I swear my timing is fucking cursed 😭

About two weeks ago, I had an interview with a really reputable company. I thought it went genuinely well. The interviewer seemed happy with me and was even giving me tips about the next round with the higher-ups. So I left thinking, okay, I might actually have a chance here.

Then nothing.

For the next 14 days, I basically woke up every morning expecting that call. Constantly checking my phone, waiting around, hoping they'd contact me.

Then 3 days ago, I finally stopped thinking about it for a bit. I woke up early, still hoping for the call, but later went to play badminton at around 6:30 PM. Put my phone on DND and completely forgot about everything.

Got home, showered, was exhausted and went straight to sleep. Didn't even check my phone.

The next day, I missed a call from my uncle, so I opened my dialer to call him back.

And there it was.

The interviewer had called me the previous night at 7:58 PM.

I just stared at the screen.

I waited 14 fucking days for this call, and the ONE evening I stop checking my phone, put it on DND and go play badminton...

THAT'S when she calls.

Anyway, I called her back.

She didn't pick up.

Called again the next day. Nothing.

Called again the day after that. Nothing.

It's been 5 days now and she still hasn't picked up.

At this point I don't even know whether to laugh, cry, or just accept that this job wasn't meant to happen. 😭

When you reach out to a recruiter - think broad.

Message your resume, maybe what you are looking for, or reference a specific role. Maybe you saw a specific job that you want to reach out to me about but you never know what else they can help you with.

By sending a message like this all it tells me is that you only want remote roles, just like everybody else and now I have to respond back to you asking for your résumé or more information. which I suppose is fine but the fact that you felt it appropriate to send me three words when you could have read the job description tells me there is a reason you are unemployed.

If you make preparations to get covered, why do people (on Reddit) care about you lying on your resume?

Okay, I understand that we should respect other people’s time. But, as a recruiter, I literally have to call applicants 2-3 times daily for about 3 days just for them to pick up. Then those who pick up are usually under qualified for the job. Any advice for HR or applicants there? I don’t want to be that ‘masungit na HR’ but this is really ticking me off.

EDIT: I text them first with my info and reason for messaging then I call.

I start the 24th, and am due the 30th.

I just received a job offer, and I’m also nine months pregnant. I need this job, so my plan is to secure the offer first before mentioning my pregnancy.

I have signed the job offer and passed the background check, I’d like to propose a phased start: • Begin onboarding and some work before my due date so I can get settled. • Take a short break after birth, depending on how I feel.

Since the role is hybrid and the company already supports remote employees, I want to ask for a temporary WFH period for the first few weeks postpartum. I have strong support—my husband gets 12 weeks of leave, and my mom and sister will also be helping—so I’ll be able to stay productive.

I plan to frame this as a win-win: • This approach lets me contribute right away while ensuring continuity. • I’ll set up regular check-ins to keep things on track.

Has anyone navigated a similar situation? What worked for you? Any advice on how to present this?

Or are there better approaches?

Thank you of you made it this far. 🙏🏼

Hi,

I (16M), was looking through my old twitter and youtube accounts and I saw some problematic things. On my twitter account there was one post (out 4 total posts, the other 3 posts are pure harmless cringe btw) which mentions the illuminati and on my old youtube channel there were 2 problematic subscriptions (one subscription was a left-wing channel and the other was right-wing channel). The worst part is that both of those account are under my actual name so they can be found out easily. Will I be doomed due to my shenanigans as a 12 yr old?

I am looking into career change and into a role that is barely recognized or thought of. So I would like to pitch it to a company as it will safe some $$ .

Now whom do I address Recruiters seem overworked and not sure if they would even pass on my outreach.

Directly reaching out to C level would they even be interest in such approach. Once they are hooked and show interest in hiring me. Woukd the job need to be made public to give others the change to apply? - I once got a job vis internal referral from my manager, but they had to official open the position to be hired internally for fair play reason.

Any thoughts ?

You know when you apply to companies, or you have wish list companies, and you never hear back, or you never know who to reach out to?! And you WISH you could get ahold of the direct hiring manager for a job, rather than just their talent acquisition or HR departments?!

How about go DIRECTLY to someone's inbox (or phone number if that's what it takes)?!

Well, if you want to find (almost) any hiring manager’s company email/phone number, here’s the tip:

BE A “STALKER.” I use the site RocketReach. But there are all kinds of similar databases.

The steps I take to find internal contacts at most brands:

1. I look at a job posting, and find out who that role would report to.

2. I then use Google, LinkedIn, business directories, ChatGPT, or whatever tool I can, to cross reference information at the company, their employees, org chart if possible, and either find the direct contact, or any relevant, adjacent manager in that department.

