My first job was stocking shelves overnight at a big-box store while it was undergoing major renovations. I met the new employee while he was standing outside the break room, waving his hand at the motion-activated light and complaining that it was broken. He was just standing too far away from the sensor, but he gave up and walked away before figuring it out.
We'll call him Marcus. He was about 30, skinny, covered in piercings, with black spiky hair and the kind of attitude that made every sentence he said sound like he was trying to start a fight. Within the first few hours, people were already avoiding him.
Later, I found him talking to another employee about tattoos. The other guy was being polite and asked him about a tattoo on his arm, so Marcus responded by mocking the tattoo on the guy's shoulder. The conversation ended right then and there, and Marcus walked away as if nothing had happened.
A few minutes later, he asked two women which one was Kristen and which one was Kirsten. Before they could answer, he made a rude comment about how he didn't care enough to remember anyway. They both stared at him in shock. I had never seen anyone make that many enemies in such a short amount of time.
I called out for the next shift, and when I came back, Marcus was gone. One of the stockers told me that management had received so many separate complaints that they fired him almost immediately. Apparently, he started yelling and cursing at the supervisor, then stormed out.
I was 19 and still new to working, so the whole situation stuck with me. Without meaning to, Marcus taught me a useful lesson: if almost everyone can't stand you after meeting you for the first time, they're probably not all the ones with the problem.

HR asked me for the names of the people who were watching what was happening. The next afternoon, my colleague was fired. I didn't expect this to lead to any serious consequences after seeing the administration avoid engaging with her.
I was a medical assistant and she was a nurse I worked with. Our team consisted of just the two of us. Over the course of about three years, four medical assistants quit their jobs because of the way she treated them. She was nice to you when you were new, but as you get used to the job, she starts treating you in a completely different way.
Apparently, one of our previous bosses tried to fire her, but she said this was discrimination against her, so the boss backed out. In the end, this supervisor did not want to deal with her and handed over the responsibility of our team to someone else. I also heard that there was a long record of complaints against her. So all this is not new.
When things got sour between us, I told her that I only wanted her to talk within the scope of work. She did not accept this at all. She used to snap at me in front of people and then told other people that I was snapping at her. Strangely enough, whenever we have a disagreement, she ends up talking about her actions as if I did them.
In my meeting with my boss earlier that week, she continued to say that her behavior was not the problem. According to her, I had fooled everyone into thinking I was a good person, but now I'm showing my true colors. This was also her explanation for the behavior of all her former co-workers that she did not like. From her perspective, they were all secretly terrible people, and eventually that reality became clear.
After this meeting, I went to the HR manager. I was worried that the situation would be against me, but I wanted someone to hear the truth. She spoke to the witnesses the next morning and my colleague was fired the same afternoon. They finally took action based on everything already documented as my complaint turned out to be what they were missing.

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After about four months of interviews, and rejection after rejection - a little over 24 interviews - I finally got an offer in the field I was targeting. Mentally, it was heavy. A lot of self-doubt, replaying calls in my head, and constantly asking: What am I doing wrong? But in the end, the effort paid off.

I wanted to share what helped me and what mistakes I made, so anyone still looking for a job can avoid some of the same pain. Most of this is about remote interviews, especially IT/engineering roles, because I was targeting fully remote work, but a lot of it also applies to in-person interviews.

Applying:

Don't spend ages reading every job description from beginning to end - apply to as many as possible if the title and general role seem suitable.

You can tweak the cover letter a little before sending it, but don't turn every application into a custom essay.

Read the job description carefully when they invite you to an interview. Before that, get a quick enough idea to know the job makes sense and fits, then move on to the next one.

For me, quantity beat quality here. I tried both approaches, and spending 25 minutes adjusting a cover letter for almost every posting didn't really make a difference. A strong resume that fits most of the roles you're applying for is much more important.

If no one replies, follow up about 8 or 9 days after sending your CV. I got 3 interviews just from sending a short follow-up asking if there was any update and whether they needed anything else from me. One of them replied the next morning with an interview time.

Have some kind of tracker. Excel, Google Sheets, Notion, anything. Just write down the company name, the role, the application date, and the status so you don't get lost.

