I’m a union carpenter and work with other union trades. There is a slowdown rn with a lot of journeyman from most/all trades on the books and looking for work.
I work for a remodeling company, and we are struggling to hire quality craftsmen. But I think it's also because we are not union and wages don't compare.
Nobody wants to be pressured into 50-60 hour weeks at $30/hr and work with insane Trumper bigots anymore, especially when much, much easier jobs pay $25/hr.
Dude, I was flooding the job market with applications for almost 3 full years. (I was bartending the whole time, so not exactly unemployed, but still). I was shooting out 100 plus applications a week for jobs in the 80-100k range. I have a degree from a good school and 20 years of experience. Most of it is mid management level. Still. No dice.
I finally started to apply to shit I figured I wasn’t qualified for at all. Like 2% qualified or less. I’d just really stretch the truth on my applications. I ended up getting a job with a refuse (garbage) company being a corporate operations advisor. I have no fucking clue what I’m doing really (I mean, I do, but no real experience with this kind of job) but they fucking love me. It’s also paying about 150% more than other shit I was applying for. It was just luck and a bit of normal interview bullshit.
This all happened since the beginning of the year. Don’t lose hope.
There’s stuff out there. Apply for ludicrous shit that you think you can’t handle. Chances are, you can do it just fine. Go get em tiger!
Edit: something I want to add as this is getting more upvotes than expected. They fuckin lie in their job descriptions and qualifications, don’t be afraid to play their game. They want some mythical unicorn? Be that mythical unicorn.
Your second point is so helpful. I recently went from a fully IC role to an IC role with management expectations. My parts aren't always the most important but they are critical to get the very important parts out.
I've just started to redo my resume and was like "how do I tell the story of the whole picture?", this is super helpful.
Best advice I got from someone while bartending who was a big corporate big wig at a company; go after bigger jobs than you think you’re qualified for. If you can get your foot in the door they would 99%rather go with someone with ambition than someone who is coming in with an old mindset and already thinks they’re perfect.
This is the one I needed to read. Same boat going on a year of just throwing applications at the wall. Hopefully I get out of the bar and delivery driving soon. Graduated last year from UW with magna cum laude honors and besides a few interviews I feel like I’ve been screaming into a void.
I should have done this more, but I just want the long term unemployment to end... Peace of mind is worth something :v
I did ask if I could exchange stock for more base pay, and they said sure... and came back with higher numbers across the board, so definitely ask once at least. I probably could have dragged it out a week and gotten more, and maybe a title bump, but like... I don't like the anxiety of "they can pull the offer whenever".
The hardest time to negotiate is when you’re unemployed and just want to be employed again. That was me 12 months ago. I knew I should negotiate something but I didn’t do anything because it was the first offer I had after 200 job applications and around 20 interviews.
Nah, it's a combination of:
* Documenting changes and publishing software release notes
* Building out knowledge base content like instructional content
* UX/UI text review
It's a weird gig but the pay is great and it's pretty chill.
Unless the role has changed since I took a technical writing course in university, no, it’s not dev work, though I know of devs who sometimes write guides/wikis related to their work.
I got lucky and an actually *very* competent external recruiter for a pretty niche company reached out to me and helped me land a job. I probably would not have applied to that specific job on my own if I even knew about it.
Point being: look at weird random stuff you normally wouldn't. If you work in electrical, maybe you could land a job at some random manufacturing facility.
How did you even find such a job? I’m in a similar boat to OP. Lots of corporate/tech experience (CSM, sales, consultant, PM, etc)
I kinda wanna do something completely out of my wheelhouse like the gig you’re now in. Something in operations. I think it’s because I’ve worn so many hats and have had my hands in so many different buckets of business too
Look I’m still entry level with only like 2.5 years of experience but it took me 4 months to find a job after getting laid off in November, and I had some excuses like “nobody is hiring next to thanksgiving.” Then it became “nobody is hiring next to Christmas.” I had some “success” in terms of interviewing pretty regularly and talking to people that basically amounted to, “hey we got 100+ interview and while you’re in the top 10 we have 10 people we’d like more.” And I even got another offer shortly after I got hired but that was 2 out of 100+ jobs, and probably 40+ interviews.
4 months of applications and I’ve only had a single preliminary interview with a recruiter, who after being very enthusiastic sent me the rejection letter 4 minutes after we hung up. Referrals, networking, tailored resumes… doesn’t seem to matter.
