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Wearing a dress to teaching interview?
I just received an interview invite for a part-time English teaching position (not at an actual school but rather an academy for standardized test prep) and I was wondering if I could wear a black dress to the interview. It's a bit higher than knee length, but shows no cleavage at all and has thick straps. Material is slightly thick as well, and it's just plain black. I stalked the company's page a bit, and the teachers seem to dress pretty casual - obviously not a random T-shirt, but the men wear button-ups and trousers, and I haven't seen what the women wear.
Jobadvisor
That dress sounds perfectly appropriate. Plain black, no cleavage, thick straps, and substantial fabric — that's a polished, professional look. The length is fine; slightly above the knee reads as business casual, not casual-casual.
For a test prep academy with a relaxed dress code, you'd actually be slightly overdressed compared to the staff, which is exactly where you want to be for an interview. First impressions favor someone who made an effort.
If you want to lean it a little more formal, a blazer or structured cardigan over it would do that, but honestly it's not necessary based on what you've described.
Got rejected after being asked about zombie invasions and cats vs. dogs. I'm so exhausted.
Hey everyone, I just need to vent. I'm currently on my 12th interview recently, and I am completely burnt out.
During a recent interview for a professional role, instead of focusing on actual skills, they hit me with these completely absurd, pop-psychology questions:
"What would you do in a zombie invasion?"
"Would you rather be a cat or a dog?"
"If you could teleport anywhere for 24 hours, where would you go?"
I just found out I didn't get the job. If I had passed, the next step was a technical test followed by an interview to justify the test.
I am just so tired, navigating this superficial corporate daycare theater is violently draining. I'm exhausted from having my time and energy wasted on games.
Jobadvisor
12 interviews is genuinely exhausting, and your frustration makes complete sense. The gap between how much you're investing and how seriously some of these processes take you is real and demoralizing.
That said — one small reframe worth considering: those "absurd" questions are actually pretty common screening tools, and interviewers do use them to assess real things (how you think on your feet, your personality fit, whether you're rigid or playful under mild pressure). They're not necessarily a sign the company is frivolous. The rejection probably had nothing to do with your answers to those questions and everything to do with something else entirely — culture fit, internal candidates, budget changes, a hundred things outside your control.
The harder truth about 12 interviews is that the process itself is a numbers game with a lot of noise in it. That doesn't make it less exhausting, but it does mean the rejections tell you less about you than they feel like they do.
A few things that might help right now:
Protect your energy between interviews. If you're burning out, the interviews themselves will start to show it. Spacing them out slightly, or being more selective about which roles you pursue, can help you show up better.
Let yourself be annoyed without catastrophizing. "That was a waste of my time" is a fair thought. "This whole system is rigged and I'm trapped" is a spiral that won't serve you.
12 is actually not that unusual for a professional job search in a competitive market, even for strong candidates. It stings, but you're not failing — you're in the process.
What kind of role are you searching for? Sometimes a fresh set of eyes on how you're positioning yourself can shake something loose.
Medical Evaluation Post Conditional Job Offer
Hello folks. I’ve been extended a conditional job offer for a construction job for a large city. With it comes a pension & insurance for my family & and opportunity to move up in the trade. So, my wife & I are very excited.
Context: I passed the criminal history background check & the only thing left is a medical evaluation.
They want me to bring my medical records with me to the medical evaluation. Luckily I’m a healthy person & can get out of bed to work to provide for my family. But, in my medical record there is documentation of some (not heavy) drug use no more than 6 months ago. The doctor who performs the examination will ask me about drug use. I don’t wanna lie & say no & then it pops up in my medical record & they end up retracting the job offer I’ve worked for. But at the same time, I also don’t wanna shoot myslef in the foot by saying yes to this & then they retract the job offer. What would you do?
More context: I don’t mess around with drugs anymore, I’ve 360’d my life ever since my son was born couple months ago.
Jobadvisor
Congratulations on the offer — a city job with a pension is genuinely life-changing, and it makes sense you want to protect it.
The honest answer here is: be truthful with the examining physician. Here's the reasoning:
The medical evaluation is conducted by a physician whose job is to assess whether you can safely perform the work — not to be a drug enforcement arm of HR. Medical records shared in that context are generally confidential and governed by HIPAA. The doctor typically reports fitness for duty, not a detailed summary of everything in your chart, to the employer.
More practically: if the records show documented drug use and you deny it when asked, that's a much bigger problem than the drug use itself. Dishonesty discovered during a pre-employment process is almost always an automatic disqualifier, and it can follow you. Whereas disclosed past use that's clearly in the past — especially with an obvious life change like a newborn son — is something physicians and employers navigate all the time.
What to actually do:
- Be straightforward with the physician. You used some substances, it was not heavy use, it was prior to a significant life change, and you no longer use. That's a coherent, honest, human story.
- Ask the physician directly what gets reported to the employer and in what form. You're allowed to ask that.
- If you have a union rep or know anyone who's gone through this city's process before, ask them what the medical eval actually looks like in practice.
The drug test at the eval is the real hurdle — if you're clean now, that's what matters most. Past documented use in a medical record is a much softer issue than a dirty test today.
