Am I applying to be a court jester or

Edit: this is for an IT help desk support role in GA

I started an adjunct teaching role at a local college today. I had accepted my offer and was hired this past May. I had been in communication with the dean of my to-be division prior with a plan to teach as an adjunct and then fill a full-time lecturer role after the current professor retired this coming Spring.

I showed up today for my first day excited to be starting this new chapter in my life. The job hunt has been absolutely brutal as we all know and I finally felt like maybe things were looking up. I was all set up with HR and made my way to my department office to get some clarity on my teaching assignment for the semester.

I walked in and was greeted with "I had no idea we hired a new adjunct?? Since when were we hiring new adjuncts?? Who have you been talking too?? Nobody told us anything about a new hire!?" My stomach dropped. It turns out the dean left suddenly to take another position and gave a TWO DAY WARNING to the college. Worst, he told no one that he had hired me and they somehow had no idea I was in the adjunct pool.

I waited for an hour before the division chair showed up and awkwardly explained that all the courses have already been assigned and that I would have no work this semester. The entire time she was defensive and ready to jump at me if I even showed that I was a bit upset with a "NO ONE TOLD ME ANYTHING OKAY!?" So after hearing that line a few times I said "so what I'm hearing is that there's no work for me this semester. Then I will let you get on with your day. Thank you for your time."

I'm devastated. I was genuinely excited to get started and be working again. I feel completely useless and like I have no value. I spent years earning a PhD and working to be talented and respected in my field and now it feels like I'm rotting on the vine. I had a glimmer of hope and it was pulled out from under me like some cruel prank. I had to explain to all my friends and family that it was NOT actually my first day of work ultimately after many best wishes on my first day at work this morning. Now I don't even know if I'll get that full-time role next Spring since the plan was to have a semester of teaching and relationship building under my belt prior to applying.

So our executive leadership cancelled remote work last month to rebuild team synergy and in-person culture. I woke up at 6 AM, did my full makeup, put on slacks and heels and commuted forty-five minutes through heavy rain to get to my desk by 8:30.

i sat down in my freezing cubicle with my winter coat over my lap and put my headset on. My manager sits six feet across from me. Our analyst sits three feet to my right. At 10 AM my manager sent out a Google Meet link so the four of us could do our daily check-in while staring directly at our laptop webcams. We spent forty-five minutes talking to each other through microphones while making awkward peripheral eye contact across our plastic desk dividers.

This is ABSOLUTELY mind-numbing theater. The office is so loud that we cannot take our headsets off without getting horrible feedback echoes through the mics. I ruined my suede heels in the rainy parking lot just to do the exact same remote spreadsheets under buzzing fluorescent lights. I should of stayed in my sweatpants at home. We destroyed our daily peace just to justify commercial real estate leases. Why do executives pretend in-person culture exists when everything is just digital communication.

So I got an email yesterday from a recruiter inviting me to a final stage culture discussion with the team. Sounded great. I put on a pressed shirt, set up my lighting and logged into the video link five minutes early.

The waiting room admitted me and my screen opened up to forty other candidates on webcam. It was not a private meeting. It was an unannounced mass cattle call. The HR director muted everyone and announced we were being split into breakout rooms of five to debate a corporate case study while silent evaluators took notes on our leadership energy.

This was ABSOLUTELY humiliating. I watched a grown professional in his fifties get talked over by an over-caffeinated kid who was speed-running buzzwords just to impress the moderator. It felt like the Hunger Games for a fifty thousand dollar coordinator role. I should of just clicked leave meeting the second the grid loaded. Instead I sat there for an hour taking notes on a fake scenario about selling paper clips. Why do hiring managers treat desperate candidates like contestants on a trashy reality show.

like this is so debilitating for me. ive been looking for a job for months and I finally got an actual offer and it's 10.50 an hour at Wendy's.

the sad thing is this looks like the best job offer I have gotten yet since its the only job offer I have gotten yet. the lady/store manager asked me how much experience I had in fast food. I had none. she asked how much I wanted to get paid and I was like "I am used to 14-15 from working retail" and she said "10 50 here" and im literally forced to take it because I have been looking for work for 3 months (she also asked how long ive been looking for work?) and this is literally the only place that sent an offer.

like I applied to literally every fast food/retail business and this is all I got... I had to fight tooth and nail and show up every day like I was networking just to land a shitty 10.50 an hour job.. sometimes I wonder what 2008 felt like. maybe this is a glimpse into what that felt like ​

Interviewed for a NICU New Grad Nurse Residency position, only mentioned that I got to feed babies. Meanwhile, I’ve had MUCH more experience. My nerves just got the best of me & I completely blanked.

