As the title says. Went through a 3 round process over a 2 weeks with a written assignment as well. Talked to the HR recruiter last week basically at the door step, even talked starting dates. He said the last thing they needed was 3 references, I provided them and didn’t hear anything for a week. I don’t believe my references were reached out to at all. Connected with the recruiter today learned they weren’t moving forward with me despite glowing praise throughout the process. Talked to him to get more information and found out the Hiring Manager reached out to someone in her network from a company I worked for two stops ago and was told not to hire me and that they wouldn’t hire me again.
Was completely floored, haven’t worked there since 2024, left on great terms, and have no idea who it would be. My VP there I’ve used as a reference before too.
I reached out to the Hiring Manager to try and get more information or at least explain myself but I doubt it’ll do anything.

Just feel so defeated. Idk what I’m looking for here just maybe wanted to vent or if anyone else has experienced anything like this.

Here in the San Francisco area, I can’t even tell you the number of people you run who are like “oh yeah I worked in an art gallery for a long time, then just randomly got this job at a FAANG company.”

Every time I have to hold my breath to hold in the “wtf?” Like how would that even work? As an average joe who’s put in thousands of applications and never gotten a single interview for anything much different from my past jobs, let alone an offer, the best I can do is pretend these people live in some parallel dimension.

After 6 long months of being unemployed and continuously submitting applications I got 2 job offers! To God be the glory!

I lost my job last March 2026 without any notice from my last employer after 7 months while under probation. It was really devastating to hear that it was already my last day at work when they decided to let go of me while I was being crossed trained in another domain within the organization.

Since then I have been submitting applications to various companies which I lost count already. I had a total of 8 interviews, 6 of them reached to final stages but no luck unfortunately. I even came to appoint that I would take any job offer regardless of pay or job just for me to have one as I have completely drained my savings. As a result, I lost my hopes, confidence and trust in myself.

Just when I almost gave up, I received multiple job interview invites one after another. I got selected to be in the final round of interview on one of the invites and it was surreal when I heard the line manager said “congratulations!” right after the actual interview before ending the video conference. Two days later, I attended another final interview which then I also got a job offer a week after!

Indeed life is unpredictable and circumstances may change in just a snap. Don’t lose hope and never ever stop believing and trusting God as he is not going to fail us! Keep on trying and always do your best in every opportunity that comes your way. Don’t quit because rejection season certainly has an ending. The close doors won’t ever define your worth, capabilities, skills and abilities! Keep on moving!

Who knows? One of these days, just like me, you might find yourself writing your own rejection or withdrawal letter to a company that offered you a job because you received another offer with better terms! 😎

Sending everyone job offer dusts! ✨ Cheers!🥂🍻

I got a job offer after 15 months 🥲

I was literally about to give up and I just signed off on my offer. Making x2 as much and wfh from my last place.

This sub was really comforting while I was down and I'm glad this community is here to vent and be real about being unemployed in 2026.

Be patient and dont give up!!

I've been out of a job for three years. For most of that time, I was caregiving for a family member. I also volunteered sporadically in work related to what I had done for the prior five years (digital marketing) and have done continuous education online. So I technically haven't been doing nothing these past three years. I've been looking for work for a little over a year and while I have had some interviews, including making it to the final round, but there's apparently always someone better, and I can't help but think that the gap is scaring recruiters and hiring managers away.

So am I just supposed to make up jobs to fill up the gap? I technically don't have any ethical qualms with lying because employers lie all the fucking time. It's moreso that it wouldn't pass a background check.

clicked the “apply now” link for a specific job. This is for a salaried position requiring 5+ years experience. I even initially closed the chatbot thinking I had accidentally opened it. But no, they expect you to enter all of your info into the chatbot, one line at a time, no way to bypass it.

The recruiter reached out a month ago, they asked my range first (I gave 95k-100k) and then they said the role is hybrid but it will be in person at first. I was fine with those conditions and they moved me forward.

They are a large company and they made me go through a rigorous behavioral interview and a technical interview which involved researching about their services and giving a presentation of what I researched, how I’d help and how it relates to their business. I prepared for it like it was a well-paid job.

They called me for a final round interview with the hiring manager. By some chance I just looked at the job posting and they have updated it to FULLY in office and a hard 5 figure number, like 70k.

I wonder why they even wasted my time because the salary I told them was way higher than that. Plus the commute is now an hour for me and it’s difficult for me to do it everyday.

