r/jobsearchhacks

Most of the time you never find out what actually happened after you leave the call. You get the email or you don't.

This one was different. She called me an hour and a half after my final round, and she'd already talked to the CTO. She told me what went well, where I lost them, and what he actually said.

He didn't say my code was bad. He didn't say I got a question wrong. He said: "I'm not sure he gets where we're heading."

(And I'm sitting there thinking, come on. Why is everyone this picky right now? The market is out of control. Let me actually work there and I'll figure out where we're heading. Of course I don't know yet. I haven't worked a single day at your company!)

It's not about the code. It's about whether I understood what they're trying to build. And nobody gets you ready for that part.

Now think about how you actually prepare. You grind the code. You sharpen your skills. You build demo apps that look roughly like the thing you'd be doing on the job. You figure you've covered it. And no, not even close. They can just ask where you see yourself in five years, they don't like the answer, and that's it. Doesn't matter what code you write. Doesn't matter what you built. Doesn't matter how many points you scored. You're out.

Once I saw it, I saw it everywhere. Three out of four finals I had inside one month came down to the same thing.

The one thing I do differently now is I ask what they said. At the end of every interview I ask the recruiter to come back and tell me the feedback. About half of them do, and I've learned more from those than from the interviews.

Has this happened to you? You prep for weeks, and then they ask something you weren't ready for, or they nitpick something you can't even see, or your shirt is the wrong color. Anything like that?

I was working in retail ops. My team was responsible for product displays and shelf/display tags (6k products per location × 35 locations).

For more than 11 years, the whole thing was simple: Excel >> supplier >> finished. Then this year, the design team pushed for a new "premium" template that takes more time, costs more, and the suppliers didn't want to deal with it at all. The ones who agreed were asking for around $4/card.

I spent 4 days teaching myself InDesign's data import feature, figured out the flow, and brought the cost down to 9¢/card. I told my manager that we needed to train a few more people so I wouldn't be the only one who knew how the process worked. My manager (rude, useless, insecure, and a professional bootlicker) said: "This is basically the only task you're handling. Now you want to get rid of it too?"

Then I got seriously sick and took 4 weeks of leave in June, came back, and my manager yelled at me over something he had misunderstood. It was a tiny formatting issue he was convinced I had missed.

I resigned on the spot, and sent an email to the CEO + HR saying that my manager was the reason, and I left on September 3.

Since then, I've received more than 20 calls/texts from the same people asking me to explain to them how to export the tags. I'm just waiting for my final settlement on the 22nd so I can block this whole circus.

Hi everyone,

Manually tailoring my resume for every job posting I want to apply to can be time-consuming. When I provide my current draft resume and the target job posting, I am looking for tools, platforms, or effective methods that analyze the keywords and requirements in the posting and generate a job-specific ATS-friendly resume draft for me.

I thought about taking a shortcut and doing this with Gemini, but I am hesitant about ATS detecting AI and docking points. Because of this, I would primarily like to try tools or platforms focused specifically on this task that are not exorbitantly priced. However, if there is a genuinely tested and solid prompt/methodology recommendation that does not feel AI-generated, I am also open to running it with Gemini.

Looking forward to recommendations on tools, platforms, or methods that you actively use and are happy with.

Thanks.

As per The Sun, if you complete 9 job related tasks before 9am every morning you are better off with your job hunting. the tasks dont have to be huge,

• stuff like sending a follow up email,
• tweaking your resume for a specific role,
• connecting with someone on linkedin,
• researching a company,
• applying to a posting, etc.

the point is momentum.

the theory is, when youve already done 9 things before most people even start their day you feel like youre actually in control of the process instead of just doom scrolling job boards at midnight.

dont just blast out the same generic resume 9 times. make each task count even if its small.

Plus applying early in the morning may get more responses too.

Worth a try?

So I moved to Chicago about two years ago. I kept my old cell phone number with a Florida area code because changing numbers with banks and two-factor authentication is a giant pain in the neck. I never thought twice about it.

when I started applying for local hybrid jobs three months ago, I sent out over ninety resumes. My city address was clearly printed at the top of the page, but I was getting zero phone calls. Not even basic initial screenings for entry-level roles I was fully qualified for.

Last week I grabbed lunch with an old college buddy who works in recruiting. I showed him my resume on my phone to get his feedback. He took one look at the header, tapped my phone number, and asked, "Why are you applying to Chicago jobs with an 813 Florida area code?"

He told me recruiters glance at contact info for two seconds. If they see an out-of-state area code, they automatically assume you are out of state and need relocation money, completely ignoring the written city address below your name. I set up a free local Chicago number on Google Voice, swapped the ten digits on my resume, and sent out ten applications. I got two interview calls in forty-eight hours.

I should of changed it two years ago, but losing three months of applications to a three-digit area code was ABSOLUTELY infuriating. Has anyone else had an out-of-state phone number ruin their local job search?

I am currently working in a job I am not too fond of and looking for a new place to work. My questions is are there any sites or services I can send my resume too that will find a job opening that fits my wants.

I am very busy with my current role and finding it very hard to do the job search. Any options to outsource that time?

I've been looking for years for that unicorn and I can't find it. I need a 6 figure WFH job in Data analytics or project management or even proofreading, anything or nothing. I will literally give half of my pay for 6 months if you can get me hired and on payroll. I need to have working history. If it's a fake job where I'm paid to do nothing, that's even better... I will give you 75% of my pay for 6 months for it just to be on payroll.

