r/jobsearchhacks

I started lying in my interviews and resume and landed a job in two weeks.

Here are the tips that helped me and I cannot emphasis on how much these helped me:

I was almost never completely honest in my interviews but rather presented myself strategically. Didn’t reveal my exact previous salary because I wanted better pay, and never told them I left due to a toxic workplace or bad boss. I avoided speaking negatively about past employers altogether, and made my future plans sound aligned with the company, even if they’re not. Most importantly, I never downplayed my contributions- spoke with confidence and positioned myself as someone who adds value. Made my CV and answers function like a pitch.

A great resume that properly explains who you are and what you can bring to their company will open so many doors for you you would be shocked. I changed my role to that of a higher position in my resume a lot of times because I could do all that work, just didn't have the experience. If you don’t know how to make your resume great, it might be a bigger ROI to use those free tools that are fast and effective and can create resumes that cater to each type of role you apply for.

I’ve never liked LinkedIn, I used it very rarely. For me personally it’s massively overrated, and if you’re genuinely looking for a job on LinkedIn you might consider switching sites. If the company posts a job on their website before LinkedIn, apply there first. As I stated, LinkedIn is horrible for job searching. Of course you can get lucky, but the keyword is lucky. Company sites always have fewer applicants. LinkedIn gets flooded fast. I always applied directly through company sites and could do it faster because I was notified every time a company posts vacancy.

I am also sharing the list of platforms/apps I used to apply through instead of linkedin and tools that helped me find job listings as soon as they're uploaded.

We Work Remote
Flex jobs
Indeed
Wellfound- if you want to join early stage start ups
Otta- If you're looking for roles in tech or startups
Remote Ok- For remote tech and creative jobs

You paste a job URL or description, it pulls company info and generates role-specific behavioral and technical questions with STAR answer frameworks. All tailored to that specific job.

Drop a comment if you want to check it out.

Hi! I'm currently looking for some jobs but I don't actually know how to make a proper resume. Please send some advice

https://preview.redd.it/m715o6fqeg2h1.png?width=580&format=png&auto=webp&s=4f0d4a8d6941eef45ac891595a101e18e61781fc

Guys, I need some advice.

I got laid off on April 1st from my full-stack developer job (around 1 YOE in MERN/JS stack). It’s been more than 40 days now and mentally I’m not doing great.

I actually managed to land one offer recently, but they wanted me to sign a 3-year bond and the salary was only around 20k/month. The interview itself was mostly theory questions and “what is X” type stuff, and I didn’t feel comfortable locking myself into that situation for 3 years, so I rejected it.

Since the layoff, I spent almost all my time doing LeetCode and watching DSA tutorials. But now I feel stuck because:

• In online assessments I still struggle to solve questions fast enough
• Aptitude rounds destroy me
• Some companies ask system design, which I never prepared for
• I feel like I wasted 40+ days only grinding DSA.(TheCodeGuy01 ) yt still not able to solve single easy questions sometimes i just copy the sol from gpt :(....

Now I’m questioning everything:

• Am I too weak for this field?
• Should I switch careers?
• Did anyone else go through this phase early in their career?

Honestly, I feel extremely frustrated with myself right now. Some days my thoughts get really dark and I feel like I’m falling behind in life while everyone else is moving forward.

If anyone here was in a similar situation and recovered from it, I’d genuinely appreciate advice:

Even harsh advice is okay. I just need some direction because my brain feels completely overloaded right now.

