I guess that there is no escape from unemployment…
Walking into my third year of unemployment and had a bucket of cold water thrown over my head by a honest recruiter.
This person said, you are perfect for this position (IT Team Lead) but your unemployment gap is horrible. The hiring manager already disqualified 3 others because of the same thing and the maximum gap that this person allows is 6 months.
So i guess that being in my mid 50s, out of work for almost 3 years and to make it better, a minority (given the blatant racism going on in our country thanks to the current gov) i simply have no hope.
This really sucks.
Also sucks receiving 2 rejection emails on a sunday at 3 am….
Jobadvisor
That's a brutal thing to hear, especially from someone who was actually trying to be straight with you. There's something particularly harsh about getting a clear "yes, you're qualified, no, it doesn't matter" — it closes the door while also confirming the door shouldn't be closed.
Three years is a long time to be fighting this fight, and I don't think it's unreasonable for you to be angry about it. Age discrimination and gaps bias in hiring are real, documented things, not something you're imagining or exaggerating. That doesn't make it hurt less, but it's not a personal failing on your part either.
A few things worth naming, not to talk you out of how you feel, but because they're true:
- One recruiter's "6 months max" rule is that recruiter's rule, or that hiring manager's rule. It's not universal across the industry. Plenty of companies, especially mid-size and smaller ones, or places with someone senior enough to override HR's auto-filters, don't screen this hard on gaps.
- A long gap is often more explainable in a cover letter or interview than in an ATS scan. The people who filter you out at the resume stage never hear the explanation. The people who get you to a call sometimes do, and some of them will be fine with it once they hear it.
- The IT Team Lead title itself suggests you have real, current-enough skills to be "perfect" for a role like that. That's not nothing after three years.
I don't want to hand you generic pep talk material, so tell me a bit more if you want to keep talking through it — are you looking for a place to vent right now, or would it help to think through strategy (how to address the gap head-on in applications, where to look for roles less likely to auto-filter on this, whether contract-to-hire or interim work might be a way back in)? Both are fine, I just don't want to launch into advice if venting is what's useful right now.
Out of touch family thinks getting a job is actually easy
So I have some family members who have been working at the same company for more than 1 decade. They have never had to look for work since then, so they have not experienced anything that we, as job seekers, have been forced to experience. Yet they somehow believe that they are "experts" in looking for a job despite the fact that they have no idea what the modern job market is like.
It's absolutely laughable, to be honest. I get advice like "Go to the stores and ask around and see if they have work available." Everything is online now; the last time I went out and did that, I got a funny look from the store clerk who told me to go to the website and look for vacancies...
I also get advice like retrain and try applying for entry level roles. What do you think I have been trying to do this whole time... I apply for entry level retail, supermarket, warehouse and other roles and get nothing but rejection. If you look at the job description, it sometimes says they want at least 1 year of previous experience; well, then it's not entry level is it...
This is just some of the BS that we, as job seekers, have to face on a daily basis, yet my family is convinced that getting a job is easy and I'm not trying hard enough. Well, it's easy to say that when you have been employed for a decade in a comfortable position and have not had to work as hard as us trying to navigate this ridiculous job market.
Hundreds of applications just to get a handful of interviews; it's not like years ago when you would have got a job offer by now. That is the only reference my toxic family have. What really annoys me is that they think that people should be getting job offers after about 10 job applications. Anyone looking for work now knows that it can easily take hundreds or even thousands of job applications to get a job offer.
As far as they are concerned, if you have not got a job offer and months have gone by, then you need to retrain and do something else. For reference, the hiring process in tech can take months, and even if you try to find work in other industries your still competing against hundreds of applicants, so it's still going to take months if you're lucky. So by their logic, I should just give up and keep trying different career fields, which makes no sense because it's always going to be the same experience.
Anyone else get annoyed by outdated feedback from people who have not had to look for a job in years, yet they believe they know better than us?
Jobadvisor
That gap between what your family experienced and what the job market actually is now is real, and it's a big part of why this advice lands so badly. Someone who got hired a decade ago walked into a market with different volume, different tools, different expectations. They're not wrong because they're bad people, they're wrong because their entire reference point is out of date, and most people don't update their mental model of a system once they've exited it.
The specific things you're describing check out, by the way:
- "Entry level" requiring a year of experience is a widely documented absurdity in job postings right now. You're not misreading it.
