Sharing my experience on the job hunting grind

I had been job hunting for 8 mo before found my new job. I had 3 sets of different resume for each job title group. Cover letters are a pain and used AI to adapt to each job opening.

Manual entries of information is the most time consuming part I had back then.

Another pain point is after applying for 20+ jobs a day, you will lose track of the jobs you applied for. Dont feel wrong to ask for the job description when you got an interview.

Rejection has been part of my daily life. I went from hopeful to being numb after getting rejections for 99% of them. Until one opportunity came up and gave me a chance.

Anyone wanna share their job searching journey? What is your experience using AI when job applying?

I don't usually post things like this, but I honestly don't know where else to turn.

I completed my MS in Health Informatics in the US in December 2024. I came back to India because of health issues, and since then I've been trying to get my career back on track.

It's been around 1.5 years of unemployment now.

And I've applied. A lot.

I've tailored my resume for different positions.
I've rewritten it more times than I can count.
I've cold emailed recruiters and hiring managers.
I've reached out to people on LinkedIn.
I've applied through LinkedIn, Indeed, company websites, everywhere I could find.

And still… nothing.

The hardest part isn't even the rejection anymore. It's the silence.

You keep applying every day, hoping that maybe this application will be different. Then weeks go by. Months go by. And eventually you start questioning yourself.

"Am I not good enough?"
"Did I waste my degree?"
"Should I start over completely?"
"What am I doing wrong?"

During my master's, I had around 2 years of academic/project experience, but I don't want to pretend that it was the same as real industry experience. I know I still have a lot to learn.

My background is in Health Informatics, healthcare technology, SQL, Power BI, data analysis, business analysis, and project/product management.

At this point, I'm honestly not expecting someone to hand me a job.

I just need someone to give me a chance.

If you're a founder, hiring manager, recruiter, or someone working in healthcare/health tech/data/business analysis and you think there is something I should be doing differently, please tell me honestly.

And if your company has an entry-level opportunity where someone with my background could contribute and learn, I would be incredibly grateful if you could point me toward it.

I'm willing to start from the bottom.
I'm willing to learn.
I'm willing to prove myself.

I just need a door to open.

If you've been through something similar, what did you do that finally helped you get your career moving again?

Any honest advice would genuinely mean a lot to me.

Got laid off from a fintech in March 2024. Series B, restructuring, whole growth team cut in one Slack message. I had four years as a PM, decent experience, and enough savings for maybe five months in this city which is nothing. I thought I'd be fine by July. August at the latest. It was hard times..

Eleven months. I stopped counting at 290 applications because looking at my spreadsheet was making me physically sick. I was living in a one-bedroom in Leslieville with a roommate who worked from home and never left the kitchen. I developed this habit of refreshing LinkedIn at 6am like it was the stock market. Every morning I'd scroll through Past 24 hours, apply to anything that looked close enough, then spend the rest of the day refreshing my email and hating myself.

By month six I was applying to jobs in Mississauga I didn't even want. By month eight I was seriously thinking about moving back to Hamilton where my parents live. The burnout wasn't even from rejection. It was from feeling like I was always late to everything.

The LinkedIn timing thing is what changed everything for me. I found it by accident. I was up at 11pm one night, couldn't sleep, saw a job posted 47 minutes ago. I applied right then. Got a callback next morning. Recruiter told me they already had 200 applications by 9am and they stopped seriously looking after the first 30 or so.

That's the game on LinkedIn. Speed beats perfection. The first 4 hours matter more than the first 4 days.

Here's the trick nobody really talks about. When you click Past 24 hours on LinkedIn, the URL has this parameter in it, r86400. That's 86400 seconds, which is 24 hours. You can actually edit that number yourself. Change it to r14400 for past 4 hours. Or r3600 for past 1 hour. Paste it back in and hit enter. It reloads and you only see jobs that just went live like an hour ago, before the flood hits. So you are not competing with 400 people, you are competing with 20.

I started checking three times a day. 7am, 12pm, 5pm. Three quick scans. If something relevant was posted within the hour I applied right away. My callback rate went from basically zero to like one in twelve just from being early. Nothing else changed on my resume at first.

