability, team work, independent follow through, work place safety, etc. ). I have put down roots in this small town and don't want to relocate.

One of the larger, growing employers in my community has had several jobs posted over the last few months. I have applied to four different jobs there. Was only brought in to interview for one of them, but wasn't selected (lack of experience). I have since seen another job posted. I like the idea of working there, their business Core Values align with my own, and I appreciate the product.

TLDR: How many different jobs at one company would you apply for?

Been three weeks now.

Started applying again and every recruiter call eventually lands on the same question:

• What are you looking for?
• What are you best at?
• What's your focus?

And I just... don't have an answer.

I can tell you everything my team shipped over the last 11 years. I can tell you the projects I worked on and the problems I solved. But if someone asks me what I'd actually want to be hired for next, I just kind of freeze.

I met with an outplacement coach this week and she asked me to describe my value in one sentence. I somehow turned that into a five-minute answer that still didn't really say anything. I walked away thinking maybe I've spent so long doing the work that I never stopped to figure out what my actual thing is.

Honestly I barely opened my laptop after that meeting.

Is this a normal layoff thing? How do you talk about bringing value to the role especially after a layoff?