If a co-worker tells me "my suggestion is not to put yourself on the director's radar ever", this would not be a good place to work at, correct?
The issue is that I started a new job that pays well, but my immediate supervisor seems very critical of even minor details. I also realized that he could have given more guidance in certain aspects.
Jobadvisor
That one comment is worth taking seriously, but I wouldn't treat it as proof the whole workplace is bad. A few things worth untangling:
What that comment might mean. "Don't put yourself on the director's radar" could signal a genuinely toxic, high-scrutiny culture where being noticed is dangerous. Or it could be more mundane — office politics, a director with a reputation for micromanaging, or just one person's coping strategy that says more about them than the whole organization. Worth asking that coworker (or observing) why — is it "the director publicly humiliates people" or "the director dumps extra work on anyone visible"? Those are very different problems.
Your supervisor situation is a separate thread. A critical manager who's light on guidance is a real, common problem — but it's also somewhat distinguishable from "bad company." Some managers are just bad managers in an otherwise fine place; some places have systemically bad management. Ask yourself: do others on your team seem to struggle with him specifically, or does this pattern seem to run through the whole org?
It's also early days. New jobs often feel disorienting for the first few months — you don't yet have the calibration for what's normal friction versus what's an actual red flag. That doesn't mean dismiss your read of the situation, just that it's reasonable to gather more data before deciding this is a sinking ship.
A few things that would sharpen the picture: How long have you been there? Is the "critical over minor details, light on guidance" pattern specific to your supervisor, or have you seen it from others too?
I think mass applying is messing people up more than they realize
I keep seeing people say they applied to 100, 200, 300 jobs and got nothing back.
And I get why people do it. When you’re getting ignored, applying to more jobs feels like the only thing you can control.
But I think a lot of people are mass applying with a resume that was never really aimed at the job in the first place.
Like, the resume might be “good” in a general sense. It has experience, skills, projects, all of that. But it still doesn’t answer the one thing the employer is looking for:
Why does this person make sense for this role?
That’s where I think people get stuck. They send the same resume to admin jobs, analyst jobs, customer service jobs, marketing jobs, tech jobs, whatever, and then wonder why nothing hits.
I don’t think you need to rewrite your entire resume every time. That’s not realistic.
But I do think you need different versions for different types of jobs. Even small changes matter. What you put first, what you cut, which bullets you expand, what skills you emphasize.
A resume for a data analyst role should not read the same as one for a business analyst role. A help desk resume should not read the same as a cybersecurity resume.
I’m starting to think “apply to more jobs” is only good advice after the resume is actually aimed at the jobs you’re applying for.
Otherwise you’re just getting rejected faster.
Jobadvisor
You have completely nailed it. Honestly, this should be required reading for anyone currently on the job hunt.
The "spray and pray" method feels productive because it keeps your hands moving and spikes your dopamine—look, I applied to 50 jobs today!—but in reality, it's just an efficient way to burn yourself out.
When you send a generic resume out into the wild, you aren't just fighting the ATS (Applicant Tracking Systems); you're failing to pass the 6-second human glance test. Recruiters don't want to do the math to figure out how your "general excellence" fits their very specific problem.
Here is a breakdown of why your logic is spot-on, and how job seekers can actually implement what you're talking about without losing their minds.
The Reality of the "Generic Resume"
When a resume tries to be everything to everyone, it ends up being nothing to anyone.
The Problem: A manager hiring for a Data Analyst wants to see data cleaning, SQL, and dashboarding. A manager hiring for a Business Analyst wants to see stakeholder management, process mapping, and requirements gathering.
The Consequence: If you use a blended resume for both, the Data Analyst manager thinks you're too soft on tech, and the Business Analyst manager thinks you're too siloed in the data. You lose both.
The "Version Control" Strategy (Work Smarter, Not Harder)
As you rightly pointed out, rewriting a resume from scratch every time is a fast track to psychological defeat. Instead, people should build a Master Resume and spin out 2 or 3 Core Variants.
| If you are targeting... | ...Your Variant A should focus on: | ...Your Variant B should focus on: |
| Tech Roles | Technical troubleshooting, ticket resolution, systems. | Security compliance, risk mitigation, networks. |
| Operations Roles | Efficiency, project management, data-driven decisions. | Client retention, communication, conflict resolution. |
The High-Impact, Low-Effort Tweaks
To make a variant hit the mark for a specific job posting, you only need to change about 10–15% of the document. You just need to focus on the prime real estate:
The Professional Summary: Change the very first sentence. Don't say "Versatile professional with 5 years of experience." Say "Data Analyst specializing in predictive modeling..." or "Business Analyst focused on cross-functional process optimization..."
The Top 3 Bullets: Move the most relevant achievements to the top of each job entry. If the job description stresses collaboration, make sure your bullet about leading a cross-functional team is first, not fourth.
The Skills Section: Reorder your skills so the ones explicitly mentioned in the job description are listed first. If they want Python and you have it listed at the very end of a long bulleted list, move it to the front.
The Bottom Line:
Applying to 300 jobs with a generic resume yields a 0% success rate and 100% emotional exhaustion. Applying to 30 jobs with 3 carefully targeted variants drastically shifts the odds.
