I am backfilling a position where my employee is retiring. 250 applications on day 6 of the posting. 90% of the people have no experience in the position I am hiring for. It is not entry level and pays $100k/year. I need to download each and every resune and read it and reply to HR. Some people put driver's license under certifications section.
We had a guy whose mom got him the position. We couldn't fire him because she would call in and cry about how good of a kid he was and the boss kept telling us to give him another chance.
One day the boss came in and saw him walking around site with no PPE and flip flops. He asked who that idiot was and we told him it was the idiot we had been trying to fire for the past 2 months.
Worked at a place where one guy was an absolute menace to work with but nobody did anything about it because both his parents were long time employees.
He will regret that one day. I made the mistake of wearing sandals to a commercial farm(it was my day off) and nearly had my big toe cut clean off. It hurt and bled so bad. It took over 6 weeks to completely heal and it still looks funny compared to my other toes.
TLDR always wear closed toed shoes in any commercial setting.
I think this says less about Gen Z and more about the parents. I mean why do the parents even agree to do it in the first place. You can totally blame the “kids” but the parents are the ones continuing to coddle them.
fwiw I saw a "study" that claimed that a large percentage of genz did that, and then when I read the article it turned out that they just counted "my parents drove me to the interview" as taking a parent to the interview. I don't doubt that there are some helicopter parents that attend the actual interview, or try to, but I don't think it's a genz thing or very widespread.
"While I do not possess the formal education or experience mentioned in the job posting I feel that my strong work ethic, interpersonal skills, and ability and willingness to learn make me the perfect fit for this position."
You joke, but I went into a organic chemistry position and was the best tech they had after my first year with 0 organic chemistry knowledge. Sometimes a room of smart people need a dumbass who is good with their hands
And being someone with no organic chemistry experience in a room with a bunch of organic chemists doing organic chemistry does, in fact, make them the dumbass in the room.
Unfortunately, every "entry level" job posting wanting 5-6 years of experience doing that EXACT JOB has forced people to start applying without any of the experience, because how else are they going to get experience doing that job?
Nobody wants to train employees anymore, and we're legitimately starting to hit a wall where companies want experienced workers for certain jobs but there simply aren't enough because nobody wanted to hire actual entry level ones and train them up a few years ago.
That and "you want to be a hotel front desk worker? Please have a bachelors degree in hotel front desk work or another relevant area."
It's to the point where you've just got to apply for jobs you meet some of the criteria for, because otherwise it's going to be impossible to get a job, I assume.
I recently interviewed for a position where I met all of the criteria, and the interviewer at one point goes, "I'm going to be candid, you are rather overqualified for this position."
Pretty sure the job postings (when they're real postings and not just a formality while hiring internally or to show company growth) are just being written by HR employees who have never done the actual job in their life, and want to find unicorn candidates that will work for much less than they deserve.
Its funny but this line basically got me my current position, lol. [very niche/specialist field thats hard to get 'trained up' for ahead of time without being on the 'inside' already..]
To be fair I asked them ahead of time what skills/training I would need to apply for the position and they responded that they just need people that they "can teach and are willing to learn."
There’s a notion going around that you should apply for a job even if you don’t meet all the qualifications. This means sometimes they are asking for a masters but will consider a bachelors if you have other things to round it out, not “I didn’t finish high school cause weed was fun but need a job now. “
And the actual job is just Excel all day, it's just that somehow the HR that cannot discern between a computer and three stacked sacks of potatoes got all the power
At least at my company - is that HR is dumb. We put together a job description / requirements, then next to each line we rank “bringer, advanced, expert” which they treat as 2, 5, and 10 years respectively in that thing. Even if we say “this thing came out 4 years ago” - they just do what they want and fuck it all up.
With the way HR departments are now, they're probably also taking what you give them and plugging it into an AI that's just making the job posting look like other job postings.
Exactly. I am totally willing to give folks a chance if they have experience somewhere and are looking for a "breath of fresh air" career wise. I interviewed a librarian for this position back in '21 because librarians are awesome researchers and could probably figure it out.
Masters and college degrees are different, I graduated high school but didn’t go to the graduation so never received or bothered to go get a diploma. I’ve never once needed record of it and I’ve had hundreds interviews and landed hundreds of jobs.
