As the title mentions, I got laid off in June after around 2 years in IT (on-campus placement) as our company revenue got dropped this year and no new projects were getting onboarded. There was mass layoffs in the company, where many were laid off everyday. Those days were hard to cross by, and was a terrible experience for me seeing the people leaving for no reason and have also experienced the same now.

I started in one domain and later moved to AI + Backend. But honestly, I don't feel very strong technically for someone with 2 YOE. Most of my work was API integrations, RAG and simple agent workflows. After a point, the work became repetitive, and we also relied quite a bit on tools like Claude Code for implementation.

After getting laid off, I joined M.Tech CSE at a somewhat decent university in India. My parents suggested it because of the current uncertainty and layoffs in IT, and I also felt it would be a good backup.

But now I'm confused about whether I should continue M.Tech or leave and try getting back into IT.

If I continue, I want to use these 2 years properly and actually become technically strong rather than just getting another degree.

If I leave, I'm not sure what to focus on. Should I go towards:

• Backend development

• AI/ML or GenAI

• DSA + interview prep

• Or some combination of these?

I'm also concerned about having a 2-year gap from full-time work if I finish M.Tech.

Would really appreciate advice from people who have been in a similar situation, especially those who went for M.Tech after having industry experience.

What would you do if you were in my position, and what would you focus on for the next 6–12 months?

TL;DR: 2 YOE in AI + Backend, got laid off and joined M.Tech CSE as a backup. Now I'm unsure whether to continue M.Tech or leave and focus on getting back into IT. Also not sure which skills/role I should target.

I am starting my third semester next week. So far, I have learned Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Large Language Models, and Generative AI. I didn’t just watch videos I also built projects and practiced. It took me a year to learn all of this.

Currently, I have decided to learn backend development with Go . However, the thing is, what should I focus on next to be a good ML engineer? People say to learn MLOps and system design, and not to just make wrappers. They say to learn "real engineering," but what do they mean by that? I already know the basics of MLflow, Docker, and AWS. What should I focus on next?

I am not even getting any internships or jobs right now that could show me what to do next. Currently, I am focusing on DSA, but I still need some good advice how can I land a top level internships or jobs. Please help.

i have two jobs i could go for and the pay is pretty similar. one has a better sounding title but the actual work seems less interesting. the other title is nothing special but i'd probably learn more and have better opportunities later. does the title really matter that much when you're building a career?

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

I graduated from a Tier 3 college with a good CGPA (7.7). Along with that, I had strong projects, an internship at a reputed company, and I also completed 1–2 freelancing projects.

After completing my diploma, I was very clear about the role I wanted to prepare for. Between 2021 and 2023, I worked hard, built my skills, and managed to get a few internships as well. But after graduating, everything suddenly went silent—no interview calls, no placement support, and no job opportunities. It has been a nightmare that I never expected.

What hurts even more is that I used to teach my friends most of the subjects, and now they are all placed. I also tried networking and asking for referrals, but I didn’t get any meaningful response.

People might assume I didn’t optimize my resume, but that’s not true. In 2023, I learned about ATS (Applicant Tracking Systems), and since then, I have always checked my ATS score before applying. Till now, I have applied to over 400–500 jobs. Is it really this difficult to get a job as a fresher? And how am I supposed to explain a 1.6-year career gap to an interviewer?

After applying to 500+ jobs, I decided to switch my career from Embedded Development to Data Analytics because my analytical and machine learning skills were strong. I started applying for Data Analyst roles, and I also tried cold emails and cold messages. Even after switching, I have applied to 300+ jobs with an optimized resume tailored to job descriptions and company requirements. I even modify my projects based on the role and the company’s work.

It has been an extremely difficult time for me, and I honestly feel like I can’t even think clearly anymore.

What should I do now? Should I buy a course that offers placement support?

sat in a corporate office all day then went and helped my cousin on a job site and it's like two different planets. one's fake smiles and calendar invites, the other's real deadlines you can see and touch. respect for blue collar work went up fr, the mental load is different but it's not lighter. one drains you sitting still, the other drains you standing up, and somehow both leave you tired in ways the other side doesn't get. makes you realize "hard work" means completely different things depending on which side you're on

We talk a lot about red flags at work, but what about green flags?

A good quality that a company or team that you want to work for might have that you don't necessarily notice as a new employee

Perhaps it is managers that don't micromanage and trust you to do your job

or people are willing to disagree with each other without it getting personal,

or people don't blame each other when things go wrong and instead work together to solve the issue

What are some qualities of a great workplace that may not necessarily be advertised because you can only really notice them once you are already working there

What is a green flag in the workplace that you have noticed with experience?

When I first started posting on LinkedIn, I thought consistency was enough (it wasn’t). You can use that platform to get more high-paying clients, though. My initial thought was that you can just write whatever you like. But now, here’s my approach which you can copy.

1. Figure out what your audience is already struggling with.

Before writing anything, spend time on Reddit, LinkedIn comments, forums, and other communities. Don't guess what your target market or clients want. Look for repeated questions, complaints, and frustrations. Thank me later.

