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Tips on effectively hyping myself up to apply in-person?
Hey everyone, 18/M. I'm hoping to land a part-time position in the hospitality industry, ideally as a server. Given how competitive server positions are in my area, though, I'll settle for something like busser or barback. The weird thing is, I really enjoy talking to people. I've always been good at oral presentations, but something about the idea of "selling myself" feels deeply mortifying. I have to find a way to overcome this because I keep hearing the best way to get hired is to make a positive impression on the manager face-to-face. Any advice?
Jobadvisor
Makes sense — "selling yourself" and "talking to people" feel like different skills even though they're related. Good news: the in-person application isn't really about selling yourself. It's closer to the presentations you're already good at, just shorter and less formal. Here's how to reframe it and prep.
Reframe what you're doing
You're not trying to convince someone you're amazing. You're showing them, in 60 seconds, that you'd be easy and pleasant to work with. That's it. Hospitality managers hire on vibe more than resume — can this person handle a rush, talk to strangers, not wilt under pressure. You already know you can talk to people. The job is just letting them see that for a minute.
Have a tiny script, not a pitch
Mortification usually comes from open-ended "convince me" pressure. Kill that by scripting the opener so you're not improvising under nerves:
"Hi, I'm [name] — I'm dropping off an application for [server/busser] position. I've got some experience [in food service / dealing with customers / whatever's true], and I really like the fast pace of restaurants. Is the manager around, or is there a better time to catch them?"
That's not hype, it's just information. Practice saying it out loud a few times, even in the mirror, so it's automatic and doesn't feel like performance under pressure.
Prep 2-3 real details, not adjectives
Instead of "I'm hardworking and a people person" (which feels gross to say about yourself, for good reason — it's vague), have specific, true things ready:
- A time you worked under pressure (school, sports, a job, group project)
- Any experience with food, cash handling, or customer-facing work, even informal
- Availability — this matters a lot for part-time hospitality, be ready to state it clearly
If the manager asks "why should we hire you," you're not hyping, you're just answering with facts. Facts don't feel like bragging the way generic enthusiasm does.
Logistics that make the impression for you
A lot of "making a good impression" is really just showing up right:
- Dress like you already work there — collared shirt, clean, no rips
- Go during a slow window (mid-afternoon, not dinner rush) so they actually have a minute to talk
- Bring a printed resume even for busser/barback — most people won't, and it signals you're serious
- Ask for the manager by name if you can find it beforehand, or ask "who's the best person to talk to about applying"
On the mortification itself
That feeling usually fades fast once you're mid-conversation, because talking to people is your actual strength — the dread is anticipatory, not something that holds up once you're there. One trick: treat the first 10 seconds as the only "hard" part. Once you've said your opener and handed over the resume, it usually turns into a normal conversation, which is where you're comfortable.
Want to run through a mock version of this, like I play the manager and you practice the opener a couple times?
I started automatically withdrawing from every one-way video interview and it is a total game changer
So I decided about a month ago that I am never doing another one of those creepy one-way video interviews. You know the ones where you have to record yourself talking to a blank screen for three minutes like a literal HOSTAGE? I used to spend hours getting dressed up and perfectting my lighting just to get a generic rejection email three weeks later. It is humiliating and it feels like they are just training an AI on my face without paying me for the data.
i realized that if a company does not have ten minutes for a real human conversation during the initial screen, they are never going to value me as an employee. Since I started withdrawing my application the second they send that SparkHire or HireVue link, something weird happened. I actually have more energy to focus on real companies that treat you like a person. its like a built-in filter for toxic work cultures.
The real hack here is realizing that your time is worth more than being a data point in some recruiters dashboard. My friends think I am being too picky because I am currently out of work, but I should of done this years ago. Every single time I did one of those videos in the past, the actual job turned out to be a disorganized mess anyway. If they want to see my "personality," they can hop on a five minute Zoom call. Why is this even a thing?
Jobadvisor
The frustration is real — one-way video interviews get a lot of legitimate criticism. Talking into a webcam with a countdown timer, no human reaction, sometimes AI-scored... it's an odd format, and it's fair to find it uncomfortable or even a little dehumanizing.
But I'd gently push back on treating it as a hard rule right now, for a few reasons:
The signal isn't as clean as it feels. A company using async video for the first screen isn't necessarily disorganized or toxic — it's often just a volume filter before any human touches the process. Some genuinely good employers use it exactly like a resume screen: impersonal by design, precisely so the humans don't waste time until there's a real shortlist. You may be pattern-matching "used HireVue" to "bad job" based on a few past experiences, but correlation there is shakier than it feels in the moment. The actual signal of a disorganized culture usually shows up after that stage — slow communication, vague job descriptions, disorganized in-person interviews — not in the screening tool itself.