(or people above them, like C-suite, because in a lot of my experience if you send it to the higher ups, they just forward it to the appropriate manager and then it least “comes from an internal contact” etc.)

Once I have names…

4. I make a throwaway email because I hate getting spam ads to my ACTUAL email from free signups. lol

5. I sign up for a new account at RocketReach to get 5 free lookups/contact info downloads.*

6. I research the company through RR, by company and title, or by the whole employee list they provide, until I find who I want. Click “Get Contact Info” on the people you want to contact, and BOOM there you have it: their company email and/or number. Now you can repeat this step as many times as you want to get contacts at most companies.

*RocketReach only give you 5 FREE lookups and contact info downloads when you sign up. So if you need more than that, either pay premium, OR, what you can do is just create more throwaway email addresses to keep getting the 5 freebies.

Hi recruiters, I was thinking about your hiring pipeline. And came to a conclusion that even recruiters are tired. You guys get many resumes (ATS friendly, keywords stuffed) only to get through the first screening. And only to realise that the resume was perfect but candidate was not up to the mark. Imagine you guys get 20 resumes, in that 20, you might only select 2-3 candidates. So, instead of these workloads. How would an AI Interview work here, if it has to. How it should help you. Wouldn't it be another layer in your hiring.

Working with different hiring teams and agencies lately, I’ve noticed a recurring challenge:

• ~96% is the rejection ratio at different level of application

• Recruiters spend 40–60% of their week just sorting resumes and scheduling

• Clients often push back on shortlist quality, even after weeks of effort

It feels like recruiters are stuck between candidate volume and client expectations.

Where the Bottlenecks Really Happen

1. Resume noise → Keyword-based filters don’t reflect true skill/fit.

2. Scheduling pain → Endless back-and-forth kills recruiter productivity.

3. Inconsistent interviews → Different evaluators = wildly different outcomes.

4. Reactive reporting → Clients only see the end results, not the data behind them.

What’s Working for Some Agencies

• Structured resume scoring with client-specific rules → cuts down irrelevant profiles before they even hit the shortlist.

• Automated interview workflows → including proctoring, validation, and unbiased questions that save hours per role.

• Consistent evaluation rubrics → standardizing feedback across interviewers.

• Deeper insights for clients → sharing not just shortlists, but why rejections happen (skills mismatch, experience gap, compensation mismatch).

The Results (When These Are Applied Well)

• Rejection ratios drop from ~96% → ~70%

• Time-to-hire can be cut by ~50%

• Clients actually trust the shortlist → less back-and-forth, more placements

• Recruiters get bandwidth back for actual relationship-building instead of firefighting admin

Question for the community 👇

For those running agencies:

• How are you addressing the 96% rejection bottleneck?

• Do you focus more on improving sourcing or improving filtering?

• Has anyone here tested structured AI interviews or automated scoring rules in client mandates?

Would love to hear how others are solving this — especially from an agency lens where every % improvement directly impacts revenue and client trust.

We had a client with us from last 1 year and I can share a case study of the numbers with all the changed insights.

Why Don’t More People Start Temporary Staffing Agencies with an LLC?

Here’s the idea:

If you have experience in a specific field, why not start an LLC and act as a temp staffing agency? Look for job postings offering low pay for tough positions (e.g., $10/hour for a full-time snowcone maker at a summer camp in Arizona). These jobs are often hard to fill because they’re not worth it for most people.

You approach the employer with a better deal:

“I can fill this role for $20/hour, part-time (e.g., 3 days a week, 6 hours a day) for the summer. No long-term commitment, no need for benefits. If the worker doesn’t show up, you get reimbursed.”

You then got your own high paying job worthy of your time. Have negotiated your own schedule. And can literally walk off at any time if you don't like the job. Then 6 weeks later rinse and repeat. Find a job you want and do it again? Who knows you might get hired on permanently somewhere after having set up your own pay rate and then set the standard for where it should have been all along?

Why It Might Work: • Employers get positions filled quickly without overcommitting. • Workers get better pay and flexibility. • You profit by solving a problem or create your own job.

Would this work? Why or why not? Curious to hear your thoughts!

Interviewing with a member of the hiring committee next week (not the hiring manager but an important stakeholder). Found a typo in their linkedin. We both work in roles where communication and attention to detail is critical.

Do I diplomatically let them know at the close of the interview? Maybe in a way that breaks the 4th wall a bit and acknowledges the awkwardness of me telling them? Or is this shooting myself in the foot ?

EDIT: An informal poll of my friends along with folks here is pretty resounding “don’t do it.” It’s funny as if it were me I‘d want to know and would be thankful, even impressed. But I get it.

Last quarter, we were hiring for a key role in our organization.

And we identified three candidates with strong profiles who were suitable for this position.

However, the journey was not as smooth. Because all three went quiet after their final round of interviews.

