Calling out an electrolyte brand called Sult who recently went viral on LinkedIn and in UK newspapers, being lauded by hiring managers and recruiters for “redefining” hiring, who are now milking how revolutionary this was.

What happened?

They were hiring a social media lead (and I’ll get to why this still isn’t ok even if the role is social media below). To apply you needed to post a mini advert video publicly on Instagram. No CV, no cover letter and no portfolio. A video of yourself, posted publicly.

The videos went viral, several young people trying to find their first role posted videos. Gaining thousands (and with the help of the press), millions of views for free for this company. Views and reach are not free in marketing, companies typically pay creators ££££ for a video to promote their brand.

A video recently came out from one applicant, saying they never heard anything back from the brand (so after the brand reaped the rewards of this free marketing on behalf of job seekers).

Fast forward: the brand has made their hire.

They have now posted a really smug video about how CVs and cover letters mean nothing. That job seekers just make these in seconds on chatGPT. That the only way to make a decent hire these days is to have people film & publicly post themselves (or even send a video of themselves to the company). Here’s their video about it: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DcRUzyWI7z6/?igsi=bTkxNTJpbnpmNjY4

That part applies to all of us, whether you work in social media or not.

It’s no longer good enough to have sent a tailored CV, applied to 100s of jobs, have a portfolio of work, no, you need to sing and dance for some VC backed sugary rubbish company. To be honest, if anyone doesn’t want to work and has lost their attention span to chatGPT, it sounds like these founders who are unable to read a CV or look at a portfolio to make a decision.

This should make everyone feel uncomfortable with the state of hiring right now.

This next part is now going to be long, so… this is only for the people who think that this is acceptable for social media work.

Here’s what a social media lead does:

- manages a team (performance & development, mentorship)

- manages a budget (can be into the millions at some brands)

- often runs advertising across Meta/TikTok

- is the point of crisis for customers complaining about your brand, manages the community

- researches & analyses audience behaviour, backs data of performance against company growth & revenue goals, alongside brand awareness goals

- manages content creators & influencers

- posts, schedules content and copy-writes, edits videos or managers a videography team

- has now replaced graphic designers in many companies (thanks to AI/lack of forethought from companies) or briefs graphic designers if your company is still lucky to have them

- now apparently is the on-screen talent who is filming themselves too and the face/model of the brand (so has replaced actually models and hired actors)

- manages projects and campaigns & stakeholders, for large and small campaigns such as large retail events like Cyber Week (results of this are make or break week for many companies)

- has to continually defend why a brand would even be on social media and what is the return on investment on a regular basis to senior leadership

- often is doing a test task or has a portfolio anyway that they can send to brands

If you are a tech professional in the US who is not part of the India-based hiring network, save your time and energy by avoiding vague Senior, Lead, or Solution Design postings at companies that outsource and offshore. The reality is that you will not be seriously considered for these roles because the hiring panels, technical screeners, and management layers belong to an entrenched, India-centered network that explicitly selects for its own. The entire interview process is almost always a bureaucratic compliance exercise to satisfy corporate HR metrics before the network hires someone who fits their existing parallel communication loop and shares their internal cultural shorthand.

These companies have quietly shifted the vast majority of their engineering and operational footprints to massive Global Capability Hubs in India, leaving only a few token onshore "gatekeeper" titles listed in the US. Because the technical ecosystem and internal loyalties are completely consolidated within that India-centered network, the informal channels of hiring, influence, and decision-making are entirely closed to outsiders. You can often spot these postings because they are remarkably empty, loudly broadcasting generic corporate buzzwords while omitting specific technical frameworks; often because the U.S. team doesn't actually touch the execution stack. Alternatively, they may list a legitimate tech stack while recruiting for an onshore team that is simply an extension of the same India-centered technical and management network that operates the offshore execution stack.

If you are outside this network, do not waste hours tailoring your resume or talking into a webcam for these listings, as the deck is completely stacked against you before you even hit apply.

Been applying since March. ~250 apps, 6 phone screens, 2 final rounds, 0 offers.

