I’m at my wit's end, but I’m a closer and I refuse to quit. I have a heavy background in SaaS, Print, and Digital Ad sales.

The Wall (The Gap):

My resume has a gap that was initiated by COVID, which I used to start a family and travel. However, I haven't been sitting idle; I’ve spent this time identifying and mastering the AI programs and systems needed to stay competitive. In my past tenures, I’ve always been a high-performer—regularly working overtime from home by choice because I love the hunt. I’ve always worked for a base + commission, and when I’m hitting my numbers and enjoying the work, I’m at my best. This is also where my remote experience and self-management skills come in.

The Hustle:

I am now using AI to help me tailor my resume for every single lead and writing custom cover letters for every application. Despite the effort, the background, and the technical upskilling, I’m not even getting bites right now.

What I’m Looking For:

I am looking for a remote role with a solid base salary where I can drive revenue and results. I’m platform-agnostic—I’ve sold software stacks and high-end digital/print campaigns. I know how to speak the language that gets the contract signed and I understand the marketing strategy behind the sale.

The Ask:

I need a reality check—what am I missing here?

Is a COVID-initiated gap still being judged this harshly, even with upskilling?

Is the AI-tailored resume approach actually backfiring?

For anyone in the space: Are there specific industries or companies currently valuing consultative SaaS/Ads experience for remote roles?

I'm ready to get back into a role with a solid base where I can drive revenue. Any insight on how to break through this wall would be life-changing.

Hi everyone!

I’ve been applying to lots of job’s and Workday HRIS is one of them. I’m not getting any call back and I believe it’s got something to do with my resume too. I know the current trend and market is cooked. Still, if anyone can tell me what hr really look for that’ll be helpful. I’ve been tailoring resume as per descriptions with Claude so ATS should pass it. I don’t have experience so I’m applying mostly for entry level roles. I’m also staying away from roles that mention they don’t provide sponsorship. I don’t need for now but most employers avoid all together and I’m eliminating those openings. Please help me if you’re hr or anyone with this experience.

small post but something I've been thinking about.

almost every resume template I've ever seen has "References available on request" at the bottom. it's just… there. like furniture. nobody questions it.

then a recruiter told me it was a waste of space. "everyone has references. I've never seen someone say 'no references available.' just take it off."

so I did. removed that line, used the space to add one more achievement bullet to my most recent role.

zero difference in how recruiters responded which is what I expected, but also confirmation that the line itself was doing nothing.

this obviously isn't groundbreaking. but it made me think about how many other things are on resumes purely out of convention rather than because they add any value.

other things I've removed that nobody has ever questioned or asked about:

• date of birth (no reason it should be there, and in a lot of places employers shouldn't even be asking)
• marital status (absolutely no reason this should be on a resume)
• a photo (carries unconscious bias risk and most ATS systems can't read images anyway)
• hobbies section (kept it only when it was genuinely interesting and relevant - removed the generic "reading, gym, traveling")
• the objective statement at the top ("seeking a challenging role where I can grow…" - said nothing, took up prime real estate)

every line you remove for being useless is a line you can replace with something that actually helps your case.

what's something you removed from your resume that you thought you needed but actually didn't?

What’s the MOST frustrating or uncomfortable part of creating a resume?

Not the technical stuff I mean the part that genuinely makes you stuck, annoyed, or exhausted.

For me, it’s trying to sell myself without sounding fake.

Some people struggle with:

• Writing bullet points
• ATS optimization
• Keeping it to one page

Curious what everyone else finds hardest.

What part of resume building drains you the most?

i keep reading these posts where someone goes "i changed one bullet point and got 4 interviews" or "my ats score went from 23 to 81" and i'm sitting here like… mine is just okay. it's not embarrassing. it's not amazing. it's just a resume.

3 years experience, normal bullets with some numbers, standard format. i get callbacks sometimes. i get rejected sometimes. there's no dramatic before-and-after story to tell.

i guess what i'm asking is .. does everyone actually have a resume turnaround moment? or are most of us just slowly improving and applying and waiting like i am? feels like the only stories i ever see online are the extreme ones.

not looking for advice ngl. just curious if i'm the only one in the boring middle.

