I apologize, there are no entry-level positions available....
I've been a C++ developer for around 30 years. Mostly on Windows, but occasionally on Linux. So a recruiter reaches out to me and asks me to apply for a role that requires 6 or so developers. Deep C++. I send my resume, and he says I do not have enough distributed systems experience. I ask him to define what the client means by distributed systems because I have experience with client/server applications, writing server applications with a RESTful API, etc... The conversation continues, and then he says he's putting me in as a mid-level developer because I don't have enough distributed systems experience. I know he set me up to fail, but I need a job, so ok. I get an interview, and during the interview I'm asked about my experience with agentic code completion and how I would architect features. None of the questions were mid-level. After a few standard C++ questions, we wrapped up, and for two weeks I hear nothing. Yesterday, he reached out with a canned opening about THE SAME C++ ROLE! Like I never applied. So I politely responded, "I applied already and never received any feedback". He apologized for not giving me a response, claimed the email was in his draft folder, then said the client passed because I needed distributed systems experience, and then APOLOGIZED for not having ANY ENTRY-LEVEL positions available.....
Am I wrong for being in my feelings?
Jobadvisor
No, you're not wrong. You have 30 years of C++ and you were put through a process that wasted your time and treated you as a mid-level candidate, then as someone who had never applied. Of course you're in your feelings.
The distributed systems point is the kind of gap that's easy to hide behind. You asked the right question, what does that mean, and he didn't have a real answer. Client/server work and RESTful backends are distributed in the sense that matters for most teams, so the "not enough experience" judgment sounds more like a checkbox than a considered assessment.
The interview questions on agentic code completion and architecture were also a mismatch. If they were interviewing you for a mid-level role, the questions should have been about C++ depth. Asking about architecture and then dropping you two weeks later with silence is a bad sign about how the client was run, and probably about how much your recruiter was advocating for you.
The "I apologize for not having entry-level positions" line is the one I'd find most grating. You're not an entry-level candidate, and it sounds like he was reading from a script rather than actually listening to what you told him.
You don't owe him more patience. If you want to keep the door open with him, you could reply with something short and direct: that you'd like feedback on the interview, and that you'd prefer he only contact you about roles that match your seniority. If you'd rather close the loop, a one-line decline works too. I can draft either if that would help.
Looking for chill jobs
I'm, 21, and recently graduated with a degree in animation- not the best idea, considering the state of the entertainment industry. I have accepted it is borderline impossible to find consistent work in animation, so I am looking for other jobs I can do that won't be too challenging.
I did a month and a half of sales but was let go. I hated how competitive it was, and how I had to put my name on things (company business card, company email signature) I didn't want this much dedication in my identity to a job that I was only doing for money.
I don't really care about the pay, as long as it is low stress and I can come home not burnt out and spend time drawing. Does anyone have any suggestions? I am trying out reception for a small office in around a week. I have also considered overnight shifts at mcdonalds or convenience stores. Ideally, I want to stay at this role for a year so my resume isn't completely cooked. (I only have experience from 2023 rn)
I am a fast learner and am good at talking to people, but also have a bit of a temper (i am working on it). I am okay with a "dead-end" job as I have a secondary income stream from commissions + Etsy, and my own projects to work on. I just want something chill where I show up, do exactly what is expected and leave.
Jobadvisor
Your goal is clear: show up, do the job, leave with your head clear. That's a reasonable thing to want at 21, and a lot of people in your position are quietly looking for the same thing.
Reception is a good first try. Small offices tend to be quiet and predictable, and you'll often have downtime. Night jobs can be even calmer. Hotel night auditor is one of the best-known low-stress options: you check guests in late, run the books overnight, and spend long stretches alone at the desk, which fits drawing well. Overnight warehouse or grocery stocking also has a lot of quiet hours, with less face-to-face contact than a register. Library assistant, museum or gallery attendant, and campus or facilities front desk roles are other steady, low-pressure choices, and the museum and gallery ones keep you around art.