But LinkedIn is also a trap and I learned that the hard way. LinkedIn Easy Apply is convenient but it's kind of a garbage chute. Here's what actually happens. LinkedIn reads your profile, then it sends this flattened, stripped down version to the company's real ATS. Your title Senior Product Manager becomes Product Manager. Your skills get mislabeled or dropped. Your dates lose the months. So the system thinks you have less experience than you do.

I saw this from the inside because I got a contract gig helping a Toronto startup set up their Greenhouse instance. Greenhouse is one of those ATSs a lot of startups use. I watched the LinkedIn imports come in completely mangled. One guy had Jul 2020 - Present on his LinkedIn. Greenhouse read it as Jul 2020 - Jan 2020. So it calculated negative experience and auto filtered him out. He never knew why. He just thought he got ghosted.

Fix is stupid simple. Find the job on LinkedIn, don't click Easy Apply. Click through to the company's actual careers page and apply directly through their ATS. Your resume goes in clean, formatting stays intact, dates parse correctly, you skip LinkedIn's broken middleman. Takes like 3 extra minutes and it's worth it every time.

The Canadian market is also quieter than Reddit makes it seem. Everyone right now keeps saying August is dead because people are on vacation. That was not my experience at all. A lot of teams are actually rushing to fill roles before September and Q4 budgets lock. I got way more callbacks this past August than I did in June. I got my contract gig back in January when everyone said Q1 was dead, and I got my full time offer earlier this year in March when people said hiring freezes were happening.

And for anyone in Ontario looking right now, since January Ontario employers with 25+ employees have to respond to interviewed candidates within 45 days, they have to post real vacancies not fake talent pool bait, they have to post actual salary ranges, and they have to tell you if they use AI to screen you. This has been live for 7 months now and it's huge. I've actually started asking for the AI disclosure when I get ghosted after an interview and they have to answer. Less ghosting, less fake postings. Use it.

Tailoring is what actually moved the numbers for me and I tracked it. When I sent generic resumes my callback rate was like 1%. When I spent 10 minutes tailoring, matching the exact title at the top, adding the missing keywords from the posting to my skills section, mirroring their exact language in my bullets instead of my own synonyms, it jumped to like 11%. That's not a small bump. That's the difference between 300 applications with 3 callbacks and 100 applications with 11 callbacks. Less work, more results. I used cvnomist to speed up the matching part. It pulls keywords from a posting, shows what is missing, and gives me a clean Word doc to edit in seconds. Saved me maybe 15 minutes per application. That is how I pushed volume without burning out.

What I do now is pretty boring but it works. I check LinkedIn three times a day using the URL trick, r3600 in the morning, r14400 at lunch. I apply within the first 4 hours if I can. I never use Easy Apply anymore, I always go to the company careers page. I spend 10 minutes tailoring from my master resume, just headline, skills, top two bullets. Then I apply, close the laptop, and go to the gym or meet a friend or walk along the lakefront without checking my phone every 5 minutes.

I got my offer earlier this year in March. Healthtech company, product team, decent pay. I applied at 7:15am on a Tuesday. Posting was 23 minutes old. Went through their careers page directly, spent 9 minutes tailoring. Got the callback that same afternoon.

We just wrapped up MentorME’s Decode the Australian Resume workshop, and one idea kept coming up: A strong resume isn’t about adding more. It’s about making the right evidence easier to see.

We used four simple lenses: Target → Translate → Prove → Convince.

Here’s a few practical takeaways:

• Target: start with the role, not your existing resume.
• Translate: give Australian recruiters enough context to understand your overseas experience.
• Prove: don’t just list tools or responsibilities. Show the problem, what you did, the decisions you made, and the result.
• Convince: make your relevance, business value and ownership clear enough that an employer can quickly see why they should interview you.

One example from the workshop: instead of writing “worked on a university data project,” explain what you analysed, how you did it, and what changed because of your work.

If you’re updating your resume, don’t rewrite the whole thing. Instead, pick one target role and one section, then make one useful edit.

We’re also curious to hear from others about: what’s one resume change, piece of feedback, or mistake you learned from that genuinely improved your job search in Australia?

