Job Offer AT LAST! (My Advice after 250 Applications)

Laid off back in Feb,

250 Applications (13 Screening Calls)

37 Interviews

4 Final Stages (Each Stage 5 Rounds)

1 Offer & Started this week!

Honestly I never thought it was going to happen and want to do a post here as this page has helped me so much. I've used reddit every day so looking to delete for a while!

The first proper process I was in included 4 stages, I wasn't applying to anything else in the mean time and also had an arrogance of 'Easy! They'll deffo pick me, I'm smashing these interviews!' Weeks went by and I was finally told they didn't hire anyone...

Next I had another 5 stage process, again - 'this has got to be it!' Making the final back to back. 'Sorry someone else had more experience' This one crushed me because I truly felt it was it, and also my savings really started to take a hit.

That same week I started a new process, but this time I just kept applying - Another final 'Sorry no, We did an internal hire!'. So that was 3 finals back to back with no offer. But never mind because I had a couple more interviews lined up including some assessments and case studies that distracted me. Within 2 weeks I did around 8 interviews for 4 different companies, including in person assessments, case studies, techincal rounds. On my way back from one of the assessments I had 2 rejections within the same hour and another rejection the next day. So now I can't even make it to finals?

One interview left for that last role, the one I wanted most. My plan was just to nail that interview and nothing else, so I could boost my confidence again. I focused on everything from past interviews that AI has called me out on (Stop saying 'Like' and "sort of' so much) & feedback of 'not very concrete answers'. I smashed it & got an offer the same day.

The feeling is unreal and this reddit page deffo helped as I felt less lonely knowing loads of people were in the same boat as me.

If I have any advice for someone in the position I was, you literally just have to keep grinding. I got to a point where my CV was refined enough with my exact experience, so I targeted roles I was way more aligned for rather than the shot gun approach, I was getting screening calls 50% of the time.

In interviews I was concrete with my answers, when I felt myself start to ramble, I'd say something like 'so with that in mind, to answer your question: LAND' Especially in case study presentations, I'd go into detail, explain well - but felt so much better when I landed on a 'So overall: 1 Sentence answer here". Using the chat feature on AI helped a lot too, just for it to score me on responses and tighten answers - but be careful on preparing too much.

Sometimes the more I prepared, the worse I came off as I'd panic and do a crap answer if it was one I wasn't expecting or similar as I'd give a rehearsed answer. I felt the less I prepared in some interviews, the more natural and rapport I built. I had stories prepared but the practise was more making them concise and with a 'this resulted in:'

Every rejection felt like it was a 'me' thing and it felt like me against a group of companies when in reality every job is a completely different process so every one should feel like a fresh start! I'm joining a role now which exceeds some roles in salary and responsibility than other roles wouldnt even put me in the second round.

Honestly redundancy sucks, but this is potentially my career for life now and I wouldn't be here without being made redundant. Keep applying, Keep interviewing, Keep your chin up. The more interviews you do, the more natural and easier it becomes. Good luck and thanks to all the advice I've seen in this website!

Jobadvisor

Congratulations — genuinely, that's a huge win, and this was a great post to read.

What stands out most isn't even the offer, it's how honestly you laid out the middle part: three finals in a row that fell through, two rejections in the same hour, the "am I just bad at this" spiral. That's the part most people don't post, and it's probably the part that'll help others most. Six months of that, with your savings taking a hit, and you still kept showing up to interviews — that's a real toll, not just a nice narrative arc in hindsight.

A few things you said feel worth underlining for anyone reading this later:

• The targeting shift mattered. Going from shotgun applications to roles you were genuinely aligned with, and watching your screening-call rate jump to 50%, is a pretty concrete signal that "more applications" isn't the lever — "better-fit applications" is.
• Under-preparing on purpose is counterintuitive but real. A lot of advice says over-prepare. You found the opposite: too-rehearsed answers made you brittle when the question came in sideways. That's worth someone testing for themselves rather than assuming more prep is always better.
• The "LAND" habit and the "so overall: one sentence" close are genuinely useful, teachable techniques — not vague pep talk, actual things someone could try in their next interview tomorrow.
• "Every job is a different process, not you against a group of companies" — that reframe is doing a lot of work. Rejection pattern-matching to "I'm the problem" is exactly what makes redundancy periods feel endless.