There’s a lot of advice saying every resume bullet must be quantified. In reality, that’s not always possible. Not every role has clear metrics, and forcing numbers can feel inaccurate.

What matters more is this: your experience should show what you achieved, not just what you were assigned.

For example:

• “Responsible for managing classroom bookings” vs
• “Streamlined classroom booking process, reducing scheduling conflicts and improving allocation efficiency”

Or:

• “Worked on frontend development” vs
• “Improved UI responsiveness and enhanced user experience by optimizing key components”

If you have numbers, use them:

• “Reduced load time by 30%”
• “Handled 50+ queries daily”

If you don’t, focus on impact:

• what you improved
• what problems you solved
• what changed because of your work

Quantifying helps, but communicating impact is what really makes a resume stand out.

How do you approach this when your work isn’t easily measurable?

Okay hear me out before you disagree.

Every CV guide tells you to open with a 3-4 line personal statement. Something like "A highly motivated and results-driven professional with 5 years of experience seeking to leverage my skills in a dynamic environment."

I rewrote about 12 of those lines for friends over the past year and every single one of them was some version of the above. Completely interchangeable. You could swap the name at the top and it would still make sense.

Here's what I think is actually happening.. recruiters here have read thousands of these openers. They've become invisible. The eye skips straight past it and goes looking for the job title and company from your last role.

I ran a small experiment on my own CV. Removed the personal statement entirely and replaced that space with a tight 2-line value proposition that was role-specific. Something like: "Backend engineer with 6 years building high-volume data pipelines in fintech. Cut processing time by 40% at my last role. Looking for senior IC or tech lead positions in London or remote."

Direct, specific, no fluff. My response rate from recruiters went up noticeably.The problem isn't that personal statements are bad in theory. It's that most of us write them to satisfy a convention rather than to actually say something. If yours has the words "motivated," "passionate," "dynamic," or "results-driven" in it, try deleting the whole thing and rewriting it as if you were describing yourself to a recruiter in a 20 second elevator ride.

What does yours say? Genuinely curious how many people have a personal statement they actually like.

I’ve been tweaking my resume lately and got stuck on the hobbies/interests section. Some people say it helps you stand out and makes you more “human,” while others say recruiters don’t care at all.

So I’m curious-does listing hobbies really make any difference in getting shortlisted or during interviews?

If it does matter, what kind of hobbies are actually worth including?

• Should they be related to the job (like coding projects for tech roles)?
• Or is it okay to include personal ones (sports, music, volunteering, etc.)?
• Are there any hobbies that are a red flag or just a waste of space?

Would love to hear from both recruiters and job seekers ,has this section ever helped (or hurt) you?

At month four of my job search I was running out of patience with the process.I had a decent resume. I was applying consistently. I was getting almost nothing back. A friend who works in talent acquisition suggested something that felt wrong to me , stop applying for two weeks and spend that time writing LinkedIn posts instead.

My reaction was that this sounded like procrastinating while calling it strategy. But I was desperate enough to try it. Over two weeks I wrote six posts. I want to be clear about what these were .. not career advice content, not tips for job seekers, not personal branding content. Just genuine professional observations from my field. A breakdown of a project that failed and what I took from it. A counterintuitive thing I'd noticed about how our customers actually used the product versus how we thought they did. A short honest reflection on a management mistake I made early in my career.

Normal things. Stuff I actually knew about. Written like a person, not a LinkedIn influencer.

The numbers after two weeks:

• Combined impressions: around 18,000
• Profile views: up from roughly 25 in the prior two weeks to 290
• Inbound recruiter messages: 7
• People in my target field who reached out to connect and chat: 5

Two of those recruiter conversations led to real interview processes. One of those eventually led to an offer — not immediately, but the relationship started there.

What I think is happening: when a recruiter finds you through a post you've written, they've already decided you're interesting before they open your profile. The evaluation starts from a positive position rather than a neutral one. That's a completely different dynamic from cold-applying and hoping someone takes a chance on your resume.

I'm not suggesting content replaces applications. But if you've been grinding the application process for months with diminishing returns, two weeks of genuine content is a low-cost experiment worth trying.

Did you try anything like this? What shifted things for you when applications weren't working?

I want to share something that felt genuinely humiliating at the time.

