There are not even 100 new jobs a week where I live, and that is including absolutely everything. Limiting to something I am vaguely skilled at? Fuck all jobs. About quarter of a million people if you combine the large town and next door city where I live and there is so little to find to apply to. Even worse when jobs give a wrong location name.
Job advertised as being in city with postcode AB1, actual role is in a town that isn’t even on he same island as the city in AB6
It took me a couple hundred when I got laid off at Christmas last year. Was May before I got hired on again. I did hire an AI spamming service towards the end and I did start getting interviews off it, but ultimately found something on indeed. I still leave the spamming service running because, fuck HR and fuck their stupid systems, break them and make them figure out something else.
Actual genuine nightmare fuel. This is not a lifestyle conducive to human health. Living this way is killing us.
yea well they deserve to be flooded with AI applications so just give them what they earned
He’s right but he shouldn’t be right.
I both envy and pity those that can and need to blast out applications like this. There aren’t 1500 open positions in my field in the country. As someone who struggles with doing nothing, application grinding would resolve a lot of anxiety.
There aren’t even 1500 open positions where I live, let alone in the same field. Most common is minimum wage care work, then random assortment of skilled/unskilled roles.
Yeah, no thanks. I choose a life of poverty instead. Enjoy your grind in a collapsing system.
Poverty for me means losing access to the medicines that keep me alive, or I would be right there with you. I wish I could just be a hobbit subsistence farmer so bad but I got bills 🥲 So I keep turning the crank until another option becomes viable.
If you’re sending out 1500 a week you have no identifiable skill set beyond existing. 1500 jobs that are relevant to 1 individual aren’t being posted every week.
I wasn’t even reading job descriptions last time. I just indiscriminately applied to everything and only read about the positions that replied back with a maybe. If they don’t allow the LinkedIn auto-apply, then I’m not filling out a form on their special unique website.
This is their problem, not mine.
That’s the thing: 1500 job listings does not mean 1500 jobs exist.
Half are companies that realized posting fake listings works as free marketing on LinkedIn. It’s a real strategy: people start subscribing to their newsletter because LinkedIn offers that by default when you apply, and when somebody looks the company up, it creates the illusion they’re booming and expanding.
Then of the remaining half, a half of that are fake listings that are actually AI companies that get you to record five minutes of audio and take a picture during your “application” and under the fine print you’re allowing them to use your voice and resell it. Not joking.
Then you do have the remainder which are the real jobs. Of that remainder, more than half will be evaluated by an AI which may or may not take your skills into consideration, understand the formatting of your resume or even fully appreciate what the position entails.
Welcome to 2025, don’t you love it? You need to answer that you love it by the way because we are monitoring your social media accounts and we have three cameras in your street and we don’t like answers that bring the spirit down.
You’re forgetting the portion that are real jobs, but they already know they’re just changing an existing employee’s job title, but HR makes them post a job for it anyway to seem fair.
Dont forget the H1B ones. To hire (at half salary) a foreigner, by law they need to prove that the job cannot be done by a US employee. So they post a fake opening, with those “entry level 15 years experience in afield that existed 10 years” to justify the hiring
Or they’re hiring a relative but have to go through the motions of pretending to do the candidate search process.
Don’t forget H1Bs where they have to ‘prove’ that there are no suitable domestic candidates first
Good point.
Oh look! Living on a couple of euros of passive income looks really enticing all of a sudden!
Right this is what frustrates me there literally aren’t that many jobs to apply for unless you’re applying to literally every cashier job around you. And for people in small towns even that option doesn’t exist. Even 10 years ago people would send me links to jobs that were obvious scams on Indeed and they’d say “see! There ARE jobs!”
Pretty sure that they would counter, that if you’re not willing to relocate to literally anywhere at no notice and at your own expense you don’t really want to work. 1500 per week is simply not possible unless you’re looking nationally if not internationally depending on the industry.
That’s true if you’re living at your parents house and not in a serious relationship, the world is your oyster. But if that’s the case you’re probably looking for entry level work and good luck paying rent on that salary.
Well you need to send 1500 out because only 30 of the 1500 exist and you have no idea which that is.
I generally agree but what that said is 100 per week.
not much better but it’s a bit of a shame that a whole thread with much attention did not notice and just copied from the first comment
Yea I noticed that I misread a little while ago but left it. The comment is still accurate, 1500 a week is way too many.
Yeah that’s just a psychopathic take.
If I had to spray and pray 1500 resumes I’d be suicidal.
I’m about 300+ deep and let me tell you…
Oh man, I hope you land a job soon. That sounds like hell
don’t get laid off!
My first job application as a spotty teenager landed me a job. This developed a false impression of the job market for baby me (in my country it’s perfectly legal to pay minors less than the minimum wage, thus an incentive to exploit children).
My second job, in my spotty mid-twenties, took me around 100-300 applications, and I only ended up getting the job due to some programme that let companies get cheaper onboarding through a government scheme.
