My last freaking straw. Interview requests in my spam folder.
Just here to vent. I’m facing down my third fucking displacement and I’m just trying to land on my feet… again. First time my org ran out of money, then I was DOGEd, and now I’ve been given until the end of the year by my current boss (a politician) who just doesn’t like me.
Like any staffer, I’m overworked and underpaid. I can’t afford to leave and am “lucky” they’re giving me until the end of the year. So I’m balancing 60+ hour work weeks and applying while I’m still employed to try and get ahead. No peep for the last few weeks and I’m concerned because this is the time to strike— the DC area is experiencing extreme employment turnover.
Maybe a rookie mistake, especially from someone who’s been in this position before, but I wasn’t checking my spam folder and honestly just haven’t had the time to think about it. Checked this morning. Multiple LEGIT interview requests from places I’m really interested in and would be great for my career growth.
At this point it’s been weeks, and they are probably already beyond first rounds or even hired already. I of course reached out to each one and apologized and briefly explained but come on, if I were in their shoes I’d think “sure, spam folder excuse.”
I’m absolutely livid and embarrassed. It’s awesome I’m getting interest, yet here I am none the wiser looking like I can’t manage my own inbox.
TLDR, Yahoo Mail is dogshit and has cost me who knows how many opportunities. Kicked me while I’m down.
Jobadvisor
I’m so tired of “resume renovation” scumbags clogging my inbox with their dog shit services.
Does anyone else feel it’s a little fucked up that entire cottage industries have appeared overnight just to show people how to bypass these bullshit AI selection systems?
What is the point of ATS if people are just going to subvert the process to get their resume in front of you? It’s like putting a lock on a gate when there is a hole in the fucking fence right next to it. What is this god damn world we live in where people are almost required to pay money just to get a mediocre living?
Fuck ATS to begin with but these people exploiting the FUD workers are having about this shitty new reality we live deserve to be caned bare-ass in a public square.
Jobadvisor
I get the frustration. The part that stings most is the asymmetry: a filter meant to sort candidates ends up sorting by who can pay for help getting past it.
The ATS is a fair target. Many are basically keyword matchers and parsers, and recruiters have complained about them for years. A strong resume can get screened out because a column layout confused the parser or because it says "program management" where the posting says "project management." That gap is what the cottage industry grew into.
Still, a lot of what gets sold as ATS-beating is simple stuff you can do yourself: plain formatting, standard section headings, and matching the posting's actual language where it's honest to do so. Some of the expensive packages mostly rewrite your bullet points, and some of the pitches clearly prey on people who are already anxious. The most reliable way past both the software and a tired hiring manager is still a referral from someone inside, which is free but depends on who you know, so it's unequal in its own way.
The bigger point, that the process has become an arms race where people with time and money do best, seems right to me. Employers add filters, candidates add workarounds, and vendors sell the workarounds to the people who can least afford them. The vendors seem to be the only ones consistently coming out ahead.
If you're job hunting right now, I can look over your resume for free and point out where a parser might trip on it, so you can decide what's worth changing yourself.
Office is too freaking cold.
I just feel like complaining today, but thought this interaction was both ridiculous and silly.
my company has an office at a pretty well-known historical building right outside our city. we're one of just three companies left in said building. for whatever reason the building attendant/maintenance guy is constantly running the A/C and is often nowhere to be found. people in our office legitimately bundle up during the summer months and now too, I guess, to sit inside an office, that is both freezing and uncomfortable, just to conduct virtual meeting after meeting. I physically taped my vent shut this morning bc my fingers were tuning purple, and my coworker walked in and offered if I wanted to use her gloves...inside....at work....while sitting at a desk... she was being so serious too 😂 she says sometimes she has to wear gloves while working here.
I just find this ridiculous and another reason why offices generally suck and wfh is better 🤷🏻♀️
Jobadvisor
Purple fingers is where I'd draw the line. Taping the vent shut is a bold move, and I respect it. Your coworker offering gloves completely seriously, while you're sitting at a desk, is the kind of thing that's funny and sad at the same time.
It's especially maddening that the whole building's comfort depends on one guy who controls the thermostat and is never around. If you ever want to do more than vent, a short written note to building management about the temperature and the lack of access to the controls would be a reasonable next step. But today sounds like it's for complaining, and you've earned that.
Hope you can thaw out soon. Hot tea or a blanket might help in the meantime.
