Welcome to our new series JOB SEARCH DIARIES, where we peek into someone else's job search. This week: pickleball, Claude.ai, and cozying up to recruiters.
Had no idea how much I needed this content! As a job seeker I feel very seen even though I'm a lot more junior. "I haven't gotten offers from interviews where I thought I performed outstandingly, and then I got offers from companies where I felt I underperformed" is honestly a huge relief to hear and speaks to how stacked the market is. I also agree that a positive of job searching is learning about all the cool innovation going on in different industries!
I hear that exact comment all the time: "When I thought I did well, I didn't get it. When I thought I did just OK, they gave the offer."
In this series, we'll have posts from people across career levels, role types, and geographies. While the specifics of their searches will be different, the challenges, at the core, are similar.
I hope it will bring fresh tactics and tools to help job searchers, yes, but also a common set of struggles and permission to be sane through it all.
Loved this post!!! Super helpful to see it broken down and validating for those in the process. Also as a fellow pickleballer, love that pickleball is an essential decompression strategy! Good luck to this job-seeker in the coming weeks!
I'm probably a softy and could grow in reselience, but reading these job search diaries I can't help but feel that the standard job search process is absolutely insane. I've been searching on and off for a few years (while holding a job) and I can get blitzed after one interview. Dozens over a period of a few months.. I just don't have that capacity and I question the value of doing that..am I missing something? Why are things this way?
The job search experience for candidates in a soft market is often bonkers. Due to the volume of people searching, all of the things that are hard and unreasonable about regular tech interviewing are magnified. Instead of two companies asking you to do take home work, you do twelve before you land something. I'd liken it to unleashing all the forces of late stage capitalism on a single person (the candidate).
My hope is that this series can shine a light on the real human impact of unemployed job searching and extreme employer choice in tech.
Had no idea how much I needed this content! As a job seeker I feel very seen even though I'm a lot more junior. "I haven't gotten offers from interviews where I thought I performed outstandingly, and then I got offers from companies where I felt I underperformed" is honestly a huge relief to hear and speaks to how stacked the market is. I also agree that a positive of job searching is learning about all the cool innovation going on in different industries!
I hear that exact comment all the time: "When I thought I did well, I didn't get it. When I thought I did just OK, they gave the offer."
In this series, we'll have posts from people across career levels, role types, and geographies. While the specifics of their searches will be different, the challenges, at the core, are similar.
I hope it will bring fresh tactics and tools to help job searchers, yes, but also a common set of struggles and permission to be sane through it all.
Loved this post!!! Super helpful to see it broken down and validating for those in the process. Also as a fellow pickleballer, love that pickleball is an essential decompression strategy! Good luck to this job-seeker in the coming weeks!
I'm probably a softy and could grow in reselience, but reading these job search diaries I can't help but feel that the standard job search process is absolutely insane. I've been searching on and off for a few years (while holding a job) and I can get blitzed after one interview. Dozens over a period of a few months.. I just don't have that capacity and I question the value of doing that..am I missing something? Why are things this way?
The job search experience for candidates in a soft market is often bonkers. Due to the volume of people searching, all of the things that are hard and unreasonable about regular tech interviewing are magnified. Instead of two companies asking you to do take home work, you do twelve before you land something. I'd liken it to unleashing all the forces of late stage capitalism on a single person (the candidate).
My hope is that this series can shine a light on the real human impact of unemployed job searching and extreme employer choice in tech.
This is such a great post! Kudos to your first guest in the column for such diligence and kudos to you for launching this much needed column!
These job seekers are extremely diligent in their searches and brave for sharing their stories. Thank you for acknowledging!
Very brave for your job seeker😊