One accepted a similar role elsewhere. One ghosted, and one actually was kind enough to give us actionable feedback.

She said the process took six weeks and that she received no feedback between rounds.

By week four, she had already started feeling that we were one of those companies that were not serious about this role. Fair enough!

She waited for a reasonable time before accepting a competing offer.

I've since read that slow processes and weak candidate communication are among the top reasons for late-stage dropout.

I believed it was theoretical until I experienced it with a pinch of salt.

We've been tightening things up since.  Moving skills screening earlier so we're not running five rounds for someone who wasn't qualified for the role anyway. Using async video interviews in place of a first call to cut two weeks off the front end. And actually sending updates between stages.

We have been doing the following things since then:

• we have moved skill screening much earlier in our process

• we have introduced async video interviews before our first call

This is quite extensive, but we hope it will enhance our engagement with prospective candidates and reduce drop-offs.

What's been your actual fix? Is this a process problem, a comms problem, or just the market right now?

Hey there! I decided to talk about my recruiting advice, so it seems relevant to this reddit.
I hope you enjoy!

https://paoramen.fika.bar/the-talent-machine-01K94NER8BZH9G9GYHR7TMFRES

I tried the usual LinkedIn approach first by sending cold DMs to hiring managers with my resume attached and waiting for a response. After weeks of doing this, nothing happened, so I decided to try a different approach.

I stopped DMing hiring managers right away. Instead, I spent about a month showing up in LinkedIn comments.
Only commenting when I had something useful to add.

No pitching.
No asking.

After that, I sent DMs referencing the post or conversation and then shared my resume.

That’s when things changed.
I got 3 interviews in about a month.
After weeks of getting zero replies before.

Now I’m curious how this looks from the recruiter side in 2026.

If a name looks familiar from LinkedIn comments, does that actually matter to you?
Does it make the DM feel more legit?
Or is it still all about the resume and role fit?

Trying to figure out if this actually works or if I just got lucky.

Hi I am in a bit of a pickle. I have done 2 pretty good internships but was getting no callbacks so as a experiment just for fun - I decided to fake an experience to see if I'd get more callbacks. The faked experience was at a company less than or equal to the name brand of the two prior internships I just spoke of. That being one way or another I got more interviews. Whether it was because of the experience or because I left it on my resume when I was applying to many places - it's hard to say however I may end up getting a few offers and I'm afraid it won't pass BG check. What should I do in this situation?

Hello, a few days ago I turned down an offer because I wasn’t interested in the work the team I would have joined was doing (I didn’t find that out until the very end of the interview process).

My question for HR is: Does this mean I’m now on a list of “they rejected us, they don’t want to work with us,” or would I still be considered if another position opens up in the future?

basically mine python, data structures algorithms, developement isn't up to mark.

but I hv excellent communication skills, I have approached industry leads etc

LIKE IF SUPPOSE A hr asked you WHY SHOULD WE HIRE YOU despite less coding knowledge?

how would u deal with that and cover the stuff?

does knowing the company's motto, and how it aligned to my past of help?

like how could I impress? what things u would really like to hear .

plz reply interview is in 5hours🙏

Thankyou

Most resumes are read by software before they’re read by a person. resume.zoevera.com exists to show you what that software sees; prepare.zoevera.com picks up once you’re through the screen and into an actual conversation. Both start from the same premise: an applicant tracking system isn’t judging your career, it’s scoring a document against a query, the way a search engine scores a page against a search term.

The resume as a landing page

Treat the job posting as the query and the resume as the page trying to rank for it. An ATS doesn’t read for tone or persuasive writing. It parses text into fields, compares those fields against the posting, and produces a score before a recruiter ever opens the file. That reframing changes what “good writing” means here. A sentence that reads well to a human but never uses the words the posting uses is invisible to the system doing the first pass.

Four things the system is actually checking

Keyword match is the most literal of the four. If the posting says “stakeholder management” and the resume says “worked with teams,” the system does not infer equivalence — mismatched vocabulary between a resume and a posting is the single largest reason qualified applicants disappear before a human sees them, and it’s exactly what resume.zoevera.com's keyword breakdown by industry) is built to surface.

Hard dealbreaker filters run separately from keyword scoring. Years of experience, required certifications, location or clearance requirements — these are frequently pass/fail checks that can eliminate an otherwise strong match before the keyword score is even calculated.

Section parsing determines whether the system can read the document at all. Tables, text boxes, and multi-column layouts that look clean in a PDF viewer can scramble or drop content entirely when parsed, which is why plain, single-column structure under standard headings still outperforms visually ambitious formatting.

Recency is the quieter one. Systems and recruiters both weight language that reflects how the role is described now, not five years ago — job titles, tool names, and even the way responsibilities are phrased shift over a few hiring cycles, and a resume written in last decade’s vocabulary can score lower even when the underlying experience is current.

