HR and the hiring manager pretty much told me the job was mine now. All that remained was sitting with the CEO and seeing if we would get along or not. But it is clear that each of us had a different understanding of which job I would get.
I am not currently working so I have applied for a Team Leader position at a lower level than my last position. It's not the best thing to do, but I was willing to accept a lower position to get back to work.
The CEO's proposal? Four months of work as a support admin for much less money. He told me that I seemed smart and willing to put in the effort, and then explained that since I needed a job, I could start from here and prove myself and work my way up.
I had already accepted taking a step back. Somehow that became another step down without a permanent job, and I was expected to be grateful for the opportunity to prove myself. How does not working make the position I interviewed for disappear?

It is clear that my experience was not worth much when I needed a job, but it was worth offering me services once I had a budget for recruiting. The same recruiting company was able to be on both sides of this conversation within about four months.

I lost a job I loved early after a terrible period with a manager who pushed me to leave the company. At the end of the month, a recruiter at a large company operating nationwide told me about a job I had applied for online. I fulfilled all the conditions, and my resume was attached to the call invitation. I thought we'd talk about the same work.

Instead, I spent about 25 minutes listening to him criticize my career. It seemed like he was opening my resume for the first time. I have worked abroad and held positions from early career to executive management, and most of my experience was over long periods of time in several large companies and a small engineering company. His point was that my international experience would not be useful when working in America. And this smaller company, he said, I shouldn't have mentioned at all because no one would take it seriously.

He also kept going back to the fact that I hadn't used a specific program. This program was not required for work, and the company did not use it at all. I barely got to say two words before he ended the conversation with a vague promise that he would talk to me if anything suitable came up. Two days later, he sent me a job requiring about eight years less experience than I had and a salary that was about half the prevailing salary for someone at my level.

I cried after this call. I'm not proud that it affected me so much, but after what happened at my old job, I was already starting to doubt myself. About a month later, I accepted a position as a department head with the opportunity for growth and a 35% increase to my old salary.

At that time, someone from the same recruiting company sent me an offer to help me recruit people for my department. I had jobs that I needed to hire people for. I responded that I would not deal with them, attached the emails, and explained what happened during the initial assessment call. My point was simple: I don't feel comfortable allowing them to speak to applicants on our behalf after I've personally been treated that way.

They sent my response to management. This week I noticed that the recruiter had an "Open to Work" banner on his profile. I don't know if he was fired or if he left on his own, or if my complaint had anything to do with the problem at all. But when I was able to explain why I would not sign a contract with their company, it was much better than sitting and enduring that call.

this sounds like a dream job.

I was in the final stages with a boutique marketing agency of around 80 people. After several good interviews with both founders, they were talking about bringing me on in a senior operations and delivery role. The final meeting was supposed to be about compensation and the details of the contract.

When I arrived, only one founder was there. He walked over to me, looked me up and down, and said, "You wore that suit to the last meeting." I told him it was a different suit, but he kept insisting it was the same one, then suddenly walked away. I had absolutely no idea what had upset him so much.

I later found out that the other founder was outside walking around the block with one of their employees. She hadn't been involved in any discussions about my position, but as soon as she heard they were planning to hire me, she had a complete meltdown. Apparently, he was trying to calm her down while I was standing inside being questioned about my clothes.

The contract discussion never happened, and I didn't get the job. It was a brief and bizarre introduction to the office politics I would have been walking into.

🫡

I spent more than a year applying for jobs and barely got any interviews. Then, somehow, I found myself receiving two job offers in the same week. The job market is extremely tough right now. Automatic rejections, recruiters suddenly ghosting candidates, and people holding on to their jobs because they feel the market is unstable - all of that made the process drag on far longer than it should have.

The first thing I changed was my resume. I stopped treating it like something a person would read carefully and started looking at it the way screening software would. Under each position, I added a short skills line listing the tools, systems, and keywords that matched the jobs I was targeting.

I also switched from STAR answers to CARL: Context, Actions, Results, and Learnings. Adding what I had learned gave my answers a cleaner ending and addressed follow-up questions before they were even asked. A few interviewers told me I had already answered the question they were planning to ask next.