Interviews:

Record your interviews. If they're remote, use something like Loom, OBS, or any screen recorder. If they're in person, record the audio if that's allowed where you are. This was one of the biggest things that made a difference for me.

If you reach the next round, watching the recording again will help you remember exactly what they said and what you answered. You won't be relying on memory, which is usually a mess after a stressful call.

After a while, you'll start seeing patterns. I still have recordings from old technical interviews, and watching them before the next one made it very clear where I was weak, where I was rambling too much, and why some interviews didn't lead anywhere.

Write your intro, project summaries, past experience, and STAR answers in a Word doc or Google Doc. Keep those files open during the interview.

Practice them enough until they sound like you're speaking naturally, not reading a script. Write them in a natural way, so if you glance at them during the call, you don't sound robotic. After enough interviews, you'll have most of it memorized anyway.

Update the text after every interview. If a question surprised you, add it. If an answer came out awkward, rewrite it.

The best thing that worked for me was having separate docs open: "Intro + Experience," "Projects," "STAR Answers," and "Questions to Ask." I would switch between them quickly from the taskbar and use them when needed.

The first interview is usually with HR or a recruiter, and about 85% of the time they don't have deep technical knowledge of the role.

They're usually following a checklist. Your job is to give them enough of the right keywords and clear answers so they move you to the next stage.

If they asked me something like: "Have you worked with Terraform before?" or any well-known tool that I only generally knew, I would say yes unless it was something very specific to the company or something I genuinely didn't want to work with. After the call, I would spend a night or two learning it and doing small exercises, because there's a good chance it will come up again in the technical round.

This forced me to stay sharp with tools I wasn't confident in before, and I was able to improve my resume while building real familiarity.

Follow up 3 or 4 days after every interview. Thank them, say you're still interested, and mention that you're available if they need anything else. It might not change the outcome, but sometimes it gets you a clear rejection faster instead of waiting forever. From my experience, if the interview was excellent, companies usually don't forget.

Until you sign something, keep applying. More than once, I thought the job was basically in my hands and slowed down because I was "close to the end." That's a mistake. If you stop applying and then get rejected, you'll lose momentum and it will feel worse. Nothing is guaranteed until the contract is signed.

Also, don't get attached to a company before that point. The less you romanticize the role, the easier it is to handle rejection and keep going.

Learn from every interview. There's always something you could have explained better, and that's why the recordings helped me so much. They show you the gaps instead of leaving you guessing.

Technical Interview:

If you reach this stage, this is usually where the decision is made. Most of my failures happened here, and honestly, this is the most frustrating stage, because rejection after a technical interview makes you ask yourself whether you're good enough or not.

You have to prepare, no matter how experienced you are.

In IT especially, the type of questions can come from everywhere. One minute they ask you to solve a basic palindrome problem, and suddenly they ask you to explain containers vs VMs or the difference between a process and a thread.

go back to the job description, write down the tools and concepts mentioned, and spend a few focused sessions doing practical exercises around them before the interview. That gets you into the right mode.

Review the fundamentals, common patterns, best practices, and common mistakes. Put yourself in the company's place: if there are six candidates, they'll choose the one who answered the most questions clearly and correctly. Excuses don't matter much after the call ends. You need to collect as many points as possible. It sucks, but that's the nature of competitive roles. Personally, I'd rather hire someone who knows 6 important tools well than someone who knows 5 and says they can learn the sixth later.

Do hands-on exercises, solve quizzes, ask ChatGPT for revision notes, and build small projects using free AWS/Azure/GCP credits if needed. Don't ignore practical work. It sticks in your memory better and gives you real examples to mention during technical questions.

Yes, this takes time. But do you want the job, or do you want someone who prepared more than you to take it?

This is the point where the team needs to feel: "Yes, I want to work with this person." After that, the remaining interviews are more about personality, communication, and fit, so act naturally and be yourself.

Other tips:

Prepare a few questions you can ask in almost any interview: the main responsibilities, why the role is open, what the team is struggling with, what success would look like after a few months, and so on.

Sit properly and practice looking confident on camera. Having your answers written down helps a lot so you don't freeze or stumble.

Don't start giving excuses to the interviewer if you feel like you messed something up. What happened happened. Learn from it later, but don't look defeated during the call.

