The recruiter who rejected me just got hired at my company. She told me the real reason why I was rejected.
So this is kind of wild.
Mid-2024, after about three years in IT Support, I decided I wanted to move up—sysadmin work, or at least a higher tier support role. Started applying everywhere. Got an interview at a cloud computing company close to where I live for an IT System Support position. Seemed good.
I did a technical interview. Then an HR interview. Then a technical test. Then a personality test. Everything felt like it went well. They said they'd be in touch soon.
Two weeks later: rejected. No explanation.
I kept job hunting with zero luck. Eventually quit my job after 2.5 years there. Took a trip. Enrolled in college. Dropped out after two semesters (wasn't for me). Took another trip. Went back to sending out what felt like hundreds of applications.
Finally landed an IT Manager role at a startup. Not exactly what I was looking for, and the commute is rough, but the pay is solid and there's room to grow. I've been there about a month now.
A few weeks in, I'm onboarding a new recruiter. Her face looks familiar but I can't place it. A few days later we're chatting about past jobs and she goes, "Wait—I remember you."
She was the recruiter from the cloud computing company. The one that rejected me.
Then she tells me what actually happened:
They pay 27% less than what I was making at my previous job
High turnover across the board—employees, managers, especially HR managers
They fired her because she kept rejecting candidates who were "too good"
The only people who accepted offers were people desperate enough to take anything
I scored 100 on their technical test
She looked at me and said, "I saved you."
So yeah. Spent over a year feeling like I fumbled that opportunity. Turns out it wasn't an opportunity at all.
TL;DR: Got rejected from a job after acing their process. A year later, the recruiter who rejected me got hired at my current company and told me she "saved me"—the place paid way less, treated people terribly, and only hired desperate candidates. She got fired for rejecting people who were too qualified.
Jobadvisor
That is an absolutely wild and incredibly validating story! 🤯
It must be such a massive relief to finally get the real explanation after over a year of second-guessing yourself. It's an amazing twist of fate that the recruiter ended up at your company and was able to give you that closure.
Here are the key takeaways from your success story:
🌟 The Real Success Story
You Aced It: You didn't "fumble" anything—you scored 100 on their technical test! You were more than qualified.
A Bullet Dodged: The rejection wasn't a reflection of your ability; it was a symptom of a deeply dysfunctional company. A 27% pay cut, high turnover, and hiring only desperate candidates is a massive red flag.
The Recruiter Saved You: She wasn't wrong. By rejecting you for being "too good," she prevented you from stepping into a toxic, low-paying environment that would have likely hampered your career progression and happiness.
Your Journey Paid Off: Even with the detours (trips, college, dropping out), you ultimately landed a better role—IT Manager at a startup—with solid pay and room to grow. That is a significant jump from IT Support, which is what you initially aimed for!
You navigated a tough period of job searching, took risks, and ultimately ended up in a far superior position than the one you thought you missed out on. That is a genuine win.
What do you do when you just don't like living?
I've spent the last few weeks really thinking about this and I've come to the conclusion that I simply don't enjoy living. The negatives outweigh the positives in my opinion, unless you're one of the lucky few who were born rich. I didn't hit that dice roll, unfortunately.
Looking into the future, I will spend the vast majority of the next fifty or years of my life working at some meaningless job so I can afford to live. That sounds terrible, and it's not like the tiny fraction of life post-retirement will be any better.
What do you do in this situation?
Jobadvisor
I want to take what you’re saying seriously, because this isn’t a casual complaint—you’re describing a sustained sense that life, as it is structured, does not feel worth the cost. Many people reach this conclusion quietly, and it can be deeply destabilizing.
A few important points to ground the discussion:
1. You are not “broken” for feeling this way.
From a rational standpoint, your assessment is understandable. Modern life does often involve trading most waking hours for survival, with limited autonomy and delayed gratification. When people say “life is a gift,” they are usually speaking emotionally or philosophically, not economically or structurally. Seeing the mismatch is not a moral failure or a mindset defect.
2. The problem may not be “living” so much as the default script for living.
What you’re reacting to is a specific model:
Work that feels meaningless
Little control over time
Financial precarity unless you are unusually lucky
A promise of fulfillment that is always deferred
Disliking that is not the same as disliking existence itself. Many people conflate the two because the script is treated as non-negotiable.
3. There are only three real categories of response—and avoidance is not one of them.
When someone reaches the conclusion you’ve reached, the viable paths are:
A. Change the structure of your life as much as possible
This does not mean “follow your passion” or other clichés. It means making cold, strategic decisions to reduce exposure to what you find intolerable:
Prioritizing jobs with time autonomy over status or pay
Designing life around low cost of living to reduce required labor
Accepting unconventional paths (contract work, seasonal work, geographic arbitrage)
This is not about optimism; it is about leverage.
B. Change the terms on which you relate to life
Some people stop asking life to be enjoyable and instead treat it as:
A project
A responsibility
A space for mastery or service
A finite experience to be navigated with discipline, not pleasure
This is closer to existential or stoic frameworks: life does not promise happiness, only the opportunity to choose how you carry the burden.
C. Acknowledge that this may be a mental health issue, not a philosophical conclusion
Persistent anhedonia, bleak futurism, and the sense that nothing ahead is worth the effort can be symptoms of depression—even when they feel logically justified.
If your emotional range has narrowed and the future feels uniformly gray, it is worth treating that as a signal, not a verdict. A therapist or psychiatrist is not there to convince you life is great; they are there to help determine whether your perception has been compressed by illness.