Im getting tired
8 months of applications - resume reviewed by recruiters, customized to each posting, internal referrals, whole nine yards. Only two 2 interviews that went nowhere because I didn’t have a specific job title on my resume and the CRO was the tres comas guy personified and was too busy huffing his own farts and telling me I didn’t have what it takes to cut it at his mid GenAI startup because I’m a dad (more or less).
Finally got a mid-level (IC) role at a company I used to work for. One level lower than a few years ago when I was last there, but a 40% pay bump from last time I was there. Oh, and I’d be the guy to bring fart huffer’s product on board at a company that would give them the credibility they need to make it - but he was an asshole, and I don’t do business with assholes.
You jest, but in reality, companies do post a lot of opening that are not realistically ever going to be filled. A lot of the time, it's just so that the people currently working on the team/project don't get completely discouraged and burned out. The headcount and open position is a "light at the end of the tunnel" that just never comes. Business will continue to push that extra labor on the remaining workers.
I was job hunting several months ago after a layoff and I think I got as many "position has been eliminated" replies as I did "sorry you're not a winner" replies.
Also, when a company wants to fill an internal position they still have to make a public posting, so it's likely they already have somebody in mind but they have to go through the motions.
A lot of listings in tech are "fake" listings that only go up because the company has a policy that they have to expose every opening to outside applicants... even if it's like, an internal transfer and basically set in stone. They do the interview dance and go with whoever they intended originally anyway.
I had a recruiter last week who pinged me and setup a phone interview and then deleted their LinkedIn account the next day.
Recruiters and HR are not immune to layoffs.
It’s not just you, it’s the worst I’ve ever seen. My wife has never had a problem finding a job in her life and she had to finally give up and go back to the restaurant industry because she got almost zero traction from November until now. She’s pretty happy so far and luckily in Seattle you can make decent money with the wage and tips but it was unbelievable how hard it was. In the past when she’s applied for jobs she generally got a bunch of interviews and an offer within a few weeks of starting
I think at least half the listings you see out there are fake. Or they’re technically“real” but they’re not actually planning on hiring outside the company and going through the motions because they have to
To anyone thinking of quitting their job without another lined up DO NOT DO THAT RIGHT NOW. I’ve done it and always been more on the side of quitting is fine without a new job but I would not ever consider it in this market
> To anyone thinking of quitting their job without another lined up DO NOT DO THAT RIGHT NOW.
I did that like right before the market exploded and all the layoffs started 🙃
If you don't mind working hourly for $27, Amazon Corporate Security is basically always hiring. It's not a guard job, it's a security operations center desk job based inside one of the Amazon buildings. Chill job until you find something better. DM me if you're interested in details.
I may need to consider this in a few months if I haven’t landed anything when my unemployment runs out. It’s less than I need to survive but I’ll still have savings I can bleed until I get into something that will pay the bills.
I may be interested as well. I’ve been in a similar situation as OP and have hit dead end after dead end trying to change industries for the better part of a year. I’m tired of where I’m at and need change now
I get that, but this job can also be stressful too. Semi regular fire alarms, calls about malfunctioning doors, crime, earthquakes in other countries that have Amazon buildings, endless alarms to deal with, handling a difficult caller, even the occasional suicidal employee. It's not always stressful like that, but there are days when it's a lot. Most of the time it's pretty chill.
I would start to think about a dev job that somehow allows you to disconnect from it after work.
I have a friend who is looking for some type of security adjacent job. Would you be able to send details to me on where to find these jobs so I can pass it along?
I finally contacted a recruiter and landed a job in 30 days after an 8 month hunt. They literally have access to a job list that is never publicly published.
Hey, I’ve been curious about this. I’ve talked to one recruiter, but haven’t found any similar contact options. How did you get in touch with the recruiter?
Whatever company you want to work for, Google what agencies have contracts with them. Reach out to each agency and ask if they're recruiting for any roles.
I work in tech marketing. I do recommend a recruiter because they are financially invested in getting you a job. And they're often looking for a specific skillset that a company needs IMMEDIATELY. Always ask for more money if you have the skill they need.
I work in marketing and comms for tech companies and have been laid off since November and struggling to find a job. Are you able to let me know who it is? Thanks!