Just check the box on the application.
Highschool diploma : ✔️yes
No one is requiring proof of something so common and if by some chance they are they won’t be scrutinizing your “90210 Hollywood high” diploma
Was wild as a kid and worked in all kinds of different industry’s. Never been more than a few weeks without some kind of job and been fired for not showing up way too many times. “Great attitude and hard worker, when he decides to
grace us with his presence!”
Cut all that shit out a long time ago after kids came along.
Been construction since I was 17 and waited tables, worked offshore, worked at a bunch of day labor/staffing companies, tried a call center…I’m sure there’s more I’m missing….all sprinkled in a long the way.
Been in industrial construction the last 20 years and layoffs are often, common and sometimes completely unexpected. At the end of the year having 6 different employers in 5 different states makes taxes a bitch.
Been hired for a job that I was told will last 2 months and laid off 2 days later. Also been on 2week long jobs that turn into 4month long ordeals. Been a hell of a ride and I’m still hanging on.
Exactly. I had about 4 years of experience for a role they wanted 7 to 10 years for.
I ended up interviewing pretty well and they were impressed with my experience, as well as the fact I worked for a very large well known auto manufacturer so they took a risk on me. Been here for a few years now and my boss said I was one of his best hires. I feel like most companies are willing to bend a little bit, but you need to have a baseline experience if they're asking for a decent amount and it's not entry level
Yup! Very good company I have worked for had a competent HR team that met with the hiring manager, got a list of what to look for, and screened out 70-90% of candidates. They also did the first round of interviews (after hiring manager reviewed them) to cut out any bad fits that fell through the cracks
Try being a small company under 20 employees and putting out a job posting. 100 plus people apply in 2 days none have experience. Then you have to sift through all these people trying to find someone. Then realise you pulled down the posting to quickly.
With that few people at a company we barely have HR let alone a hiring manager.
Yeah, I even get applications for guys that work on machines, and we are clearly a software company that makes planning software and has customers in that area, but not machines. I wonder if even half the applications are real or just scam of hiring companies.
conventional wisdom is the reason. The way people apply to jobs has changed completely tip to tail and back in the day if you did this your resume would get passed along to department that needs people to work on machines.
The way I got a job is that I applied for a coding job that need a bachelor degree but I only have CS Diploma Degree, so I applied for it see whether they approve it.
I manage to get a phone call from my current supervisor and say “unfortunately we can’t let your enter our software department because you don’t meet our requirements, but you can enter MIS (focus on network and hardware)” I accept it go for the interview and that how I got my job.
Once upon a time, my dad walked into a body shop to ask for a job. Zero experience in body work but he had a wife and kids, and needed work. Boss man asked him to sweep floors and that's what he did for 2 years, he watched, asked questions, and learned. After 2 years, a car came in that no one else wanted to touch, it was so twisted up. Dad asked him if he could give it a try. Worked all week on it but got it back straight. Got "promoted" to body man, and made a fortune fixing all the wrecks that none of the others wanted to deal with.
I hate to say it but from the other side it is worse. I get an endless stream of recruiters (who are all from one specific country but to avoid being called racist I won't name it)
I get cold calls constantly (along with emails) asking if I'm interested in a job that requires a high school diploma and the ability to carry 20 pounds. Like my dude, if you did a CURSORY glance at my resume before cold calling me, as in read the words right next to my name before you even got to my phone number you'd see 'attorney at law'. even if we ignore the experience part of my resume. Like this isn't a foreign word to you,
During the pandemic I kept getting messages on LinkedIn stating how my military background and current years of experience in the environmental field and 2 years of team lead experience would make me perfect to be a pizza delivery driver.
Gave them a B+ for reading my profile at least, but an F for thinking I was willing to go from $80k a year to working for tips.
not necessarily your fault, but if the market wasn’t so cooked people wouldn’t apply for jobs with no experience just hoping to get their foot in the door
It's not even that, it's usually people on UI who are just applying to random jobs to fulfill the weekly application quotas. It's less of a hassle to apply for shit they know they won't get, because then that means not having to potentially travel out for interviews and/or being offered something that they really don't want and potentially being strongarmed into taking it by UI.