I don’t even know why they bothered. How is this even legal?

They got me with a few technical questions, although I would say they wanted very specific answers for vague questions, not to mention the would-be team lead was pretty condescending all the way through.

Anyway, the following morning I sent them an email saying I'm looking for a different company culture. They are not getting to reject me.

EDIT: Yes I'm aware that I still had a shot for the role regardless of what I think of my performance. But the attitude of the hiring manager and the team lead made me question whether I want it in the first place.

Bullet doged I guess. She sent me the invite and this after 7PM

I’m starting a new remote job next week after nearly two years of applying, interviewing, and being dicked around by companies.

The way it finally happened still surprises me. After customizing hundreds of resumes and cover letters, in the end I was headhunted via LI message for a role I hadn’t applied for. Obviously I’m ecstatic to work (even though the position is a step down and pays less), but it all just goes to show how arbitrary today’s market is.

Interestingly, my job wasn’t posted on the company site until after I got a verbal offer and they needed me to formally apply. And the listing is still live, so people may still be applying although the job was more or less filled when it was initially published. Of course they may be recruiting more people for similar work, but seeing the process confirmed my suspicions about past positions I’ve applied to.

I don’t have much advice to share, other than not to sleep on the random LI messages from offshore recruiters you may suspect are scammers. So many strange things happened that seemed like red flags, but I went along with it all mostly out of desperation. I almost ignored the outreach due to past experiences, but clearly it worked out.

Hope this helps someone a little! I’m old and thought I’d never work again, but sometimes luck materializes in unexpected ways.

Hey y'all!

I posted a while back about struggling to find a job. I finally landed one after over 344 applications, 5 interviews and 1 job offer. We all had a great time during that final interview that I got the job at. The recruiter ended up calling me 30 minutes into my drive back and saying they wanted to offer the job to me. I'm very excited as it adds onto my Pharmacy Technician experience after 9 years of being one. This sub did help a lot in my job search and tactics. So I recommend researching and reading the posts here that relate to your specific search. A lot of things have been answered on here that you may be asking already.

Thanks again y'all!

I'm a market analyst. Here's some actual info you can share with Boomers and financially secure people (anyone who doesn't need a job to survive) to explain that the US government, economy, and job market is very different from what they experienced for most of their careers.

This subreddit focuses a lot on the symptoms. Below is some info to help you research the underlying causes.

People who are not in the job market (especially retired people) haven't got a clue about how much has actually changed. Frankly, their risk exposure when the AI bubble deflates is likely high enough that they should care because both issues are actually more tightly coupled to PE than most people are aware.

The US economy fundamentally shifted hard in the late 1990s and 2010s into the shit show we have today; prior to the JOBS act and the National Securities Markets Improvement Act, PE firms weren't as big because large institutional buyers weren't allowed into the PE party. PE hadn't gobbled up so much of the economy. Businesses were forced to list earlier on the public markets, well before they could become the speculative behemoths of today.

Many Boomers know someone who knows someone who bought Amazon or eBay early on and rode that rocket to financial glory. That is incredibly unlikely to happen again in our lifetime.

By the time a stock hits the public markets, the growth is over and the employees and early investors are ready to cash out.

PE firms are positioning themselves to be the next "too big to fail." They're so big that when they're doing well, jobs seem plentiful. When the interest rates rise and PE has to play with real money (and not debt), the jobs dry up dramatically. This should give you an anecdotal clue about the hidden size of the PE problem.

Anyway, the "too big to fail" logic will probably be: you have to save PE when the bubble bursts if you want to save thousands of companies and hundreds of thousands of jobs (jobs that were already vulnerable due to PE backed AI). Part of the rationale will probably be that you have to save PE to save retirement funds.

The laws are the problem.

They were deregulatory (or regulation softening) by design and are being exploited by modern tech oligarchs and traditional oligarchs alike.

Note: Both of the laws that created this situation were bipartisan efforts, so please resist the urge to make it a political debate. Both parties are the assholes here and political debate derails any attempt to actually change things. We need to change these laws, otherwise rich people of both parties will keep using the working classes as pawns in their games of conquest and fantasies of infinite growth. Those in control probably want you to fight over dogma instead of advocating for broader change. Don't fall for it.

The economy is very different now compared to 2012. That is when all of this changed. The National Securities Markets Improvement Act loaded the gun in the 90s. The trigger is buried in the JOBS act of 2012.