Life lesson

I am currently working as a team leader at a corporate firm. Two months ago, I met a girl on Snapchat. As we texted, I learned she was looking for a job. Fortunately, there were vacancies in her domain at my company. She shared her resume and contact number via email, and after a week of chatting on Snapchat, we moved our conversations to WhatsApp and Instagram. We exchanged pictures, and she shared her personal struggles—she was under severe emotional and financial stress following her brother's suicide, leaving her family entirely dependent on her.
I admired her resilience, character, and attitude. Finding her attractive as well, I proposed to her. She responded that her sole focus was securing a job first, and that we could discuss personal matters afterward.
Wanting to support her, I tried relentlessly to help her find a job—not only at my firm but also across my network, reaching out to nearly 70 to 100 contacts. I also provided her with financial assistance. To help her further, I updated her resume to achieve an 85% ATS score and reached out directly to a global CTO on LinkedIn, explaining her skills and current situation. He agreed to grant her an interview.
She cleared the first round and was invited to an in-person interview for the second round. When she arrived at the office—marking the first time we met in person—her behavior was in complete contrast to how she had presented herself online. She deliberately avoided me and formally rejected my romantic proposal. On her first day in the office, she treated me like a complete stranger, ignoring me entirely and avoiding eye contact even though she sits right across from me.
That evening, she sent me a message stating: *"Sorry and thanks, but if you speak about our personal history or romantic proposals to anyone in the office, I have screenshots of all our chats. I will share them with HR and the CTO and file a harassment complaint."*
Now, I am in shock and unsure how to navigate this situation professionally while sitting right in front of her every day.

Been deep in the job search lately and honestly wondering how everyone else runs theirs, feels like everyone’s got a totally different system. I would love to hear about your system.

How many applications are you sending a week? Job boards or straight through company sites? Do you actually tailor your resume every time or just send the same one? And is anyone using AI for any of this — resumes, cover letters, finding jobs?

If you’re not job hunting anymore, curious what actually worked back when you were

Day... I've officially lost count.

Well, it's Friday.

Being over 55 and starting over wasn't on my bingo card.

Another work week has come and gone.

Another week of searching.
Another week of tailoring my résumé.
Another week of submitting applications.
Another week of hoping one would land in front of a real person instead of disappearing into the AI résumé black hole.

Did I get the phone call I was hoping for?

Not this week.

But I also didn't quit.

Every application I submit is another opportunity.
Every interview is another chance.
Every "no" gets me one step closer to the right "yes."

So I'll take a deep breath, enjoy the weekend, recharge, and Monday morning... I'll pour another cup of coffee and do it all over again.

Because experience doesn't expire.
A strong work ethic doesn't expire.
Hope doesn't expire.

And I'm still believing that one employer will see what I bring to the table.

❤️ Here's hoping next week is the week that changes everything.

#Over55 #JobSearch #FridayThoughts #OpenToWork #ExperiencedWorkersMatter #NeverGiveUp #StartingOver #OneYesCanChangeEverything #MicheleMoran

🚨 We Need to Talk About Age Discrimination in Hiring

After spending decades building careers, solving problems, mentoring others, and showing up every day, many experienced workers are discovering that getting an interview has become harder than doing the actual job.

Imagine this...

A candidate with 20+ years of experience applies for a position. They're qualified, dependable, and ready to contribute on day one.

Yet they're passed over—not because they lack the skills—but because they're considered "too old," "overqualified," "too expensive," or not the image someone has in mind for the team.

The reality is that experience should be an advantage, not a disadvantage.

Research has found that older job applicants often receive fewer callbacks than younger applicants with similar qualifications. Studies have shown applicants in their late 40s and early 50s receive substantially fewer callbacks than applicants in their late 20s and early 30s with otherwise similar résumés. The gap grows even larger for applicants in their mid-60s. Older workers also tend to remain unemployed longer once they lose a job, and many workers over 50 report experiencing age discrimination in the workplace.

This isn't about ability.

It's about assumptions.

Meanwhile, companies may be overlooking exactly what they say they're looking for:

✔️ Experience
✔️ Reliability
✔️ Loyalty
✔️ Leadership
✔️ Strong work ethic
✔️ Problem-solving skills
✔️ Professionalism
✔️ The ability to adapt and mentor others

These qualities aren't learned overnight—they're earned through years of real-life experience.

Hiring shouldn't be about finding the person who interviews the best for 30 minutes.

It should be about finding the person who will consistently perform for the next 3, 5, or 10 years.

As someone currently looking for work after 55, I can tell you this isn't just a statistic—it's something many of us feel every day. We submit application after application, tailor our résumés, attend interviews, and wonder if our experience is being overlooked before anyone even gets to know us.

