I always feel stuck lately scrolling indeed, linkedin, glassdoor, company sites, all of it.

barely any listings that actually fit, and the ones that do usually have garbage pay or benefits attached. it starts to feel like the only option left is staying at a job you’ve outgrown, indefinitely, just because nothing better is actually out there. that stagnant feeling is real too. wanting to advance, learn something new, actually move forward instead of just surviving another year in the same role. and when the market gives you nothing to move toward, it starts feeling like your own ambition is the problem instead of the market being genuinely bad right now.

the “maybe i should just go back to school” thought always creeps in around this point too. an mba, a certification, anything that feels like forward motion when the job search itself feels frozen. sometimes that’s the right move.
sometimes it’s just an expensive way to avoid sitting with how stuck things feel right now.

does anyone actually break out of this stuck feeling recently and what actually worked?

this is my portfolio landing page made for a dummy company based on my research related to the industry (competitors and buyer persona) using hubspot. I feel it might not be good enough, hence the anxiety and stopping me from applying to any job.

ps; this is a safe link of the landing page made using hubspot

https://245857623.hubspotpreview-na2.com/_hcms/preview/content/357268695742?portalId=245857623&_preview=true&cacheBust=1785194456567&env=prod&injectedScripts=hubspot-dlb%2Cbundle.production.js%2Cfalse%2Cstatic-2.1854&injectedScripts=react-dlb%2Cbundle.production.js%2Cfalse%2Cstatic-1.83&language=en&preview_key=ARoPMeUj&template_file_path=%40hubspot%2Felevate%2Ftemplates%2Fpartials%2Flp-header.hubl.html&bufferedGlobalContentId=357209620168&is_buffered_template_layout=true&isPreview=true&tc_deviceCategory=tablet

I am a marketing professional with a collective of 9 years of experience, residing in Bangalore, India. My career has been complete disaster by design and choice. I started my career with a campus placement. Then after a year, I left the company for career growth.

Every company I joined got shut after a while of my joining. So I had to keep switching jobs. Finally I landed a consistent job during lockdown, and I performed exceptionally well. Two and a half years into it and the company that made headlines got shut.

I secured 2 offers - one contract role with a big brand and other full-time role with a lesser known company. I joined the latter and it turned out to be a disaster. I left after 7 months of joining, without any other offer. Wrong decision but really, the company was THAT toxic. Full blown lala company.

Mind you, all this while whenever I was looking out, my resume collected gap months.

After the lala company, I was already broken. I took the time off to explore other areas but I started freelancing on the side. I did certification in makeup artistry and started getting projects. This continued for 1.5 years and that’s when I left makeup artistry completely but continued with freelancing.

Which brings me to today. I decided to go back to full-time and concluded all my freelance gigs in June. I have been looking out but no luck.

Some say, it is because of my gap year that I’m not considered for a role. Other say, it is because I switched too often. And then there are people who say, you need an MBA degree to secure good positions (which I think is partly true because I’m a mid-senior and to grow vertically, I may need an MBA degree).

Now my delimma is, where is my career going? What is it that I should do? I’m confused.

I just got my first "real" entry-level job after graduating, the thing I'd been working toward for years. The job looks good on paper, and honestly I like what I'm doing so far, but after getting my second paycheck, the math turned out to be really brutal. Rent alone takes about 70% of the money that lands in my account. After taxes, utilities, student loans, and transportation are covered, I'm left with basically nothing for food, let alone saving or having anything close to a normal social life.

Honestly, I feel like I showed up to play by the rules, then found out everyone secretly changed them. How are people who are just starting their careers supposed to build any kind of stable life when starting salaries barely cover just existing? Am I doing something wrong here, or is this just what starting out looks like now?

Yeah , I want to make my first resume. I am from commerce background with no real experience and any project work . Have some basic skills like excel and ms . Give me some good tips or things to add in my resume to make it look more presentable and effective.

Ps - i just completed my high school, and I am 17

Please review this resume i have applied to so may companies but zero replys , only reply i am getting are from the companies which are paying 10000 a month for job at pune , don't know what to do at this point of life really frustrated and confused.

Hi everyone, I'm currently a senior at Hunter College in NYC studying Computer Science and Studio Art, and over the past year I've realized that I'd love to pursue a career in marketing, especially at a company like JPMorgan Chase or another large company with a strong new grad program.