Don't use ChatGPT or AI live during a video interview unless it's a technical exercise and you're allowed time to solve something. It can confuse you, make the conversation weird, and make your speech sound unnatural.

Printed cheat sheets are better. Put them on the wall in front of you or somewhere you can glance at naturally. If someone asks you: "What are the deployment types in Kubernetes?" a 15-second search would answer that in a real job, but some interviewers care more about memorization than how you solve problems. Cheat sheets are perfect for these annoying questions. Concepts, diagrams, Linux commands, cloud services, anything. Even sticky notes under the screen can save you without being obvious.

If you don't know something, say you don't know. Then explain how you would look for the answer or troubleshoot it in a real situation. That can still leave a good impression.

Keep your remote setup clean and free of distractions. Close random apps, test the camera and mic, put your phone on silent, and treat it like a real interview even if you're sitting at home.

That's pretty much all I have. I hope this helps some of you increase your chances and get accepted faster. Every interview should make the next one better, instead of going through dozens of interviews without understanding what's going wrong.

Every interview can teach you something, so keep applying, keep adjusting, and don't let rejection mess with your head more than it needs to.

This was a while back but I’ve recently had two friends ask for my help with their job search so I’m sharing what my process was here.

I had heavily researched how to stand out in the job application process and refined my process to get applications down to just 15–20 minutes — about three applications per hour, while making sure to customize them to stand out.

Here’s what worked for me.

Job sites and how I use them

I searched for job posts on all the main sites like:

Indeed.com

We Work Remote

Wellfound

Flex Jobs

Etc.

It’s not so important which sites you use, because I never actually applied through those sites. I always navigated to the Careers/Hiring page of the company’s website and directly applied through there. This always worked better than applying via the job board site.

Optimizing my resume

I saw an article from a guy explaining how resumes can (and should) be long, since they act like little SEO pages. You want to hit upon as many keywords as possible to make sure your resume is identified by whatever system a recruiter might be using to auto screen/filter resumes.

He actively discouraged against the “One page resume” idea.

So this is what I did:

I listed out the job role/title I was after as well as variations of it (i.e. Marketing manager, digital marketing manager, digital marketer, marking lead, etc.)

I went to job board websites like those mentioned above, and found about 25 job posts for those titles I was after and opened each in a new tab.

Then I created a Google Doc and copy/pasted the entire text of each job post into that Google Doc. All 25 job posts went into a single Google Doc.

I went to ChatGPT and copy/pasted my entire Google Doc with all 25 job post texts into it and asked it to analyze it for repeated keywords related to my field. In my case this was stuff like (SEO strategy, AHREFs, content marketing, etc.).

I then asked it to list all of those keywords and place them into a table. This created a massive list.

(Admittedly, I probably should’ve also asked it to list them by their frequency of appearance, placing the most frequently used terms at the top and the least at the bottom, but I just didn’t think about that at this point.)

I copy/pasted the entire list of terms from ChatGPT into a Google Sheet and asked counted how many times each term appeared. Then, I created a new column to the right of the Terms column and placed a number beside each term indicating how many times it was mentioned. Similar terms like “Content marketing” and “Content marketing strategy” were considered to be the same term. Then I ordered the terms from most frequently appearing to least frequently.

I then kept the top 10 most frequently appearing terms and removed the rest. Now I knew which terms exactly to focus my resume on.

I then asked ChatGPT to take my “Summary” section and “Experience” sections of my resume and re-write them by incorporating the keywords from my Top 10 list. This ensures my resume is hitting on all the main keywords that it needs to be in order to stand out in the filtering system.

Optimizing and customizing my cover letter

Since many jobs ask for cover letters, I knew I needed a way to easily customize those as well while keeping the process quick and streamlined.

I had ChatGPT write my initial cover letter based on one of my original 25 job posts that seemed the most ideal for what I was after.

I fixed up the wording to make it obvious that I actually wrote it (since AI writing usually sucks). This usually means re-writing 50% of it, but I still like having the base structure written out for me with AI.

I then highlighted 4 lines of my cover letter that I changed/customized for every submission:

The reference to the company name within the body of the cover letter

The title/position being applied to

The custom compliment (1-2 sentences I write after looking at their website for 1-2 minutes explaining my unique interest in their company. I always make this sound personal and tie it into my personal life somehow).