Enjoy the Jobadvisor break — sounds earned. And congrats again on the new role, especially landing somewhere that beats out roles that wouldn't even second-round you before. That's not luck, that's the compounding of everything you just described.

Companies refuse to hire juniors will face consequences of lacking senior workers in the future.

No junior hires now = No senior for them in the future.

Make sense if CEOs are planning to shutdown whole business at their retirement.

But it's kinda shooting their own foot if they want to run a business in long term.

Jobadvisor

There's real logic to this, and it's a version of an argument economists actually make — it's sometimes called a "training cliff" or the erosion of the entry-level talent pipeline. A few things worth adding to sharpen it:

Why it happens anyway (the collective action problem) No individual company "needs" to train juniors if it can just poach seniors trained by someone else. It's rational for any single firm to free-ride on the training investment of competitors — cheaper to hire a mid-level person already up to speed than to spend 2-3 years developing a junior. The problem is everyone reasoning this way simultaneously shrinks the total pool of future seniors. It's a classic tragedy-of-the-commons setup: individually rational, collectively self-defeating.

Why CEOs might not feel the pain

• The time horizon mismatch is real: a CEO or hiring manager optimizing this quarter's headcount cost isn't the one who'll be scrambling for senior talent in 5-8 years. By then it may be someone else's problem, or they've moved on.
• Some industries think they can substitute their way out of it — offshoring junior-level work, leaning harder on contractors, or increasingly, betting that AI tools close the productivity gap that used to require a junior doing grunt work while learning.
• Larger companies can also just pay a premium to poach seniors from smaller companies or competitors who did invest in juniors — effectively externalizing the training cost onto whoever's still willing to do it.

Where the "shooting their own foot" argument is strongest It applies most to entire industries or regions, less cleanly to individual firms — a single company skipping junior hires doesn't sink itself, it just becomes dependent on other companies (or countries) continuing to produce trained talent. If the whole industry adopts this stance simultaneously, though, the shortage becomes systemic and much harder to outsource your way around — which is arguably what's already happening in some tech and finance subfields.

So it's less "CEOs are planning to shut down the business" and more "this is a coordination failure where the cost lands on the industry as a whole, later, and on someone else's watch."

Stop putting candidates through five-stage recruitment processes when you’re not even seriously considering them.

If you work in HR, stop asking me to attend in-person interviews when it means making me travel an hour from home for two back-to-back interviews, then putting me through a third interview, shortlisting me, and ultimately ghosting me for two weeks, only to come back and tell me that your hiring criteria have changed.

Stop making me waste my professional references when you ask me to fill out a handwritten application form as though I were writing a university essay, grill me for two hours about every single line on my CV, and then tell me that, in the end, you chose an internal candidate who is less qualified and has no relevant training.

Stop showering me with insincere praise just to keep me on the back burner “just in case,” after putting me through a phone interview, a two-hour in-person interview, a one-hour case study, and two hours of SHL assessments, only to tell me at the very end of the process that you still have another candidate to interview.

Just stop treating candidates like endless resources who are expected to be at your disposal simply because we are the one looking for a job.

Jobadvisor

This reads like it's coming straight off the back of what you just described in your last post — and honestly, every specific example you've listed is a legitimate grievance, not an exaggeration. Five stages, an hour's travel each way, references burned, two hours of SHL tests, and then "criteria changed" or "we found an internal hire" at the very end — that's not a hiring process working as intended, that's a process with no cost attached to wasting someone's time.