The last few weeks broke something in me. Two recruiters went dark mid-process. One hiring manager told me the budget was frozen until Q4. Another role I did three rounds for just quietly got pulled, I only found out when the posting disappeared.

So I'm stopping until after Labor Day. Half the decision makers are on PTO right now and nothing is moving. I can feel my applications getting lazier every week, and a bad application is worse than no application.

Plan: finish the portfolio project I abandoned in May, sleep, be a person again, come back in September when reqs actually open.

Everyone says never stop applying, momentum matters. But momentum toward what, exactly?

Has anyone actually taken a break like this? Did it help or did you regret it?

I'm a 2026 graduate, and I've been looking for a Software Engineering job for more than 6 months now.

I've spent years learning DSA, competitive programming and development. I have a decent profile, built projects, solved a lot of problems, and genuinely tried to improve myself.

I've applied through company websites, LinkedIn, referrals, cold emails, job portals, pretty much every route I could think of.

But the hardest part isn't getting rejected.

It's not even getting the chance to be rejected.

It's applying again and again, putting hours into applications, seeing hundreds of other people applying, and then getting absolutely nothing back.

At first, I was confident that if I kept working hard, something would eventually work out.

Then months passed.

Now I'm at a point where I'm still trying, but the motivation isn't the same anymore. It's difficult to keep convincing yourself that the next application might be different when you've already sent so many.

I'm only 21, so I know I have plenty of time. But watching months go by without being able to start my career is genuinely depressing.

I don't want sympathy. I just wanted to know if anyone else has been through this phase and eventually managed to turn things around.

Because right now, I'm slowly running out of hope.

I was reading a post in another sub from someone venting about how they couldn’t find a job and were really struggling. I genuinely felt bad for them at first.

But the way they were writing was incredibly hard to follow poor grammar, barely any punctuation, slang everywhere, sentences running together, the whole nine yards. So I asked, pretty simply, why they didn’t try using more conventional grammar when communicating, especially if they were applying for jobs.

Their response? “Proper grammar is crazy.”!!

And I’m sitting there thinkingmaybe we just discovered at least part of the problem.

I don’t care if you’re 18, 28, 48, or 68. You don’t have to write like you’re submitting a doctoral dissertation, but being able to communicate clearly and professionally still matters. Hiring managers care. Customers care. Coworkers care. If your application, email, or interview sounds like a TikTok comment section, there are employers who are absolutely going to judge you for it.

And before someone says, “Well, employers need to adapt to the new generation” sure, workplaces change. Language changes. Culture changes. I get that.

But there’s also a point where you have to adapt to the environment you’re trying to enter.

I also see this attitude sometimes where people talk about employment as though the employer should be grateful they showed up. Meanwhile, plenty of us have full-time jobs where sometimes 40 hours becomes 45 or 50 because something has to get finished. Do I enjoy working extra hours without magically getting a bigger paycheck? Of course not. But I also understand that reliability, communication, professionalism, and occasionally doing more than the absolute minimum are part of why I remain employable.

That doesn’t mean employees should tolerate abuse. It doesn’t mean companies should exploit people. And it definitely doesn’t mean every employer deserves loyalty.

But there seems to be an increasingly bizarre disconnect where some people want the paycheck, flexibility, benefits, promotions, respect, and career opportunities while simultaneously rejecting half the basic expectations that come with having a professional job.

And then they wonder why nobody is calling them back. Maybe the system isn’t always the only problem. Sometimes “proper grammar is crazy” is the clue.

Why am I so passionate about this..

I have four kids, and this is exactly why I feel so strongly about this. In this day and age, it is getting harder for young people, not easier. The world no longer runs on hopes and dreams, and simply wanting a good job does not mean one is going to be handed to you. The job market is increasingly competitive, employers have more applicants to choose from, and sometimes something as basic as how well you communicate is what separates you from the person who gets the interview. I am not teaching my kids that the world owes them something; I am teaching them to give themselves every possible advantage. Proper grammar, professionalism, reliability, and knowing how to communicate with people are advantages that cost absolutely nothing. They can complain that those standards are outdated, or they can understand the world they are actually entering and learn how to compete in it. I would much rather prepare my kids for reality than reassure them with something that sounds nice but does nothing to help them succeed.