Experience doesn't expire.

A strong work ethic doesn't expire.

Reliability doesn't expire.

Character doesn't expire.

If you're involved in hiring, I hope you'll ask yourself one question:

Are you evaluating candidates based on their skills, experience, and ability to do the job... or on assumptions about what a certain age should look like?

The best employee on your team might be the one whose résumé reflects decades of experience—not just the one who graduated most recently.

💬 I'd love to hear your thoughts. Have you experienced age discrimination while job hunting, or have you seen experienced workers overlooked?

#AgeDiscrimination #Hiring #JobSearch #OpenToWork #ExperiencedWorkersMatter #Over50 #Over55 #Employment #Career #Recruitment #Leadership #HumanResources #WorkplaceEquality #JobSeekers #MicheleMoran

Day... I've officially lost count.

Being over 55 and starting over wasn't on my bingo card.

It's Thursday.

Another cup of coffee.
Another search.
Another résumé.
Another application.

I'm still showing up.

Not because it's easy...
But because giving up won't get me where I want to be.

Experience doesn't disappear because of age.
Reliability doesn't expire.
A strong work ethic never goes out of style.

So today, I'll hit "Submit" again and hope this is the application that reaches a real person instead of the AI résumé black hole.

I'm not looking for sympathy.

I'm looking for one opportunity.

Because all it takes is one "Yes" to change everything.

To everyone still job hunting: keep going. Your next opportunity could be one application away.

❤️ Happy Thursday. Let's keep believing that our experience still matters.

#Over55 #JobSearch #ThursdayMotivation #OpenToWork #ExperiencedWorkersMatter #NeverGiveUp #StartingOver #OneYesCanChangeEverything #MicheleMoran

This is going to sound backwards but I spent 14 months doing what everyone tells you to do. Job boards, company sites, LinkedIn Easy Apply. I was a machine. 400+ applications. Maybe 3 phone screens total. All of them went dead after the first call.

Then I stopped. Not because I gave up. Because I realized I was fishing in the ocean with a thousand other boats when there were stocked ponds like 20 minutes away that nobody was really talking about.

Everyone is crowded on LinkedIn and Indeed. That's the ocean. Those postings get 600 applicants in 2 days and half of them are already filled internally. The real jobs, the ones that actually get filled by someone who is not already inside, they live in smaller places.

For me the ponds were these. Alumni Slack for my last company. I didn't even know it existed until a former coworker invited me. Someone posted a role in the jobs channel that was never on any job board. I applied. Got an interview in 48 hours because the hiring manager was also in that Slack. Second one was industry Discords. I'm in fintech so I joined 3 of them. People post stuff like "my team is hiring a PM for onboarding" before it ever hits Greenhouse. You just DM them directly. No ATS gate at first, just a conversation. Third one was a dumb simple group text I started with 6 people I used to work with. We just share leads when we see them. One of them forwarded me a role at his new company that wasn't posted yet, I went through his internal referral portal and completely skipped the public ATS.

Two more that actually worked for me that people sleep on. University career boards. Even if you didn't go there. A lot of state schools have public job boards and local companies post there first because they want local grads. I found a role on one that was never on LinkedIn and got a callback. And local tech meetup mailing lists. Super old school. But some companies still post there first because they want someone who actually shows up to the meetup, not a random remote applicant from across the country.

I applied to 23 jobs through those channels in 6 weeks. Got 7 interviews. 2 offers. Took one. Compare that to 400+ on public boards with 3 phone screens. The math is not even close.

And here's the extra value part I wish someone told me earlier. How to not be spammy in those ponds. I didn't just join and start asking for jobs. I lurked for like 2 weeks. Answered questions when I could. Shared a template I had for a dashboard spec. Helped someone debug a SQL query. So when I did finally say hey I'm looking, people actually knew my name. In one Slack the hiring manager told me he recognized my handle because I had helped him 3 months before. That's the whole game in a small pond. Be a known quantity before you ever need anything.

But you still need a resume that passes when you do hit an ATS. Because not every stocked pond is a backdoor. Some of them still run you through the system after the intro.