#layoff #softwareengineer #fullstackdeveloper #mern #reactjs #nodejs #javascript #webdevelopment #careeradvice #leetcode #dsa #systemdesign #jobsearch #frontenddeveloper #backenddeveloper #developers #coding #programming #india #cscareer #techjobs #developerlife

I dont know what to do, anytime I give my brain a chance to think, I just think of all the negative things and just start crying. I have like 10 breakdowns everyday which is affecting my productivity. I cant focus on applying for jobs or interview prep because i just cant stop fucking crying

idk why this randomly hit me today but are people actually out here working the job they genuinely wanted?

like the “this is what i wanna become when i grow up” type job.

or did most of us just slowly end up somewhere after applying everywhere, getting rejected 38 times, panicking a little, and then just accepting whatever paid decent 💀

cause i swear half the people i know are working jobs that 14 year old them would never even guess.

lowkey curious if anyone here actually made it to the profession they always imagined for themselves or if everyone’s just freestyling adulthood rn

Okay, so this was supposed to be my third round interview with this company. After the second round I sent the traditional follow up email and the recruiter sends back that they are looking at having me for the third interview and do I have availability on Day X or Day Y. I respond back I can do Day X.

Fast forward to Day X. I show up, call to try and get into the building and recruiter tells me we don't have an interview.

What?

I double check that I had the right date she listed and that my confirmation email had sent. All good.

So I ask her and she goes "Well yes I sent those dates, but I didn't CONFIRM so we don't have an interview today.

I press a little more because I'm trying to see if I made the mistake and she says the Boss isn't even in town so we definitely don't have an interview today.

Is this...normal? To me, you suggest a date, I say that date works = conformed. Do I just not understand corporate worlds? Moreover if those dates weren't even an option, why send them?

Any perspective would be greatly appreciated!

EDIT: Thank you all for the responses! It's truly appreciated. With the people in the "wait for confirmation" camp give me just a little more help? How long should you wait? This was over a week between my response email and proposed day.

Do you prod for a confirmation? I was running under the idea that would be rude/pushy. Do I just continue to block things off my calendar and assume there's a high chance they never come to fruition? I'm just feeling defeated and a bit lost.

hi I’ve been trying to find a job or internship opportunity that aligns with my degree in Psychology.

I’d love to work as an HR Assistant or in a role where I can gain practical experience while also understanding how the corporate world works I would prefer it to be work from home as my college is still going on anybody from Shillong can hit me up as I am currently here pursuing my degree

I’m looking for a paid opportunity ☝🏻 because I do have some skills I can contribute. Along with a basic understanding of HR concepts, I also have basic HTML, CSS, and web development skills.

I’m open to fresher friendly roles internships, or startup opportunities where I can learn and grow. If anyone knows of any company or startup looking for interns or freshers please feel free to reach out. I’d really appreciate it .

I’ve reached out to several recruiters for various roles after applying, trying to keep it short and simple. “Hi X, I just applied for this role and would love to connect” something along those lines and I get nothing. What are you saying to a recruiter to get them to engage with you?

The other day I had an interview and I was very caught off guard because my interviewer introduced himself for a minute and then immediately asked me if I had any questions…… I’m used to being asked if I have any additional questions at the end of the interview. I’m confused about why he didn’t ask me anything about my experience at the beginning of the interview. I found that very odd and it threw me off.

I’ve been trying to find a remote job, but haven’t been able to, like indeed has almost none or if they do they require certifications or PhD or something like that… LinkedIn is just instagram about job, completely dumb, don’t even know if it actually works, its never worked for me tho, Glassdoor? It’s like it doesn’t even post real jobs, dunno…so where are these jobs?? Where are all jobs anyway?!! Whats y’all’s experience?

Over the past couple of months I've sent ~30 cold emails/LinkedIn InMails to hiring managers. Got 5 callbacks. Background: 10 years in strategy/consulting, no AI title on my resume, but I'm applying for AI-native roles where ATS would probably screen me out on keywords alone. Been applying for relatively senior roles (Director, Principal, etc.) Sharing 3 messages that worked for me. Generally used Claude to write the initial draft but then still iterated on it myself.

1. A hiring manager (VP) who went to the same school as me. Got to the final round in this one, but didn't get the job.

Hi xxx,

Michigan alum, also in Boulder. Small world gets smaller.
I saw thexxx role on the AI side at xxx. I've spent the last year building and shipping AI tools. Not strategy decks about AI. Actual working products. An AI-powered competitive intelligence system that replaced a manual process at Verizon Connect. A decision-support tool that's live at xxx.