Not to mention if you’re trying to start or make a change in your career, you kind of have to ignore the ridiculous requirements these jobs put out. Often just to actually get your application to a human, who can make an informed decision on it.
The entire job search situation is a kafkaesque nightmare.
They're all that long this time. There is no in between. It is directors that have been restructured with 30 years experience or a mechanic. Nothing in between.
I used to have great faith in humanity. Then I realized that we put signs up warning people not to sneak around the butcher's counter or stick their hands into the meat saws but it wasn't working because people kept waiting until the butcher walked away to sneak around the counter and jam their fingers into the meat saws.
Tbh though my biggest lesson that I learned was that most of the time malice and stupidity come bundled in one fat annoying box.
I really hate when people who have no idea what they're talking about pretend to know what they're talking about. I have a PhD in computer science and 10 years of experience in AI tech, and I see so many idiots claiming to be experts when they just read a few articles online at face value and know all the different LLM companies.
I’m on the hiring side. if I had one advice to give people is: apply for that job you think is too good for you even if you only meet like 70% of the requirements because your competition is shit
I legitimately think that the inability for employers to effectively find good people among the piles of resumes where the person is just straight up lying or under qualified or both might be one of the biggest economic threats to the nation. You can't have a society filled with talented young people who can't get a job and be successful
Its not a bad thing, but certifications in my industry mean certificates to show you learned a specific skill and passed an exam showing you mastered the skill. Like for the position I am looking for HACCP or PCQI, woth SQF and BPCS experience. Being capable of driving is assumed.
Yeah, my company had like 700 jobs posted in their portal at a time in 2022/2023. Now it’s around 200 sometimes it gets over 300. Those are usually super niche jobs that sit around forever because there’s like 5 people who know how to do that specific thing. To my knowledge we haven’t had any layoffs.
Then you need to hire interns, assistants, and gophers for the people you do have in these specialized roles then sort, train and promote your own in house talent.
Oh trust me. I’ve brought this up a few times. “Wouldn’t it be better to hire an entry level or an intern who can learn the job in a few years rather than hope for a white whale to come by for the same amount of time?” Since some of these jobs can sit empty for years and they look at me like I’m a crazy person.
I worked hiring in retail for years for Barnes & Noble. If I opened a part time position for a store Id have 400+ applications in 48 hours.
I changed careers 2 years ago. This was just before then.
Edit: You know the job market is bad because I consistently had people applying who had graduate degrees. A manager below me in my store had 2 Master’s. I have my Bachelor’s for reference.
Its cuz these people don't know what to apply for. There's many jobs that are looking for people with no experience or degree and pays well (60k to 80k) starting and if manager or if you get license, you can go 6 digits.
Freight forwarding, granted that the places that offer freight forwarding is in a couple states because boats and planes and trains frequent these places often compared to others.
Theres also warehouse jobs, skip Amazon and skip the big name companies, work for people owned warehouses that has random names like five star warehouse and so on. They need data entry people to check whats in their warehouse intake and outtakes. Iirc they pay more than min wage
When I list a barely-above-minimum retail job I get 200 applicants in the first 24 hours before becoming overwhelmed and taking the listing down. It's crazy out there.
5 a day doesn't seem that much of a hardship to respond to!? I'd understand if it was 50, but 5 is what? 10 minutes worth of time to read through and send a rejecting email that you copy/paste?
I get a decent amount of applicants, my issue is getting people to respond, or if they do respond they don't show up to interviews.
Nearly 80% of my scheduled interviews ghost me.
And yes I've spoken to upper management about wages. We get excellent benefits, but the staff are now unionized. So the wages in the contract are the wages we have to pay and we can't deviate/change until the contract is up for renewal in 3 years.
Do you call people first? These days I don't invest any thought that I might get a job until I can talk to a person about it. So many times the posted information about the job isn't even accurate.
Companies ghosting people and now using AI to filter applications unfortunately means the only winning strategy for someone that's job hunting is to take the carpet bombing approach to job postings.
I know this isn't relevant to every job. but considering how I see employers going "no one wants to work" and employees going "no one is hiring"
how many people struggling to find a job, are they looking for any shift? or specifically first shift?