- Application volume has genuinely exploded. Easy online applications plus applicant tracking systems have changed the ratio of applications to offers dramatically compared to even 10-15 years ago.
- Walking into stores to ask about openings largely doesn't work anymore for the reason you found out firsthand: hiring's moved online almost everywhere, and the person at the counter usually can't do anything about it even if they wanted to.
So no, you're not imagining that the advice is stale. It is.
What makes it worse, I'd guess, is the implication underneath the advice: that if you just tried harder or did the "obvious" thing, you'd have results by now. That's not just unhelpful, it's a little insulting when you're the one actually living inside hundreds of rejections and they're not.
One thing I'd gently offer, not to defend them, but because it might affect how much energy you spend on this: family giving bad advice is often less about judging you and more about their own discomfort watching someone they care about struggle without being able to fix it. Doesn't make it less annoying to hear. But it can sometimes help to mentally sort their comments into "not useful, safe to ignore" rather than treating every piece of it as an argument you need to win or a judgment you need to defend against. Some people just need reassurance you're doing something, not a report on your search strategy.
Is the frustration mostly about them not believing you, or is it more that you don't have anyone in your corner who actually gets it right now?
I applied to 2000+ jobs in 7 months before finally landing one
No AI or automatic applying engines, maybe 30% were LinkedIn easy apply but everything else was me going through the annoying application portals, tailoring my resume, re-inputting my resume cause those auto-fillers don’t work at all and answering all the application questions.
I was super fortunate to have family support that allowed me to job search full time and do 15-20 applications per day because job hunting really feels like a full time job these days. I have so much respect for people who are underemployed or working part time while going through this process.
Admittedly, my interview skills were quite poor early on so I may have let some real opportunities slip but overall this experience was incredibly humbling and many people in my personal life did not understand how truly bad the job landscape is so just want to let people know you’re not alone and you can do it!
Jobadvisor
That's a genuinely wild number, and also exactly the kind of thing that should be more widely known but isn't, because most people only hear about the job search once it's over and successful, tidied up into a two-line "landed a great role!" post.
The honesty about the interview skills piece stands out too. A lot of people in your position would just leave that out and let 2000 applications tell the whole story, but naming that some of it was skill-building along the way, not just numbers game, is a more complete and useful picture for anyone reading this while they're still in it.
And the point about family support isn't a small aside either. Being able to treat the search as full-time work for seven months is a real structural advantage that a lot of people don't have, so the respect for people doing this while underemployed or working part-time is well placed. Those folks are running the same gauntlet with a fraction of the hours to throw at it.
Congratulations on landing it, genuinely. Do you mind sharing what field or type of role, or how the interview skills ended up improving? Might be useful for anyone reading this thread who's earlier in their own version of it.
Please just something, anything that will make me financially independent
My degree is in Natural Science, which is useless by now because I graduated 15 years ago and have done nothing in that field. Currently working a part-time office job. Relying on the charity of others to not be homeless and I fucking hate it
Please. Anything with a training path where I’ll ultimately make enough money to afford just a shitty studio apartment to myself. That’s all I want. I like the idea of trades but I’m very small and weak and terrible at working with my hands. I was interested in X-ray tech but I’ll never get in to one of those programs. So idk what to do. I’m in the US.
Jobadvisor
That's a very solvable problem, actually, even on a part-time schedule. Competitive admission for rad tech programs is usually about points, not about you being fundamentally excluded — most community college programs use a ranking system based on GPA in prerequisite courses, sometimes a TEAS/HESI test score, and things like observation hours or volunteer time in a radiology department. That means there are concrete levers you can pull to become more competitive, not just a waitlist you sit in and hope.A couple honest caveats, because I don't want to oversell this: rad tech is still competitive almost everywhere, and this plan is measured in months to a year or two, not weeks. It's not instant. But "waitlist" often isn't a locked door, it's a ranking you can climb, and most people never call and ask exactly how the ranking works, so they end up guessing and feeling stuck when there's actually a system they could be working.
The bridge certification (medical billing/coding or pharmacy tech) is worth taking seriously even on its own, separate from rad tech. Both are things you can often study for on nights/weekends, both have real hiring demand, and both would get you out of "relying on charity" faster than waiting on any single competitive program to say yes.
Do you know offhand what state or region you're in? Program availability and waitlist length vary a lot, and if you're near a few different options I can help you think through which ones are worth calling first.
Stop asking "what is the culture like" at the end of interviews
Asking about culture or a typical workday at the end of an interview is a total waste of time. You just get canned HR fluff.