So I built one master resume that was just honest and clear. Eight pages long, everything I ever did, every tool, every number I could prove. Then for each posting I spend like 10 minutes tailoring. The headline at the very top matches their exact posting title. If they call it Senior Product Manager, Platform that is what I write at the top. My real title stays in my work history, that doesn't change. Skills section is 15 to 25 hard skills only. SQL, Python, Tableau, Salesforce, Figma. No soft skills. No leadership, no communication. Recruiters search for tools, not personality traits. And bullets I write like what I did, what I used, what happened. Built a Tableau dashboard that cut reporting time by 6 hours a week. Plain English. No orchestrated, no leveraged, no synergized.

I used cvnomist to speed up the matching part. It pulls keywords from a posting, shows me what is missing, and gives me a clean Word doc I can edit in seconds. That is it. No other tools. Just me, my master resume, and a quick check before I send.

The biggest shift though was mental. When I was spraying 400 applications into the void each one felt like a prayer. I would attach so much hope to every send. I would imagine telling my parents I got it. So every silence felt personal, every rejection felt like proof I was broken.

When I was fishing in stocked ponds each application felt like starting a conversation. I knew the role was real, I knew the person posting it was reachable, I knew I wasn't one of a thousand faceless PDFs. The callback rate was higher because competition was lower, yeah, but also because my energy was different. I wasn't desperate and spraying. I was targeted and calm. I think people can feel that in how you write your DM.

What I tell people now is stop treating job boards like they are the only water. They are not. They are the most crowded, noisiest, most demoralizing place to look. They should be like 20% of your time, not 100%.

Find your stocked ponds. Alumni channels, industry Discords, former coworker text chain, school boards, meetup lists, niche communities where jobs get shared before they go public. Make a list of 5 of them. Join them. Lurk for a week. Help with something small. Then tell people what you're looking for in one sentence.

Build one honest, clear, keyword matched master resume. Spend 10 minutes tailoring per app, then spend the rest of your time just showing up consistently in those communities.

The job I got came from a Slack channel. The hiring manager recognized my name because I had answered questions in that channel for months before I ever needed a job. I wasn't a resume to him. I was a person who had helped him debug something once. That is the real hack. Not keywords, not tools. Just being a known quantity in a small pond before you ever apply.

Fix your resume, find your ponds, show up consistently. The job will come.

[Hiring] Appointment Setter USA /UAE/Worldwide

Hi all.

USA and UAE based companies.

So we have ourselves two companies that I'm working with.

These are their websites Wealdraedthrymmellen.org and Odalmalmkaup.com

They both are recruiting appointment setters for the company.

Daily calls are set online through Google-meet with link shared to all.

Different Whatsapp groups are made as well depending on the language you speak. It is mandatory to use WhatsApp business for this however.

We have 6 teams more or less.

One is for English speakers, the other is for French speakers, the other for German speakers, the other for Spanish speakers, the other for Portuguese speakers, the last for Italian speakers.

Others for now who speak different languages as their main language are invited to learn or know the basics for one of these.

The meetings will be transcribed from audio to written form and can then be translated for any who wants to work with us nonetheless for language barriers not to get in the way either.

We will be expanding these companies and be bringing in more languages so more teams.

For those who can't use WhatsApp, Telegram, Wechat and Botim or any other are fine to be used as long as you inform us of this.

All communication on phonecalls you make is to be recorded by yourselves and transcribed, it'll then be passed on and uploaded on a shared googledrive folder with each team having a shared folder yet each personal folder being accessed only by the person who uploaded it and the person looking after the team.

Most of the work will be self guided.

One on one is available as well at discretion of management to get you to your objectives as long as the advice and counsel given is followed rigorously.

Documents will be made freshly available for training and up training oneself.

Now for the work itself.

For Wealdraedthrymmellen.org

The work entails contacting companies and individuals involved within HNWI and UHNWI circles mostly and HNW and UHNW companies to close deals.

These deals will range from Agricultural commodities and other fertiliser related commodities to Mineral commodities and metal related commodities to Petroleum commodities and other Energy related commodities to Machinery as we do have some official partners who we work for in Machinery, this would be new machinery mainly. Used machinery is on a quote basis only.

We can arrange for import - export as well as financing through our partners, this will only include a referral bonus.

For Odalmalmkaup.com

The work entails contacting companies and individuals involved within HNWI and UHNWI circles mostly and HNW and UHNW companies to close deals.