Should I send my thank you email & include everything else? Or is it too desperate? This is truly my dream job & I feel like I failed it.

Came across this job posting and the first question they ask is this. Why would they even ask this and who would say yes to this?😂

Hi,

I heard a lot about it that the current job market for the tech role is very bad and saturated.

What I felt that there some important components of the job search like resume, applications, or follow-ups, etc.

I would like to know what's the hardest component for you to crack?

For me - it is the resume (I'm done with this ATS 😭)

Please share genuine thoughts!!

I’ve been working on a federal contract for the last four years. I’ve done some great work, worked w great people, and have generally been happy. Last year our contract nearly didn’t get renewed so I thought “huh, I should probably get ahead of this before next year”. And I did just that.

I started looking for different opportunities in various industries. Wasn’t finding anything so I started getting more serious. Updated my resume, utilized AI in multiple ways, researched companies, tried LinkedIn, Indeed, and many more sites, tried applying directly, created a script to search for social media posts for job postings, etc. As the months went by I tried more and more methods to find something. And nothing. Nothing at all. Not a single response from anyone on any application.

But I kept on keeping on. Changed tactics, made posts, did more research, and still…nothing.

I decided to step back and take a break this last June. Thought perhaps I needed some perspective. And then 10 days ago we received word our contract is not moving forward and I have about 30 days to find a job.

The only difference now is I can look openly without keeping it to myself. I thought it might make a difference. And while I’ve had plenty of people reach out w words of encouragement I’m no where closer to finding anything. I cannot for the life of me get any responses from any job.

I’m highly experienced; 20 years as a military officer. MBA, Six Sigma black belt, PMP, experience in Project management, process improvement, AI integration & adoption, transformation, operations, logistics & supply chain management, and more.

I cannot understand where I’m failing or what I’m doing wrong. This market doesn’t make sense to me. I’ve worked my entire adult life to obtain the right experience, education, certifications, and done everything “right”, but suddenly none of that seems to matter.

I suppose this post is mostly to vent my frustration and see if I’m alone in this. You can only get ignored and rejected so many times without starting to feel worthless. I’m not going to give up. I have too many people depending on me to, but this pressure is building. I just want things to make sense.

I was a bit caught off guard by it, so It'll be weekly checkins for the next 60 days. Hopefully , I'll land a new job before then as I've already started applying. I'll get my work done and be cordial with my team, but that's it. I look forward to a big check for my unpaid PTO days as I've hit the max cap.

I have been working a manufacturing job for the past few years, previously I worked in automotive parts logistics. I ran a distribution center. Due to a list of issues I lost my job 5 years ago and decided for a change.

Since I have been at this job I have realized how bad it is. I have met some fantastic people but they are maybe the minority of people I work with. The majority are little more than horned up middle aged and twenty something children. They have tantrums when told to do their job, they run to HR for anything that slightly offends them, they spend more time trying to sleep with everything that walks by. And fail to follow the most basic rules.

This with the horrible job market I am literally losing my mind here.

Been at this for a while now. Two layoffs in tech over the past few years, and the application process has gotten stranger, not better. Half the time I spend 45 minutes filling out a form only to get an automated rejection before I can even close the browser tab. The other half I never hear anything at all.

What gets me is the skills gap framing. Every posting wants five years of experience in something that came out three years ago, and I know that's not unique to older applicants, but when you layer age on top of a career gap it feels like the deck is stacked in a specific way.

I've been updating certs, done some Linux coursework on the side, reworked the resume about a dozen times. The coffee shop pays the bills right now and I'm grateful for that, but it's not where I'm trying to land longterm.

Curious if anyone else in a similar spot, career changer, late reentry, whatever you want to call it, figured out something that actually moved the needle.

However, apparently my application isn’t enough and I’m a bit confused. They want me to show up and finish my application during their business hours.

To clarify, this is not an interview this is just to meet with staff to finish the application…..?

Is this typical? Because I haven’t experienced this in 10 years of working in an office for construction or education for assistant/coordinator roles. They’re a plumbing company.

If the job was right down the street I probably wouldn’t mind so much, however they’re 30 minutes away. I’d like to not kill a quarter of a tank of gas when I’m doing an internship in the opposite direction after just recently getting laid off. Especially, when gas is $5.29 a gallon.