The MCP expansion piece in the JD caught my eye because I've been hands-on with agentic workflows and tool-use patterns. The subscription billing context is new to me, but the core problem (turning AI from a feature into actual merchant value) is exactly what I've been solving.

Would love 20 minutes to hear how you're thinking about the AI roadmap and share what I've been building.

Go Blue.

2. Outreach to a VP who incubated a startup from a larger company. This one is the most generic of the three, and I think it worked despite the writing, not because of it. The shared incubation background did the work. Didn't get passed the hiring manger interview round on this one.

Hi xxx,

I saw that you incubated and launched xxx after a year of intense customer-focused research at xxx. I love that. My consulting background is similar: customer discovery, hypothesis validation and early stage strategy.

I've also spent the last two years building AI systems automate competitive intelligence, turn messy customer data into insights, and compress weeks of analysis into hours with LLM workflows. I've also built a couple of side projects with Claude Code.

Since xxx sits right at the AI and contingent work intersection, I'm curious how you're thinking about using automation internally as you scale?

I'm very intrigued by the xxx role. Would love to talk about the role and why I would be a fit.

3. A VP that shares similar cultural background as myself. Still in the process of interviewing now.

Hi xxx,

Online applications are where intent goes to die, so I thought I'd reach out personally about the xxx role. 

Background: ~10 years in strategy and innovation consulting (Fortune 100, JTBD/ODI), then product, incubation, and most recently market and competitive research for Verizon Connect, the $700M+ ARR fleet telematics business. 

What got me to write was the JD. Reads like someone who actually builds wrote it. The loop I've been running for two years sounds close to what you're hiring for: find the analyst work that doesn't need a human, automate it with agentic tooling, reinvest the freed-up time in actual strategy. A couple examples:

1. Multi-agent competitive scorecard system. Feed it a competitor set, it figures out the right subcategories, researches each one, ranks them, surfaces sources with confidence ratings. Built it on my laptop because Verizon's firewall blocked everything useful.
2. LLM pipeline that turned thousands of unstructured sales notes, RFPs, and customer docs into 2,000+ categorized problem statements. Fed product roadmap and sales enablement directly.
3. Agentic job search app I'm shipping right now in Claude Code. React/Vite/Tailwind, FastAPI/SQLite, Anthropic API with native web search. Real eval harness because the alternative is shipping garbage.

Honest gap: I haven't done deal-memo synthesis at a $10B AUM fund and I won't pretend to speak PM/CCO native. What I bring is a strategy operator who actually builds. I can ramp fast.

Would love to have a 30 min to pitch you on why I would be a great fit.

P.S. Saw the Russian poetry line in your bio. I grew up there.

Hello, I’m trying to get out of retail and move into some kind of 9–5 office job.

I know the job market is really competitive right now, and I’ve been told a couple of times that companies aren’t willing to train people who don’t already have experience.

For those of you who successfully made the switch, how did you do it? What roles did you apply for or what helped you get your foot in the door?

Dear Redditors,

I’m looking for some advice on my career direction within IT, specifically in QA / software testing, which has always been my main interest.

I used to work in QA, but due to a departmental retrenchment, I was moved to the procurement team so I could continue contributing to the company. Over the past 8 months, I’ve gained exposure to procurement and business processes, and also worked on CMMI documentation and related tasks.

That said, I’ve been consistently working on my QA/testing knowledge on the side because I really want to move back into a QA or software testing role.

My question is: how should I position this in my resume? Should I include the non-QA (procurement) experience? And how should I explain this during interviews?

Would really appreciate any advice or insights. Thanks in advance! 🙏

I've been in recruiting long enough to have seen a few cycles where companies cut during downturns and hired back when things improved.

These are not struggling companies. Meta's revenue grew 16% last quarter. PayPal processed over a trillion dollars in payments last year. The cuts are not because the business is failing, they are because the business figured out it can do the same work with fewer people and AI handling what junior and mid level roles used to cover.

