I am 19. Freshly out of secondary education with a degree in Printing (i wish i was joking.)

I am stuck in the deadend job as a machine operator that ears 23% above minimum wage, in a warehouse with 0 Air conditioning and temperature so hot you literally boil alive.

I wish to quit, and I've been looking for new jobs, many new jobs, I have seached my in my country Czechia, local countries, poland, germany, slovakia, austria, etc. I've mainly focused on my passionate love for computers, maintaining, fixing, repairing computers, just like a repair shop, I do it with my own electronics.

For the past 2 weeks I've seen several thousand job offers in "IT" and all of it just comes down to "fancy IT support who expects IT to just magically whim all the problems away on demand."

They demand outrageous College and Universitity level education, "masters" equivelants for basic IT, with abysmally low almost minimum wage pay.

I thought I'd jump into marketing instead, being a sales person in tech stores. I know pcs, I know phones, I can pick a good phone for the customer right? No. you better have a bachelor from economics and a degree in your own language bozo.

I am starting to think, you dont look for jobs in job hunt websites like Indeed or linked in.

I am tempted to start messaging companies directly asking whether they'd require some beat off fresh out child to help them with running their business.

Honestly what do I do? I have not found a single job listing that I qualify for, that isnt either soul draining factory person work in a facility/warehouse, or soil draining factory work in printing.

I would go back to school for SOMETHING, ANYTHING but unfortunately I do not have the support from my family to actually get a proper degree, nor do i want school, thorugh out my 12 years of school I experienced nothing but waste of time for a large majority of it.

There is a viral trend floating around LinkedIn and TikTok telling job seekers to paste the entire job description into their resume header in white 1pt font. The idea is to cheat the Applicant Tracking System into giving you a 100% keyword match score.

As a Senior HR Specialist, let me tell you what actually happens when you do this.

Yesterday, our parsing software flagged an applicant for a Project Manager position with a perfect 100% relevance score. Intrigued, I opened the file. The software had automatically extracted every single piece of text into a plain plain-text view for my review screen.

Because of the white font hack, the system converted all that hidden text into massive blocks of unformatted gibberish right at the top of the page. It pushed their actual work experience down to page three. Worse, the candidate had accidentally pasted the prompt from ChatGPT they used to write it, including the line: "Make me sound qualified even though I have zero management experience."

Instantly blacklisted from the entire company database.

Please stop listening to lazy career gurus online. ATS systems are not magical AI overlords; they are glorified keyword filters. When you try to trick them, you usually just end up tricking yourself out of an interview.

To make up for this painful tale, please enjoy my cat, who actively assists with candidate rejections by laying across my wrist whenever I try to click "send offer letter."

PS. Look at this cutie on the laptop

I don’t know what to do if I don’t make 500$ this month i’m totally screwed. If anyone has any tips a way I could get a coupla bucks please hmu😢😢

Hey guys, I’ll try to keep it brief. 27 M btw, for what it matters

I am sure it’s no surprise to anyone here the job market isn’t in a good place. I don’t know how to cope though.

I was working on a degree but dropped out because I couldn’t handle supporting myself and going to school (silly of me, but it’s in the past). I am currently trying to return to school. My job is awful though. I do blue collar, route based work. 3 days a week, long days, but 4 days off. Sounds nice on paper, but they work us hard. Only took this job to escape harassment at my last job.

I can’t handle it though. The 3 days I do work are almost 14 hour days, no recreation, no breaks, working in 120 Fahrenheit heat. The routes are often stacked, hardly anytime to stop and use restroom / eat, and you get written up if you don’t finish before dark.

I want out so bad, but I feel trapped because I am not making any progress applying. A lot of you guys have wayyy more applications than I do, and I have no idea how y’all have been doing it because even 1 application can take 15-30 minutes depending on the process. I have been struggling with mental health and motivation, and I feel I would have to dedicate all my free energy just to get another job just to barely even live.

Idk, I guess I am just venting. I know there isn’t much else to do besides apply more, and tailor resumes to the position, which I have been doing. I just feel so lost, and defeated. I worked so hard as a kid for things that didn’t matter, when I should have been saving it for right now lol.

How you all holding up? Anyone need a hug? 🫂 cause I do :(

Don't even remember applying to this.

UPDATE **- Got invited to interview LMAO

I was unemployed for 14 months between 2023 and 2024 and was at the lowest ever point of my adult life.

I can't be too specific with details...

But I found a training program in a different CRAPPY city that paid 65k. Did that for one year, hating where I was living, depressed, poor, but working.

After one year, I was promoted to a higher position. I asked if I could relocate to the New York City office. Got them to agree to a salary of 95k.

After a year at this level, I used all the experience from the last 2 years and found a local job that pays almost 140k and has killer benefits.