You've done the hard part — actually changing. Don't let anxiety about the paperwork make you do the one thing (lie) that could actually cost you this.
Fresh out of college and I’m already worried I’ll be stuck at some working-class job for the rest of my fucking life.
Fucking shitty-ass job market.
I just got my BS in Business Administration about a couple months ago and I still don’t have a fucking job. I’ve applied to multiple jobs ever since I graduated and am even taking an online course for an application (PowerBI) just to see if that’ll help me.
I’ve actually been applying since the start of the school year. In total, I have applied to about 200 jobs (I was applying more aggressively after graduation) and received… wait for it…
ONE FUCKING INTERVIEW!!!!
And of course, that interview led to nothing.
I don’t want to flip burgers for the rest of my life. I specifically went to college to AVOID that. If I end up having to get one anyway, the five years I spent in college will have just been all for naught.
Jobadvisor
That frustration is completely valid. The gap between what college promises and what the job market actually delivers right now is brutal, and 200 applications for one interview is genuinely demoralizing — not a reflection of your worth or your degree.
A few honest thoughts:
The market is rough, but your approach might need a pivot. 200 applications with a ~0.5% response rate usually signals something in the process, not something wrong with you. The most common culprits:
- Resume getting filtered by ATS before human eyes ever see it. Generic resumes applied to many jobs get killed here.
- Applying too broadly — a BS in Business Admin is versatile but also vague to recruiters. Specializing your applications toward specific roles (analyst, operations, supply chain, finance, marketing) with tailored resumes tends to unlock more responses.
- Missing the network piece — most entry-level business jobs are filled through referrals or LinkedIn connections, not cold applications. It's unfair, but it's real.
The PowerBI course is a smart move. Data skills on a business degree genuinely differentiate you. Pair that with Excel/Google Sheets fluency and SQL basics and you become a much stronger candidate for business analyst or operations roles.
You're not stuck. Two months post-graduation with one interview is painful but not unusual in this market. People who land jobs right now are mostly the ones who cracked the networking piece or got very targeted.
If you want, I can help you with something concrete — like looking at your resume structure, figuring out which roles to target, or building a LinkedIn outreach approach. What feels like the biggest bottleneck right now?
Timeline to layoff after a physical office closure forced remote.
To those of you who were originally working in a physical office then forced remote due to its closure, how long did you stay remote for until you were laid off? Was your office considered a satellite location compared to a major hub? What industry are/were you in?
I know the answer to these questions is going to be highly dependent on many different factors and I'm not trying to make a prediction from anecdotes but I am interested in reading from the experiences of others here, what led up to office closure, if you know why it was closed/weren't immediately laid off, and what happened in the aftermath once moved remote.
Jobadvisor
Looks like you pasted a Reddit post — were you looking to discuss this topic, or did you mean to send something else?
Either way, it's an interesting question. From what's broadly known about this pattern: when companies close a satellite office but keep employees remote, it often signals a cost-cutting phase rather than an immediate headcount reduction. The timeline to layoffs varies a lot — some people get years of remote work before a cut, others get months. Common warning signs that a layoff is coming after forced remote include role consolidation, reduced project assignments, being left out of planning conversations, or a return-to-office mandate you can't comply with (which effectively functions as a constructive dismissal).
Is this relevant to your own situation, or just something you were reading about?
What a Holocaust survivor taught me about the misery of unemployment
I’ve been in this sub for a while and just wanted to share something that helped me a lot during this period. I was laid off recently, and during that time, I read "Man’s Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl. It’s a book about surviving the Holocaust camps, but it completely hit home for my job search.
Frankl explicitly connects the psychological toll of unemployment to camp prisoners. The big issue with both? Not knowing when it will end. He calls this an "unknown limit," and that uncertainty makes the struggle incredibly heavy.
Here is how his insights helped me through:
Give yourself grace: The struggle is real. Validate how tough this is.
Stop the spiral: Do your best to remain positive. Pessimism destroys motivation.
Take it day by day: When you can't see the finish line, focus only on today.
If you are struggling right now, I highly recommend this book. It kept me grounded during my layoff. Hang in there!
Jobadvisor
Thank you for sharing this. Man’s Search for Meaning is a profound piece of literature, and your ability to bridge Viktor Frankl's observations on the human psyche to the modern trauma of a layoff is incredibly insightful.
You hit the nail on the head regarding the "unknown limit." Human beings can endure a massive amount of hardship if they know there is a hard stop. It’s the limbo of unemployment—the ghosting by recruiters, the endless applications into the void, the lack of a definitive "start date" for your next chapter—that quietly drains your battery. Frankl’s work in logotherapy reminds us that when we cannot change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves and how we find purpose in the interim.
Your takeaways are incredibly grounded:
Giving yourself grace is essential because a layoff attacks your sense of identity and utility, not just your bank account.
Stopping the spiral keeps you from projecting today's silence into a permanent future.
Taking it day by day shrinks the overwhelming mountain into a manageable hill.
It sounds like you've managed to transition out of that period (since you mentioned you were previously laid off), which is fantastic news.
For anyone else lurking in the sub right now and reading your post, this is the exact kind of mental armor needed. Thank you for putting this perspective out there.
How long did it take you to find your footing again after adopting this mindset?