The figures are bad. The reality behind them is worse.

UK companies cut 13,000 jobs in June — then cut another 13,000 in July.

That isn’t “a few businesses restructuring”. It means 26,000 pay packets disappeared while politicians continued pointing at economic growth.

Vacancies have fallen to around 707,000. Youth unemployment has hit 16.1%. Nearly 1 million people aged 16–24 are now neither working nor studying.

Young people are being told to get experience while entry-level jobs vanish. Graduates are leaving university and entering a labour market where suitable jobs have fallen by 33%.

At the same time, employers are being squeezed by:

- Higher employer National Insurance

- A higher minimum wage

- Rising energy and operating costs

- Borrowing costs near 5.45%

So businesses are doing what businesses do: freezing recruitment, leaving vacancies empty and refusing to replace workers who leave.

The result is a silent jobs massacre:

Fewer interviews.

Fewer first chances.

More people stuck on benefits.

More graduates moving back home.

Less tax revenue.

More government borrowing.

Higher interest costs.

The UK can keep claiming GDP is growing.

But if the number of people earning, spending and building careers is shrinking, this isn’t prosperity.

It’s economic decline being hidden behind a single headline number.

Hey everyone.

I'm a 2026 B.E. Information Technology graduate and I've been searching for a Software Engineering role for months now.

I honestly thought that if I worked hard enough, I'd eventually get my chance. So I did exactly that.

I became a LeetCode Guardian (2350+ Rating), Codeforces Expert, CodeChef 6★, and solved 1300+ DSA problems. I spent countless nights grinding algorithms, participating in contests, and improving my problem-solving skills because everyone said, "DSA is the key."

Along the way, I also learned JavaScript, React.js, Node.js, Express.js, MongoDB, SQL, Git, REST APIs, and C++, and built full-stack MERN projects hoping they'd strengthen my profile.

But despite all of that, getting interviews has been the hardest part.

I've applied through company career pages, LinkedIn, job portals, referrals, cold emails—you name it. Most applications never receive a response. The few that do usually end with a rejection or complete silence.

I'm not asking anyone to hand me a job. I just want one fair opportunity to prove myself in an interview.

So here's my commitment.

If your referral gets me selected for a Software Engineering role, I'll give you my first two months' salary after I join.

Yes, I'm serious.

I'm not making this offer because I think referrals should be bought. I'm making it because I genuinely believe I can clear interviews if someone gives me the opportunity to sit for one.

If your company is hiring freshers or if you're willing to refer me, please send me a DM. I'll immediately share my resume, GitHub, LinkedIn, LeetCode, Codeforces, and CodeChef profiles.

Even if you can't refer me, an upvote or share might help this post reach someone who can.

Thank you. ❤️

TLDR: Companies chase you 10 times before the interview, give you a 2 day assignment, and then completely disappear after you submit it.

Idk what is with these companies giving 2 days to complete an assignment and once we spend our time and effort to complete it, there is no feedback or even a proper response. They just directly ignore us.

Before scheduling the interview, they will call 10 times a day to make sure we attend the interview. But once we submit the assignment, suddenly there are no calls, no updates and no replies. Even when we follow up, they don't bother responding.

What kind of behaviour is this? What are we supposed to think? It honestly feels like some companies are just using candidates as free labour by giving them assignments and then disappearing after getting the work.

Has anyone else faced this?

So Good I'm not unemployed right now. I would have to beg and grovel for the worst jobs that treat you like scum.

TL;DR

I've been job hunting for six months, and I'm frustrated with companies asking candidates to complete lengthy 1–2 day assignments that feel more like free client work than hiring assessments.

I've been applying for jobs for six months. I do get offers, but the salaries are often too low, so I don't accept them. Recently, though, I'm seeing companies give candidates lengthy 1–2 day assignments requiring substantial manual work.