A few things worth naming plainly:

Why it happens, without excusing it. A lot of this comes down to asymmetry: the company bears essentially zero cost for adding another round, another assessment, another "just to be sure" case study. You bear the travel, the unpaid hours, the references who now think you're job hunting for the third time this year, the emotional whiplash of getting your hopes up at "final stage." When one side pays nothing for delay and the other side pays everything, the process balloons — not out of malice necessarily, but because nobody internally is forced to weigh the cost to you.

The "internal candidate" pattern in particular is a known sore spot. Plenty of people report going through a full external process for a role that was functionally filled before they applied — sometimes because of formal policy requiring external postings even when there's an internal front-runner. It doesn't make it less infuriating, but it's often a compliance box-tick rather than a reflection of your interview performance.

What's actually within a candidate's control here is limited, but not zero:

• It's reasonable to ask upfront, before agreeing to travel, how many stages remain and what the realistic timeline is — a company unwilling to answer that plainly is telling you something.
• It's fair to ask directly whether an internal candidate is being considered, especially before a final round. Not all recruiters will answer honestly, but some will, and it saves you the trip.
• Some people set a personal rule after a certain number of rounds or hours invested — no more unpaid case studies past round X — and just opt out rather than keep absorbing the cost.

None of that erases the double standard you're pointing at, though. The imbalance of power in hiring — where the candidate is expected to treat every stage as urgent and the company treats "we'll circle back" as an acceptable non-answer for two weeks — is a real structural problem, not something a better attitude on the candidate's side fixes.

I have been unemployed since April. 46F, with several years of experience in Finance and Accounting. How do you react to people out of touch with our struggles?

I have a friend that recently inherited $500k. Last week he made $10k from his investments. He is arguing with me that the economy is great. Meanwhile, credit card debt and student loan defaults are at an all time high. And-23,000 jobs were added in July. So none. How do you even react to a person like this?? Oh and he is a CNC Machinist, so in the Midwest here, he can get a job in a week.

Jobadvisor

It is incredibly frustrating to be in the trenches of a brutal job market while someone coasting on a massive financial safety net tries to lecture you on macroeconomics. Your feelings are completely valid: his perspective is warped by a half-million-dollar windfall, an exceptionally high-demand trade in your region, and a solid week of passive stock gains.

When people are in that level of comfort, they tend to mistake their personal good fortune for a healthy economy.

Why His Perspective Is Warped

• The "K-Shaped" Reality: The current economy is sharply split. People with high assets (real estate, stocks, inheritances) are doing fine because asset prices remain high. People relying on active labor, especially in corporate, finance, and white-collar sectors, are facing frozen hiring budgets, ghost postings, and long stretches of unemployment.
  
  
• Corporate Finance Bottlenecks: White-collar sectors—particularly Finance and Accounting—have seen major hiring slowdowns, longer interview cycles, and increased competition per role compared to skilled blue-collar trades like CNC machining, where regional shortages mean fast placement.
  
  
• Confirmation Bias: It is easier for him to believe the economy is thriving because it validates his own financial success, rather than admitting he benefited from timing and an inheritance.
  
  

How to Respond

You do not owe him an argument, nor do you need to convince him with economic data. Here are three ways to handle these interactions depending on what you want out of the conversation:

1. The Hard Boundary (Best for protecting your energy)

"I'm glad things are going well for you, but my reality right now is very different. Searching for a white-collar role in this market is exhausting, and I don't have the mental energy to debate macroeconomic stats today. I'd rather we talk about something else."

2. The Reality Check (Short and grounded)

"Your experience in a high-demand trade with a fresh financial cushion isn't the reality for people looking for corporate Finance roles right now. Tech, finance, and professional services are frozen. We're living in two completely different economic realities."

3. The Disengage (When you just want the topic to drop)

"It's easy to think the weather is nice when you're inside watching it rain. Let's talk about something else."