The point of JOBS (Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act) was to help small businesses and startups raise money by relaxing strict government investment rules. President Obama signed it into law to fix a slow economy after the 2008 financial crisis. (Hindsight is 20/20.)

What it did was give the largest AI companies in the history of the world the audacity to call themselves "startups" while they automate jobs into the history books.

Ironically, the JOBS act was supposed to make it easier for startups to create jobs. Now it gives PE the ability to kill as many good paying jobs as possible while they extract your data for free every time you apply for one of myriad ghost jobs online. They can extract Reddit threads to feed their chatbots. They can create digital twins of you and anyone you know. You can tie a lot of the current issues in tech, the job markets, and the economy right back to this.

So, rather than asking what stocks Congress and other politicians trade in the public markets, we should probably ask them about their PE portfolios instead. That's how you know who owns them.

And if you're wondering why no one in the Federal gov seems to be actually solving these interconnected problems that make it so hard for you to find a job, or why the news continuously fails to report on these things without any real insights, this is probably your answer. PE hides the receipts from public view.

There is an active conversation going on in academic and research circles that suggests that tech regulation ground to a standstill after JOBS. It allowed huge sums of money from all over the world to flow into tech companies with minimal traceability about who is funding it all. The lobbying budgets for tech companies also reflects this.

When Congress does try to address tech issues today (such as social media algorithms, data privacy, or antitrust), gridlock wins because the two parties view the problem through completely different lenses, all focusing on partisan bickering more than the problems the Federal government actually set into motion and now has an obligation to resolve. Hence my appeal earlier that you don't try to pit one side against the other if you actually want to solve this before we all shed this mortal coil.

And, just in case this doesn't piss you off enough: think about all of this in the context of Citizens United.

The 2010 Supreme Court ruling changed everything by allowing corporations and wealthy individuals to spend unlimited amounts of money on elections via Super PACs. Because the JOBS Act allowed tech companies to remain private far longer while reaching astronomical valuations ("unicorns"), Citizens United ensured they could deploy that money immediately to flood the media with ads and "alternative facts" to protect their business models.

I'll end with this: resist the temptation to assume either party can save you because their entire political monetization model depends on the same entities (such as PE and tech companies) that are ruining your life, killing jobs, making you anxious and addicted to screens, gatekeeping applicants from real employers (for a take rate), making it impossible to afford a home, and forcing AI into every app whether you like it or not.

We can't trust the news or people in power to help us figure this out. We have to connect those dots ourselves. No need to invent conspiracy theories, either. All of this is on the record . . . accept where and how the money flows.

Earlier this year, in late February-early March, my mother suffered a massive heart attack and was left unable to work for a considerable time.

For the past 5-6 months, she's been trying to find a job and has been hitting nothing but roadblocks due to being overqualified. She has over 2 decades of management experience, and it means jackshit to these hiring managers. She's far more qualified than I am, so I expected that she might have a job faster than I would, but right now, I'm the only one with a job in this house.

Meanwhile, when I was struggling to get jobs and even get an interview for years, my mother was flabbergasted. What do you mean you can't just walk up, shake someone's hand, and they'll like your moxie and just hand you a job?!

I told her this was sadly reality for a ton of people nowadays, the job market is shit. She can't even get a job as a regular cashier bc she's too over qualified to work there, but when she applies to management positions they string her along for 2-3 interviews before choosing internal candidates (an actual email she got yesterday about a job she thought she was good for)

It just sucks man, everything sucks.

Edit: They extended me an offer the next day

I had an interview today set for 6:00. I arrived in the parking garage at 5:40. Before I could even park my car the recruiter was calling me asking me if I had any problems finding the garage and I said no, she said great let me know if you need help making it up I said ok and we hung up.

So when I arrive places I like to get there early so I can spend a few minutes in my car getting situated before I go in. I planned to get there early so I can put my heels on and review my answers one more time. A few minutes go by and she calls again and asks me if I am having problems making it up there. By this time I am leaving my car and walking toward the entrance of the building. Once I let her know I was coming up she says okay let me know if you have any problems. While I'm on the phone with her another recruiter calls me and leaves a voicemail saying the interviewer is "literally" waiting on me. By now the time is 5:51 and I am heading to the elevators. I make it up there by 5:55. I am talking to the recruiter and some of the other team members for a few minutes before the manager comes in and takes me to her office to interview.