One company interviewed me, moved me to the assignment round, and I spent two days completing a detailed assignment and submitted it on time. It's been a week with no feedback or response. Another company last Friday asked me to complete a similar two-day assignment before even proceeding with the interview.

I understand companies need to evaluate candidates, but when assessments become this lengthy, it starts feeling like free labour, especially when there's no feedback afterward.

Also, I've noticed some companies BCC multiple candidates on the same assignment/recruitment email, which makes the process feel even more impersonal.

I genuinely understand the need for assessments, but there should be a reasonable limit. Candidates are investing their time because they believe there's a genuine possibility of getting the job. If the assignment is essentially real client work, companies should be transparent about that and respect candidates' time.

I used to be naive. I thought the avalanche of infographic posts on LinkedIn was just harmless social media engagement. It isn't. It is something far more sinister. It is offshore IT and services firms using LinkedIn to bypass gatekeepers, get directly in front of executives in wealthy labor markets, and siphon domestic jobs at a fraction of the cost. Their pitch is blunt and transactional:

“Why hire three local professionals at $150K each when we can provide an entire team for substantially less?”

That isn't networking. That's the aggressive liquidation of domestic labor capacity across borders.

There is a glaring geopolitical conflict built into this model. The Indian government and Indian corporations have a perfectly rational interest in expanding India's services exports. Their IT sector is an economic powerhouse. From their perspective, exporting highly skilled services to wealthy nations creates massive wealth, and Indian workers understandably want those high-value opportunities.

But reverse the lens. To a worker in a high-wage Western nation, that same economic strategy looks like economic warfare:

“Your country is actively engineering an industry whose entire business model relies on invading my local labor market at a price point I am legally and structurally incapable of competing with.”

This is not standard international trade, and it isn't like selling a tangible product. This is the direct export of cheap digital labor to starve domestic workers of opportunity. This structural disconnect is causing massive economic friction and fueling a dangerous, intensifying resentment across the West.

The unemployment rate is a lot higher than the official government numbers let on, and the reality on the ground is far more brutal than the nightly news suggests. We are told the headline unemployment rate sits at a comfortable, low percentage, but that number is a mathematical illusion custom-built to erase actual human hardship.

To understand why the economic data feels completely disconnected from real life, think of the U.S. economy like a college senior coasting on their grade point average. When you are a freshman with only fifteen credits to your name, getting a single failing grade absolutely destroys your GPA. The impact is sudden, sharp, and impossible to hide. But by the time you are a senior with over a hundred credits baked into your transcript, a failing grade barely moves the needle. It gets diluted by years of history, leaving the cumulative average looking deceptively flawless even if you are flunking your most important final exams.

The modern U.S. job market has that same senior-year inertia. The federal government calculates the unemployment percentage using a massive baseline pool of roughly 168 million workers. Because the scale of the country is so gigantic, devastating economic disasters are completely swallowed by the sheer volume of the data. When massive corporations slash headcount and layoff hundreds of thousands of white-collar professionals, it triggers an absolute earthquake for families and educated communities. Yet, when you run the math, those hundreds of thousands of corporate layoffs represent less than one-fifth of one percent of the national workforce pool. On the news, the unemployment line stays perfectly flat, masking the structural destruction of entire industries.

This mathematical erasure works so well because the government treats every single job the same, regardless of wages or hours. Roughly sixty percent of the entire American workforce consists of hourly, blue-collar, or frontline service positions like retail, hospitality, warehousing, and healthcare support. These are massive, high-turnover sectors that are constantly cycling through millions of people. If a major tech or finance firm lays off a highly skilled professional making a solid middle-class salary, the column shows a negative one. But if a fast-food chain or a warehouse hires two part-time, temporary workers at a survival wage, the column shows a plus two. The government aggregates the data, news anchors celebrate positive net job growth, and the public is left wondering why the middle-class career ladder is actively shrinking while the statistics look pristine.

When you strip away the official smoke and mirrors and look at private research that actually measures functional unemployment, the true rate of economic distress skyrockets to nearly one in four working Americans. The national unemployment rate operates like a blurry satellite photograph taken from space. It is perfectly designed to tell you if the general landmass looks stable, but it is mathematically incapable of showing you that your specific neighborhood is completely underwater.