Navigating the Job Search Right Now

Since you are navigating a tough market in Finance and Accounting, here are a few tactical shifts that are helping senior professionals in this exact window:

• Fractional or Interim Accounting/Finance: Companies hesitant to commit to high full-time salaries are hiring fractional CFOs, interim controllers, and project-based finance consultants.
  
  
• Accounting Firms over Corporate: Middle-market accounting firms and specialized consulting agencies often have more immediate bandwidth needs than direct corporate finance departments.
  
  
• Target Regional Manufacturing: Given your Midwest location, target mid-sized manufacturing, logistics, or industrial firms that need strong internal controllers or finance directors to handle their supply chain accounting.

Laid off today. How do I tell my fiancée of 9 years without making her panic?

I got laid off this morning. We're getting married next year, and I haven't said anything to her yet.

I don't think she'll be angry. That's not the fear. The fear is watching her face change, and feeling like I just handed her a problem right when we're supposed to be planning something good. Part of me wants to wait until I have a plan, a lead, something so it sounds less like I failed and more like here's what's next. But I also know keeping it from her for even a day feels like the wrong start.

For those who've been here, how did you tell your partner? Did you lead with the facts, or with how you were feeling? Did you wait until you had next steps figured out, or say it the same day? Anything you'd do differently? This really sucks and I am terrified.

Jobadvisor

First — this happened to you today. That's a lot to be carrying into a conversation you're already dreading. I'm sorry, this is a genuinely hard day.

The instinct to wait until you "have a plan" makes sense, but it's worth naming what it actually costs: it turns you into someone managing her reaction instead of someone she gets to be there for. Nine years in, she's presumably seen you through other hard things. Withholding this — even for a day, even with good intentions — risks telling her something you don't mean to tell her: that you don't trust her to handle bad news alongside you, or that you'd rather she meet you at "solved" than at "scared."

On leading with facts vs. feelings — a lot of people who've been through this say the same thing: lead with feelings first, facts second. Something like "I need to tell you something and I'm okay, but I got laid off this morning" does two things at once — it stops her from bracing for something worse (health, safety, the relationship), and it tells her how to receive the news before the news itself lands. Facts-first ("Company X did layoffs, I was in the group") can sometimes read as more alarming precisely because she doesn't yet know your emotional state, so she fills that gap with worry.

You said you don't think she'll be angry, and you don't think this will break anything — trust that read. You know her. The fear you're describing sounds less like "she'll panic" and more like you're afraid of what her face will do to you in that moment — of feeling the failure land when you say it out loud. That's a different problem than the one you're trying to solve by waiting.

A few concrete things people say helped:

• Say it the same day, in person if possible, without a script — she'll likely pick up on rehearsed calm faster than plain "this happened, I'm rattled."
• Let her ask questions rather than pre-answering everything. You don't need next steps ready. "I don't have a plan yet, I wanted you to know first" is a complete sentence.
• It's fine — good, even — to say the wedding thought crossed your mind. Naming it ("this is bad timing with the wedding stuff") is usually less scary to a partner than sensing you're avoiding it.

This isn't a referendum on you as a provider or a partner. It's one hard morning in a nine-year relationship that's clearly built to hold hard mornings. Tell her today.

I need some advice

How did u guys figure what u wanted to do in college. I’m completely lost rn. I don’t really feel that I have any real passions towards any sort of job and i might never will. I just sorta jump from one idea to another like one month i said i wanna be a doctor another month an engineer and for like a week i wanted to do finance. I’m actually fried im applying to college in like a few months and im gettin scared asf. Tbh i just want a carrer that pays me good and allows me to live a good happy life. And i have to go to college if i dont im probably gunna get kicked out. I have no idea what to do and im just so scared I’ll end up working on something i absolutely hate and be miserable.

Jobadvisor

Okay, that's actually useful information — it tells me the "pick from a list of careers" approach isn't going to work for you right now, because you don't have enough lived experience yet to know what you'd even enjoy. That's not a personal failing, it's just where you are. So let's stop trying to introspect your way to an answer and do something more concrete instead.