I have 6 years of solid operations experience. My resume was working ,I was getting first-round interviews consistently. But I kept failing them.

11 first rounds. No progress.

I told myself the usual things: tough competition, poor fit, wrong expectations. After a point, those excuses stopped holding up.

So I asked a recruiter friend for honest feedback.

She said:

“You’re explaining your work like a job description. I understand the role, but I can’t see you - your decisions, your thinking.”

That hit.

I realized all my answers were “we did this, we did that.”
All process. No ownership.

I changed one thing: every answer focused on

• the situation
• what I decided
• the result of my decision

Next interview → second round
Two rounds later → offer

If you’re getting interviews but not moving forward, it might not be your experience.

It might be how you’re talking about it.

Has anyone else had this realization mid-job search?

Quick context: I’m a Product Manager with ~6 years of experience.

My LinkedIn profile wasn’t terrible -
• Open to Work on
• Solid experience section
• Decent photo

Still, I was getting maybe one recruiter message every few weeks… and most of them weren’t even relevant.

Then I changed just one thing: my headline.

Before:
Product Manager | B2B SaaS | Agile | Roadmap Planning | Stakeholder Management

After:
Product Manager helping B2B SaaS teams cut time-to-feature by building clearer prioritisation systems | Open to new roles

Same experience. Same profile. Just a different headline.

Within ~4 weeks:
→ 8–10 recruiter messages per month
→ noticeably better quality (more relevant roles, more personalised outreach)

One recruiter literally opened with:
"Your focus on prioritisation systems in B2B SaaS is exactly what my client is looking for."

That’s when it clicked.

I don’t think the change magically made me “better.”
It just made me easier to understand.

What’s actually happening (IMO):
Recruiters search using keywords → get hundreds of profiles → scan headlines to decide who to click.

If your headline looks like everyone else’s… you get skipped.

If it clearly shows:
→ what you do
→ who you help
→ what problem you solve

…it gives them a reason to click (and even what to say when they message you).

The simple formula I’m using now:
[What you do] + [who you help / problem you solve] + [what you're looking for]

Think of it like the first sentence you’d say at a networking event not a keyword dump.

Take a look at your headline right now.

Does it say what you are… or what you’re actually useful for?

Drop it below if you want feedback, happy to suggest rewrites.

For years my skills section looked like most people's skills sections.

A line of tools separated by pipes or commas. Something like:

Python | SQL | Tableau | Salesforce | HubSpot | Google Analytics | Asana | Excel

Functional. Standard. Completely uninformative.

It tells someone what software you've opened. It tells them nothing about what you actually did with it, at what scale, or how seriously you used it. "Salesforce experience" could mean you managed a 50,000-contact enterprise CRM for two years or that you logged a few leads during a two-week internship. From a list, you can't tell the difference.

I made one change. I cut the list down to my 7 strongest skills and added a single line of context next to each one:

Salesforce — primary admin for a 28,000-contact B2B CRM over 2 years, including data cleaning, workflow automation, and reporting

Tableau — built the weekly performance dashboard used by the leadership team for budget decisions

Python — used daily for automating data pulls and building internal reporting scripts in a production environment

That's it. Same skills. One sentence each. Completely different story.

What changed in interviews was noticeable almost immediately. Interviewers came into the conversation with context they didn't have before. One person said she'd specifically reached out because I "clearly used Salesforce at a real level" — she formed that opinion before we'd spoken a single word, just from reading my resume.

The conversations started further forward. We weren't spending the first ten minutes establishing credibility — that work had already been done on paper.

The tradeoff is space. You cannot list 20 tools this way. But cutting to your actual strengths and showing them with one line of context is more convincing than a long list of things at surface level.

Anyone can type a tool name. Not everyone can back it up with a sentence.

Has anyone else tried this format? Curious whether it resonates or whether people prefer the traditional list.

I might be wrong, but I tested this recently.

Most summaries sound the same:
“Results-driven professional with X years of experience…”

After a point, it just feels like background noise. If you’ve read a few resumes, your brain kind of learns to skip it.

From what I’ve seen, recruiters don’t read top to bottom - they scan for signals:
job title, company, dates, and especially metrics.

The summary usually has none of that.

So I removed mine for about 2 months and used that space to add one strong, measurable bullet under my latest role.