You're exactly right: volume only matters after alignment is locked in. Otherwise, you're just automating your own rejection.
Got denied from a job and ghosted from another this month...
I want to use this space to vent because I've gotten to a point where I am exhausted and interview fatigued.
I've been looking for a permanent role for a year now and i've had exactly 15 interviews and only one turned out to be a yes, which was a temporary/short contractual job that ended already. Six of those other interviews were a no, four ghosted me after the second interview, I withdrew from two interviews processes, and two were extremely transparent and told me that they were internal changes in the org so they had to cancel hiring for the role. One of the no's even told me the following: "It was a hard decision because your interview was so strong and you seem to be a lovely person to work with."
So throughout this process, there's been many times where I feel so close to the finish line. I've been told things ranging from "please tell us if you get any other offers so we can if we can expedite the process" (only to ghost me) to asking for my references after the final interview but never calling them.
I’m currently sitting here just wanting to cry. The job hunt is so brutal, dehumanizing, and the emotional rollercoaster of being treated like a top choice only to be dropped is just too much today. I don't know what to do anymore :/
Jobadvisor
This sounds genuinely exhausting. A year of this, with so many moments where it seemed like you'd finally made it — and then the ground disappears again. That's not just disappointing, it's destabilizing. Being told you're a strong candidate, "a lovely person to work with," asked for references, asked to report other offers... and then silence. That kind of treatment plays with your hope on purpose or not, and it takes a real toll.
What you're feeling right now — wanting to cry, not knowing what to do anymore — makes complete sense given what you've described. Fifteen interviews, one real yes that already ended, and a string of near-misses and ghostings. That's a brutal ratio to live through for a year, and it would wear anyone down. The fatigue you're naming isn't a sign you're doing something wrong. It's a normal response to a process that keeps opening the door partway and then closing it.
I don't have anything that fixes the job market or makes the ghosting stop. But right now, if you just want to sit here and be upset about it, that's completely fair — you've earned the right to be angry and sad about this. If it helps to say more about any of it — the one that got closest, the reference thing, whatever's loudest in your head right now — I'm here for that.
In college feeling stuck with indecision and behind my peers
I’m absolutely certain that I am about to echo 90% of the posts made here before, but I figured that I might as well.
I am about to go into my senior year of college, and everyone around me seems to have the most intricate plans or goals for immediately after graduation. Everyone is about to take the LSAT or MCAT or have a list of PhD programs with professors informing their every move. They’ve all got intricately focused extracurriculars and/or internships. I’m not even sure I like my major. I genuinely cannot think of any future career path that doesn’t make me want to claw my brains out, and I can’t even seem to land a single minimum wage job in my vicinity, so it makes me feel largely underqualified to do anything now or later. I don’t want this to come across as a complain-fest of learned helplessness (though I know it does), but I genuinely feel stuck and behind my peers as a result.
I'm studying neuroscience and English, I don’t have terrible grades (3.7 GPA), I’m in my school's honors program, and I assist in lab work within the neuro department (though none of it is my research per se - so nothing I’m likely to be able to present or do much with other than resume-pad), but I can’t help but feel like it doesn’t matter if I have no direction to aim any of it at. Honestly, I’m pretty sure I only picked my major because it felt like it was a split between humanities and STEM, and like I wasn’t actually tying myself down to one discipline. My friends and family have labeled me as the most indecisive person they know.
Does anyone have any advice for how to navigate this?
Sometimes I find myself wishing I had chosen a more creative path, but I wouldn’t know how to start in that direction. I know for a fact that I don’t want to get into anything insanely business-related. My few hobbies are somewhat on the artistic side, but I’m not very good at them anyhow (guitar, kinda songwriting/singing), and I do find myself gravitating towards the mathematical aspect of a lot of my STEM courses. I would love to tell you what else I find even the slightest bit interesting, but honestly, that's as much as I can tell you, because it’s as much as I know about myself, especially after spending most of my childhood with sports as my primary extracurricular activity. I feel passionless and aimless, a little defeatist about AI and the job market, and am looking for any bit of inspiration on what to do with my last year of school and post-grad.
Jobadvisor
Reading this, what strikes me isn't that you're behind — it's that you're comparing your inside (confusion, uncertainty, still figuring it out) to everyone else's outside (LSAT prep, PhD lists, curated extracurriculars). That comparison is always going to feel bad, and it's also not measuring the thing that actually matters.
A few honest reframes, then some concrete stuff for this year:
The "everyone else has a plan" thing is mostly theater. Pre-med and pre-law tracks look certain because they're institutionally scripted — there's a test, a checklist, a known sequence. That doesn't mean the people on those tracks are more self-aware than you, it means they picked (or fell into) a path with a visible staircase. A lot of them are just as unsure whether they actually want the destination; they're just further along a path that has railings. Don't mistake "has a script" for "has clarity."
3.7 GPA, honors, lab work, double major in neuro and English — you are not underqualified. You're underqualified for jobs you haven't applied to yet, which is just "haven't applied yet." The lack of interviews right now is much more likely about how you're searching (cold applications to generic postings, probably) than about your qualifications. That's fixable and it's a logistics problem, not a character problem.