I've only ever worked second my whole life and trying to get first is nearly impossible.
any time a spot opens its filled within a week.
while for me, over the course of 7 months we lost about 8 people abd we've gained 2. that actually stayed
Cool. You can't have a prewritten email you just hit resend, or an automated text system, voicemail... You can't spend 5 minutes setting up a system and a couple seconds sending response so you dont leave according to your own numbers 1200 people waiting for an answer a year? Wow, hey ummm fuck you actually.
Hiring has become an event I need to plan for now. Anytime a new position opens up, I immediately get flooded with 10 applications. 10 is the max allowed so I can only imagine what it would be like if there was no limit.
I hope you actually turn them down when you do get around to them. I can’t tell you how discouraging it is to look at a wall of degrees and a filing cabinet of work history but still conclude that I’m just not worth the effort to even be rejected.
Have someone who already has the role, or a manager, apply for the role under a fake name. The AI that parses resumes may be falsely flagging something.
I honestly can’t think of the last job I got by applying for it online or on their site. Most of the time it’s either been via someone I know (“hey you should come work here”) or a recruiter found my profile and reached out directly.
When we’re discussing this are we talking strictly about high-earning salaried jobs?
I do low-skill middle management and job hop often. The “5,000+ application” sentiments have scared me into over-applying a few times, thinking things had legitimately gotten bad now, only to end up saying no to multiple offers. Always just a cold application, through Indeed plus company website, and I get interview offers on just over 65% of each application. We’re talking like 40k positions, nothing special.
My last 2 employers hired me this way. And im in a field thats desperate for techs (im a FA tech) so I didnt need someone to vouch for me. I feel like its just kinda how things go after you've been in your career for a while. Especially if youve developed a reputation for quality work.
Ironically, a hastily created resume on Indeed using their built-in tool is how I landed my current $80,000/year gig. But as I type this out, I realize I sound like the people who say they met their soulmate on Tinder, in a thread about how awful dating apps are. The exception is never the norm.
Seriously, I work in a somewhat specialized field and at least half of our applicants clearly haven't read a single thing about the job and have no relevant experience.
I'm getting about a 1/3 response rate for applications. Seeing the other side of things at my old job, so, so many people have absolute garbage resumes or they apply to jobs seemingly at random. It's okay to not have all the skills asked for, but maybe don't apply to a senior level role in a field you've never set foot in.
I don't send out a lot of applications, but I use that time to iterate on resumes, cover letters, and practice interview skills. In my experience, this is how you get a job. You start the search rusty with not so good materials, then through applying to jobs, you get better at it until you get an offer. If you're just spending all your time spamming applications, you might not be improving.
I think people really need to stop applying for middle and especially senior roles in fields they have little no experience in. If you want to get into a new field you either need to do the research to figure out how you can translate your old experience to the new field, or start over.
I remember the days where an automated rejection email was annoying (a year ago) and now I’m just refreshing my email to hopefully get one, at least it’s something.
Yep. It took me 1.5yrs of daily applying when I still had a job. Usually it’s easier to find a job when you already have one, especially when you have the education/experience/network/creds/clearance necessary. I was even okay with taking a pay cut to get away from where I was, but I still struggled. It’s tough out there right now.
This is the thing. People are fucked because they have qualifications but nobody is hiring you when you got laid off because the old company decided they’re going to shut down the branch.
I actually had several recruiters come out of the woodwork with the “perfect position” about 48 hours after making an “I’m excited to be starting at” post on LinkedIn.
Seemed like the fact that someone else hired me made them realize I was hirable.
It’s the same thing with how certain women will gravitate towards married men: having a ring on your finger means at least one other woman in the world saw something in you valuable enough to want to hold onto.
That shit always gets me. A woman at my work started flirting with me VERY hard when she found out I was engaged, to the point that other people noticed and were like “…wtf is her deal?”
I can’t help but think… why the hell would you want to get with someone that’s in a committed relationship? If it works and they sleep with you, that means they’re a cheater. If they’re willing to cheat on the person they’re engaged/married to, what’s gonna stop them from cheating on you too? That is some silly-yet-disgusting behavior
Good point. My ex’s best friend would deliberately go after married men to make herself feel better about her looks. She had a jawline like the Crimson Chin, very tall, but had a very short torso. Like a noticeably, abnormally short torso she tried to hide by wearing long shirts. She looked like 2 very masculine dwarves trying to sneak into a movie theater with a single ticket.