EDIT: I am fluent in three languages (English, French, Farsi), I have experience in hotel environments, private banking, Management. I was diagnosed with agoraphobia and all sorts of other mental health issues that stop me from going outside to work. But I can work all day at my computer. I have studies Data science and project management too. All the works I listed, I am good at. I'm in Switzerland right now but I am dying to go back to Los Angeles, my hometown. I miss my country.

Hey guys, honestly, it’s been really tough lately. I’ve been looking for a job for the past 9 months, mainly in Data Analytics or Junior Machine Learning roles, but I’m still struggling to find the right opportunity.

I’ve been learning and improving my skills along the way, but at this point I’m not sure what I’m missing or what I should focus on improving.

If anyone here has been through something similar or has any advice on what I should improve in terms of skills, projects, resume, or job searching, I’d really appreciate your suggestions.

Any advice or guidance would mean a lot. 🙏

I was looking at a resume recently where the job required experience conducting candidate interviews.

The resume said the person had scheduled interviews and communicated with candidates throughout the hiring process.

Obviously, that’s related experience. But it’s not the same thing as actually conducting the interviews.

I’ve seen resume advice that would basically turn that into “conducted candidate interviews” because it matches the job description better. That feels risky to me.

Maybe they sat in on interviews. Maybe they helped with screening. Maybe they actually did conduct some interviews. But unless the resume or the person confirms that, you can’t just assume it.

At the same time, calling the requirement completely “missing” doesn’t seem accurate either. There is relevant experience there.

So I’d call it a partial match:

Relevant experience? Yes.
Proof they conducted interviews? No.

I feel like this is where a lot of resume tools get things wrong. They treat everything as either matched or missing, when sometimes the honest answer is somewhere in between.

Curious what others think. Where do you draw the line between tailoring a resume and exaggerating someone’s experience?

Like our Job applications, resume , coz changing these days we need to customise resume according to companies, and its hard to track them in a excel sheet, let say if we apply at 50 jobs it would have atleast 15 resume ig

This is the side-hustle everyone might be missing out on..

Here`s what I`ve found out -

- quality candidates are in touch with candidates leaving the organization..

- the last interviewee knows who`s searching and who`s desperate..

- building a separate side-hustle that sure comes with perks, is finding those gems from the masses..that is the point..

- WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO IS THIS -

-- build a file of candidates with their credentials, CV, contacts, linkedin, their present and last job, skillset, last drawn salary, expected salary, dates of joining, of notice periods..just everything. Be the private investigator..

-- stay in touch with opportunities coming along and start plugging the candidates.

Its a great hustle. Disclaimer: Takes time to build.

AMA on recruiting, CV making, referral jobs, building linkedin outreach

So after all making your resume absolutely flawless may not work. like when every single bullet point is perfectly quantified and the formatting looks like it came out of a design studio and every word is optimized for ats, it starts to feel... not human?

hiring managers read hundreds of these things and i think theres a point where a resume thats too perfect actually makes them suspicious or just makes you blend in with everyone else whos doing the exact same optimization tricks.

A mid size tech company recruiter said she actually gravitates toward resumes that feel like a real person wrote them. not sloppy ones obviously but ones where the personality comes through a little bit.

she said the overly polished ones all start to look identical and she cant tell candidates apart anymore.

Making your resume worse on purpose that would be dumb. but maybe stop agonizing over whether every line is perfectly structured and spend more time making sure your actual experience and voice comes through.

does anyone else feel like the resume game has gone too far?

So I spent seven months submitting customized applications for mid-level operations roles. I had a polished two-page resume format, my MBA listed right at the top and links to my project portfolio. Two hundred applications. Zero screening calls.

i got so exhausted last week that I decided to run an experiment out of pure spite. I completely deleted my graduate degree from the education section. I removed all the high-level strategy terms and replaced them with boring simple bullet points about spreadsheets and phone calls. I saved it as an ugly black-and-white file with zero design styling.

This is ABSOLUTELY infuriating. I submitted that stripped-down file to six jobs on Monday morning. By Thursday afternoon I had four separate interview invitations from internal recruiters. I should of dumbed down my credentials six months ago. Apparently listing an advanced business degree on a standard corporate resume makes automated filters flag you as an expensive flight risk or makes hiring managers feel insecure. Why does the modern hiring market punish people for actually being qualified.

Before my layoff I could give you a pretty convincing answer about where I wanted to be in three years.

Next role, skills I needed, salary I was aiming for. The usual map.

Then one meeting basically deleted the whole thing.

I'm interviewing again now and people keep asking where I see myself in three or five years. I can still give the answer. I just don't really believe it anymore.

Watching people with great performance reviews, long tenure and carefully planned careers get cut alongside everyone else did something to the way I think about work. I'm not sure whether planning that far ahead is useful or if we're mostly creating a story around something we have much less control over than we admit.

Thoughts?

I had a job I loved, but it was closed down after 10 great years during covid.

Got another job I didn't love, then they laid off 350 people, including me, a few months back.

I can't catch a break!

The only good thing about that one was I got to work from home.

I don't have a degree of any sort.

I live in a small town in Oregon, gas is still almost $4.50 here. Any other jobs people can still do from home now days? Without degrees? The nearest big towns are 40 minutes away, gas is gonna kill my wallet.

Times are rough, jobs are hard to find, so many lay offs here.

Thanks!