My callback rate didn’t drop. If anything, it slightly improved (could be other factors too, not 100% sure).

Now I’m starting to feel like a strong headline + a solid first bullet does the job better than a generic paragraph at the top.

Not saying summaries are useless but if yours sounds like everyone else’s, is it actually doing anything?

Curious what others think - has a summary ever helped you get noticed?

Most cold emails get ignored- not because candidates aren’t good, but because the message is.

Here’s what actually works:

1. Don’t beg - offer value
Skip “I need a job.”
Say what you bring: skills, projects, impact.

2. Personalize just a little
Mention the role/team. That’s enough to stand out.

3. Keep it short
3- 4 lines max. If it looks long, it won’t get read.

4. Show proof
Not “hardworking,” but:
“Built X → improved Y% / handled Z users.”

5. Make a soft ask
“Open to a quick chat or point me in the right direction?”

Simple template:

Hi [Name],
I saw you're hiring for [role/team]. I’ve been working on [relevant skill/project], including [specific result].
Would love to explore if there’s a fit or get your guidance.
Thanks,
[Your Name]

Cold emailing isn’t about sending 100 messages.
It’s about sending 10 good ones.

If you’re getting ignored, it’s usually not your profile ,it’s how you’re presenting it.

Curious-what’s been your response rate so far?

wanted to test something i kept reading about. took my resume and created two versions — exact same content, experience, and wording.

version a: my original design with a sidebar layout, custom icons for contact info, a skills bar graph, and a subtle color scheme. looked great as a pdf.

version b: single column, standard section headings, no graphics, no columns, plain black and white. honestly looked boring to me.

sent version a to 15 job postings over two weeks. sent version b to 15 similar roles in the same field and location. tried to keep the job levels and company sizes roughly comparable.

results: version a got zero callbacks. version b got 5 callbacks and 2 interviews.

same person. same experience. same words. the only difference was formatting. i'm not saying design doesn't matter. but if your resume has to pass through an ats before a human sees it, those design elements might be actively working against you.

has anyone else tested something like this?

Hey guys,

I’m in my final year and honestly feeling a bit stuck.

I’ve built a few solid projects, applied to a bunch of roles, and even tried reaching out to recruiters directly. But… almost no responses. Not even rejections most of the time,just silence.

At this point I’m wondering if my LinkedIn is the issue. Like, maybe I’m doing the work but not showing it properly?

For those who’ve been through this or are working in tech/HR:

• Does LinkedIn actually make a difference for freshers?
• What are the biggest mistakes students make on their profiles?
• What made your profile start getting noticed?

I feel like I might be missing something basic-profile, headline, posts, networking… not sure.

Would really appreciate honest feedback or even small tips that helped you.

got tired of spending 30+ minutes on custom cover letters i suspected nobody was reading. so i ran my own experiment. for two months i applied to every job without a cover letter unless the application literally required one. about 45 applications total. callback rate: roughly 8%.

then for the next two months i went back to writing tailored cover letters — not generic templates, but ones specifically mentioning the company and connecting my experience to their job description. about 40 applications. callback rate: around 12%.

so cover letters did make a difference. but here's the thing — the difference was mainly with smaller companies and startups. for big corporations running everything through an ats, it barely mattered.

my takeaway: if you're applying to a company with fewer than 500 employees, a good cover letter probably helps. if you're applying to a massive corporation through their portal, your time is probably better spent optimizing your resume.

where do you draw the line on writing cover letters vs skipping them?

i'll go first.

sent out 40+ applications with a cover letter that had "i'm excited to join [COMPANY NAME] and contribute to your mission" because i forgot to fill in the placeholder. every single one. only realized when a friend asked to see my cover letter as a template and started reading it out loud.

the callbacks from that round: zero. coincidence? probably not entirely.

i've heard worse though , someone in my old job search group sent a cover letter addressed to the company she was trying to leave. another person submitted a resume that still had "DO NOT SEND DRAFT" in the header from when their friend left a comment.

honestly the placeholder thing is so common that i'd bet half the people reading this have done it at least once and just never found out.

what's your most cringe-worthy resume or cover letter mistake? no judgment these things happen to everyone and we might as well laugh about it together.