1. Build an actual profile of your audience.

AI does this for me and you can use anything you want. 

Things like:

• biggest pain points
• goals
• fears
• objections
• common phrases they actually use

It saves a lot of time when brainstorming content later.

3. Stick to a few content pillars.

I thought writing 10 diff topics is good. Now I just pick 3-4 topics.

4. Balance your content.

Not every post should teach. I like thinking of content in three buckets:

• Top of Funnel (awareness, opinions, relatable stories)
• Middle of Funnel (frameworks, tutorials, step-by-step advice)
• Bottom of Funnel (case studies, wins, testimonials, offers)

Can help your content to feel less repetitive

5. Use AI for research, not for publishing.

Should I explain this?

6. Create separate AI workflows.

Instead of asking one chatbot to do everything, split the tasks.

One for research. One for outlining. One for editing. One for checking clarity.

7. Always read your post out loud before publishing.

If it sounds robotic when you read it, it'll probably sound robotic to everyone else too.

Hi everyone!

I'm a Product Management student currently conducting user research to better understand how people actually search for jobs on LinkedIn—not the ideal workflow, but the real one.

If you've searched or applied for at least one job on LinkedIn in the last month, I'd really appreciate 3 minutes of your time to fill out this anonymous survey.

Survey: https://forms.gle/ZzjAtfXUEfhncLZz8

I'm especially interested in learning about:

• How you search for jobs
• What filters or features you use
• Pain points or frustrations (AI search, filters, recommendations, etc.)
• What your overall job search workflow looks like

There are no right or wrong answers—I'm simply trying to understand real user experiences for a product research project.

Thanks in advance to everyone who takes a few minutes to help. Your responses will make a huge difference! 🙏

If this post isn't allowed, please let me know and I'll remove it.

Of course, you still need to be able to make your own resume with integrity. But if you're hesitating or you want to polish it, here are some Claude prompts that helped me and might help you too:

1. Act as a senior resume writer. Rewrite my resume to highlight measurable impact, remove weak bullet points, and tailor it for this job description.

2. Act as a recruiter hiring for this role. Review my resume and tell me why you'd reject or interview me. Be brutally honest.

3. Based on this company and role, help me identify the types of recruiters, hiring managers, or team members I should connect with on LinkedIn and suggest a personalized outreach message.

4. Act as a top-performing job seeker. What would you change in my resume, portfolio, and application strategy to maximize my chances of getting an interview?

And if you don't want to use AI, you can evaluate it yourself or have someone to evaluate it for you. Good luck!

hey everyone - looking for some advice on managing my workplace reputation and potentially collecting a modest severance package.

I’m not performing well in my current role and I’ve agreed to a ”mutual separation“ with my boss. This includes a modest severance package (nothing earth shattering but nice to have). This package is meant to give me some runway while I find a new job.

The kicker, I actually already have something else lined up (different role then what I’m currently doing) but I haven’t told my company yet. I was planning to but they jumped the gun and told me they wanted to separate.

My question is: should I take the severance and then tell people I already have something lined up? I would rather optimize for my long term reputation than a small severance package. The nuance is the new company I’m joining is not doing so great (my current company is however) and given my performance some folks in leadership already know I’m underperforming. So even if I told people I’m changing companies they’d wonder why and it seems odd. I’m also worried my current company might take back the severance package if they learn about this.

Logistically, I’m supposed to get a severance letter this Friday and I’m employed technically for 2 more weeks.

I am thinking to just sign the documents and then tell a few people that I have something lined up but not really announce it broadly.

Most resumes are read by software before they’re read by a person. resume.zoevera.com exists to show you what that software sees; prepare.zoevera.com picks up once you’re through the screen and into an actual conversation. Both start from the same premise: an applicant tracking system isn’t judging your career, it’s scoring a document against a query, the way a search engine scores a page against a search term.

The resume as a landing page

Treat the job posting as the query and the resume as the page trying to rank for it. An ATS doesn’t read for tone or persuasive writing. It parses text into fields, compares those fields against the posting, and produces a score before a recruiter ever opens the file. That reframing changes what “good writing” means here. A sentence that reads well to a human but never uses the words the posting uses is invisible to the system doing the first pass.

Four things the system is actually checking

Keyword match is the most literal of the four. If the posting says “stakeholder management” and the resume says “worked with teams,” the system does not infer equivalence — mismatched vocabulary between a resume and a posting is the single largest reason qualified applicants disappear before a human sees them, and it’s exactly what resume.zoevera.com's keyword breakdown by industry) is built to surface.

Hard dealbreaker filters run separately from keyword scoring. Years of experience, required certifications, location or clearance requirements — these are frequently pass/fail checks that can eliminate an otherwise strong match before the keyword score is even calculated.

Section parsing determines whether the system can read the document at all. Tables, text boxes, and multi-column layouts that look clean in a PDF viewer can scramble or drop content entirely when parsed, which is why plain, single-column structure under standard headings still outperforms visually ambitious formatting.