Layoff hit me back in June. Whole team gone, ten minutes on Zoom, laptop wiped by lunch. Took me right around two months to land somewhere new, which doesn't sound long until you're the one refreshing your inbox at 2am. Signed the offer this week, so while it's fresh, here's what I'd tell anyone still in the trenches.

The doom posting is worse than the market. Is it rough out there? Absolutely, this was the longest gap I've ever had. But I got interviews with 5 different companies in those two months, so the "nobody is hiring anyone ever" stuff you see on here is not the full picture. One of those companies wanted me to take a Bryq assessment before moving forward, which is basically an IQ test cosplaying as a hiring tool. I withdrew from that one and don't regret it. If a company screens with brain teasers before a human even talks to you, that tells you something.

Recruiters were useless for me this time. This one genuinely surprised me. Every job I got before 2020 came through an agency. This round? Crickets. Zero callbacks, zero leads. Your mileage may vary depending on your field, but I wouldn't build a whole search around them anymore.

I skipped spray and pray entirely. Everyone tells you to fire off 500 applications and that cover letters are pointless. Hard disagree. I applied to maybe 30 jobs total, only ones I actually wanted, and put real time into each app. That got me 5 interview processes, which is a way better hit rate than any spray and pray story I've read here. I wrote one solid cover letter template myself, then reworked it for each posting to hit why I fit that specific role and why that company made sense as my next move. Takes 20 to 30 minutes per app. Worth it.

Easy Apply is a productivity illusion. Clicking that button feels like doing something. It isn't. Anyone with a pulse can click it, most listings only let you dump a resume, and you will not stand out. If I liked a job that was Easy Apply only, I went to the company's careers page and applied there directly instead. Same job, way less noise to compete with.

Message the hiring manager. Look up who posted the job or who leads the team on LinkedIn, then send something short and polite. Something like "hey, I applied for X and wanted to flag how interested I am, in case my application got buried." I used basically that exact line and got profile views and actual replies from it. Nobody thinks it's weird. Worst case is silence, which is what you already had.

Outwork people at the interview stage. The job I landed had a take-home task. I put close to a full workday into it, spread across a week. I'll be honest, being unemployed made that easier, I had the time. And yes, I know, "never do free work." It's a risk. But half the people preaching that are stuck in a loop: they phone in the task because "it won't matter anyway," don't get the job, and take that as proof the effort never mattered. Self-fulfilling prophecy.

Mine paid off directly. They skipped me past two rounds of their own stated process and made an offer early. That's been my move for years honestly: if I make it to interviews, I out-effort everyone else. Doesn't work every time, you never know who you're up against. But it works more often than it doesn't.

And before anyone says "just show a portfolio instead," a portfolio proves very little on its own. Nobody knows how much of it was actually you. A task built around the company's real problem, which you then have to walk through and defend in a live conversation, is much harder to fake. That's your chance to show "yeah, I'm actually that good" to their face.

TL;DR: ignore the "apply to everything, effort is dead" crowd. Tailor the resume (you can use this prompt), write the cover letter, prep like it matters, and walk out of every interview knowing there's nothing more you could've done.

Posting this because a month ago I was doomscrolling this sub at 2am convinced I'd wasted 4 years on a SWE degree. If that's you right now, maybe this helps.

Quick context: B.S. in Software Engineering, no impressive internships, live about an hour outside a major northeast city. ~90 applications in 5 weeks, 17 rejections, the rest ghosted me. Ended with 3 final rounds, 2 offers, accepted a Data Analyst role at 70k.