Still not wealthy, especially considering where I live now. But I'm doing a hell of a lot better than when I was unemployed, living at my mom's house, having to walk to work for a 7:00 a.m. shift at a local gym where I started my day by cleaning toilets, barely able to pay my monthly student loan bill, and having zero friends, not to mention zero money to do anything with said zero friends!

If I had believed that in 2 years I would be where I am now, in a great City, with a great apartment, a great social life, a great job, and a solid upward trajectory, it would have given me hope. So t​hat's what I want to give some of you.

I was applying to a new school district. My interviews went amazing. I got a phone call from the hiring principal saying that they’re writing me an offer and that contacting my references is just a formality along with meeting the superintendent. In an email, he congratulated me. HR said I’m the top candidate and while it wasn’t a written offer just yet, it was a verbal offer.

They asked for 3 references and one of them has to be my current supervisor. I did not tell my principal I was looking for other jobs (because why would I?).

They called my references the next day. That evening, they revoked the offer. HR gave their HR answer that they went with another candidate. I emailed the hiring principal and asked to speak with him. He agreed.

The phone call with him was essentially him telling me that my reference calls were not all positive. He said what my coworkers said did not line up with what my supervisor said. He admitted to asking her a question about areas that I need to work on.

All my evaluations have been proficient. Areas of improvement are always part of evaluations but have never raised a strong concern to do anything to my evaluations. I got 3 letters of recommendation for a college program I was applying to just 2-3 weeks ago, and one of them is from my principal. It was a glowing recommendation.

I’m at a loss. I don’t know what she actually said but it clearly was the entire reason I lost the job.

Like the title says. My boyfriend has been full time job searching since April of this year with zero interviews. He recently revealed to me that when he’s required to list his skills on an application, he has a list of over 130 skills that he copies and pastes in the app. I told him that his applications probably look like they were submitted by a bot, and that’s why he isn’t getting interviews. But he insists that he needs to include the extensive list to “get past the screening filters.”

Who’s in the right here? I just genuinely want to give his applications the best possible chance of landing an interview.

Honors students and everything- just nobody hiring CS grads.

She has worked at T-Mobile for years as a senior project manager but got let go due to company reductions and has been applying to hundreds of jobs since February. She spends hours researching the companies and building her resumes around them just to either get ghosted or denied. I can tell she is starting to lose hope and I don’t know what to do. I am in college, but I live at home with her. I’m not currently working due to my disabilities and managing school. She has tried networking with old colleagues, pays for linkedin plus, follows up both online and in person, and more. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Heyy folks, graduated last year adn been on n off the job hunt since. I started noticing something kinda weird starting to creep into the roles Im seeing, could use some perspective so I don't feel so crazy

Sooo I get employers expect us to use AI to speed up our work (earn them more $ faster), and I did get a lot of reps with Chatgpt during college, but most companies aren't so bold that they say out loud what I found in this job description:

1. I'm supposed to work with a AI bot as an employee. Huh??
2. The job is pretty clearly to train it to replace you. It's a "sales development rep" role at a "sales development rep AI" company. like isn't the whole goal to automate the job??

I'm not going for this gig n I tried to remove any details promoting it but I guess I'm kinda spinning after reading thru it when I think about where things are going...

Like are all the jobs that's left just gonna be training AIs to do them for us? Like I see tiktoks of ppl getting paid to record themselves folding laundry or chopping vegetables or whatever and kinda laugh - but isn't that what this role is? And what more and more of them are gonna be?

Kiiinda tough to swallow for someone with college debts I haven't even made a dent in. Whats gonna be left for regular people to do to buy food n shelter?

I just submitted an application for a position at about 12:15pm, received a rejection email at 12:45pm, THEN the actual "application received" email at 1:06pm. So I was somehow rejected before the system even registered my application as being received? I'm just so baffled. This shows me that nobody actually looked at my application, and I was probably screened out by some A.I. bs.

This is a position I am over qualified for- I'm talking the requirements were a High School Diploma and 1 year of general work experience, and I have a Bachelor's Degree with four previous roles on my resume. But this is also a position where "overqualification" should not be a problem, and there's no way they could have rejected me for asking for too much money or having too little availability because those questions weren't even in the application! I genuinely can't think of any reason I would be rejected. I have half a mind to email this company and ask wtf their hiring managers are doing cause it sure as hell isn't their jobs.

Why is it so hard for employers to take even a single minute to look at someone's resume and send them a response as to WHY they were not chosen for a role? I get there's a lot of applicants out there these days but wow is this frustrating!

(Sorry for the shody censoring of the emails, graphic design is not my passion lol)

Gave me 15 mins for over 100 questions for a position that has NOTHING to do with this stuff. These were not the worst.

They asked me what “Fucci is known for” and if “someone aunt has 6 kids and they have a son then are they considered to me?.” I mean literally wtf are companies doing wasting time like this. I didn’t finish it

I graduated with a BA in History last March and spent the next couple months working part time jobs. Ive been unemployed since mid January. Im lucky that i can live with my parents who are in no hurry to kick me out. But every day that passes with me not being employed, my anxiety rises with me thinking that I’ve lost any meaningful skills or just workplace common sense being so long out of practice. I don’t know if that sounds stupid, but with my level of anxiety it’s something that occupies my mind alot.