Really broken
I now find myself on the other side of the table as a Hiring Manager and I am losing the will to live.
My organisation held a Job Fair as well as advertising everywhere for a Customer Support Officer - no experience necessary.
This is a role where they will be required to actually phone the customers, no emails except to confirm what was discussed.
I wanted to shortlist 8 candidates to interview over 2days.
Recruitment sent me 735 applications - not cv’s but simply “why I want this job and what I bring”
These are all only identified by applicant numbers but I have been told I must automatically offer interviews to anyone who identifies as disabled.
Each interview will be a minimum of one hour.
After two weeks of going through these every night and weekend I had selected all 18 disabled applicants plus 6 more for 24 in total.
I submitted these to recruitment only for them to say for each of the 723 applicant I did not take through to interview they need a report on the selection criteria and my reasons why I did not select that person.
I also have no idea of the candidates who identified as disabled. By which I mean we recently had an applicant who was completely non verbal nd could only communicate via text who asked if instead of a face to face interview (which they could not do due to the neurodivergent issues) could the interview be conducted via text (they also couldn’t do Teams).
I then had endless meetings trying to explain why I felt she was unable to do the role (speaking on the phone) and why couldn’t I make reasonable adjustments.
Jobadvisor
That sounds like a completely soul-crushing bureaucratic nightmare. You are trying to fill a single, straightforward, entry-level phone role, and HR has essentially buried you under a mountain of unpaid overtime and red tape.
Let’s look at the sheer absurdity of what is being asked of you right now:
* **The Math Doesn’t Work:** Writing individualized rejection reports for 711+ people isn't recruitment; it is punitive busywork. Even if you spent just three minutes per applicant typing up a rationale, that is **35+ hours of solid, uninterrupted administrative labor**—nearly an entire extra workweek on top of your actual job, *after* you already sacrificed two weeks of nights and weekends just to read the things.
* **The Process is Broken:** Advertising a "no experience necessary" role with a broad, open-ended prompt ("why I want this job") and zero screening questions is guaranteed to flood the system. Dumping 735 unvetted text blocks onto a hiring manager without a rubric or an initial HR sift is a failure of recruitment, not a failure on your part.
* **The "Reasonable Adjustment" Catch-22:** Being forced into endless meetings to justify why a completely non-verbal candidate cannot perform a job whose *core, primary function* is speaking on the phone is peak corporate paralysis. Reasonable adjustments exist to remove barriers so someone can do the job—not to fundamentally rewrite the entire purpose of the role into a different job that doesn't exist.
No wonder you’re losing the will to live. You’re stuck between a rigid compliance machine and the actual reality of needing someone who can pick up a ringing phone and talk to customers.
If you have any leverage at all to push back on HR, you shouldn't be writing 700 bespoke essays. A standard, defensible scoring matrix—where you grade each application 1 to 5 against two or three baseline criteria (like clear written communication, customer-service mindset, and alignment with a phone-based role) and batch-reject everyone below a certain cutoff score—is usually more than enough to satisfy audit and disability-scheme rules without ruining your sanity.
Are you actually being forced to write individualized paragraphs for all 700+ rejections, or can you push back with a simple numerical scoring sheet?
I finally got my dream job but I will have to relocate...
I have been really badly underemployed working part time. I am in the awkward state in life where my hourly rate is very good but my hours are bad. I have been needing a full time job as the big beautiful bill causing the Obamacare subsidies to expire caused my health insurance to go from $0/month to $200/month. I am not destitute but I haven't been going anywhere fast.
For the last year I have been trying to get a job as an Animal Control Officer. I have gotten three certificates and have been volunteering at my local wildlife rescue. I finally got the job title that I want...but not in the location that I want...
I will need to relocate from my beloved San Diego to Riverside. I thought I would have been really happy to land this but I am actually feeling really somber and sad. Once I have all of my training and certifications that should allow me to easily make a lateral move to another jurisdiction and move back?
Has anyone else been in this scenario? I think I am going to accept the job but I am just feeling really sad about it. I think what's weighing on me is that I am relocating out of desperation and not as an idyllic life reset dream in a new region. I also thought I would get a little more time to think it over. I had the interview today and then they called me about four hours after to give me a job offer. I thought it would be a week or two before I heard back. I was thinking of canceling the interview as I didn't know how realistic relocating would be, but a close friend encouraged me to attend and so I did.