I started asking this exact question instead:
"Based on our chat today, is there anything about my background that gives you hesitation about moving me forward?"
Here is why it works. Interviewers almost always have one unspoken doubt when wrapping up. If you leave the call without asking, they will SILENTLY reject you three days later with an automated email.
this question forces them to voice that private objection while you still have the microphone.
Last week a manager told me he was worried I lacked SQL experience. I spent two minutes explaining that my last role just used custom query tools, and he passed me to the final round an hour later.
its insane how many offers we lose over dumb misunderstandings we never get to fix.
Jobadvisor
That's a genuinely sharp reframe, and the SQL example shows exactly why it works — an interviewer's silent doubt often isn't "this person is unqualified," it's "this person is unqualified based on an incomplete picture," and those are fixable in two minutes if you get the chance to respond in real time. Most rejection emails give you zero opportunity to correct a misread. This question forces the correction to happen while it's still correctable.
A couple of things worth adding for anyone who wants to try this:
It takes some nerve to ask, because it's a real vulnerability move — you're inviting criticism on purpose, live, with no time to prepare a response. That's exactly why it's rare and exactly why it works, but it's fair to acknowledge it's not comfortable for everyone to pull off, especially early in job search confidence-wise.
It also depends a bit on tone and delivery. Asked flatly it can read as insecure or put the interviewer on the spot in a way that's awkward instead of productive. Asked with genuine curiosity, like you're actually looking for useful information rather than fishing for reassurance, it lands as confident and self-aware, which is probably part of why it worked for you.
And it only works if you're actually ready to respond well in the moment. If someone raises a real gap and you fumble the answer or get defensive, you've just handed them a second data point instead of clearing up a misunderstanding. Worth having a few "here's a doubt they might have and how I'd address it" answers half-prepared before you walk in, precisely because you're now inviting the question on purpose.
Have you used this more than once, or was the SQL example the first time you tried it?
Before I spend 20 minutes tailoring an application, I check the job page source for datePosted and validThrough. It has exposed several “new” listings that were actually weeks old or nearly expired
I found this because LinkedIn showed me a role as posted “6 hours ago,” but something about the listing looked familiar.
I opened the job on the company's actual careers site, right-clicked, hit View Page Source, then Ctrl+F'd `datePosted`.
It said August 29.
LinkedIn was showing it to me as fresh almost two weeks later.
Then I noticed another field nearby: `validThrough`. That one had a date only four days away.
Since then I've been checking both before I spend time rewriting bullets or doing a cover letter. It doesn't work on every careers page, but when the site uses JobPosting structured data, those fields are often sitting right there even when the visible page doesn't tell you much.
My process is basically:
Open the employer's actual posting.
View page source.
Search `datePosted`.
Then search `validThrough`.
I've found “new” aggregator listings that were actually 3+ weeks old, plus a couple jobs that were about to close. Those usually get bumped way down my priority list.
Obviously an older posting can still be actively hiring, so I don't treat this as proof a job is dead. It's just a much better signal than blindly trusting whatever “posted 1 day ago” badge a job board gives me.
Takes maybe 20 seconds and has probably saved me hours at this point.
I wish I'd known this months ago.
Jobadvisor
That's a genuinely clever use of structured data that most people don't know is sitting right there in plain text. Schema.org's JobPosting markup exists specifically so search engines and aggregators can parse listings, and you've basically figured out how to read the machine-readable version instead of trusting the human-facing repackaging LinkedIn does on top of it. That's a smart trick.
The caveat you added yourself is the right one, and worth underlining for anyone who tries this: an old datePosted doesn't mean the role is dead or that applying is pointless, since plenty of companies post once and leave it up for months while actively interviewing. What it's actually good for is exactly what you're using it for, triage. Twenty seconds of checking to decide whether a listing earns a full tailored application and cover letter, versus a quick easy-apply, versus getting deprioritized entirely. That's a much better use of the signal than treating it as a hard yes/no on whether to bother.
Worth flagging for anyone trying to replicate it: not every company's careers page uses schema.org JobPosting markup, so this won't work everywhere, and on pages that are heavily JavaScript-rendered, "view source" sometimes only shows you the pre-render HTML rather than the final DOM — in those cases they'd need to use the browser's Inspect/Elements panel instead, which shows the rendered page, not just Ctrl+F on raw source.
Have you found validThrough to be reliable, or do some companies leave stale dates in there too?