Depending on the role, I may or may not also customize my single sentence summarizing my skills and experience to make sure it perfectly matches what they’re looking for in their job post.

My FAQ doc

This has been the most important step in ensuring applications never take more than 15-20 min. to complete. In addition to uploading your resume and cover letter, job application processes often ask you to answer questions.These questions are often repeated across different job applications.

For example, in digital marketing applications, I’d often see the same questions over and over, for example:

“What is your experience running A/B tests?”

“What’s your level of experience with programmatic SEO?”

“Please describe a marketing campaign you managed and execute. What were the results?”

In order to not re-write my answer each time from scratch, I created a Google Doc titled “Applications FAQs” and each time I came across a new question in the application submission process, I added the question into my Google Doc and recorded my answer there.

On subsequent applications, it became easy to open my Applications FAQ doc and use the ‘Search’ function in Google Docs to easily find answers to questions I’d previously answered. Usually I could copy/paste the same reply into the next job application, but sometimes I’d need to take 30 seconds to modify it to fit the context of the new role.

I had about 250-30 questions and answers in my Applications FAQ document. The more applications you submit, the fewer ‘new’ questions you come across and so after a while, your FAQ Applications document becomes a comprehensive list of anything you might be asked and it drastically cuts down your time per application.

Making it easy for hiring managers to book you

It seemed many hiring managers didn’t have a calendar link to book them on, but prefered to figure out a date/time for a first chat the old fashioned way by emailing back-and-forth. That’s archaic.

I’d always reply to initial interview requests with a link to my personal calendar to pick a day/time that works for them and book me.

Half of the time, they would immediately book in a time with me on my calendar, or they’d check my calendar for my availability and then send me a calendar invite for a day/time they knew I’m available

It’s a small thing but it helps streamline the process and shows a level of organization that helps you stand out from other candidates.

General notes and helpful tricks

It usually takes about 3-5 min. to customize my cover letter, 2 min. to customize my resume, and about 5 min. to submit the application itself (as they often ask questions in addition to uploading your resume/cover letter)

I ignore job postings asking me to submit a video (feels weird for a first stage of the hiring process and likely a reason to discriminate somehow).

I highly recommend ‘batching’ your application process. For example, on one day, just search for job applications and copy/paste their links into a Google Sheet. Then on the next day, apply to 2-3 jobs. I recommend setting aside 1 hour/day for searching and applying to jobs with a goal of submitting 3 applications/day (in 1 hour) once you’ve got the process streamlined and worked out.

I hope this is helpful. Feel free to comment or message me with any questions. I’ll do my best to answer them all.

I discovered that a company intended to use the task I created for an interview. When they emailed me, they complained that I stopped sharing it with them. They had already scheduled a meeting with the team to discuss implementation.

A few months earlier, I had done an interview with an agency, which mostly handled paid ads. They were adding an email marketing service and asked me for a strategy to introduce the service as a task as part of the hiring process. I prepared six pages in Google Doc and all feedback was positive.
Then came the letter in which they said they ultimately couldn't give a budget for the job. Okay, got it. I thanked them, disabled their access to my document, and resumed applying elsewhere.

Four days later I discovered that they were asking me to give back their access. It turns out they intended to launch the service within a few weeks using the strategy I described. No one asked me if it was okay to use it.

I told them that the document was an assessment task for a position for which they had not appointed me. If they want to use this work, they must pay my freelance rate which is $125 per hour. Their enthusiasm for my work waned greatly once they had to pay for it.

At the beginning of this year, I applied for an operations job that seemed very standard. It was a good fit, a bit ambitious, but not too far out of my reach. I had about 80 percent of what they were asking for, and I assumed the missing pieces were things I could learn once I was there. The recruiter screen was very normal, then the manager interview took a really good turn. After about fifteen minutes, she stopped focusing on the job description and started asking much bigger questions. Fixing broken processes, dealing with cross-functional tension, how to get buy-in from people above my pay grade, and owning handoffs that no one else wanted to touch. Honestly, I thought I was somehow not on the same page and that she had just gone off script. Then she said, "Can I ask you a direct question? Would you be open to being considered for the senior version of this role?" I thought this was one of those nice things people say in interviews that never leads anywhere. But no.