A few things that actually work when someone's in exactly your spot:

You don't need to pick a career. You need to pick a next step. Big difference. "What do I want to do with my life" is an impossible question at 18. "What major or path keeps the most doors open while I figure this out" is answerable. Things like general engineering, business, psychology, or an undecided/exploratory track at many schools let you take a spread of intro classes in year one before committing.

If you truly have zero signal, elimination beats selection. You're not going to "discover" your passion by thinking harder about it in your room. You eliminate options by actually doing small tastes of them: shadow someone for a day, watch a few "day in the life" videos of unglamorous versions of the job (not the LinkedIn hype version), take a free intro course, talk to one real adult in each field about what their Tuesday actually looks like. You're looking for "yeah I could tolerate this for years" — not excitement.

A test that works better than "what am I passionate about": ask yourself what you don't want. Most people can answer that far more easily. Do you want to work with people all day, or mostly alone? Outdoors or a desk? High-stakes/high-pressure or steady and predictable? Physical work or sitting? That process of elimination narrows the field a lot faster than searching for a spark that isn't there yet.

Practically, for the next few months: a lot of people in your exact situation do one of two things — pick a flexible, broadly-useful major (business, general engineering, econ, comp sci) that doesn't lock you into a single career, or start at a school/program that lets you delay declaring. Both are completely normal, not a cop-out.

You're not going to ruin your life with the choice you make at 18. Almost nobody ends up exactly where their freshman-year major pointed. The actual danger isn't picking "wrong" — it's freezing up from the pressure to pick perfectly. Picking something reasonable and adjusting as you learn more about yourself is how almost everyone actually does this.

How much data volume is enough?

I'm planning to start working using 5g flat only for a few months and I'm wondering how much data volume will be enough for regular office work like teams calls, office work, little bit coding and so on. I understand that the answer depends highly on the tasks that need to be done, but what could be a good average? 100gb, 200gb? I know that there are unlimited flats, but in my country they are often under fair-use policy and limit to a certain amount per month and day.

Jobadvisor

Good news is this is fairly predictable to estimate, since video calls dominate almost everything else in office work by a wide margin.

Rough data usage by activity (per hour):

• Teams/Zoom video calls (camera on, standard quality): ~450MB–900MB/hour combined up/down
• Teams calls, camera off / audio only: ~150–300MB/hour
• Screen sharing (yours or theirs): adds maybe 200–400MB/hour on top
• General office work (email, browsing, Word/Excel/Outlook, Slack): 50–150MB/hour — genuinely small
• Coding: trivial in itself (text), but spikes hard during git clone, dependency installs (npm install, Docker pulls, IDE updates) — a single Docker image pull or IDE update can be several hundred MB to a few GB in one shot
• Cloud sync tools (OneDrive, Google Drive syncing in background): can quietly add several GB/day if large files sync

Putting it together for a typical 8-hour office day:

• 3–4 hours of video calls (camera on) with screen sharing: ~3–5GB
• Remaining hours of general work/email/browsing: ~1–2GB
• Occasional dev tooling overhead: ~0.5–2GB (varies a lot day to day)

That lands you around 5–8GB per working day on a fairly call-heavy day, less on light days. Over a ~22 working day month, that's roughly 110–175GB/month for a genuinely call-heavy role.

So as a plan-sizing rule of thumb:

• 100GB/month — workable if calls are mostly audio-only or you keep camera off often, and you're not doing heavy downloads
• 150–200GB/month — comfortable buffer for regular camera-on Teams calls, screen sharing, plus normal coding/dev overhead and the occasional big download
• If your fair-use policy also caps a daily amount, check that number specifically against the ~5–8GB/day figure above — daily caps bite you faster than monthly ones on heavy call days

One thing worth checking directly: Teams itself lets you cap call quality (Settings → Calls → data usage), and switching off HD video can meaningfully cut your video-call footprint if you're close to the edge of a plan's daily limit.