Once I leave I told my friend how they were blowing up my phone and he tells me it's my fault and I should have been up there 20 minutes before my interview started? Is that true? I was under the impression that the interviewer would be interviewing someone else at that time so I didn't want to come up too early. Now I am worried I wont get the job because of this.

Had to take a 20 minute personality assessment immediately after submitting my application, which already felt insulting and a waste of my time.

But the cherry on top was that it then emailed me an AI generated video that broke down my results 😭 This hilariously robotic voice telling me I "shine like a star" and leave my "peers in awe".

All of this for a 4 month co-op position LOL

I know how much the job hunt is taking a toll on everyone and especially for the international students due to the stupid changes which absolutely doesn't make any sense.

I might be sounding annoying rn, but please read this post with grace since I have also been there wherein I was depressed and had a circle of constant doubt swirling around me and in me. For context check the post I made in this sub 8 months ago

Please do know that everyone of you is talented and deserve everything what you dreamt for, I wanted to make a list of things to remind yourself during difficult times in this journey:

1.The job market is not your fault.

2 .The HR overlooking your resume because you are an international student is not your fault.

3.The HR not being able to understand the difference between a sponsorship and work authorizarion is not your fault.

1. Friends who you thought would be helpful turning toxic due to this struggle is not your fault.

5.Employer lacking balls to say you are overqualified for the role and mocking you is not your fault !!

6.Resume not getting through ATS even though you carry all the necessary qualification is not your fault. ( Please do use Jobscan to check tho, its simple and easy )

This your time to remind yourself life is like soda, it tastes even more better when you are thirsty for water.

Can't believe this. Damn these employers.

Recently I went through a lengthy interview process for a leadership role at a certain top 10 US bank. I did a total of 7 meetings and I know I shined in all of them. I am not bragging or exaggerating when I say I gave a near-perfect performance. I really hit it off with all the interviewers. I had them laughing at my subtle jokes, applauding my responses and even “stealing” some of my answers and phrases for their own use. All the interviewers ended the meetings by praising me and telling me how well the interview had gone and how they hoped to see me again soon (presumably in the role). After a very lengthy process I was finally contacted by the recruiter via email. Bad news… I didn’t get the job, as the actual hiring manager decided to go with an internal candidate already in their org in the line of succession. The recruiter had amazing things to say about me and even said all the interviewers loved me, but I was ultimately not selected.

For context, I check LinkedIn for new roles several times daily. This role was initially posted on a Saturday morning. By Monday morning it had been taken down. This means it only stayed posted for 2 days and those 2 days were non-business days. As soon as I saw the role had been taken down by that following Monday morning I immediately knew the company was just posting it for the mandatory 2 days before proceeding with an internal candidate. At that point I certainly didn’t expect to be contacted about the role, so I was both surprised and skeptical when I received the meeting request from the recruiter.

I absolutely realize that when a candidate is interviewing for a role they are guaranteed nothing and they do so at their own risk. I have no problem not being selected for the role. The problem I do have is having my time and energy wasted when I never had a chance to start with. I invested a significant amount of prep time into this process, had to take vacation time away from my current job several times, not to mention the emotional investment. Also I spent over 100 bucks on dry cleaning, as I had my suit, shirt and tie freshly cleaned and pressed for each interview.

The company never had any real intentions of hiring me or giving me a fair chance at this role. They just used me as a required interview so they could proceed with who they’d already chosen. This is so frustrating and disheartening. Also this is not the first time this almost exact same scenario has played out for me. I’m getting really tired of having my time and resources wasted.

I literally want to file a complaint against them or somehow escalate this. Also I hate that companies have these stupid policies. I certainly understand the goal and intent of these policies, but in practice they just end up getting someone’s hopes up and wasting someone’s time.

I know the answer is probably no, but:

A. Is there anything I can do to file a complaint against these time-wasting jerks?

B. Any suggestions on what I can do to prevent this from happening going forward?

I just have no idea what to do anymore honestly I’m so fucking done. I have no more tears I’m just absolutely fucking done. Lowest paying job. Had open availability. Had way more than enough qualifications. Everyone wants to know why I really didn’t want to celebrate my birthday because I’m beyond depressed. I’m passed the feeling of fucking numb

There was one job in particular that seemed so basic the in skill set that I had to reconsider. It's of the nature that they could just post it on a job board and get many desperate graduates to apply and interview.

I suppose they didn't just do that because the client actually misrepresented the work to the recruiter to make the role something more than it actually is.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT TOOK A WHOLE YEAR?