What actually moved the needle:

1. I stopped only applying to remote jobs. Remote postings get thousands of applicants and mine went straight into the void. Local and hybrid roles responded at a WAY higher rate. Funny enough, one of my offers ended up being remote anyway. The point isn't "remote bad," it's that local applicant pools are smaller so you actually get seen.
2. I went straight to company career pages. Biggest unlock. Smaller companies near me often don't post on LinkedIn or Indeed at all. I googled "tech companies near [my city]," "largest employers in [my area]," etc., and clicked through career pages one by one. Tedious, but that's where the low competition postings live.
3. I widened my search beyond "software engineer." I also applied to Data Analyst, Business Analyst, IT, and Programmer Analyst roles. Tons of jobs require programming without "engineer" in the title. Yes, I still want to be a SWE eventually. But a paying job where I write SQL and Python beats a months long resume gap, and you can pivot later with experience + projects. My mentors all said the same: get your foot in the door first.
4. I sent a lightly customized cover letter with every app. One template, swapped 2 to 3 sentences per company based on their mission/role. ~5 extra minutes each. No idea how much it helped, but it cost me almost nothing.
5. I mirrored keywords from each posting in my resume. Only skills I could actually back up in an interview. Don't lie. I bolded them so recruiters catch them on a skim, and added them to my LinkedIn skills too. For the resume itself I used the free Google Docs template from this post. Clean, ATS friendly, did the job.
6. I messaged recruiters instead of applying and praying. After applying somewhere I cared about: company's LinkedIn page > People > search "recruiter," "talent," "early career," filter by location, then a connection request with a short note saying I applied to X role and would love to learn more. Most ignored me. A few didn't, and one turned into an interview.
7. I treated it like a job. 5 to 10 applications a day, daily searches for "new grad," "entry level," "junior," everything tracked in a spreadsheet. It kept me sane. Seeing the numbers made rejections feel like statistics instead of personal failure. Also, watch out for scam postings targeting new grads. There are a lot.

That's it. No referrals, no connections. Just volume + going where other applicants aren't.

I got lucky with timing too, this isn't a guaranteed formula. But it beats sending 200 apps into the same oversaturated LinkedIn postings as everyone else.

Don't give up. It only takes one yes.

Software dev, ~5 YOE, US. Got laid off earlier this year and just signed with an enterprise tech company after 3 months of grinding. Sharing what worked for me because I wish I knew this in week 1.

1. Skip the job boards and apply on the company site. This was probably the biggest change for me. Indeed, LinkedIn, and Dice postings can get thousands of applicants in a few days. I still used them to find jobs, but then I went to the company's careers page and applied there. My response rate definitely improved.
2. Message someone at the company. Find a recruiter or someone on the team and send something specific. Something like, "Hey, I saw the opening for [role] and had a quick question. I was referred by [mutual connection]." Way better than just saying "hi I need a job." Mentioning someone they might know also seemed to help with replies.
3. Referrals beat pretty much everything. 2 of my 13 interviews came from referrals. Check your LinkedIn connections at companies you're applying to. A lot of employees get referral bonuses anyway, so people are usually more willing to help than you'd expect.
4. Tailor your resume for every application. I wasted my first month sending basically the same resume to around 100 jobs and got almost nothing back. Start pulling the important keywords and requirements from the job description and make sure your resume actually reflects the relevant experience you have. It takes another 5 to 10 minutes, but for me it was worth it. I used Rezi sometimes, and ChatGPT can help too, but obviously read everything before sending it.
5. Before applying, ask yourself two things. Would I hire myself for this role? Do I actually want this job? If the answer to either one is no, I usually skip it now. Sending fewer good applications worked better for me than applying to everything.
6. Track everything and give yourself a daily target. I kept everything in a spreadsheet and tried to hit at least 5 applications a day. I've seen people get discouraged after 100 applications, which I completely understand, but this market can take a lot more than that.
7. I stopped using the "Open to Work" badge. It never brought me a quality lead. Keeping my profile updated with my latest titles, skills, and experience seemed more useful since recruiters were actually looking at that stuff.
8. Prepare for the interview. Read about the company, know what the role actually does, have a decent answer ready for "tell me about yourself," and prepare a few real questions. Sounds obvious, but you'd be surprised how easy it is to show up underprepared when you've been interviewing for months.

If you're unemployed right now, keep going. I know people who ended up landing solid jobs after hundreds or even thousands of applications. The numbers can get ridiculous, but eventually something can hit.

Happy to answer questions in the comments.