Be a little careful with convenience store and fast food overnight shifts. They're easy to get hired for, but late-night customers can be unpredictable, and a short temper is harder to manage when someone is rude to you at 2 a.m. The fact that you're working on it is good, and it's worth choosing a role where you can avoid that kind of friction, at least while you're building the habit.
For your resume, a year in any of these roles is fine. Your Etsy shop and commission work can go on it as freelance or self-employed experience, which fills the gap since 2023 and shows you've been producing work consistently. Keep track of your sales and client work too, since that's useful if you ever want a more structured creative job.
Would you prefer something with a lot of solo downtime, or something with a bit of light social contact?
31, went from making six figures in a creative career to working part-time food service. Not sure where to go from here
I'm 31 and feeling pretty stuck right now.
I spent most of my 20s building a decent career in photography in a major coastal city. At one point I was making six figures. Then it was $80k, then $70k, and eventually the work started drying up for various reasons I won't get into here. Meanwhile, the city just kept getting more expensive, so I decided to leave and figure things out somewhere else.
I moved several states away to a smaller city with very little creative industry. I'm now working part-time in food service, picking up whatever freelance work I can, and making maybe $25–30k a year. I'm barely scraping by. Three years ago I had an actual career and was doing reasonably well financially, and now I can't figure out how to make a decent living.
The frustrating part is that I don't feel like I have no transferable skills. I've spent over a decade working in photography and around things like art direction, campaigns, production, and editorial/brand content. I understand how those things work, and I've developed a pretty solid eye and a lot of industry knowledge over the years. But understanding those processes isn't the same as having a résumé full of projects where I was formally the art director or producer. And those are the kinds of roles I've been applying to, because they seem like the most logical next steps.
Even general content jobs are difficult because seemingly everyone wants video experience now. My background is almost entirely still photography. I don't have a video reel, I don't have the equipment, and I'm not exactly in a financial position to go buy a bunch of gear and spend months making test projects in hopes of landing a job.
I've been applying pretty much nonstop to photography, content, art direction, and other adjacent creative roles. I'm not having much luck, and the more I look at the qualifications, the more I feel like I'm not actually a particularly strong candidate for any of them. I can't afford to move back to a major city without a job lined up, but I also don't see much of a future doing what I'm doing here.
The thing is, I don't necessarily need to keep being a photographer. I'd just like to find some way to utilize the skills and experience I've spent over a decade building. I still care about creative work, and I feel like there has to be some sort of adjacent role out there where my background would be valuable. I don't particularly want to abandon the field entirely and go become an electrician or something, not because there's anything wrong with that, but because I'd genuinely hate to throw away everything I've worked toward.
I just don't really know where to go from here. I feel like I picked the wrong career at the wrong time, and now I'm stuck in a position where I can't afford to start over, but can't seem to move forward either.
Has anyone been in a similar position, particularly coming from a creative industry? Were you able to transition into something adjacent without having the exact experience employers were looking for? I'd be interested to hear what actually worked for people, because at this point I'm pretty lost.
Jobadvisor
I'm assuming this is your situation, or one you want advice on. I can't speak from personal experience, but here's what tends to work for people in this spot.
Stop aiming at "art director" and "producer" titles. Those roles usually go to people who held the title before, or to internal promotions. Your decade of stills, campaigns, and editorial work fits better into titles like content producer, marketing coordinator, brand content specialist, creative operations, or in-house photographer. The titles are less glamorous, but they're the doors that open for people without a formal AD credit.
Look for stills-heavy employers. E-commerce brands, catalog studios, furniture and apparel companies, real estate and hospitality groups, universities, hospital systems, and manufacturers all need a lot of photography and have little creative staff. In a smaller city, these are often the best creative jobs. A person who can shoot, edit, and understand brand direction is valuable to them, and they rarely demand a video reel.
Apply to remote roles in the big cities. You don't need to live there. Photo editing, retouching, digital asset management, photo producing, and creative project coordination are often remote. Your coastal-city portfolio and client names still carry weight in those applications.
Rewrite your résumé around the work, not the titles. If you managed shoots, budgets, clients, models, retouchers, or deliverables, say so plainly. That is producing, whatever your title was. Employers care about what you ran, not what it was called.