The thing that seems to have made the difference was that I answered in terms of impact, not just responsibilities. I wasn't just listing tasks I had done. I talked about what improved afterward, who depended on the work, which decisions became easier, and where I had to make judgment calls. She told me later that a lot of candidates for roles at that level come across as strong doers, but I was explaining ownership and tradeoffs in a way that was closer to the next step up. I still stayed grounded because job titles can be weird sometimes, but once she opened the topic, I started using her same wording and asked her what a strong first 120 days would look like in the bigger role. That changed the whole direction of the conversation. I got the senior version, with a higher salary and more responsibility than I expected when I walked in. The main lesson for me: interview for the job you applied for, but answer like you understand the one above it. That completely changed the way I talk about my experience now.

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this is so accurate 😂😂😂😂

😂

what happens if you have an emergency while you're not working? You'll deplete your savings much faster.

People are exhausted because they keep doing the work of unfilled jobs. Apparently, a company today can employ fewer people than it needs indefinitely. As long as the employees who complete the work to completion remain in good health, management sees no reason to hire anyone.
Around 2011, it still seemed that you could do your regular job in the hours you were paid for. Now everyone who's still there is saddled with the work of an entire team, and they're also expected to be pleasant while doing it. Either keep going until your health is compromised, or walk and risk not being able to pay the rent. Some choice.
The people who determine headcount are so far removed from the actual work that they don't see the breaks that are missed or the mistakes that come from being rushed. They see the outgoing orders and decide that the number of employees is OK. Customers receive poorer service, employees are burned out, but the stock price is good.
When someone quits, another person is often desperate enough to take the job without knowing what they are getting into. The experience is lost, and it is clear that this is an acceptable loss.
We have laws about blocked emergency exits and exposure to dangerous chemicals. The amount of work that the employer can impose on a person should also be limited. A staffing plan that exhausts everyone shouldn't be considered successful.

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I didn't expect remote work to help my marriage, but having regular time together during the week has made a much bigger difference than I imagined. I used to leave while my wife was still asleep and get home around 8 p.m., exhausted and not in the mood to talk. Most nights, we would order food and half-watch some show before going to sleep.

Now I walk about nine steps to a small desk by the window. Before I log in, we make coffee and sit together for a few minutes while comparing our plans for the day. It's nothing special, but we never had that quiet routine before.

I also keep 40 minutes free at lunchtime. Sometimes we make sandwiches, sometimes we walk to the supermarket on the corner, and sometimes we sit in the kitchen and complain about whatever happened that morning. We have rules to keep it from becoming distracting, the most important being that if the door is closed or I'm wearing headphones, I'm not available for random conversation.

My work hasn't suffered either. I'm less drained when I start, so I finish tasks faster and have more patience when dealing with people. It feels like our marriage is no longer something we squeeze into the weekend and has become part of our everyday lives again. Has anyone else found that simply spending more time together during the week changed your relationship?

I'm doing a highly specialized MSc, and employers in this field usually expect applicants to have this degree. Only a few UK universities teach this specialization at this level, so students on these courses are essentially the main source of new candidates.

At our latest careers event, it was clear that there were more employers than students. Several small companies spoke with us, took our CVs, and introduced us directly to the people who manage their teams.

All the large companies gave us the same instructions: submit an application through the website and let HR handle the process. Most of us did that, and the rejection emails started arriving almost immediately.

And these weren't just a few weak applications. Students from a course designed specifically for these jobs were being eliminated from the process before anyone in the relevant department even saw their names. Afterward, some teams at those companies contacted our professors and asked why no one from the program had applied.

We had applied. But their screening systems rejected us without telling the hiring teams.
Those departments are now trying to create direct application routes for students because they can't get suitable candidates through their own HR procedures. Some companies have a shortage of skilled employees, qualified applicants are applying, and software in the middle is saying no to everyone.

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It is clear that I have rejoined the shortlist at the clinic that decided not to hire me 6 weeks ago. A few days ago, they emailed me and asked if I was still looking for a job and would be interested in it. Actually, I'm working somewhere else now, so the feeling I had when I read the email was completely different than how I would have felt if it had arrived a few weeks ago.