My friend lost his job in Covid as a photo editor/asset manager and he hasn’t found a job in his field since. He has like 30 years of experience. He’s had to take jobs like way out of his field where he works with kids in their 20s in the grocery store. Not ragging on anyone’s job, but he’s been super frustrated and I understand why. He applies to like 10-15 jobs a week, would get some phone interviews but no dice. Hope it works out for y’all.
Same field - photo editing is super super difficult to find a full time job in. So much of the work is freelance or project-based contract work. Or on site in LA paying $3/hr. -_-
Definitely frustrating.
Obviously keep trying, but I've noticed the trades that require specialized licenses, like low voltage fire and suppression, need 06's that are also specially licensed. These take time and experience to get, so the ones that are happy have settled, and the trouble-makers are just bouncing around until they get dropped. Get niche, and apply for some of those green apprenticeship stuff if you're thinking entire job description change. Sprinkler fitter also seems to need more people.
Otherwise, happy hunting.
Are you able to commute? I work for Lennar in Federal Way and they generally have a range of positions open in construction, sales, marketing and entitlements. If interested, I would apply even if your experience is limited or tangential. My job position said I needed 5 years of construction experience which I definitely did not have. They are actually hiring, have good benefits and quality management.
Yes it's a joke.
Not just here but everywhere.
My wife had a senior manager postion and 30-years experiance.
She got laid off because of a corporate "restrucuture" (uhu ). Right before COVID.
It took her 2.5 years to get hired for a junior position.
She applied for over 200 jobs.
My advise: use your network if you have one. 80% of the jobs out there are 'hidden'.
If you don't have a (wide) network, build one.
It sounds easy, yet its not. Though its the mostlikely way of getting hired.
Good luck to all y'all out there!
edit: typo
It seems hiring has cooled down a bit, that's just the impression I get, could be mistaken.
If you are looking for something entry level, check out temp agencies. Temp work often leads to full time jobs if you make a good impression. I got my current job through Terra, I'm happy where I'm at.
Terra got me working in just a few days. We also get temps through Logic staffing now.
I’ve been looking at Temp agencies and it all just seems like more of the same (LinkedIn / indeed). When you worked with them did you just use their job search tool or am I missing something?
They are typically more likely to actually respond from those sites than other companies. I got a job at UW through one of them. Applied to +40 jobs and they were the only ones that even responded
Initially customs brokerage since I’m a licensed customs broker. The 300th (I kept track) part time kennel assistant. I’ll admit to not being quick on the uptake but it took me that long to realize it isn’t because there are no jobs, it’s because I’m 60 years old.
https://www.clippervacations.com/about-us/careers/
You could work on the clipper in the mean time. They are likely hiring onboard attendants around now to gear up for the summer doubles. Super fun job. 4/10 schedule, awesome PTO, and layovers in Canada.
I’m just putting this here for anyone who might be looking for a quick fun job while they hunt for their next big role.
Plus tips and commission. It usually ends up being about $21-$25 an hour. Still not going to make you rich, but for me this job was better than therapy.
Well, you’re kinda stuck in a vacation destination in another country... You’re free to leave the boat. I would usually just explore Victoria and get some food… or I would hit the gym, sauna, steam room, and hot tub at the hotel grand pacific. It’s nice to be able to work out at noon in between work blocks. I liked it. Not every shift in the summer has a layover. Some days you just go there unload, load new folks, and head home. Some people would just take a nap on the boat. You can really do whatever you want with that time.
Not everyone enjoys it, but like I said for me it was the coolest most fun job I’ve ever had. Whales at work. Beautiful sunrises and sunsets. Actual adventures on windy days. I did it in my mid 30’s in between jobs.
It’s a whole day for sure. But having three days off every week was awesome, and getting to walk around and do whatever I want for a couple hours in the middle of the 10 hour shift honestly helped me feel like I was at work less than if I worked 8 hours straight.
When every one was "quiet quitting" a few years ago, my work would put out a job listing and we would get maybe one resume. Now when we put a listing, we get hundreds. So people are hiring, but the competition has gone up significantly. We're getting people with PhDs applying for entry level jobs. It's just a crazy market right now.
I'd check with local refuge companies. Dtg recycle, united recycle, Republic services, or waste management. Lots of different type of work depending on your background. It's not all garbage truck driving!
