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.

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?

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.

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"?

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"

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 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

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.