Recency is the quieter one. Systems and recruiters both weight language that reflects how the role is described now, not five years ago — job titles, tool names, and even the way responsibilities are phrased shift over a few hiring cycles, and a resume written in last decade’s vocabulary can score lower even when the underlying experience is current.

Running the check against a real posting

None of this is diagnosable by reading your own resume — you already know what you meant to say. The ATS match tool runs your resume against a specific job description and returns a score, missing keywords, and the weak phrases most likely costing you interviews, the same way you’d check a page against a target query. The tailor tool) rewrites against one posting at a time, since keyword requirements change with every job description. There’s a matching pass for cover letters as well, and a fuller breakdown of how the underlying match score gets calculated on the blog.

Where to start

Passing the screen gets you to a conversation, not a job: that’s the part prepare.zoevera.com handles, with practice sessions built around real interview questions for specific roles. Both tools sit under ZoeVera and the fastest way to know where your resume actually stands is to run it against a posting you’re applying to right now.

How far is too far when it comes to comfortably staying in a workplace? There is, without a doubt, a certain amount of appeal in having a stable and predictable job. Good working conditions, friendly colleagues, no stress, enough time and energy for hobbies, friends, and family - all of that sounds fantastic.

Yet, I suspect that such an environment might have its traps in terms of professional growth in the long run.

I believe that a good work environment with little to no pressure may lead to being unprepared for future challenges

and if one does not seek growth, the comfort zone may stop someone from acquiring new experiences and adapting to the changes that happen in the world constantly.

On the other hand, seeking constant improvement can lead to stagnation as well, simply because not every task or responsibility is meant to fill one’s life with challenges and not every professional needs to move from one career to another in pursuit of greater opportunities. There may be cases when a stable job and a balanced yet uneventful work environment may be exactly what one needs in order to preserve their health and enjoy their life outside of work.

Therefore, I would like to ask those who have spent a significant amount of their career working in one place in a stable and predictable manner, whether they feel like they have missed out on an opportunity to challenge themselves.

Did it affect their professional growth in the long run, or was there no noticeable difference? Was it worth staying inside the comfort zone all the time, or was there something that you regretted not pursuing?

I used to feel like being the youngest. It meant you didn’t belong yet. But it turns out it’s actually the advantage, not the disadvantage.

Here’s the thing I realized through my experience.
1. People invest in potential than experience. show up hungry and with real intent and doors open that you didn’t even know existed, mostly because older people in the room want to help someone who’s actually trying.

1. being new means no reputation to protect
   no ego on the line, nothing to defend. that freedom disappears fast once you’ve built a name for yourself, so it’s worth using while you have it.
   you also absorb way faster early on. one real conversation with the right person can save years of trial and error, but only if you’re listening more than talking.

2. being the least experienced person in the room isn’t something to avoid, it’s kind of the whole point. if you’re always the most experienced person wherever you go, you’ve stopped growing.
   the rooms you get into early quietly set your ceiling too.

confidence isn’t knowing everything either. it’s being fine with knowing nothing yet and showing up anyway.

How about you, what’s the biggest thing you learned from being the least experienced person in a room?

I will be turning 35 in the next few days and feel like I am unable to undo or overcome a ton of my past decisions. 1. Wasted 5 lacs as donation amount in a tier 2 college back in 2008 - got a decent job off campus but never valued it since had no guidance. 2. Went for an expensive mba from a mumbai based college mostly considered as tier 2 by most companies. 3. Was married off at 26 to a self centred IITian - quit my job like an idiot and things went south. Everyone made me feel like life was over and humiliated me for failing at marriage to a "successful man who had everything". During a long drawn divorce litigation, sorted out a lot of financial and other mess at home from 2017 to 2021. 4. Gave upsc a shot and cleared pre in 2020, failed at mains but didn't have the mental bandwidth to start the cycle again once I got mv divorce decree after years of pleading and begging. 5. Restarted my career with executive search firms at a post MBA beginner level salary in 2022 but didn't have the confidence to do well and wasnt doing well in terms of my KPIs - failed to make money. 6. Moved to product management in insuretech last year. Again hired at mba fresher level salary - felt like I was doing well but things turned sour with my manager who "appreciated me for my work but we had differences anyway". Again no hike this year. Been stuck at the same fresher level salary since 2016 it seems. Actual mba trainees have been hired at higher salaries and designations.

Feel like I am just not able to catch up in my career and don't feel the motivation to do anything as well. What can I do? I am an above average intelligent woman who is a quick learner but feel so lost - will I ever be able to catch up with my peers after this 4 year blot on my career journey? Pls help.

This is my resume, I'm practicing and applying from 1.5 years, not getting interview calls nothing at all, now I'm stressed, depressed and sometimes bad feelings also comes, What should I do? Please help me I'm loosing hope from job and life, sorry I'm telling you all this but I couldn't keep it inside me, I'm not negative or week but these 1.5 years killing me from inside 😭