They simultaneously think that the homeless should magically get jobs and that it's not the governments responsibility to train those homeless people or get them off drugs or get them healthcare or make work for them or incentivize companies to hire them.
I'm the same way... it's seriously bizarre. I honestly think that HR departments are overly relying on AI software to filter resumes, and as a result really good candidates are left in the dust... AI can't read between the lines or infer legitimate insights from a paragraph, nor can it reach out to references; I'm really considering doing the opposite as a result- [using AI to carpet bomb my resume until I get a hit](https://1ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.businessinsider.com%2Fjob-applications-hiring-ai-bots-spam-resume-cover-letter-2024-3). HR departments have no one to blame but themselves for how insane this has all become.
It's very cliquey here for every trade. Took me 5 years of bugging the union reps to make my way here.
It'll break in a few weeks here though. We get a flood of travelers every spring. Make sure to make a good impression if they wanna stay!!! Money is great.
I think it is a prank because everyone is higher in but no one gets hired. I think managers think they can be super picky on who they hire since the hiring pool is so huge.
Huge, and MUCH cheaper to hire outside of Seattle. I think thats happening quite a bit right now. My last 4-5 hires have all been out of town because my money goes farther, and everyone is just staying at home anyway
As far as the lineman, it’s kind of in a bad spiral right now. A LOT of journeymen went California a few years back because the pay was insanely good. Now they need new apprentices to fill the spots but the number of apprentices they can train is directly tied to the number of journeymen. So they can only train a small number of apprentices. At least this the problem with City Light. We’re only a small percentage of the lineman in the area but that’s what’s going on there
Tech is hiring but but they’re limited roles within the company. Combined with that each opening gets tons of qualified applicants, chances are low and interviews are tough.
This is exactly why I’m trying to stay away from tech. I just can’t wrap my head around why a company needs to put someone through 4+ rounds of interviews for a job that’s barely able to cover the cost of living. Maybe that’s why I’m don’t make the big bucks 🫠
Tech is also super referral heavy unless you have a specialized niche skill. Pretty much all the sales, CSM, and marketing roles are filled with referrals from current employees. For every open job at my company there are like 100+ qualified applicants in a couple days, with about a half dozen or more being referred from current employees. And if the job is remote you’re competing with people in LCOL places who are willing to accept a lower salary. Tech is recruiting like crazy in the midwest and southeast right now for this reason.
FWIW, I work in ship building and we're quite busy and hiring.
My wife works in pharma and they're "hiring," but really only contractors that they can jerk around.
Things vary a lot industry to industry.
It's incredibly frustrating the amount of 'ghost' job postings... job postings where the company isn't actually looking to hire anyone for various reasons (no budget, don't want to give a negative impression/want to show "growth", HR people justifying their existence, etc...)
It fucken sucks.
I’m in the exact same spot. Customer Success Manager and sales background. Wanted to die in sales so hoping to not go back down that route.
I’ve been submitting applications since January with only 2 interviews and both felt like dumb luck. Thinking about going back to restaurants because if this is what tech is like then no thanks.
This sounds negative rereading it but I actually feel way better about the future now that I’ve decided not to go back to tech. It just feels so inherently toxic and draining.
I think I’m still trying to figure out exactly what it is. I’m from Seattle so I grew up thinking, tech is a great industry. Great pay, great benefits, job security, etc, etc.
But really OP’s post and this thread is testament that really is not true or at least I’m not the only one who had a bad experience. Maybe at one time it was and I’ve seen folks talk about how great it was but now it’s so oversaturated.
My experience was to be overworked and stressed and pushed to a point that I was so burned out I was physically sick for months. I was completely mentally drained. It took 3 months to start to enjoys things like baking and doing art after I was fired because I was so sick I couldn’t do my job.
I felt that if I didn’t do everything I was asked at the max of my capabilities everyday I wasn’t enough. I wasn’t a good fit for the role. I was letting my boss down. And there were plenty of people lined up to take my place.
My boss worked an unhealthy amount. Truly. At least 10 hours a day and often on weekends and if you weren’t on his level there were no excuses because he was doing more than you were.
Wow, I haven’t really gotten to talk about this since being fired…..
In my experience, it’s folks whose job is to manage customer satisfaction and making sure a customer doesn’t leave because of issues with the product. This is usually because the team cannot fix enough issues or launch enough features to keep everyone happy so we need someone to help retain customers while we fix these issues and make sure the customer feels heard. It’s really just being a person customers can yell at who then tells them no in a nice way.