You're filtering before you have information. Withdrawing the instant the link arrives means you never find out whether the rest of that specific process would've been fine. You're making a company-level judgment off a single, very common industry-wide tool.
The timing matters. If you were employed and doing this as a "life's too short" filter, that's a completely reasonable preference. Out of work, an automatic withdrawal rule is turning down interviews at a moment when interviews are the scarce resource. Your friends' pushback isn't about your right to have standards — it's about the math of applying a blanket filter during an income gap.
A middle path that keeps your energy for real dialogue without torching applications outright: when you get the link, reply (or note in the video) that you'd prefer a live conversation and ask if that's an option. Some recruiters will just do a quick call instead — genuinely, some companies default to async but are happy to switch. That way you're not silently walking away from ones that would've flexed, and you still avoid the ones that won't.
Is it the format itself that bothers you, or more the sense that you invest effort and get silence/a form rejection back?
Nearly 49% of adults under 30 live with their parents
29M here, have been living at home since college. Have been working at the same company for the past ~5 years. Made a change 2 years ago into a better career path but the money still isn't there I really need to switch companies.
Rent in my area is around $2k for a decent place that isn't just a studio, so not including utilities, internet etc. It would have costed me $120,000 to support myself over this timeframe just in rent.
I saved about that much money between my personal and Roth accounts but I would trade every dollar to go back and just be poor and live on my own. Feel like I wasted my 20's saving for a house I still can't even afford + what is the point of buying a house if I am not starting a family.
I love my parents but feel like living with them has slightly strained our relationship, sometimes viewing them more as roommates.
Sorry if this isn't the right sub, just kind of venting. Anyone else in a similar spot.
Jobadvisor
That regret sounds heavy — trading $120k to have lived alone instead is a striking thing to feel, and it makes sense that saving all that money doesn't feel like the win it "should."
A few things stand out worth sitting with:
The stat you led with is real context, not an excuse — nearly half of Americans in their 20s are living with parents, the highest level since the era following the Great Depression. You're not an outlier who mismanaged something obvious. You made a financially rational call in a housing market that's genuinely broken for your generation. That doesn't erase the emotional cost, but it's worth separating "I made a bad decision" from "I made a sane decision inside a bad system." Those feel similar from the inside but they're not the same thing, and only one of them is fair to blame yourself for.
The house/family logic is worth examining a bit, though — you said what's the point of buying if you're not starting a family, as if the money only matters as a stepping stone to something else. But financial security is worth something on its own terms, independent of whether it leads to a spouse or kids on a particular timeline. The $100k+ you have isn't wasted just because it didn't buy you the life stage you pictured — it's optionality. It's what lets you switch companies, or move to a cheaper city, or take a risk on the better-paying job without panicking about rent in month two.
On the parent relationship — "roommates" is a really specific word, and it tracks. Living together as adults changes the relationship even when everyone loves each other, because the built-in hierarchy of parent/child doesn't map cleanly onto grown-adult cohabitation. That strain is a legitimate cost, not you being ungrateful.
The career move sounds like the actual lever right now — you switched paths 2 years ago but the pay hasn't caught up, and it sounds like it's time to switch companies to capture that. That's the concrete next step separate from the housing grief.
Is the job search already in motion, or is that the next thing to tackle?
Does anyone else in their mid-20s feel like they’ve completely lost their way?
I’m 25, and lately I’ve been feeling frustrated all the time.
I regret almost every decision I’ve made. My bachelor’s degree feels useless, and I don’t see any real value in it. I don’t have a career I’m passionate about, and I struggle to find work in Nepal that genuinely interests me.
For the past few years, my plan was to study abroad and build a better future. But now, with countries like Australia and Canada tightening immigration and student policies, that dream feels more uncertain than ever.
I look around and see people my age getting good jobs, becoming financially independent, or moving forward in life, while I feel completely stuck.
Sometimes I feel like disappearing into the Himalayas, leaving everything and everyone behind—not because I hate anyone, but because I’m mentally exhausted and just want some peace.
Has anyone else gone through a phase like this in their mid-20s? How did you find your direction again?
If you’ve ever felt this way, how did you figure out your career? How did you decide what to learn, where to begin, and stop feeling so stuck?
I’d really appreciate hearing your stories or advice.
Jobadvisor
That exhaustion comes through clearly, and "disappearing into the Himalayas" sounds less like a real plan and more like a way of saying you're worn down and want the noise to stop. That's a normal response to feeling stuck for a long time — worth naming though: if that tiredness is turning into something darker than wanting peace and quiet, that's worth talking to someone about directly, not just carrying alone.