The category they worked in just stopped making sense to keep at the same headcount.

What makes this harder to navigate than a regular layoff is that the usual advice does not fully apply. Finding a similar role at a similar company is a shorter term solution if the same logic is playing out everywhere, and it is.

The people I have seen come out of situations like this in the best position are the ones who moved quickly, were honest with themselves about which parts of their skill set were most exposed, and made a deliberate decision about where to go next rather than just applying to the same type of role out of familiarity.

This part of job searching still does not make sense to me.

I have seen situations where small changes in a resume completely change the outcome even when the experience is basically the same.

It makes me think the difference is not always about skills but how the resume is structured or how it is interpreted by ATS systems before a recruiter even looks at it.

I have tried adjusting wording and focusing more on ATS friendly formatting but it still feels inconsistent.

It is strange how unpredictable the whole process can be.

Has anyone actually figured out what creates that shift from silence to getting real responses

Has anyone had any success in using Glassdoor to apply to jobs? I have never used it for applying or searching, just for checking reviews for companies that I’m interviewing with.

I do like the idea of being able to see employee reviews before applying, as I feel like I keep getting interviews with companies that have some reviews citing toxic work environments. After being laid off for almost 8 months from a company I disliked, I’m really afraid of ending up in another environment that ends up stunting my career growth.

Been going back and forth on this. On one hand, the repetitive parts of applying, re-entering the same information into every form, manually tracking 30+ applications, trying to remember who to follow up with, take up a huge amount of time and energy that could go somewhere more useful.

On the other hand, there is a version of job search automation that is clearly counterproductive. Blasting generic applications everywhere with no targeting just increases competition for everyone and produces nothing.

The version that actually seems to help is narrower: autofill for the repetitive form fields, automatic tracking so nothing falls through, and reminders for follow-ups. The targeting, the personalization, the actual conversations, those stay manual.

What changed the most in my search was not automating applications but building a proper tracking system. Once every role had a status and a next action, the search felt completely different. Less chaos, more clarity about what was actually moving.

Has anyone else found that fixing the process mattered more than increasing the volume?

I’ve been job hunting for a few months now due to a PIP my boss has put me (and 75% of the rest of the team) on, and it’s due to speed. All the other jobs I’ve been searching for mention “fast paced” in their descriptions or “multitasking” as a requirement. I can’t help but wonder if these companies think that makes the position actually desirable to job seekers like me. I guess I appreciate the honesty, but this is literally the reason I’m trying to quit my current job. We’re all on PIPs because we aren’t fast enough. No one can reach the unrealistic quotas. Quantity is more important than quality.

I’ve been in other “high paced” jobs, and they’ve been miserable. I don’t multitask, and psychological studies have actually proven that the human brain can’t multitask. Yet every job I’ve applied for has that as a requirement.

Contrary to these employers’ assumptions, not everyone wants to work their butts off every day, feel exhausted at the end of the day, crash when they get home, and get burnt out after working there for a month.

Stress is bad and unhealthy. I don’t know why these companies advertise this “fast paced” description as if it were something good or desirable to potential employees. The job I just applied for is VERY different than my current one, but during the interview, the manager said, “This is a very fast-paced job.” And then my heart sank.

I don’t work well under stress. It isn’t that I’m lazy, stupid, or don’t want to work. I just want to work at my own pace. I want to make sure that one project has been completed accurately before I move on to a new one, instead of zooming through 50 projects at a time with 200 small mistakes.

Do jobs that aren’t “fast paced” even exist? Can I just type “slow paced” in the job search?

Hi all,

I am looking for guidance regarding job opportunities in Project Management/Project Controls.

I currently have 3 years of experience in Project Controls at vConstruct and am looking to grow further in this domain. I would really appreciate any advice, referrals, or job search strategies that could help me transition into better opportunities.

If anyone can share job hacks, industry insights, or suggest companies hiring for Project Controls/Planning roles, it would be very helpful.

Thank you in advance!