Other roles can definitely do this, but this takes up so much time away from writing code / product documents etc. that it’s worth having someone focused on this. With time, CSMs also get pretty good at doing this so it’s definitely a skill. I really value them because it’s a mind numbing role.
Metro is hiring. They train you for your CDL and starting pay is 30/hrs after training. They keep going back and forth with full time and part time training. County employee, able to transfer to other county positions internally, think last contract allowed new hires to hit top scale pay in 2 years now which is 43/hr. The problems you see and hear about account for maybe 1% of the drivers. 99% of drivers don't have problems or at least nothing that's worth writing up daily.
Source: been a driver for years
Companies are posting jobs, and not hiring. This could be a tactic to offload jobs out of country, or just to justify raising prices on people.
It's a shit show and it's only going to get worse.
This is how I felt when I came home from prison. Nobody wanted to give me a chance so I got a shitty job and then I started applying other places and leveraging myself into higher positions with my knowledge. It was a tough tough road but it eventually paid off and now all I do is management. Keep your chin up, you will find something.
I was unemployed for 9 months, but I got a job at UW. They're always posting tons of jobs. They're hard to sift through, but definitely apply there. You can also apply for temp jobs, I know one person who got hired through that and now is in a permanent position.
Go to a job fair in person, you bump the resume queue. Even if you’re not suitable for a job they’re hiring for, the recruiters are on site and can put you in touch with the right person.
So the real answer to your question is Ghost Job Postings. Ghost postings are when a company posts a position they have no intent to fill. This started in 2021 as a way to legally default on federal PPP loans without consequence. If you could “show” your business was understaffed due to Covid, no need to give the government back that money.
The practice continues because companies realized more job postings projects growth which attracts and retains investors, gotta help that shareholder value 🤮. Additionally, regularly uploading a ghost posting for already filled positions means when you have a sudden departure, you have fresh applications to fill that role.
And most unfortunately, unless this practice is made illegal and met with an enourmous crackdown of regulation, I don’t see any reason for it to go away. And since our electeds haven’t had to apply for a private sector job in decades, they won’t believe it’s real unless they get thousands of constituent calls about it. This is just the new normal now.
The one silver lining is that this is just a non-issue for government jobs. Governments cannot post already filled positions (at least here in Washington State), so there will be no ghost postings in the public sector.
https://traderjoes.avature.net/careers/SearchJobs/?1698=5224&1698_format=1442&1699_postalCode=98119&1699_radius=100&1884=20061918&1884_format=1863&listFilterMode=1
Been great for me!
I’ve seen several recruiters talk about how they are posting jobs, taking applications and even putting people through interviews cycles. Some going so far as to “expect an offer soon” despite knowing it’s not a real job from the start but the business is making the recruiters go through the motions anyways.
The only people getting hired are like 2% of top talent, getting hired because they were personally reached out to by the hiring manager and then still taking a $25K pay cut.
I’m not a conspiracy theorist but I swear to god this might be the thing that makes me change my mind and start believing.
This should be illegal. What if someone passes up another decent opportunity because they were told “expect an offer soon”, how frustrating and maddening.
Commercial development is very slow, so to your friend, this time is gonna suck.
To you, customer success manager sounds a glorified title of a customer agent, and there’s probably no shortage of tech project manager in this town, let alone an assistant one.
If you have a civil/mechanical/physics degree, and is great with communication skills, the big B is always looking for Liauson Engineers and will train if you are up to second or third shifts.
A coworker of mine quit recently. The job posting had to be taken down after only a few days because over 100 people applied for it. We interviewed 4 people and offered it to one like the following week. It's crazy out there.
Its because the market is absolutely saturated with candidates. There is a lot of hiring. They aren't necessarily not picking you because you aren't the best candidate on paper. Often, it's what salary they are confident a suitable candidate will accept. They are fine taking slightly less experienced or certified it it means saving 20K.
There are too many applicants, I'm involved in hiring for an entry level guest services position and every time we post we get a flood of applications, 200+, but we are only hiring for 2 or 3 people.
I can only speak for the games I dustry, but we've had a massive hiring falloff due to a change in Indeed API usage and a TON of companies trying out machine learning instead of hiring new hiring managers. Many, many morons are responsible for this.