I’m in my spotty mid-thirties (I might have bad skin), I’ve had success only applying for the occasional job that actually interests me, and putting my best foot forward (each application generally takes 3-5 hours preparation). I’m fortunate enough to not be desperate though (employed, just seeking something better).
Even with LLMs, I think most employers are savvy enough to tell if a person is genuinely interested.
Side note: Don’t use em dashes. I love em dashes—but so does ChatGPT—it’s one of the first things a recruiter will look for apparently.
what about fake em dashes (two en dashes --)
who am I kidding I just spam semicolons anyway
just spam semicolons anyway
We get it you went to college 🙄
Starting out that’s the amount I had to do to get a job far away from the shit hole I was living in.
It was an awful experience and literally moving across the country by myself was less emotionally taxing than the application process.
This isn’t how we’re meant to live.
Also, every interview:
“So, why do you want to work with us, specifically?”
Well, specifically, I need money for housing, bills, and food.
Also, specifically, you gave me an interview so I’m now really interested in working…at wherever this place is. That’s it, really.
…
I mean, yeah, I could blow smoke up your arse if you really wan me to. But I would hope you’d have the intelligence to realise that it’s bullshit and that nowadays it’s all about money. I whore my time out and you give me money. When do I start?They know it’s bs and want to hire fellow people who can spew bs
I had an interview recently where they spent almost half of it just trying to sell me on the company itself and how they work rather than asking why I wanted to work there. It was honestly refreshing, hope I get to work there
I hope you get it too. Its nice to find somewhere you vibe with.
The paranoid part of me warns that the company doing nothing but try to sell you on how good they are to work for may be a sign of desperation and problems hiring on their part, but I wasn’t in the room. I’m sure you got a good sense of how genuine they were in person.
Oh it was less what it’s like to work there and more the guy excitedly info dumping on what they’re building. He made it clear it would be hard work lol, but that’s fine with me if it’s actually something cool
Damn this sounds interesting! Good luck 🍀
[puts hand on sholder] They arn’t *intelligence enough to realise that it’s bullshit and that nowadays it’s all about money. * Managers specificly are paid to drink the coolaid, unless your being hired by a triple threat (can do the job, manage people, and spin it all for managment above them) your going to be stuck working for some peter principal shmuck who is probably good enough at one of those things.
Not to be too pesimistic but your job is to blow smoke, unless your working for yourself or you managed to find one of those unicorn bosses. In the latter case, do what you can to be along for their ride.
Exactly. You can’t possibly submit over 100 applications per week while also using any kind of reasonable discretion about wether the job is something you actually want to do, that you can actually do competently, somewhere that you can reasonably do it. You’re just an application shotgun at that point and you’re wasting the time of everyone involved.
Wow… So you are expected to feel ghosted/rejected 100 times a week, and upwards to 1500 in total? I wonder how healthy that must be for your psyche…
In case anyone would like a reminder, this is a market failure and doesn’t reflect on you personally whatsoever.
We didn’t have psyches back in the day. Just a can-do attitude and strong values.
And a bottle of alcohol too many here and there. And hobbies such as beating your wife black and blue in front of your kids. And fatal accidents from speeding around in our souped up cars.
Just none of that psyche shit, okay?
SLASH S.
Missing to hear about your bootstraps??? Did you pull them up at all??? I need to know!!!
Of course, everyone did it back then…
Though quite a few got it all wrong and ended up with a form of bootstrap tightly around their neck and hanging from a joist in the garage.
Or they accidentally fell off high buildings due to pulling their bootstraps up while on a roof.
Or they accidentally lassoed a bottle of vodka in to their mouths with the bootstraps, drank themselves in to a stupor, and then accidentally went driving and crashed.
BUT THERE WAS NONE OF THAT THE PSYCHE SHIT. Right, I’m off to do some wholesome beating of my wife and kids.
That “SLASH S” gives me Roy Kent’s “WHISTLE!” vibes.
And sometimes people had accidents cleaning their guns. With their mouths. But that’s just the cost of bearing arms, no mental health problems
I mean, it was normal getting a bit beaten up a kid for doing dumb stuff. It builds character! That’s why everyone ended up so funcional as adults, no? … No?
I wonder how healthy that must be for your psyche…
I went thru several months of it. Even with my anxiety meds, it felt like I was losing my mind.
Try multiple different periods of years of it… :/
Sucks, man. (got something now, though)
And people like that boss doesn’t even realize he’s celebrating his own inefficiency and incompetence when declaring they’ll go through that many applications without hiring somebody. Why do you want to be bad at finding talent and why do you want people to know you can’t recognize skill?
They’re probably not going through that many applications, they’ll be using a screening company or system that’s dropping every applucation that doesn’t have whatever the magical combination of keywords is in this particular case. I can only imagine it’s git even worse with the use if LLMs for screening.
Sounds super rough… Really hope things worked out in the end and you’re all better now!