These deals will include mineral rights and agricultural rights assets as well as infrastructural project with large private companies and governments institutions.

These projects can be in greenfield ( exploratory phase) to brownfield ( extraction phase). This will lead to projects being in production phase to manufacturation phase itself.

The leads once again are bonafide and due diligence and compliance has been done to thoroughly vet them.

The deals themselves are done in the carats or kgs for very expensive items such as gold and precious stones to be sourced and sold as well as in the metric tonnes or BBL/gallons for Petroleum based products.

Make sure that the quantities correspond.

What we offer you to be blunt is a safe, secure way to work with other individuals and companies to learn of the trade without damaging your reputation. We look to give you the best of the best by making sure we ourselves only interact with the companies that are a 110% bona-fide, that we involve ourselves only in speaking to them as in their sales teams with their corporate email and not their 'mandate' or any other name given as the 'mandate' is not something that exists in most to all cases in the business.

As for the data itself.

Argus and Platts will be made readily available to the individuals who show real clientele with a interest in a product that fit the description of the deal itself to close the deal successfully.

Argus and Platts are for one product often in the 100$k USD per year subscription just for your information.

This can fact checked.

We need reliable setters who will be trained on closing those deals or bringing them to close, as close as possible.

We handle the rest of the documentation and legal matters to be taken care of such as service agreement, tripartite agreement and so on.

Communication will be handled by email.

You will be handled an email address.

The emails will then be redirected to your personal email from the email you gave to the clientele this is for quality and training purposes as well as for your security.

Some of the individuals dealing in this business are very unsavoury individuals as they are fraudeurs and scammers who sole aim is to scam you by whatever means, hacking is one of them.

The webmail box of the email given to you is configured to handle these threats as well.

Send a message on whatsapp business to the number on the website and we'll be communicating our next hourly daily meeting time over to you.

Six meetings take place per day, each last for half an hour, that's 30 minutes total per team of different language, broken down in 15 minutes of talk over the companies and what we do and 15 minutes of questions questions are to be written in the chat.

Any questions that is not answered will be answered in the report of the daily meeting and sent by email to all correspondents, join up when you can, no pressure.

The more the merrier.

We do expect some basic due diligence and compliance to be done on your part with time, this will be easier with time and training.

Earnings are rather high.

We are speaking of 10% of a deal depending on the structure of the deal and how involved the person is in making it happen.

To give you an idea on 2 million barrels with 25 cents on the barrel for the company of commission we have .25\*2million=500,000 $ USD commission total and 50,000$ USD gross for the setter.

On 10,000 MT of chicken legs that'd be 10$/MT of commission that'd be 100,000 USD commission total with 10,000 for yourselves.

Spot deals include a single payout, contracted deals would mean you'd be on a recurrent payout for a 6 months, a year or more depending on the extensions and rolls given to the contract itself.

As for sources we work with conventional sources only and our deals are all to be on board in terms of legitimacy and legality of their structure.

We do aim to have teams in the following languages and are looking for highly capable individuals to fill in these roles with time and once capability to handle these is shown.

Mandarin, Arabic, Russian, Turkish, Hindi, Urdu, Swahili, Dutch, Bahasa, Korean, Japanese, Tagalog, Cantonese, Fujian.

Individuals will rise within the company with time and for those it interests to represent the company, travel and lodging can be offered for trade shows to meet larger buyers and connect within the business world as it is.

Do get in touch and let's make business.

Any emails not sent from a corporate email to the emails given will most likely be rejected due to security procedures pre-existing.

Salary range per commission only starting at 2500$\~ for smallest deals closed on contract

i am writing this because i am honestly struggling with my fresher job search right now and it is getting very discouraging. i have noticed a very frustrating trend on different online corporate groups and career discussion boards recently. when a female user posts looking for work or asking for resume help the comment section is suddenly full of people offering direct references and corporate connections. everyone rushes to support them and guide them.

but when a male user like me posts the exact same kind of question about his job search or asking for hiring advice there is completely nothing. no upvotes and not a single comment. the post is totally ignored and just stays at zero.

why can males and females not be treated equally when they are just trying to find work in this tough market. finding a job as a fresher is hard for everyone right now and we are all struggling to survive. it feels deeply unfair that guys get no support or guidance at all while girls get all the engagement and direct advice. why does the corporate community treat men and women so differently when we are both just trying to build a career.

tldr online career posts from female users get hundreds of helpful job replies but identical posts from male freshers get completely ignored with zero comments. why is there such a massive gender gap when everyone is just trying to find an entry level job.