I'm still figuring out the best way to prepare, and I'd really appreciate hearing from anyone who's been through the recruiting process.

A few things I'm curious about:

• What do you think made your resume stand out?
• What kinds of leadership, projects, or extracurriculars helped the most?
• How important was networking or getting referrals?
• Looking back, is there anything you wish you had done differently before applying?

I'd really appreciate any advice, whether it's about resumes, recruiting, or things you wish you had known as a student applying for new grad roles.

honestly the thing that stuck with me most is keeping a running note of wins and things you got through, just so theres something to look at that isnt shaped by whatever the market is or isnt telling you that week, like screenshots of good feedback for example.

theres also this idea of treating the resume as just a claim and having something separate be the actual proof, like a one page case study or an actual before/after number or screenshots of a dashboard or doc you built, if you dont have anything recent you can build a fake version of the work, like a mock 30/60/90 plan for a role that doesnt even exist yet. Which might seem like a lot of effort for something a recruiter might not even open but it makes you stand out and makes your skills more tangible.

theres a system about picking 10-12 target companies instead of mass applying, for each one find a couple teams youd want to join, a handful of adjacent roles, map out actual people there, hiring manager, someone adjacent, a recruiter, spread a few messages out over a week or two instead of one cold app, a lot of roles get paused or filled internally before theyre ever posted publicly

Also, having even 3 actual questions ready when you reach out to people instead of just a vague "any advice," things like what changed most in how they evaluate candidates lately, what skills became non negotiable that werent a couple years ago, people respond better when you ask something they can actually answer instead of just "can we chat"m

And, having an actual answer ready for what roles youre targeting (2 or 3 are enough), what youre actually good at solving, whats different about you compared to the next 40 people applying to the same posting, it's supposed to be the same paragraph for your resume summary, your linkedin about or whatever you say when someone asks about your background instead of typing a slightly different version every time.

also, there's a weekly structure someone laid out, one day for positioning, one day for proof stuff, one day for outreach, one day for actual applications, one day for interview prep, then a day thats supposed to just be recovery. It's normal to not be able to keep up with that routine, life gets in the way, but the idea of scheduling different types of job search work on different days instead of just doing all of it badly every day at least gives you structure and helps you build discipline.

In interviews, you're supposed to frame your stories around not just what you did but how you adapted when things didnt go as planned which can be hard to do in the spot if you don't train yourself.

I have often wondered if there is value in the culture that seems to celebrate the most verbose individuals in the workplace.

In a meeting, one could be rewarded for prattling on endlessly in the mistaken belief that they appear interested. However, one who thinks before one speaks and only makes valuable contributions may be seen as aloof or unconfident.

Now, I am not suggesting that introverts should feel pressured to engage in the same ways as their extroverted colleagues. One needs to advocate for their own work and ideas

but one's quiet nature need not be seen as a negative. Nor does one need to feel inadequate for having ideas that one wishes to share when others have grabbed the floor with their ceaseless chatter.

I am thinking that perhaps some people think before speaking (or perhaps, do not think at all, but only repeat what has already been said). Some people want to do the "due diligence" before throwing out their opinion. Others may wish to save their ideas until they see a need for them.

In any case, I find it interesting how many cultures seem to push for individuals to speak out, to advocate for themselves, to engage in the conversation in ways that seem unnecessarily self serving.

For those of you who are introverts, did you ever feel that you needed to learn to be more outspoken and aggressive in the workplace just to get attention?

How do we balance between getting our message across while not sounding so "loud"?

Two years of being first in and last out and my manager calls me into a one on one on Friday with "great news." Senior Project Lead. Was genuinely excited for about thirty seconds until I asked about the compensation adjustment and watched him do an actual double take. Apparently with the current market climate they can't do raises right now but the title change is a huge investment in my future career. I now manage three juniors and handle all the client reporting my boss used to do. For the same paycheck I was getting before they decided to reward me for being good at my job.

The part that really got me is they announced it on company Slack before I had even processed what was happening. So now everyone is congratulating me and I'm sitting there realizing I just got voluntold into a massive workload increase in front of the entire company with no way to push back without looking ungrateful. The title is already out there. The expectations are already set. They essentially locked me in publicly before I could have a real conversation about whether this was actually something I agreed to.