Thanks! Things improved but aren’t good. Just less bad
A real # is probably 25 a week, which IMO is still quite brutal on mental health.
Thing is its limited by geography. If I can’t physically get to the job in under 30mins, then I can’t get to the job on time, ever. Don’t have kids, folks, unless you really actually want them. Don’t just do it because you’re ‘at that stage in life’
Mate I’ve done jobs that have had a 1.5hr commute before. What are you talking about?
Congrats, but did you know that other people have problems that you don’t? And that just because you can do something doesn’t mean others can do it too?
We all have our problems in life, and you overcoming yours is meaningless to other people overcoming theirs.
But good job volunteering that your time is so worthless you’re willing to waste 3 hours of it on a commute. The only time I’ve ever driven more than 45 min for a job was to a client site, and I was getting paid and the commute was part of my 8hrs.
The person I replied to was implying they can’t commute longer than 30 mins because they have kids.
In a thread about finding jobs.
There’s a shedload of people including me for whom narrowing their job prospects down to only jobs within 30mins commute would be wishful thinking, and borderline ridiculous.
My ‘mate what are you talking about’ was based on my perspective yes, but there’s large swathes of people who would laugh at your privilege.
Nice for you I suppose. And nice of you to be so self-righteously hostile too.
That is your prerogative, but it is not a wise one.
I understand, but if you have to put food on the table, then that’s what you have to do.
Clearly he’s talking about the constraints that kids put on his time.
I also have kids.
Kids have to get to and from school
Oh fair enough if you’re ferrying them.
So the 30mins is essentially from latest drop off, to acceptable show up time at work then.
Exactly. My last job was great - had a 9:15 start which was more or less the perfect time when bussing in
Understood. It’s going to get a lot easier then when they can make their own way in.
Last time I applied for a job, I applied for 3 jobs, landed 2 interviews, got into the second round for both and took the one that matches the most with what I wanted and paid well.
Applying to 100+ jobs just sounds like spray and pray. This was admittedly 6 years ago and not in the US, but still if you already have experience it shouldn’t be that hard.
Also admittedly, for my first job I applied for 30+ positions, getting into the second round once. After that I took a break from applying because I wanted to study up on how to actually land a job. After reading about how to conduct yourself in a job interview, I applied again and landed the first job I applied to.
All that to say that there is a certain skill required for applying and interviewing. Probably a hugely unpopular opinion here, but I stand by it.
That’s how it used to be for me too, something has changed. Before this current job search, I’d never put out more than 4 applications to get a job. Now I’ve put out dozens (I refuse to spray and pray), and am still unemployed 6 months later.
The signal-noise ratio is too low nowadays that even genuine talent is purged.
Ive met too many colleagues who just arbitrarily filter out candidates because there’s too many resumes that get past the automation.
That sounds like the hiring manager joke about throwing away half the resumes because you don’t want someone unlucky getting hired.
Not a very funny joke for unemployed people
The problem I have identified is that the people and or systems who do initial screening don’t really know what they should be screening for.
You might have a real technical position that you need to fill requiring like archaic engineering knowledge. Then they do the screen and remove everyone who doesn’t have a resume polished to whatever the latest MBA format is. Which removes a bunch of weirdos that are perfect for the job (because let’s be real, it requires a strange skill set) and you are left with a bunch of candidates that can talk out of their ass perfectly, but don’t actually have the knowledge or skills needed.
Then you get this bubbly Kevin who is good at communication when you really need Kwame who just wants to be left alone working on the technical problems.
That’s true, being an effective technical interviewer to really sus out bs vs skill is hard. It’s not just asking some rote set of questions, which often time are easy to rehearse answers for, but rather trying to get into the interviewee’s mindset when you give them a scenario and assessing thought process rather than effective communication.
Yeah, I have always thought the interview process is a bit BS as it always puts interpersonal skills over technical skills, even for positions where interpersonal skills aren’t needed.
I as both an employee and someone hiring would rather be able to hire 4 people for a week or two with them knowing only one person will get the job. I think in today’s labor market people would jump at that and it gives opportunities for weaker candidates to learn what they need to learn. Culturally it would be hard to get a company to adapt to a model like that, and it probably goes against labor rules in a handful of states.
Society will frame this as self-sacrifice. They won’t recognize that you’re trying to survive long-term. They’ll pretend blindly following commands would give you better chances of survival and health than a “refusal” that leads to 6 months of unemployment. They will sacrifice your health and well-being in the name of reframing what you’re doing, pretending you’re the one sacrificing your health and well-being to protest your choices not being exactly what you want, when you’re actually just trying to survive while offered choices that aren’t viable.
Or maybe you actually are intentionally protesting. Nothing wrong with that. But a lot of people aren’t
Once you have experience in a field you should have recruiters knocking down your door. At least thats my experience in a pretty niche industry.
I got a job in construction with a single application and basically a firm handshake. Felt pretty damn good after all the doom & gloom. I think it really depends on the profession and shit like that.