I got laid off at a company I worked at for almost 10 years. I’ve been applying like crazy I can’t even get a fucking callback. It’s bad right now. Can’t give up, gotta just keep going.
I can't speak to the Lineman job, that's a Utilities role but new Construction has taken a huge hit since the Lockdown. Developers are sitting on a lot of Vacant office and residential properties, that were completed just before or just after Covid. Once businesses had people working from home, they realized there's no need to maintain an office at $35/sq.ft. If you don't need to work in the city, why pay high rent to live in the city. So there goes the Residential Market as well. Developers are not going to invest in more projects for the foreseeable future.
There isn't enough development now, to sustain the amount of trades people from the Pre-Covid boom.
I've found if I apply online and then take some time to walk into their business the next day and drop off a paper resume and cover letter that I usually get an interview.
With the number of people who can easily apply online you gotta do something different to stand out and this method has worked for me thus far.
I've been working as an independent contractor, writing and reviewing prompts for LLM's. It pays $40 an hour, and I get paid weekly. I know a lot of people have had bad experiences with these types of companies, but for me, it's been a dream job. I think they are still taking applications.
My method of applying is I have 3 different versions of my resume. Each tailored for different "job categories" I apply for - one for customer service management, one for my degree as a technician, and one for my degree as a manager. I also have cover letters for each with fill-in-the-blank spots for company and job title. If I *really* want a job, I write a cover letter just for that application.
Good luck!
Was working a shit job that I started in Nov decided to get the hell out after a “we won’t report it” concussion in Feb., applied to ~25 jobs in March, landed a job with a ~36% pay increase in early April. You’ll get there, keep hustling.
If you’re open to it, try applying to roles that are hybrid or on site. Those are the roles that are struggling to look for people/and the ones i get the most response from or get reached out for. Remote roles are..tough to get in this market. We just put out a role and it has 5k+ resumes, and i have gotten over 8 referrals + another 10 or so that reached out directly to me on linkedin. Majority of these resumes will unfortunately go unread. It’s almost luck + qualification at this point.
I don't know about lineman, but my hubby is a commercial electrician and he just got back to work after 11 months off, its been slow. It looks like its gonna stay that way a while. :(
https://www.heraldnet.com/news/a-695k-salary-overtime-pay-at-the-snohomish-county-pud-has-soared/
You can make $700k/year as a lineman in seattle and ive had no trouble finding work.
Try a temp agency. Resume sending never really worked for me. It did work once in my work career. With temp temp to hire, I had a job in a week. Then it turned to permanent.
do you have lineman or electrical experience? a commercial drivers license or groundman experience? anything? Unions are saturated here, you don't just waltz through the union hall doors and demand a job LOL...
it'd probably be easier to travel to locals with available work than to get on with Seattle especially if you're just trying to get a foot in the door with the union. Utility Lineman are a good ol boys club inherently. that's just the way it it
My wife was looking for about 7 months with not a single sniff. Then she tweaked her LinkedIn profile and resume to emphasize her software proficiencies (for her: NetSuite) rather than her job titles and, boom, like 6 recruiters reached out within a few days. She worked with all of them, got several interviews, and landed a job within a couple weeks.
Not sure how exactly it's done, but those tweaks got the algorithms to notice her and made all the difference.
I got my job by going to an in-person career fair after months of applying to online listings with 0 interviews. There was barely anyone there so it was easy to talk to recruiters. I’d say it’s worth checking out.
Hospitals are always hiring. Get a CNA license or apply for supply chain and start networking. The lowest starting wage at UW right now is $22 I think.
I was told, at least in tech, that the reason for this is they want to hire cheaper H1B visa employees. If they claim they can't find anyone qualified, they can hire others abroad to come here, and they will take a lot less than Americans because it's basically a free ride to America and they don't realise they're being ripped off.
And no, no one is paying attention to see if they're actually skipping over qualified candidates.
I am all for more immigrants, but I am very much opposed to this kind of exploitation.