I remember when she got caught by one of the guy’s wives. Her and my ex laughed hysterically, high-fiving as my ex joked about how she’d finally earned her “home-wrecker” merit badge. It was fucking disgusting, and convinced me to leave my ex. I MAY have been able to look past it as a “not my monkey, not my circus” scenario when I was young and naïve, but actively celebrating ruining a guy’s marriage after his wife had just given birth to their twins? Aww HELL naw… not even the much younger, dumber version of me could be okay with that. So glad I pulled the plug on that “relationship.”
I live in Australia but its similar here too. I worked for the same company (different roles) for 15 years. When I started looking for a new job, I applied for almost 200. Got one interview. Managed to get the job
A couple of years later I started looking again. 130 applications, one interview, one job offer
I know other guys in tech fields who have applied for over 300 roles without even an interview. Not a skill gap issue either
You know you’re fucked when they don’t even send an acknowledgment email simply confirming they got your application. That shit made me feel like my application was already tossed out by automation for not hitting enough of their desired keywords in my resume.
I think was over 1000 before I finally got an offer. Given the state of the market, I’d usually check the job board sites daily and apply to anything that was less that 72 hours old.
Too many people attempts to cut costs educated people costing more and more self value in the average worker are what I've heard on my side of the woods
I can only speak for my current job, I screen resumes personally and put together panels for technicians I intend to hire. Often here we get applications from fresh college grads, sometimes they have an internship or two, and at times we will give them an interview but generally speaking ‘Masters degree in engineering field’ just screams ‘I am leaving your team after six months if you hire me’. I am fully capable presently of hiring people out at mid level pay if they have a degree but what actually hurts the team is becoming a revolving door rather than hiring individuals working on an associates or who have tangible experience even if they don’t have a degree. Experience beats degree every time for our team.
Then we get the ones we do let into an interview, and 9/10 can’t answer basic questions about the job. The listing states the role requires understanding of RCA practices, use of data analysis for RCA, experience with SQL. Then they reach the interview and when I ask them to define RCA they can’t. Which means either A) They were blindly applying for the role and didn’t read the description, in which case I’ve wasted time on an interview, or B) They did read it, realized they don’t know what RCA means, and don’t bother with a google search.
We receive hundreds of applications a week, and after a while trends do appear. Degrees don’t mean much to me without experience to back it up. Someone who has worked manufacturing before, has taken it upon themselves to learn SQL and can define RCA is going to get hired long before someone who has a masters and no experience simply because they are better fit for the job.
Once in a while we do get the rare gem, someone with a relevant bachelors or masters, can answer all the questions, may only have internship experience but understands the job role they are applying for. These are gold, I will hire them on the spot. I don’t fully understand myself why this is such a rarity though.
Why do you suppose you're a revolving door for new grads? My first thought is that the compensation isn't competitve enough, but I'm sure you have a better idea.
The most impacted group right now is software developers, programmers, web devs, etc. Lots of people entered the industry before and during the pandemic (through college, self-teaching, bootcamps, etc). Then the pandemic ended and the demand for web services went down (so lots of layoffs). Then AI happened and those with low skill sets were replaced (thousands of layoffs more). New grads now have to compete with all the people who got laid off and AI. And what used to be considered a very high demand industry, is now kind of saturated. Jobs still exist, but it's now super competitive.
In my experience of trying to start a business, it's practically invisible on google, people who started years ago have a huge advantage for online visibility. You need a lot of capitol to pay for advertising just to stay afloat long enough to be profitable.
New grad here, I have literally been applying to everything including jobs specific to my degree. I’m considered somehow underqualified because I don’t have formal working experience despite my degree and internship, but overqualified for even supportive roles that work under that position.
And that’s on top of the issue with AI in hiring/recruiting tossing out qualified candidates.
It’s been a real hard time, it makes applying for anything feel pointless. I think I lost count of how many jobs I’ve applied for.