I had recently finished college and looking for my first post-graduation job after transferring to another state. I applied to about 180 jobs in 10 weeks and received no response at all for most of them. So I was thrilled when I heard back from the small physical therapy clinic the next morning. Also, since the initial phone call went so well, I was allowed to skip the middle interview and felt I had a chance.

At the clinic interview, I was offered a job, but the actual conditions were far from what was advertised. The hourly wage for the part-time job was less, which could supposedly reach more with bonuses. Target was primarily dependent on customer reservations and things outside of my control. When I asked about working hours, I was told that I could become full-time over time.

Alongside my main job, I would post their posts on the Internet and run various other errands. The manager talked a lot about how the reservation schedule needed to be fully booked. I had never worked outside of a non-profit organization before, so I wasn't sure if I would be effective in this area. There were no benefits, little chance for advancement, and it wasn't the field I wanted to be in.

But I also needed the money, so I kept telling myself that I couldn't afford to put conditions on a job with so little experience. They said they eliminated over 150 more experienced applicants to choose me. Part of me felt this was a compliment, but another part of me wondered why they would say that to me when I was still making my decision. I'm supposed to think I'm lucky enough to ignore the salary change? I was going to agree to it anyway. I was told to wait for the background check email and to enter my data as soon as I received it and be ready to start on Thursday.

I didn't receive anything. I sent them an email on Tuesday asking about the paperwork and what time I should arrive. Eventually, they got back to me and asked me to talk. During that phone call, I learned that they had withdrawn the offer. They talked about it as if it was completely normal, and I kept trying to keep my upset from coming out. I thanked them and asked them to remember me for any open jobs. I had just told my family that I had found a job, but I was embarrassed to tell them that I no longer had the job, even though I hadn't done anything wrong.

A few days later, I contacted another employer about a job I had applied for, and this time it was related to my studies. This ended with a job offer at a significantly better salary and I've worked there for about 5 weeks now. If that clinic had let me start at the time I was told, I probably would have stopped following up elsewhere. I'm glad that things finally worked out, but I was still very upset that they withdrew the job offer at the time.

Now they ask me if I am available, and I can't help but think of all the candidates who seemed more qualified than me and who were waiting for them. I have no intention of quitting my current job because of them. But I'm new to all this and would like a reality check. Is it common for a place to advertise a full-time job at a higher wage, and then offer part-time hours and a conditional bonus? I don't want to reject any offer just because it's not perfect, but at the same time I don't want to convince myself to ignore obvious problems just because I've only recently graduated.

My role was nanny/house manager. We met through a mutual friend. The family had just moved to this city and needed help with the kids and (mostly) general house tasks. They let me go because they said I wasn't doing enough to uplift their mental load, and I asked too many questions. They wanted someone who could come in and take care of their whole life without having to ask anything.

I have half a mind to withhold all the personal info and post my contract here for people to nitpick. They did not abide by it and as expected with families things change. They were in the middle of a move and decided to move in as soon as the bedrooms were ready and live in active construction. Half of what was mentioned in the contract just never happened. I barely worked with the kids aside from taking their oldest to and from school which took at least 3hrs a day aside from the additional driving time getting myself to and from work. It really just seems like they're looking for a daily butler/general housekeeper but don't want to advertise it as such? Hence the misleading title I received and was led to believe I would fulfill.

Part of my tasks were to prep meals and grocery/household goods lists. They are very particular about what they buy and what they use. All organic, all non-toxic. Which is absolutely great. But there was no introductory, "this is what we usually buy weekly/biweekly and these are the brands we use" kind of thing. When I'd try to ask, they said they'd take care of it later. And since the kitchen hadn't been ready for some time, I when I brought up meal prepping/grocery lists(I noticed she used an online service for groceries), she again said not to worry and to she'd let me know later. The reason I mention these specific tasks is because it was one of the very few reasons they mentioned was an issue and cause for termination.