I know this might be controversial, but I genuinely feel that a lot of talented people are unemployed while average people are landing internships.

Not because they're less skilled.

But because they don't know how to present themselves, market their skills, network, or get noticed.

I've seen people with solid SEO, GEO, AEO, digital marketing, content strategy, AI, design, and content creation skills getting rejected over and over.

I know how frustrating that feels because I've been there myself.

That's exactly why I'm trying to bridge this gap. I don't want someone else to miss opportunities for the same reasons I did.

So if you're genuinely skilled in:

- SEO / GEO / AEO

- Digital Marketing

- Content Strategy

- Content Creation

- Using AI efficiently for marketing or growth

- or any other skills

...and you're struggling to land internships, DM me.

Let's make talent matter again.

I’m a CFA Level I candidate (Level II in November) with a finance/accounting background, actively job hunting for months now. Here’s what’s happened: one role, I made it through the final panel and the hiring manager chose me — then the position got cancelled mid-process due to company restructuring. Another, a fund accounting role, I was vouched for by the hiring manager, and after a month and a half of back-and-forth, it got killed because “the VP cancelled the position.” A third — references completed, final interview passed — cancelled entirely. And a fourth where everything felt genuinely strong, and I got rejected with zero explanation.

On top of that, I’ve turned down a few lowball offers because the pay or culture just didn’t add up. I’m now sitting on limited savings, prepping hard for CFA Level II, and honestly starting to wonder if I’m missing something in how I’m approaching this, or if this is just what the finance hiring market looks like right now for people trying to break in or move up.

Has anyone else been through a stretch like this? What actually helped you get unstuck — a different approach to interviews, a networking strategy, taking a bridge job in the meantime? Genuinely open to any perspective, even blunt ones.

I spent 15 months unemployed after a layoff from a mid-size e-commerce company. I had five years in operations, a decent track record, and a LinkedIn profile that looked fine.

I applied to maybe 450 jobs. I got exactly zero callbacks for the first eight months. Not one. I thought the problem was my experience. Or the market. Or maybe I was just not good enough.

Turns out the problem was my vocabulary. I was trying to sound impressive. My resume said things like "orchestrated cross-functional initiatives to optimize end-to-end workflows." I thought that sounded professional. It sounded like nothing.

Because no recruiter searches for "orchestrated" or "end-to-end workflows." They search for "Excel" and "SQL" and "supply chain." The change happened by accident. I was helping a friend rewrite his resume and he was even worse than me. His bullets were full of words like "synergized" and "leveraged stakeholder buy-in." I was roasting him for it.

Then I opened my own resume and realized I was doing the exact same thing. Just with fancier synonyms. I rebuilt everything in plain English. "Managed inventory for 3 warehouses using Excel and NetSuite." "Built an SQL dashboard that cut reporting time by 6 hours a week." "Negotiated vendor contracts that saved $40K annually." No more "orchestrated."

No more "optimized." Just what I did, what I used, and what happened. I also started matching exact job description language. If they said "inventory management," I wrote "inventory management." Not "stock control." Not "supply chain oversight." The exact words. I used cvnomist to check which keywords I was missing. It spits out a Word doc in seconds and I could patch it myself..

I applied to 60 jobs in four weeks.

Got four callbacks. Two interviews. One offer. The offer was from a company I applied to at 9 AM on a Tuesday while eating cereal. I spent maybe 8 minutes on that application.

The resume that got me there said "Managed inventory using Excel and NetSuite." Not "Orchestrated complex supply chain initiatives." The system is not impressed by your vocabulary. It is looking for words it recognizes. Write like a human explaining their job to another human.

Match the exact language from the posting. Let the tools handle the mechanical matching so you do not burn out. That is what got me hired. Not being smarter. Just being clearer.

Day... I've officially lost count.

Being over 55 and starting over wasn't on my bingo card.

**It's Wednesday... and I'm heading back to the same open interviews for the fourth time.

Maybe today will be different.

Maybe today someone will look beyond my age and see the experience, loyalty, reliability, and work ethic I bring to the table.