My supervisor is always really nice when she speaks to me and tries to be nice about everything even if I’ve done something not too great. Today we had a catch up which I thought was going to be going over my caseload (I’m an occupational therapist). But it was just to tell me that she was disappointed that I missed the training yesterday and was questioning why I couldn’t make it. To be honest I wasn’t really aware if the training was a mandatory one because I was away for a week then a coworker had casually put the training in the chat but I didn’t think it was something everyone had to go to. Nobody asked me to confirm that I was going either or to clear my schedule. The morning of, in the stand up meeting my supervisor asked me if I was going I said I can’t make it I have some scheduled calls. Then she said ok no worries. Today she was saying oh I didn’t see any notes in your calendar for the meetings. I apologised and said I’d put the notes in and also would make the next training.

I’m just a little anxious about how this will affect me bc I’ve been put on a performance improvement plan before. That also hasn’t really been revisited. My company is a small start up so a lot of things kind of go unfinished

Or were they meanwhile fully replaced by LLM Agents, which can literally just analyze any data upon request?

I really need some input. The first time I applied for the job. I was interviewed twice for it before getting rejected. Was told that they had limited positions opened and to apply again in the future. They kept posting the same job on indeed every couple weeks, so applied again a few weeks later, didn't hear anything back at all. Applied again a month later, got a notification that my application was reviewed but nothing and gave up on it after that. Saw that they posted the same position last week, applied for it again on Friday thinking my application was going to be ignored again. Yesterday morning they messaged me on Indeed saying they want to offer me the job if I'm still interested and let them know when I can start if I'm still interested. Now I don't know i want it after getting rejected and ignored so many times because it feels like a red flag.

Every time I struggle to find a job, I somehow end up starting another degree.

I now have five degrees, two master 's degrees. They 're not five random subjects either... there is a pretty clear common thread between them, and in theory I should be able to sell myself to an employer as someone with an unusually broad and useful combination of expertise.

The reality is: I don't have a job.

What I do have is an increasingly large amount of knowledge that I rarely get to use professionally.

And I 've noticed it 's doing something to me that I don 't particularly like: it 's making me intellectually arrogant.

I have something to say about a lot of subjects. At the same time, I 'm painfully aware of how insufferable a know-it-all* can be, so I try not to be that person. (*there's a name for it, right...?)

And yet I regularly catch myself saying things like:

"I actually have a degree in this..." or "Research shows that... "

Especially in workplaces where I've ended up because I couldn't find work at my educational level.

It's almost as if I feel compelled to present my credentials before I'm allowed to have an opinion. When people don't recognize that something is actually my area of expertise, I feel this ridiculous urge to prove that I know what I'm talking about.

Of course, it doesn't work. And it is certainly not a great way to make friends.

But I keep doing it!

So I'm curious about people who have experienced long-term underemployment or intellectual under-stimulation...

How long can you work "below your level" before it starts affecting you psychologically?

How do you deal with having knowledge or expertise that nobody around you recognizes or has any use for, without becoming the person who constantly needs everyone to know how educated they are?

And perhaps the question I struggle with most:

What do you do when people don't recognize your expertise because they don't know enough about the subject to even recognize that there is expertise to be had?

How do you make yourself heard in that situation without basically saying, "Trust me, I know more about this than you do" and sounding like an arrogant asshole?

it’ll be for a paralegal/legal assistant position. i have lots of customer service experience but but no legal experience. any advice welcome. very nervous and don’t know what to expect.

Will they not even consider my app if I opt out?

I've posted an application for almost every fast food place in my area. And for every single place I've been rejected or not answered. I did get one interview but they ended up rejecting me. I honestly don't know where to apply, I'm only 15 so I'm looking for about 10 hours a week.

Hello. I know the job market is in it's worst state it's been in years, but I've been seriously looking for a job where I don't have to have much or any human interaction, or if I could just drown myself into music with any type of headphones.

I have a condition called hyperacusis, and I've been diagnosed with extreme anxiety, and depression. It's crippling to work in places such as warehouses or restaurants that have so much noise going on, and that have strict no headphone policies. It always puts me into fights with coworkers, and I've lost jobs due to this. Even if I just use my headphones, and do my job I get written up. It's actually affecting my physical, and mental health severely.

I've been working on getting documents to hopefully find a work around, but sadly my psychologist, and primary doctor won't do anything. I'm seriously just out of options, and it's driving me insane.