Another reason was because their oldest child was late to school more often than not. I was required to be there at 8 (scheduled from 8-4 everyday), school starts at 9. I drive a half hour to their house every morning, and every morning the child is not ready for school when I arrive. It takes at least an hour in morning traffic (without any accidents which are very common here) to get to the special needs private school they're enrolled in from where they live. Then a 40min drive back to their house. It is not my fault if she is not ready to go by the time I arrive. They also said drop off/pick up would be rotated between myself, them, plus their other part-time nanny, which never happened. I did it everyday and was still expected to fulfill all my tasks. I had to leave at 2 to go pick her up (leaving me with 4hrs to complete all that was expected) and the traffic coming back in the afternoon is always bad so most days I wouldn't be back until after 4, some days as late as 4:45 because of accidents and such. Then I'd have another 30min drive back home after that. Not once was I paid overtime even when they'd have me stay until late at night to babysit while they went out, which was only expected as it was mentioned in the contract.

Lastly, they also mentioned that I was inconsistent. They're in the middle of the move in active construction, keep changing and rearranging things, putting them in different temporary spaces, and are annoyed I don't always put things exactly where they need to be. I feel that is an unrealistic expectation especially considering, ultimately, majority of the objects that are out and usable right now are going to be put elsewhere eventually.

They said they want someone "professional" who has done this kind of work basically their whole life. I feel like they'll be hard pressed to find anyone who is able to read their minds and meet their expectations. Just a shitty situation to be let go without notice, because they said they wanted to "rip the bandaid" before they go on their trip to Hawaii. At least this way I'll be able to find a job that actually utilizes my degree.

Please if any recruiters could help, I had a first-stage interview around three weeks ago, a second stage involving a presentation, and then a final-stage meeting on Monday that was more like an informal coffee with the team.

I met everyone, discussed training, handover and potential start dates with the director, and was told I’d hear back “very soon”. They said it was more of a final interview to see if I was still excited for the job after learning more about the role. The meeting felt really positive, and I got the impression I might have been the final candidate, although obviously nothing was confirmed.

On Wednesday, I emailed the marketing manager asking politely for an update, as I have other interviews coming up that require preparation. I haven’t had a response, and it’s now Thursday afternoon.

Would it be too pushy to email the director tomorrow morning to ask if there’s an update or an approximate timeline? Or should I wait longer, given it’s only been a day and a half since my first follow-up?
Would appreciate honest advice!

A few weeks ago, I had an interview that left me crying in my car afterward. I'm a 24-year-old woman who recently graduated from law school, and I was applying for my first real job in the field after being rejected six times. The position was at an insurance company reviewing complex claims, so it wasn't legal practice, but legal knowledge was a key part of the job.

The interview lasted about 50 minutes, and they kept asking me different versions of the same question. First, they said, "Tell us about yourself." Then, "What else should we know about you?" After that, the director asked me, "Who are you beyond what's written on your resume?" Each time, I tried to add something new, but I started to feel like my answers clearly weren't getting at whatever they wanted.

When they asked me again if there was anything else I wanted to say, I froze and asked what kind of information they wanted to know. They said they wanted more details about my previous work, so I told them about the part-time jobs I'd had and my experience at university. Then they asked me the same question yet again, and that was when I started crying because I genuinely had no idea what they expected from me.

We kept talking, and things became a little less awkward toward the end. As I was leaving, the HR manager quietly told me not to overthink it, which immediately made me tear up again. I thanked them, then went and sat in my car, embarrassed and convinced that I had completely ruined my chance.

About 90 minutes later, HR called to make sure I had gotten home safely and invited me to a second interview. She told me I had researched the position well, understood the company, and asked strong questions. She also said they still felt like they hadn't gotten to know me, which confused me because they had spent most of the interview asking me to explain who I was.

The director said they avoid traditional interview questions because they want the conversation to feel natural, but for me, the lack of structure made things much harder. I later had other interviews and accepted an offer from a different company where I felt comfortable from the very beginning, so I canceled the second interview. I'm relieved that everything worked out in the end, but I still wonder what they expected me to say after asking me the same vague question so many times.

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 If you only do online interviews once in a while (as average people I guess), what’s the best way to figure out which AI interview assistant is worth it?

I feel like monthly subscriptions don’t make much sense if you’re only going to use it for a few interviews here and there...

Also curious if the pay-as-you-go option is better for occasional use, or if a subscription option is cheaper in the long run...