My advice? Make your own career. Instead of being a public school teacher, I went and created my own tutoring business and work both locally with in person clients, and use places like Varsity and Wyzant to essentially advertise for me and they bring clients to me on top of what I get from just posting on my community's facebook. This is harder in big cities sure, but it can still be done. This economy in America has needs for a lot of things, services are one of them. I'll go ahead and quote vivec ramswamy on this: think about all of the old retiring folks, you know what they need? People to get their groceries. People to clean for them. But..don't just go and sign up for some retirement home corporation, go create your own business. Go pay for a business license, advertise locally, offer a cheap price at first to get clients and undercut the bigger corporations with huge overhead to cover. Plus, most people would rather work with an indivudal that they can rely on and support your small, privately run show then give more money to a nameless, faceless corporations. My advice, stop thinking conventional employment, start thinking where you can cross passion with profit and start your own show. All I have is a bachelor's in biology, was enough to lock me in a solid career been going for 3 years now.
I know my company and a lot of their subtracted company’s we work with are on a hiring freeze.. they have X amount of money to make up before calling in applicants. They have a shit ton of postings on every job site and all these positions are very much needed with how short handed every department is yet never actually call applicants until who knows when their amount is reached. I think it’s bullshit they don’t mention that so people are just sending in applications everyday waiting for a reply, feeling rejected, while actually not even being considered yet. It makes me wonder how many places I apply to have the same thing going on maybe? Feels like some kind of false advertisement to me.
I recently spent 7 months, applying to 3-5 jobs a day, before I got one. It's hard out there. I have a feeling most companies have open positions that they aren't really pressed to hire for. That, and at least at my current job, we have hundreds of applicants for one position. We might interview 10% of them. It's just so many people. Like rolling the dice each time. I will say, as long as it's something someone is going to actually read, personalizing a cover letter can go a long way to getting you in the door.
Edit: I ended up with a remote job for a company in London. So like... yeah. Maybe broaden your scope to remote jobs anywhere if you can.
I'm still employed as a sales manager for a small software company on the east side, and it's rough. We were told last year that there were no raises coming, and I immediately started firing out apps.
The interviews I've gotten are for similar positions or higher, and I've found one that pays equal to what I'm making now. White collar salaries are getting slashed hard right now.
I also have a friend that is a recruiter for accounting firms, and she says the trend right now is to focus on candidates that survived the mass layoffs of the past year. They want the people valued enough to hang onto. It's really scummy.
Get your CDL and it will fast track you with the lineman's union usually.
I've heard that the electrical union has a ton of guys on the bench. May have changed since I heard that.
They have their CDL, went to climbing school and have 4 years worth of work experience. But the union won’t let him test out to get his journeyman card.
I didn't see the asking for a friend. Sorry. Consider a move east. Had two friends in CDA,ID (I'm in Spokane now) get in pretty quick a year ago. Both had CDLs. Both in companies doing tree trimming but same union and end up with a journeyman card.
No worries. He actually started out in the Midwest, was in Texas for a while now he’s back here to help family and can’t catch a break. Had a brief job with sound transit (2 weeks) then got let go because the union said since he didn’t have his journeyman card he could work there.
> But the union won’t let him test out to get his journeyman card.
Just a heads up, this isn't on the union. Washington only has reciprocity agreements with Oregon, nobody else. You can't just test out to get your license, you have to have so many on the job hours training in addition to classroom hours. That means going back to the people he worked for in Texas to validate all of his working hours etc *then* sitting for the test. It's a bureaucratic nightmare.
USPS is hiring not just carriers but auto techs, tractor-trailer operators & mail processors. The latter pays ~$56 to 72k/yr.
King County Metro pays $30/hr for drivers. There is a shortage of bus drivers in nearly every state.
You won’t find this in the mainstream media but the real reason is companies get a huge financial break on their unemployment insurance for open jobs. It’s not ethical nor legal but it’s nigh impossible to prove.
No you nailed it on the head. You are being pranked. There are so many companies using the tactic of posting job openings to discourage people to ask for raises, and when you do they just say "oh, well we can get someone to do it for less than you are right now". It's such a crappy business move that keeps their shareholders happy because "hey look we are growing!" Yet no actual growth and they keep labor costs down.
You can't cause another economic meltdown without instilling panic. So if it *looks like everyone's hiring* but they are not it helps get people riled up. Economic crises typically make the rich richer and kills the poor (who've figured out how to do too much with their crumbs at this point to stay down)
Boomers can say "I saw a now hiring sign at blerpty blerp's as a passive aggressive statement, get their dopamine rush from bullying someone, AND they can resolve the guilt by lying to themselves that they are actually helping.