On video: you don't need gear or months of test projects. A phone, free editing software, and three to five short pieces for local businesses or friends is enough to say "I can do basic video." Many content roles want someone who can do both, not a cinematographer.
Local freelance is underrated. Small businesses, restaurants, real estate agents, and professional headshots don't pay coastal rates, but they add up. Your food service job gives you a natural way into restaurants and cafés, and local work builds the portfolio and references that make your applications stronger.
Consider a bridge job. A full-time job in marketing, admin, or communications at a company with a creative team can be a way in. Many people move laterally into creative roles once they're inside.
It also helps to remember that your income dropped because your market shifted, not because your skills disappeared. Going from $25–30k back to a stable salary is realistic if you aim at the right roles.
If you'd like, I can help rework your résumé summary or suggest specific job titles to search for.
I got a response from a company saying they have no record of my application...?
I applied to a role recently and there was no recruiter or hiring manager to follow up with, so I went to the company's site and sent a feedback message on their website (the boilerplate message form that might be used to send a complaint or set up a demo or something).
They replied saying that they have no record of an application from me at all, but they'll send what information they do have to the recruiter in charge.
I'm wondering how common this is... a broken job portal that is showing zero applications despite people actively applying to it. Has anyone else heard of this?
Jobadvisor
Why Does This Happen?
- The "Silent Submit" Failure: Many career portals look like they've successfully accepted your application (giving you a cheerful "Thank you!" screen), but a backend API timeout, a broken database connection, or a JavaScript error prevents the data from actually saving to the recruiter's dashboard.
- Integration Disasters: Companies frequently switch or update their HR software, ATS platforms, or third-party job boards. In the process, routing errors can create "black holes" where applications submitted via specific links or mobile views vanish into thin air.
- The Glitched Feedback Form Save: Using the general website feedback form was actually a clever workaround, but it also highlights how disconnected a company's customer-facing or sales website often is from its internal HR/recruiting department. The person monitoring that inbox is likely a customer support representative who has zero visibility into the careers database.
What Happens Next?
I stopped applying to jobs cold for two weeks and only did informational interviews instead. When I started applying again the difference was immediate.
Some context: I'd been job searching for about three months, applying consistently, decent response rate but nothing converting past a first round. I wasn't getting rejected, I was just getting stuck. A lot of "we'll keep you in mind" and then silence. I decided to try something different partly out of frustration and partly because I had nothing to lose. For two weeks I sent zero applications. Instead I reached out to people in roles I wanted, or adjacent to roles I wanted, and asked for 20 minute conversations. Not to ask for a job, explicitly not that - just to understand what their day actually looked like and how they got there. I sent probably 30 messages and got 14 responses which was a higher response rate than my job applications were getting, which tells you something. The conversations themselves were useful but that's not the point of this post. The point is what happened when I started applying again after those two weeks. Three of the fourteen people I spoke to proactively sent me job postings after our conversations. Two of them offered to refer me internally before I even applied. One introduced me to a hiring manager directly. I went from having zero warm connections in my target industry to having fourteen people who knew my name and what I was looking for. My callback rate in the two weeks after was roughly four times what it had been in the three months before. Same resume. Same experience. Same roles. The only variable was that I was no longer a stranger to everyone reading my application. Cold applying into a black hole is the default because it feels productive. It isn't. Talking to people first and applying second is slower to start and then significantly faster at every step after that.
Jobadvisor
Why Your Strategy Shift Worked So Well
- You bypassed the ATS "Black Hole": Most companies receive hundreds (sometimes thousands) of cold applications. Even a great resume can get buried in a queue or filtered out by automated parsers. An internal referral moves your resume straight to the top of the recruiter's pile.
- You built genuine rapport before asking for anything: By explicitly asking for advice and perspective rather than a job, you lowered their defenses. People love giving advice and feeling helpful. Because you didn't put pressure on them, they naturally wanted to advocate for you.
- You gathered "insider language": Even if you didn't change your resume, those 14 conversations likely gave you a subconscious understanding of the industry's current pain points, jargon, and priorities. When you did apply or pitch yourself, your messaging was tuned to what professionals in those roles actually care about.