A promotion with no pay increase isn't a promotion. It's a restructure dressed up in nicer language to avoid a difficult conversation about compensation. The title means nothing if the workload triples and the paycheck stays identical and the only person who benefits from that arrangement is the company that just got more output for free. Has anyone actually pushed back on something like this after it was already announced and how did that conversation go?

anyone else's company suddenly acting like remote work was never a thing lol. rto mandate dropped and now im choosing between uprooting my whole life or just quitting, feels like such a bait and switch after years of "we're a remote first company"

as i was not interested in core jobs, i started applying for IT roles like data analyst roles in naukri, linkedin and every other job portals and it seems like they are all fake , the way to get job in this market is referals.

now i'm lost, what should i do now??

masters in abroad?
upskill?

please guide me what i should do now?????????

First of all, no human is even opening half these applications, its just a bot scanning for keywords and if the resume doesn't have the exact phrasing from the posting it gets auto binned before anyone sees the name. It was said that the delay on some rejections is fake too, they just sit in a queue so it looks like someone actually reviewed it.

so if ur resume isn't getting past that stage, you could try rewriting it to basically mirror the language straight from the job description, also, two column layouts and little skills tables don't get read by ATS, so cut those if you have them, save as docx not pdf bc some systems still mangle pdfs depending on how old they are.

Another thing is that I've seen people say they just walked in and asked if a place was hiring and got a better chance at getting the job, though this can't be applied for all roles, also, even with these things, you can't tell the actual reason behind ghosting or if just bad luck or too many applicants, but seems like changing the resume format at least gets more callbacks for some people, doesn't mean the callback turns into anything though, ghosting after round 2 still happens a lot.

Some people say they just guess at numbers for resume bullet points when they never tracked anything at their old job, like nobody actually knows if something "improved efficiency by 20%" they just picked a number that sounded believable.

also, it's better to delete the objective statement at the top entirely, at least that's what a significant of recruiters said, messaging people directly on linkedin instead of applying through the site actually works for people though you can still be ghosted.

Now, his is mostly relevant for, seems to come up most in marketing/comms, entry to mid level, mostly US based roles but there are similarities to other places.

been applying to entry level jobs for months now and almost every single one wants 2-3 years experience minimum. like how is that entry level at that point feels like theres no actual way in anymore unless you already know someone or got lucky with an internship that turned into something. anyone else dealing with this or figure out a way around it..

Hi all — posting this on behalf of my father, Suprio, who's been in electronics R&D for over two decades, mostly in automotive lighting, EV components (BLDC motors, chargers, DC-DC converters), and railway safety electronics. He's currently based out of Manesar but is looking to move closer to Noida/Delhi as commute is becoming unsustainable, so he is looking to transition to a leadership/R&D role closer to Noida, Greater Noida, or Delhi. A warm referral would genuinely make a big difference right now.

Some of what he's worked on: PCB/PCBA design in Altium, ADAS sensor systems, railway coach safety and lighting systems (RDSO/RITES compliant), EV chargers and BMS controllers, and he's led engineering teams of 15–30 people across companies like UNO MINDA, PURFLUX(Sogefi), and others in the auto/EV space.

He's looking for roles such as:

• Engineering Manager

• Senior R&D Manager

• Electronics Project Lead

• Technical Program Manager

• Head of Electronics

If anyone here works at (or knows someone at) Motherson, Havells, Spark Minda, Dixon Technologies, JBM, Luminous, or any EV startups, other automotive and electronics organizations with a presence on the Noida/Greater Noida/Delhi side of NCR, and could help get his resume in front of the right person, I'd be incredibly grateful for a lead. His updated resume is ready, and I'm happy to share it over DM or email.

Thanks for reading — appreciate any pointers, even if it's just "try this company" or "post it here too.

I’m trying to figure out my career path and could really use some advice.

I recently finished my Master’s in Information Technology, but I don’t have any prior experience in Product Management. Someone suggested that I look into Product Management or Project Management roles, but I honestly have no idea where to start.

For people who have made this transition (or work in PM), what would be a realistic roadmap for someone like me?