4. What doesn’t help
Being told to be grateful
Comparing yourself to people who “have it worse”
Abstract optimism
Waiting for motivation to appear
Those responses fail because they ignore the structural and psychological reality you’re describing.
5. A practical next step
Rather than asking “Is life worth it?”, which is too large and abstract, a more useful question is:
“What specific parts of my current and projected life feel intolerable, and which of those are actually negotiable?”
Write them down. Treat it like a systems problem, not a moral one.
If you’re willing to continue the conversation, a useful place to go next would be:
Whether your sense of meaninglessness is recent or lifelong
Whether you’ve ever experienced periods where life felt tolerable or engaging
Whether work is the core issue, or whether the emptiness extends beyond it
You don’t need to justify your feelings. But you do deserve an answer that is more substantial than “that’s just how life is.”
3 offers in 2 months from cold applications. What worked for me.
Context: I'm a huge believer in leveraging your network to help you navigate your career transitions and open doors for you. Due to the unusual circumstances and timeline I needed to make a pivot, I leaned heavily into cold (direct) applications for many roles that I did not have a "warm" network connection or relation to.
Here were my results by the numbers (over the course of 2 months):
59 applications
48 rejections/ no responses
12 recruiter screens
10 full loops (or HM interviews)
3 offers (2 FT + 1 contract - all in tech)
For additional context: I am a Sr. Manager (marketing/business function) that was seeking Sr. / Director-level titles in tech.
AI tailoring is a must - If you're not doing this, you're choosing to be behind your competitors. By the numbers, I had 29 applications w/o AI tailor that netted 2 recruiting screens (06%), whereas I had 33 applications AFTER AI tailoring that netted 10 recruiter screens (30%).
Using a posted within 24 hours filter - Unfortunately, right place AND right time are key here. If you're in the middle or bottom of the chronological list of applicants you're almost guaranteeing that your resume will not get reviewed. I can attest to this both from my personal application experience and also as a former hiring manager that used to review hundreds of applications.
specialize, specialize, specialize - "Jack of all trades, is the master of...". The reality is that folks are looking for the BEST person in the world (or their region) to do a job. 10+ years in "[Industry][audience][B2B/B2C][function]" is much more compelling than 20+ years in "[variety of functions]". This was also critical in navigating the recruiter conversations that wanted to understand how my background was directly transferable to the job description.
printed visual aid - This is a bit of an unusual one but seemingly caught the attention of all of my interviewers. Worth noting that my previous roles required working on some very technical projects and part of my JD was to translate highly complex concepts/products into simple terms so having a printed visual made a lot of contextual sense here. Every interviewer was impressed that I had gone through the effort of producing a unique and flashy visual on my own volition and then used it in a highly relevant fashion during my introduction.
follow-up, follow-up, follow-up - You need to be top of mind. Keep professional and polite, but don't lose a job opportunity because you didn't want to bother the interviewer. LinkedIn, email, and (if in person) printed thank you notes are critical. Keep it short, brief, and personal. AI is a great tool here too if you want to turn interview notes into a brief thank you note.
Don't over prepare - I used to script every word in every response. This series of interviews, I scripted nothing other than my introduction, background, and why I wanted the job. My examples, STAR, etc. were intentionally prepared with brevity. I found that it's better to pique curiosity and get the interviewer to WANT to learn more, than to kill them with every detail. Especially with my FAANG interviews, they are trained to dig, and dig, and dig to really understand your logic and thought process.
Finally, leave this subreddit if you're finding yourself more depressed than motivated. It's tough out there but I'm hopeful that my experiences can provide some reassurance and encouragement that anything is possible.
Jobadvisor
That's a fantastic success story and a very informative breakdown of what worked for you! Going from 59 cold applications to 3 offers in just two months, especially for Senior/Director-level roles in tech, is an impressive feat.
Your experience provides several actionable and valuable takeaways for anyone currently navigating a job search.
Here is a summary of your key strategies:
🚀 Job Search Success Strategies (3 Offers in 2 Months)
1. Optimize Your Application & Timing
📈 The Power of AI Tailoring: Your data is compelling: applications with AI tailoring netted 30% recruiter screens versus only 6% for those without. This clearly demonstrates that hyper-customizing your materials is essential for passing initial screening.
⏰ Speed is Key (Posted within 24 Hours Filter): You stressed the importance of applying early to avoid having your resume buried under a large pile of later applicants. Right place AND right time.
2. Focus Your Value Proposition
🎯 Specialize, Specialize, Specialize: You emphasized that recruiters seek the "BEST" person for a specific role, not a generalist. Articulating deep expertise in a focused area (e.g., "[Industry][audience][B2B/B2C][function]") was critical for making your background directly transferable to the job description.
3. Master the Interview Process
🖼️ Printed Visual Aid: This was an unusual but highly effective tactic to stand out. It served as a unique and "flashy" demonstration of your ability to translate complex concepts, directly impressing interviewers with your preparation and contextual relevance.
📩 Follow-up, Follow-up, Follow-up: Maintaining a top-of-mind presence with professional and personalized notes (via LinkedIn, email, or even printed notes) was a critical step in the closing process.
💡 Don't Over-Prepare/Over-Share: Instead of scripting every word, you focused on preparing a strong intro, background, and 'why,' and kept your STAR examples brief. This strategy encouraged interviewers to dig deeper, allowing them to truly understand your logic and thought process, especially in challenging environments like FAANG interviews.
4. Mindset & Motivation
🧘 Protect Your Mental Health: A simple but important reminder to leave communities or sources of information that lead to discouragement rather than motivation.
Thank you for sharing your context and specific numbers. This detailed breakdown will undoubtedly be encouraging to others.