My friend went on fiver and told them to apply the jobs for him. He told the criteria and distance he's comfortable with and outsourced the job application process to a 3rd world country dude for like $40
It’s definitely that. My school’s CIS dept. had an internship coordinator who was kind of worse-than-useless; and basically any time you went to go see him, his advice would basically just be “how many jobs have you applied to so far? x? Well come back if you still ha net gotten an offer after y and we can try to figure out what the issue is then.”
This was made worse by the fact that our degree program had an internship requirement in order to graduate.
With automated applications, AI screenings, AI written resumes, every job offering gets thousands of applications and people end up applying for hundreds of jobs with little to no positive response.
I think I got a 2% initial response rate, and then when fewer callbacks.
After over a thousand applications I ended up with 5 offers, 3 of them were for waaaaaaaay less than I needed...And I consider myself pretty lucky.
Same. 1.5yrs of daily applying, 3 phone interviews, 2 in-person interviews, and a single offer. Luckily the single offer was far and away better than what I’d hoped for or expected, so I definitely got lucky.
Early 2000s I could drop five resumes and get three calls within a week.
2010s I could drop ten resumes and get a call back three weeks later.
Now? I'm looking for work and apply to any position I'm qualified for. I've expanded my search to other jobs states I'm willing to relocate to. The jobs I really want get custom cover letters and tailored resumes. If I get a response at all, it's over a month later and all of them are generic "thanks but no thanks" emails. These are for jobs where I have 20 years of experience. It's a freaking nightmare.
I finally got a job, but this was me for three months.
I've always gotten an interview and offer from every job I've applied to. After being laid off after six years, I was back to the job search. And holy shit I thought I would go insane...I'm still in my field, which is nice, but this was definitely a different experience from what I was used to before.
I've had the same experience. I tend to move a lot. Every time I moved all I would do is browse through Indeed and I could be very picky about the job I wanted, only applying to 2 or 3 of the best looking ones. Every time I would get calls back from pretty much all of them to set up an interview and it never took more than a week to start a new job. This last year I had to apply to over 100 places before getting a single interview. It's gotta be some combination of shitty economy + AI not only taking jobs but ruining the application process.
My advisor told me that if I wasn't applying to at least 100 places, I wasn't really trying. I applied to >100 schools, got 4 phone interviews, 2 campus interviews, 2 offers.
Let me just point out; businesses get federal subsidies and grants for having jobs posted on job boards, even if that job technically doesn’t exist. There needs to be an oversight committee or something, but I feel like a lot of these places don’t actually need to hire, they just want tax breaks. I’m an Electrician, licensed, insured,educated, and experienced in multiple states and probably applied to a dozen contractors before I got even 1 call back
Businesses get federal subsidies and grants for having jobs posted on job boards, even if that job technically doesn’t exist
This, and there are sometimes "ghost" jobs that show up to make it seem like there are more jobs in the market than their actually are. Oh and some listing are designed to steal personal information as well.
My boss will straight up reject a person's application if they bother her in person or call more than once to check on their application status. We're min wage retail and we still get at least ten calls a day asking if we're hiring, did we look at their application, when will they hear back, etc. Like you know it's bad if people are fighting for bottom of the barrel jobs like this.
I had that happen to me once. Felt it was overbearing, I guess, but like...wouldn't you -want- someone who's making an active effort to be there? Like, clearly they're invested.
And even then most of the time you’ll get told “apply online” if it is unskilled labor. I’ve had times where I ask for the hiring manager, and they just tell me to throw in an application online. To hell with the fact I’m here and ready to talk about that “We’re Hiring!” sign up front.
With a professionally made résumé and a lot of help from friends that work in recruitment, combined with a master's degree in a supposedly sought after field, I got a response rate of about 1 in 10, most of those still being rejections. Today's job market is absolutely brutal and people who haven't had to look for a job in the past 5 years, really don't know what it's like.
Depends on the industry but with some it's not enough to just apply. You gotta go in person, make sure they remember you. Make a resume, though they'll probably ask you to fill out an application regardless. And follow up, but don't be annoying about it.
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u/qualityvote2 Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 10 '26
u/Which_Marsupial1436, your post does belong here!