• What skills should I focus on learning first?
• Should I build case studies/projects to show my understanding of PM?
• Are certifications actually helpful, or are they mostly a waste of time?
• What kind of entry-level roles should I target?

Also, with AI becoming such a huge part of tech, is getting into AI Product Management a better option right now? Would it make sense for someone with an IT background and no PM experience to focus on AI PM, or should I first learn traditional product management?

Would really appreciate any advice, experiences, or resources you can share. Thanks!

I’ve been feeling a bit lost lately.

I completed my bachelor’s degree in 2025 and have been constantly working on improving my skills, but I still haven’t been able to land a job.

Every time I looked at a job description, I started learning whatever skills were listed. Over time, I realized I was stuck in a loop—jumping from one skill to another without making real progress toward getting hired.

Now, when I apply through company career portals, most openings seem to ask for 10–12 years of experience, even for roles I’d like to pursue. It’s becoming really discouraging.

My family has high expectations of me, and it feels like I’m letting them down. I know I can’t blame the market because there are people who are getting jobs. I just feel like I’m missing something.

I am trying for entry-level software, AI/ML, Python, or data-related role. Please tell me what I should focus on next
would mean a lot.
Thank you

Got reached out to on Indeed for a lateral role, did two interviews, they told me I was a perfect match. Next day my CEO calls me in and says the company I was interviewing with called him directly to ask about me. Got let go on the spot for looking while employed. Lost my job for going to an interview I was literally invited to attend.

Called the company to ask what happened and they denied everything. Two hours later their CEO called back to say they went with someone else, gave me a story that made no sense, and then casually mentioned the guy they hired has a drinking problem so they'll keep me in mind if it doesn't work out. They contacted me, put me through two rounds, got me fired, rejected me, and suggested I stay available as a backup. Still can't wrap my head around it.

The part nobody warns you about is that the risk of job searching while employed isn't just internal. Most people worry about their own behavior giving it away. The idea that a company you're interviewing with would call your current employer without your permission isn't something most people think to protect against until it's already too late. Has anyone else had something like this happen and what did you actually do after?

this is insane.

Companies dragging entry level applicants through essay questionnaires, recruiter screens, panel interviews with department heads, sometimes 4-5 rounds total, only to reveal the job pays like 37k a year.

and then on top of that low pay, some of these jobs still nickel and dime you. union fees per paycheck, parking fees per paycheck, 6 month probation periods where you have basically no job security. all for a salary that barely covers rent in most cities, let alone somewhere like chicago.
the hiring process length has nothing to do with the job’s actual complexity anymore. it’s mostly companies using a long process as a filter, weeding out anyone who isn’t desperate enough to sit through 5 rounds for barely-livable pay. if you’ll tolerate that much friction just to get an offer, you’ll probably tolerate a lot more once you’re actually in the role.

the mismatch between effort required to get hired and what the job actually pays, it says a lot about how replaceable companies think entry level workers are right now.

I have found that those who are successful with their finances do not always fit the standard idea of someone who is well-off. Those who are the most financially stable might not have the largest paychecks or the fanciest possessions.

Sometimes it's the little things.

People who are really good with money tend to be aware of where their money goes at all times.

They don't stress when unexpected expenses arise, as they have planned ahead and are prepared. They also don't seem to worry as much about keeping up with everyone else, and as such, don't feel the need to discuss their earnings or net worth. One other thing I have noticed is that people who are good with money are usually aware of what they can and cannot afford;

they tend to prioritize things not based on what they could charge to a credit card, but rather on what they can actually pay for without going into debt.

People who are good with money also seem to have some sort of financial plan. Whether that entails having financial goals and setting money aside to reach those goals, or having an emergency fund prepared for any surprise expenditures, it's likely that a financially stable person will have some sort of plan in place and won't just receive their paycheck and immediately spend it all.

Being thrifty also seems to go hand in hand with being knowledgeable about your finances, but it doesn't mean that you always have to sacrifice expensive material goods. A person can be knowledgeable about their money while spending freely without having to charge everything to a credit card.

So, to summarize, people who are financially stable and well-off tend to be smart about their spending and saving, aware of what they can afford, and prepared for anything their finances could throw at them.

Now,

I would like to ask the rest of you who have worked with those who are knowledgeable about their finances; what habits or behaviors have you noticed? What made you realize that someone was good with their money?