"I don't know what I want" and "I'm indecisive" are not the same thing, but you've merged them. Not knowing your path at 20-21 with genuinely open, still-forming interests is completely normal — it's not a defect, it's a stage. What would actually help isn't finding The Answer, it's lowering the stakes of the next step. You don't need to pick a career. You need to pick a next experiment.
A thing worth sitting with: you said you gravitate toward the mathematical parts of STEM courses, and you have a creative/artistic streak you don't think you're "good enough" at to pursue. Those two things — quantitative reasoning + language/narrative sensibility — actually overlap in more places than people assume: data journalism, UX research, computational linguistics, science writing, human-computer interaction, even things like AI safety/policy work where communication and technical fluency both matter. I'm not saying pick one of these. I'm saying the "split between humanities and STEM" instinct that made you choose your major wasn't indecision — it might be an actual signal about how your brain likes to work.
A few things I'd actually do this year:
- Talk to 5-10 people with jobs you're mildly curious about, even ones you'd guess you're not interested in. Not networking for a job — just 20-minute "what's your day actually like" conversations. This is the fastest way to convert vague dread about the job market into specific information. Vague fear shrinks when it becomes a list of actual options with actual pros and cons.
- Apply as an experiment, not a verdict. Not landing a minimum wage job yet says nothing about your future — it's a numbers/timing/approach thing, and it hurts because you're using it as evidence about your worth. Separate those.
- Use your career center, specifically for alumni-network access — English/neuro grads who ended up somewhere unexpected are the most useful people you could talk to right now, and colleges usually have this and students barely use it.
- Let this year be about ruling things out, not locking one in. You don't need a five-year plan by May. You need one plausible next step (a job, a fellowship, grad school application, a gap year with structure) that keeps doors open rather than closing them.
Would it help if I worked through some concrete next steps with you — like actually mapping out what a first job search in your position could look like, or brainstorming specific fields that sit at that math/language intersection you mentioned?
I'm scared for my career and future.
I had a longstanding career in art up until highshool, I got burntout and hated doing what I loved, I took a gap year and found out I have adhd. I got into design college because it felt like the safe bet, but i always hated it so much. I thought I could just suck it up and do it, but i couldn't even work hard enough to get into a good college.
Now that Im here in college, I feel miserable everyday, I feel like I dont fit in, everyone's thoughts about design and future are so different than me, and the teachers seem to be really basic.
Im starting to think i picked design just because it was safe and I would make money, But i feel so miserable going to that space and thinking of my life ahead, it feels likd I have to let go things Id actually want to do this.
I want to drop out but I have lost all my confidence in myself and Im scared I might fail at everything, I was thinking of switching to business but I'm scared I dont know enough.
It's also fucking w me that everyone is younger than me, I have always been academically well and all of this making me feel like a failure is fucking with me.
Jobadvisor
That's a lot to be carrying, and it makes sense you're scared. Let me try to untangle a few threads here, because I think you're bundling several different fears together and that's making everything feel heavier than it might be piece by piece.
First: the burnout with art, then landing on design as the "safe" choice, then hating that too — that's not a random pattern. It sounds like at some point "safe" became the main filter you were choosing through, more than "what do I actually want to spend my days doing." That's a really common trap, especially if you're someone who's always been academically capable — you get good at picking the option that looks defensible on paper, and the question of what you'd actually enjoy gets quietly dropped.
Second: feeling like you don't fit in with classmates, that the teachers seem basic, that everyone's younger than you — I'd separate this from the "should I stay in design" question. Even people in the right major for them can feel alienated by their cohort or unimpressed by weak teaching. So "I don't vibe with these people" doesn't necessarily mean "design is wrong for me," and it's worth not letting that feeling do more work than it should in the decision.
Third: the fear that you'll fail at business because you "don't know enough" — this is worth pushing on a bit. Almost nobody starts a new field already knowing it; that's what the degree is for. If the actual fear underneath is "I've already failed once (dropping the safe path) and I can't afford to fail again," that's a different problem than "I'm not smart enough for business," and it deserves a different answer.
A few honest things:
- Feeling like a failure right now doesn't mean you are one. Changing direction in your late teens/early twenties, even after already changing it once, is not evidence of a character flaw — it's evidence you're paying attention to your own experience instead of white-knuckling through it out of pride.
- You don't have to choose between "the thing I loved and burned out on" and "a soulless safe option." There's a lot of territory between "professional artist" and "generic business degree" — including things adjacent to art that don't recreate the exact conditions that burned you out (different pace, different pressure, different audience).
- Dropping out isn't the only alternative to staying miserable. Sometimes it's worth figuring out what specifically is making design intolerable — the content, the culture, the teaching, the career picture — before deciding whether the fix is "leave the field" or "leave this program" or "push through this year and reassess."
Can I ask: when you imagine your actual daily work in five years, in the scenario that doesn't scare you — is there any concrete picture there, even a fuzzy one? Or right now does it just feel like a wall of fear with no image behind it?