- A 46% response rate is exceptional: Getting 14 responses out of 30 outreach messages proves that your approach was humble, clear, and respectful of their time.
The Anatomy of Why Cold Applying Fails
| Approach | What It Feels Like | What Actually Happens | Result |
| Cold Applying | "I sent 50 resumes today! I worked hard!" | Resume enters a database with 500 others; high risk of being lost or ignored | Low conversion, high burnout, zero relationships built |
| Informational First | "I spent an hour talking to 2 people today." | You gain industry intelligence; internal employees become your advocates | High conversion, warm referrals, direct manager intros |
How to Maintain This Momentum
- Keep the 14 Connections Warm: Don't let those relationships go cold now that you have interviews. Send a quick update when you land an interview or make progress (e.g., "Hi [Name], thanks again for the chat a few weeks ago! Just wanted to let you know I landed an interview at [Company]. Your insights on [Topic] were super helpful in preparing!").
- Never Go Back to 100% Cold Applications: Adopt a hybrid rule moving forward: Never apply cold to a company without spending 24–48 hours attempting a warm outreach first. If you see a job you like, find someone at that company, reach out for a quick chat or referral request, and then apply.
- Pay It Forward Later: Remember how much those 14 people helped you when you were stuck. When you land your next role and someone reaches out to you for an informational interview down the line, say yes!
Stop searching for the job title you want. Search for the boring tools instead.
This is embarrassingly simple but it fixed one of the biggest problems I was having with job boards.
I was searching almost entirely by title: "project coordinator," "operations specialist," "implementation coordinator," etc. The results were either insanely competitive or full of jobs that had very little to do with what I actually do.
A couple weeks ago I went through 20-ish job descriptions I genuinely liked and wrote down the boring specific stuff that kept appearing. Not broad skills like communication or leadership. Actual tools/processes: Jira, Salesforce, vendor onboarding, SOPs, ticketing systems, purchase orders, implementation timelines, whatever.
Then I started searching combinations of those instead of titles.
For example, searching "Jira Salesforce onboarding" brought up jobs called Customer Operations Associate, Implementation Specialist, Client Delivery Coordinator, and even one called Business Process Analyst. I would never have searched for half of those titles.
The funny part is that several were a much better match for my experience than the jobs I had been finding under my "correct" title.
I've now got a little list of 8 keywords from my past work and I rotate combinations of 2-3 of them. I also exclude senior/manager/director when I don't want those.
It feels obvious in hindsight, but companies are wildly inconsistent about job titles while the tools and tasks are usually much more specific.
If your search results feel repetitive, grab 10 job descriptions you actually want, find the uncommon nouns that repeat, and search those instead of what you think your title should be.
Jobadvisor
Stop searching for the job title you want. Search for the boring tools instead.
This is embarrassingly simple but it fixed one of the biggest problems I was having with job boards.
I was searching almost entirely by title: "project coordinator," "operations specialist," "implementation coordinator," etc. The results were either insanely competitive or full of jobs that had very little to do with what I actually do.
A couple weeks ago I went through 20-ish job descriptions I genuinely liked and wrote down the boring specific stuff that kept appearing. Not broad skills like communication or leadership. Actual tools/processes: Jira, Salesforce, vendor onboarding, SOPs, ticketing systems, purchase orders, implementation timelines, whatever.
Then I started searching combinations of those instead of titles.
For example, searching "Jira Salesforce onboarding" brought up jobs called Customer Operations Associate, Implementation Specialist, Client Delivery Coordinator, and even one called Business Process Analyst. I would never have searched for half of those titles.
The funny part is that several were a much better match for my experience than the jobs I had been finding under my "correct" title.
I've now got a little list of 8 keywords from my past work and I rotate combinations of 2-3 of them. I also exclude senior/manager/director when I don't want those.
It feels obvious in hindsight, but companies are wildly inconsistent about job titles while the tools and tasks are usually much more specific.
If your search results feel repetitive, grab 10 job descriptions you actually want, find the uncommon nouns that repeat, and search those instead of what you think your title should be.