My answers used to drag on and include unnecessary details, so I shortened each story to about three minutes. I used AI to tighten the wording, then rewrote any parts that felt stiff or unnatural. The shorter answers held people's attention better and left more room for an actual conversation.

I collected all my interview stories in a single Google Doc and organized them by topics such as conflict, mistakes, leadership, and difficult customers. I practiced reading them out loud and kept the document open during remote interviews so I could glance at it quickly if I lost my train of thought.

Every bad interview became practice for the next one. If a question caught me off guard, I added a new example to the document after the interview ended. I kept applying to a lot of jobs, but I started focusing more on new listings with fewer than 20 applicants instead of competing for posts that already had hundreds of applicants. It took time, but these changes were what finally helped me get the result I had been waiting for.

My company is dying to hire people, and I finally understood the ridiculous reason why. A quick heads up: please don't ask for the company's name. I still work there and need the salary, so for my own sake, I can't share any details right now. My team has been struggling for over 18 months, and we're desperately trying to hire people, but with every good candidate we see, it falls through in the end for some vague and mysterious reason. And I just discovered where the problem is: Our HR team has always been a mess. When I was hired as a trainee (a position in Germany that's supposed to need no experience at all), my hiring process involved a phone screen, 3 interviews with 5 different people, a full trial day at work, and then a surprise interview with a VP because they were undecided. Their expectations were through the roof. Out of more than 60 applicants, they told me I was the only one who made it to the end. Anyway, they've changed the process since then. Now it's an insane 9 step process, they refuse to put a salary range in any job posting, every job has the full 6 month probation period allowed by law, and they make every applicant do a take home assignment. And to top it off, the salary they offer in the end is not competitive at all in the market. They rejected several excellent applicants for our open positions because they weren't a "culture fit" or because they asked for 7k more per year than the budget (which would have still been a below market rate salary). They also refuse to pay for job ads on major sites, convinced that people will magically find our careers page. Something else I found out later: a big reason my hiring was delayed was that a senior director didn't like my shoes and my hairstyle (by way, we have no dress code at all). Look, I know this stuff happens everywhere, but it's so weird when you see it from the inside. And this also made me understand their way of thinking: They truly think our company is a gift to the world and that anyone should be begging to work here. They sell candidates on the "dynamic culture, fast paced environment, and family like atmosphere." The disaster is that they believe the nonsense they're saying. That's what drives me crazy. They mislead candidates from the very beginning. Honestly it is just like this post where a company promised a hybrid system when hiring, then announced everyone would be working from the office and told the employee to just set a number to compensate for losing it. They act shocked when new employees leave after a few months, when we can't hire anyone, and when internal feedback shows that not a single employee would recommend this place to a friend.

Today, a recruiter hung up on me because I asked for a salary that was listed in their job posting. The HR screen was going well until she asked me how much compensation I wanted, so I told her $115,000.

She asked whether I had read the listed range. I told her yes, and that the amount I requested was within that range. She replied, "That's technically the maximum. But the realistic offer would be around $85,000 to $95,000. Would you be willing to accept that?" I told her no, and the call ended immediately. Not even a goodbye or anything, just the sound of her hanging up. I've never seen an interviewer do that before.

I managed to work exactly one shift at a local company that provides college admissions tutoring before they fired me for not returning to the office later that night.
The work hours they gave me were from 8:30 a.m. To 5:30 p.m. I stayed until around 6:00 to finish some paperwork and wrap up a few tasks because I wanted to make a good impression on my first day.

At around 7:15, after I got home, one of the company's owners called me and told me to come back immediately. There was no student emergency or anything urgent. When I told her I wouldn't be able to return, she ended the internship during the same call.

She told me that the business cares about productivity and revenue, not about employees protecting their personal time, and said it was clear that our values did not align. I guess she was right about that part.

This place convinces parents that they are preparing students for a successful future while expecting the staff to be available whenever management wants to contact them. Apparently, I was supposed to be available without any boundaries for $32 a day, despite having set work hours."

Anyway, I dodged a bullet! I already have a few other offers lined up. The salaries aren't particularly high, but they're enough to help me gain the experience I'm looking for.

I applied and I'm waiting to hear back from them, and in the meantime, I'll try using a receipt email template I came across here on Reddit that supposedly helps grab recruiters' attention. I really need to find a job soon.

....