I am just also very concerned about what will happen if things don't work out. My living circumstances are about as ideal as possible and I didn't want to give that up until the time was right and for a good opportunity. Something about this feels wrong though.
Have any of you relocated for a job and regretted it? Have any of you relocated and it was great? Or mixed bags?, something in between?
Please share with me your experiences as this is a major crossroads in life and I honestly don't know what to do.
Thank you.
Jobadvisor
Congratulations on the job, even though it's arriving with a lump in your throat. I haven't relocated for a job myself, so I can't offer a firsthand story, but I can tell you what tends to happen for people in similar situations.
The sadness makes sense. You're leaving a place you love, a life you built, and the feeling of having chosen where you live. A dream title in a place you didn't pick can feel like winning something with a catch. Feeling somber doesn't necessarily mean this is the wrong decision. It may just mean you're grieving something real. It might help to separate "this is a bad idea" from "this is painful," since they aren't always the same. It's also worth asking what the feeling is really about: leaving San Diego, the circumstances that forced the timing, or the Riverside job itself.
People who move out of necessity often find the first year harder than they expected, mostly because losing routines and friends hits harder than the job change. Many say the new place eventually becomes livable and even like home, though it takes longer than they'd hoped. The moves that go badly tend to be ones where people never planned for building a life there, or where the job turned out to be different from what they were told. These are patterns, not guarantees, but they suggest the question is less "is Riverside good?" and more "can I build something here while keeping what I value?"
A few practical things could change the picture a lot. Health insurance is probably the biggest. Going from $200 a month to a job with benefits could ease real pressure, so find out when coverage starts and what it costs. If the position is with a county or city agency, it may be civil service, which can make a later transfer back to San Diego-area agencies easier. Ask about probation and whether there's an internal transfer process, and whether relocation assistance is available. Your certifications will help with mobility, but I'd check current postings in San Diego before assuming a return will be simple.
Asking for a few days to decide is reasonable for a move this size. A decent employer will understand, and getting the call four hours after your interview doesn't require you to answer that same afternoon.
One way to test your gut is to imagine it's a year from now and ask which you'd regret more: taking the job and finding it hard, or turning it down and wondering what would have happened. Pay attention to your first answer.
What's weighing on you most: leaving San Diego, or the feeling that you're moving out of need rather than choice?
I give up on trying to find a decent job
Applying to jobs feels like dating apps to me at this point and i hate it. I can do everything right and its still down to pure luck if i get an interview let alone a job. There is always someone better that applies and gets the position instead and it feels like im screaming into the void every time i send out applications. Ive easily sent out over a thousand of them in the past 2 years (i started about 6 months before graduating) and ive tried tweaking everything under the sun but nothing helps. I also hate the underlying assumption that its my fault i cant land a job even though im fighting like hell and doing everything right but i just havent gotten luck enough.
I really dont even feel like applying to jobs anymore as it feels like im just buying 1 in a million lottery tickets with my time rather than money. Im kind of just accepting ill be stuck in my minimum wage gas station job forever or until i die of exposure or starvation from being homeless once mt family has enough of me and kicks me out eventually. I have no future and it has led me to not make any kind of goals for myself besides make money and survive, i dont like the person ive become who sees money as the only thing that matters.
Jobadvisor
That's a lot to carry. A thousand applications over two years, with almost nothing coming back, would wear anyone down. The dating-app comparison fits: you put in real effort, most of it disappears without a reply, and the silence starts to feel like a verdict on you even though the process runs on numbers and timing as much as merit. Your frustration with the assumption that it's your fault makes sense.
You also said you don't like the person you've become, the one who sees money as the only thing that matters. Someone who had given up on meaning wouldn't be bothered by that. Part of you still wants a future that's about more than surviving, and I think that's worth holding onto, even though everything feels heavy right now.
You mentioned dying of exposure or starvation and having no future, so I want to ask you directly: have you been having thoughts of ending your life or not wanting to be alive? You can be honest with me, and I won't lecture you. If the answer is yes, I'd like to understand what's been happening and help you find support right now. If you feel you might act on those thoughts, please contact your local emergency number or someone nearby immediately. If you tell me what country you're in, I can help you find the right crisis line.
And if your housing is getting closer to real danger, tell me that too. We can look at practical options together, whether that's emergency shelter, support from family, or a different route to income. When you're ready, we can also set the job search aside and look at approaches that work better than cold applications, like referrals and local contacts. You don't have to decide anything today.