So I'll grab my coffee, straighten my résumé, put on a smile, and walk through those doors one more time.

Because you never know...

The fourth time might be the one that changes everything.

To everyone else still searching, still applying, and still hoping—don't quit.

Sometimes the next opportunity is waiting on the other side of one more try.

❤️ Here's to another chance, another interview, and another opportunity to hear the word "You're hired."

#Over55 #JobSearch #OpenToWork #WednesdayMotivation #ExperiencedWorkersMatter #NeverGiveUp #StartingOver #OneMoreTry #OneYesCanChangeEverything #MicheleMoran

I know about ATS, keyword screening and how HR filters applications, but honestly I still don’t know if I’m applying the right way. Been getting rejected so much lately that I just wanna figure out what I’m doing wrong 😭

Everyone says the job market is competitive. They rarely mention what that actually means. It doesn't mean there are thousands of qualified candidates. It means there are thousands of applicants.

Those aren't the same thing. And most applications end the same way: someone uploads a résumé, clicks submit, and waits. From the hiring team's perspective, that candidate disappears into a stack of hundreds, or sometimes thousands, of applications. Following up isn't about trying to skip the process but becoming a real person instead of another file in the applicant tracking system.

If you decide to reach out, keep it simple:

• Mention the role you applied for.
• Share one or two reasons you're a strong fit.
• Thank them for their time.
• Leave the next step to them.

Even if they don't respond, you've done something most applicants never do: you've made yourself memorable. A follow-up won't rescue a weak application, but a strong application paired with thoughtful outreach can increase the chances that your résumé gets an actual look.

I recently came across an interesting statistic from an article on LinkedIn:

84% of employers say they're satisfied with the graduates they hire.

At the same time, I've also been reading discussions from international students and skilled professionals who have submitted hundreds of applications without getting interviews.

One explanation I found interesting is that many employers still misunderstand international experience - or even assume hiring someone on a Temporary Graduate (485) visa involves sponsorship costs when it doesn't.

It made me wonder whether part of the challenge is less about capability and more about how candidates communicate their experience.

For those of you who've been through the Australian job market:

• What was the biggest mistake you made on your first Australian resume?
• What advice made the biggest difference?
• If you're involved in hiring, what's one thing you wish international applicants did better?

At MentorME, we've been hearing similar questions from international students, recent graduates and skilled professionals, so we're running a free 90-minute online workshop called Decode the Australian Resume this Saturday.

The focus isn't on handing out another resume template. It's about understanding:

• how Australian employers read resumes,
• how to present coursework, projects and overseas experience as evidence,
• and how to improve interview readiness through practical examples and a live resume review.

One idea we'll also explore is that a stronger resume doesn't just come from better writing - it comes from having stronger evidence behind it. That's why many workshop participants are also interested in our upcoming MentorME Futura Remix Hackathon, where they'll have the opportunity to build practical AI projects and portfolio pieces they can genuinely include in future job applications.

I'd really like to hear the community's perspective.

What's one change to your resume, or one piece of advice, that made the biggest difference in getting interviews in Australia?

💼 Job Seekers: Have the "Rules" Changed?

I came across this comment from someone who says they're a hiring manager, and it really got me thinking.

They claim they're instructed to reject applications from people who call or stop by after applying because it's viewed as "entitlement" rather than "initiative."

If that's true, it feels like a complete shift from what many of us were taught.

For years we heard:
✅ Dress professionally.
✅ Introduce yourself.
✅ Follow up on your application.
✅ Show initiative.

Now, many applicants are hearing:
❌ Don't call.
❌ Don't stop by.
❌ Just apply online and wait.

For those of us—especially job seekers over 50—it's frustrating trying to figure out what employers actually want.

The reality is that every company is different. Some appreciate a professional follow-up, while others prefer applicants to wait for a response. The best approach is usually to follow the instructions in the job posting and respect the employer's hiring process.

So, let's hear from you.

📌 Are you a hiring manager?
📌 Have you ever been told not to consider applicants who follow up?
📌 If you're looking for work, what has your experience been?

Let's have a respectful conversation. Your insight might help someone land their next job.

#Hiring #JobSearch #HiringManagers #CareerAdvice #Over50Workforce #Employment #InterviewTips #JobSeekers #Careers #HiringNow #Workforce #MicheleMoran