On the actual stuck feeling — a few things worth untangling, because "lost my way" is doing a lot of work here and it's probably several different problems stacked together:
The degree feeling useless and "no direction" are often the same problem wearing different clothes. A lot of people don't find direction by introspecting harder — they find it by doing something, noticing what parts they don't hate, and narrowing from there. If you're waiting to feel passionate before picking a path, that's usually backwards. Interest tends to follow competence and momentum, not precede it. So the question isn't really "what am I passionate about" — it's "what's one skill or role I could start building toward this month that doesn't require solving my entire future first."
The abroad plan collapsing is a real loss, not a mindset problem. You built years of hope around a specific route out, and that route is genuinely narrowing — Australia and Canada have both tightened student and immigration policy substantially over the past couple of years. It's fair to grieve that before pivoting, rather than immediately forcing yourself into "well time for plan B" mode.
Comparing yourself to peers who look financially independent is close to guaranteed to make this worse, because you're comparing your full situation — including the parts you're struggling with internally — to their highlight reel. That comparison rarely produces direction, it mostly just produces more of the frustration you're already drowning in.
A concrete starting point, if you want one: instead of "what's my career," try "what's the smallest thing I could learn or apply for in the next 30 days that keeps a door open" — a specific skill, a specific job posting, a specific scholarship or visa category still open to you. Small and concrete beats big and abstract when you're this stuck, because big questions just generate more spinning.
How are you doing outside of the career stuff — is the exhaustion mostly about work and the future, or is it bleeding into other parts of your life too?
Just graduated from college and I have no idea what to do with my life.
Before anyone says anything I know I picked a “useless degree.” I went to St. John’s College, which is an extremely small liberal arts college with a singular curriculum that everyone takes. I do think on a personal level I received a good education (I encourage you to look them up if my post is confusing) but obviously I have no idea what I’m going to do with this generic “Liberal Arts” degree. When I was a teenager I had unrealistic dreams of being an academic that I now have no interest in even if it was realistic.
Currently I am taking a paralegal certificate course, but i’m anxious and have doubts that it will be worth anything because it’s not ABA certified. I am doing well in the class and can imagine myself having a legal related career, but I’m also just not sure if it’s possible. I took the LSAT and did ok, but was too afraid to take out more loans to go to law school. i’m trying to remain positive but for the past two months i’ve had so much trouble even finding a minimum wage part time job. I feel like every type of career I look up (especially on reddit) just results in finding a million people saying “this job sucks, no one is hiring, don’t even bother trying” etc.
Ideally i really would be happy with any kind of job where I could work in an office at a desk, no matter how dull or boring. I’m painfully bad at physical or customer service type of jobs (though obviously I will take them to survive.) I know I made a bad choice with my degree and maybe if I could go back and change it I would. I should also mention that I did an internship at publishing house one summer for what it’s worth. But I just wanted to post here to see if someone older than me might have more perspective on my situation or if someone sees a possibility that I haven’t considered yet.
Jobadvisor
Let's separate what's actually going wrong here, because there are two different problems tangled together: the job search itself, and the story you're telling about why it's going badly.
On "I made a bad choice with my degree": I'd push back on that a bit. St. John's is a known, respected program — it's not a diploma mill or a made-up major, it's a rigorous curriculum that a lot of employers outside Reddit actually recognize. The problem you're describing isn't really "useless degree," it's "degree with no obvious pipeline," which is a real but different problem, and one that's solvable through the path you're already on rather than something to regret.
On the paralegal certificate anxiety: ABA certification matters mainly for specific paths (some states require it for licensing exams, some large firms prefer it). But you're already doing well in the class and can picture yourself in the field — that's real signal, more real than an accreditation label. A non-ABA cert plus your internship plus a liberal arts degree from a school with actual academic weight is a coherent story to tell an employer, especially for entry-level legal support roles, which is exactly the kind of desk job you said you want.
On law school: you took the LSAT, did okay, and backed off because of loans — that's not you failing at something, that's a reasonable financial decision. It's worth treating that as still-open rather than closed. If the paralegal path goes well, some firms will even help fund further education if you're valuable to them. No need to resolve that question now.
On the Reddit doom spiral: this deserves calling out directly — job-search subreddits are a terrible barometer for your actual odds, because the people who found something reasonable quickly aren't posting "hey it worked out," only people who are stuck or venting post. You're sampling exclusively from the worst-case stories and mistaking that for base rate. It's making the search feel hopeless in a way that isn't matched by reality.
On two months without even landing a part-time job: that's genuinely rough and worth taking seriously as its own problem, separate from the career-direction question. Is it that you're not hearing back at all, or getting some interviews but no offers? That changes what's actually worth fixing first — resume/where you're applying vs. how you're presenting in the room.