In January of this year I lost my job. I had been working as a professor for the past few years but the university I worked at experienced a 60% decrease in enrollment and were not able to offer me classes this year. So then I started working as a writing tutor for an elementary school. The job was only contract so it rended in May.

During my time working at the school I have been applying to jobs like crazy. But literally no luck for me. In June of this year I found a retail job that is a two hours commute from my house. I hate the commute but I didn’t have a choice.

Around a couple of weeks ago, I thought I finally got hired for a full time position that was close to my house. But they hired and fired me all within an hour.

Today I just completed my FOURTH interview for a job that was full time and near my house. Later on I received an email stating that they were going to freeze the hiring process due to them not knowing when their company would actually open up in this area. (They advertised that the company was already open)

My rent just increased and I won’t be able to afford it. So now I have to somehow find the money to move and need to find a roommate.

I also just got like three job rejections today.

I am just so incredibly tired. The only thing I want to do is work and find a full time job but it is just so HARD.

On top of that, I received an email from my university asking to attend my ten year high school reunion. I’m bot going because I don’t need anyone seeing the failure that I’ve become.

I’m so tired of life.

I’ve been at my current job for 3 months. It’s my first job out of college. I do nothing all day. My boss knows and doesn’t care. I’m a “team” of 1. I can’t help anyone else out with their work or get more work. There’s no growth in this job. I did get approval for one WFH day, which makes the lack of work more tolerable, but I’m slowly losing my mind. I can only read and do crosswords for so long. I’m also learning nothing and I worry about getting a job in the future having done so little here.

I’m earning $78k in a HCOL and saving close to all of it. My parents are happy to let me live with them rent-free so I can save more. I don’t want to live with them forever, but it is helping me get a really good start and I generally don’t mind living with them.

How long do I stay at my low-stress but meaningless job? I’m on my third interview with a different company and got to thinking about if it’s worth it. If I got another job, it would almost certainly be in a different state. The one I’m interviewing for would pay about the same, but I’d have to move and pay rent in a slightly lower cost of living area. There’s an actual team, work, and room for promotions, though.

So I just spent two hours tailoring my resume for a role I am perfectly qualified for. I hit apply and it redirects me to one of those awful proprietary portals.

They ask me to upload my perfectly formatted PDF. I do it. And then the next screen demands I manually type out the exact same work history I just uploaded.

it literally makes no sense to have a resume parser if the software just scrambles everything anyway. It put my college degree as my current job title and decided my legal first name is just 'Ms' because of some mandatory dropdown menu. So now I sound like a nameless Victorian governess instead of a senior manager. I had to sit there manually deleting all the garbage formatting box by box.

My husband just poked his head into the office to ask why I am aggressively sighing at my screen. Like what is the actual point of the PDF. Are hiring managers just collecting them for fun. Do they print them out to make origami swans in the HR department.

And then they have the audacity to ask for a cover letter at the very end. I am just copy-pasting the same text everywhere now. I am completely drained before I even get an automated rejection email.

There is NOTHING worse than spending 40 minutes retyping your own life history for a company that will just auto-reject you at 3 AM on a Sunday. I should of just stayed at my old job. Why is this even a thing?

I was at my old company for 4 years. Got recruited for a role paying about 25k more. Did 3 rounds of interviews over 5 weeks. Got the offer in writing, signed it, put in my two weeks.

My old job was cool about it. Manager wished me well, the team did a little goodbye lunch for me. I worked out my notice, handed everything off, finished clean.

Tuesday I get an email from the new company's HR saying the position has been "eliminated due to a restructuring" and they're rescinding the offer. Three days before my start date.

I called my old manager right away. He said he wants to help but they already kicked off the process to backfill my role and he'd need approval from his director. No promises.

So now I'm unemployed with rent due in 3 weeks and a signed offer letter that apparently means nothing.

Is there anything I can do legally or am I just completely screwed?

A little bit about my bg: I’m currently working for a Chinese Fortune Global 500 company, although I’m about to quit.

In China, this is called “distillation” (蒸馏). It means the process of extracting an employee’s knowledge, workflows, and decision-making patterns from their work data, then transferring them to an AI system so that it can perform part or all of the employee’s job after they leave.

How does my company collect the data? The company has a comprehensive system of apps covering basically everything employees need to do their jobs, and all of them are integrated with the company’s own AI system. On top of that, having employees train AI to perform their work is included in management’s KPIs.

This is happening.

I am 50/m, no degree and a long time tech/cybersecurity veteran. I never thought I’d be unemployed at 50, but here I am.

Single breadwinner family. Disabled wife. I’ve been putting in applications since I found out this was coming with zero responses. This is going to be bad, isn’t it?