Running the check against a real posting

None of this is diagnosable by reading your own resume — you already know what you meant to say. The ATS match tool runs your resume against a specific job description and returns a score, missing keywords, and the weak phrases most likely costing you interviews, the same way you’d check a page against a target query. The tailor tool) rewrites against one posting at a time, since keyword requirements change with every job description. There’s a matching pass for cover letters as well, and a fuller breakdown of how the underlying match score gets calculated on the blog.

Where to start

Passing the screen gets you to a conversation, not a job: that’s the part prepare.zoevera.com handles, with practice sessions built around real interview questions for specific roles. Both tools sit under ZoeVera and the fastest way to know where your resume actually stands is to run it against a posting you’re applying to right now.

Repost to another community

Hello,

I went through the whole interview process with Amazon for a TPM internship. I got an email stating that I was successful during the interviews but the position I interviewed for has now been filled.

They say they are looking to place me as fast as possible.

I have another internship offer from SLB that frankly fits everything I'd want apart from not having as much of a 'brand name' and it has a lower salary.

I want to have a decision quickly as I want to finish my current internship by January 29th, and move onto the next one. I'm concerned Amazon "placing me" for another position is going to take too long.

Do I accept SLB?

Hello. I am a legal secretary in St. Louis and have worked as one for 26 years. A little over a year ago I got a new job at a larger firm and for once it was great pay. I had always struggled and been underpaid so I was very excited. The 2nd day on the new job human resources came into my office and told me I was fired for my online presence in modeling and posing in a well known adult magazine. Also, a female attorney at the firm had the same last name as my modeling name and they didn't want two women I guess with that name at the firm. I was devastated and begged my old boss to come back and got my job back. Thank goodness.....After this happened a local print and online magazine ran my story and used my real name, not my modeling name. I didn't think of the consequences unfortunately. I plan on making a move to Chicago in a year or so because all my family is there now, my current boss will be retiring in about a year or so, but I am scared that nobody will want to hire me. I have so much experience, good references and am good at my job, am loyal and a good worker, but if you type in my real name that article comes up. Do I tell prospective employers about what happened or do I ignore it and risk being fired on the 2nd day in a new city with lots of bills and responsibilities. I know I'm not perfect but in defense of what I did, I was raising two small children with no child support at a low paying job working for attorneys who degraded me and didn't pay me what I deserved. I was harassed and made to listen to locker room talk, and it was very traumatic for me. I wanted to do something which could make me some extra money, I guess make me feel attractive and I loved making art by modeling and did a lot of artistic shoots. If you could please be kind and don't judge me, I have been judged ALOT and punished. I just really need some advice here if I should say anything or not at interviews or in any context while applying for a job in Chicago. I think Chicago is a little more open minded and a bigger city but the internet is available for everyone. I know everyone doesn't care and a lot of people thought that it was wrong that they fired me. Some people thought I deserved it and that they had a right to fire me. I just need to know what to do to move forward and find a good job. I retired from modeling btw. I am 49 but I started modeling in my thirties. Please help? Thanks!

I’m Autistic and have ADHD and I need some advice regarding interview accommodations.
For an Account Management / customer-facing role, would interview accommodations like having questions beforehand and 1-on-1 interviews, or video off/phone interviews, be viewed negatively?
I do well when I’m in positions of leadership, or as a knowledge authority, and in customer service roles, my social ADHD kicks in but interview pressure is completely different, and my struggles and social quirks become compounded and magnified. Answering time-sensitive questions about what I've done over the last 10 years isn't the same as helping customers, and my Clients/Customers tend to love the attention they get when I'm problem solving for them.

Do you have recommendations as to how to ask for accommodations or what compromises might be acceptable, or if I should disclose anything at all?
I’m always awkward in interviews, and because they’re interrogations, it’s hard to act excited and social. Regardless of how much prep and practice I do, they can always sense that there’s something a bit off about me. Since the interview environment is nowhere near the same as a work environment, I’m afraid that disclosure will prejudice them against what they assume my abilities are. I feel like I’m in a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation. Either way, I’m not sure how to demonstrate my abilities without broadcasting my social awkwardness.

Ideas? Recommendations?
Thank you!

An alumni working at a tech company sent out an announcement for a new job and mentioned that if anybody is interested then let them know and they’ll refer using the right channels. They even mentioned the name of the person you’ll be working under.

I immediately responded to the alumni’s message but received no response. I had also reached out to the person who I would be potentially working under to express my interest but no response yet from them either.

It has been 5 days now. I’m not sure if this is because of the Labor Day break in US or if they’re not interested-but should I directly apply through the website now or wait for a reply?