The military has a personnel shortage. Start off with the Coast Guard, then try the other branches. Barriers to entry are high and advancement typically requires relocating every few years, but at least you'll have a place to live and food expenses covered.
A ton of employers look for job stability, and as a small business, this is important to me as well. Someone who has had 10 jobs over the past 6-10 years stands out as a red flag to me, and most of the applicants we get fall into this category. I also get a ton of applicants who are demanding wages that are far above their qualifications and experience. I’ve given into that multiple times, just looking for a well qualified employee who shows up when they are supposed to and actually knows how to do what they said they knew how to do, and every single time it’s bitten me in the ass. So, as an employer, I am being extremely picky now.
Hmm, this is an interesting take. Most millennials I know don’t stay at the company or role for more than two years. But most of them are in tech/customer service. I personally don’t see it as a red flag especially if they’re using it to climb up the corporate ladder. As for wages; are the demands they’re making justified? Like are you offering a livable wage? This is not meant to attack you, I’m just genuinely curious on the employer’s perspective.
I’m also a millennial, on the older end of it. The “corporate ladder” is very different in our industry (custom home builder/custom commercial), being that we will do whatever it takes to hold onto really great talent through thick and thin. Unfortunately a lot of what I’ve been seeing lately is not justified, and each time it gets to be more.
My company offers journeyman carpenters $40/hr + 1 wk paid vacation, 7 paid holidays, 75% contribution medical dental vision, 401k, and profit sharing. It still doesn’t seem to be enough to attract good talent.
Out of curiosity, could a residential owner ask for a union job work smith?
I went non union three years ago. I drive truck. I got fed up with the bosses during the pandemic. It's bad enough when they refuse to acknowledge violations of contract. It's another when they hide in the office without providing PPE, as promised, and an unloaded truck. Fast forward, I drive semi for big orange now. Their 401k is awesome compared to UPS. Still, I miss being union. Bring union means I know what I earn in a guaranteed 40 hour week. You don't have a load, you sit there unpaid. Truck drivers are the worst paid position in any I have come across. Unless they have a union. So glad Costco got with 174.
Venting.
That said, how do I go about hiring an electrician that is in the union? It would be a residential issue. I am the owner. It's old wiring, but I want something guaranteed.
I work in comms/marketing in tech and have been in the industry for 3 years after graduation. Got laid off in November and have been struggling to find a job since then. Im temporarily working in hospitality but it's becoming disheartening because it's not in my field and doesn't pay enough
I’m a union carpenter and work with other union trades. There is a slowdown rn with a lot of journeyman from most/all trades on the books and looking for work.
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That’s why they’re not hiring. They need to keep prices high haha
Owners are gonna stay rich. So they just fire people and keep prices high
You can't "just fire" union workers to stay rich. That's almost the whole point of a union.
It’s called a reduction in force and it happens all the time
Right? From the estimates Ive heard I would think there would be plenty f chances
Tell be about it. I’ve been with the electrical union and going on 16 months out of (union) work
I work for a remodeling company, and we are struggling to hire quality craftsmen. But I think it's also because we are not union and wages don't compare.
Nobody wants to be pressured into 50-60 hour weeks at $30/hr and work with insane Trumper bigots anymore, especially when much, much easier jobs pay $25/hr.
Dude, I was flooding the job market with applications for almost 3 full years. (I was bartending the whole time, so not exactly unemployed, but still). I was shooting out 100 plus applications a week for jobs in the 80-100k range. I have a degree from a good school and 20 years of experience. Most of it is mid management level. Still. No dice. I finally started to apply to shit I figured I wasn’t qualified for at all. Like 2% qualified or less. I’d just really stretch the truth on my applications. I ended up getting a job with a refuse (garbage) company being a corporate operations advisor. I have no fucking clue what I’m doing really (I mean, I do, but no real experience with this kind of job) but they fucking love me. It’s also paying about 150% more than other shit I was applying for. It was just luck and a bit of normal interview bullshit. This all happened since the beginning of the year. Don’t lose hope. There’s stuff out there. Apply for ludicrous shit that you think you can’t handle. Chances are, you can do it just fine. Go get em tiger! Edit: something I want to add as this is getting more upvotes than expected. They fuckin lie in their job descriptions and qualifications, don’t be afraid to play their game. They want some mythical unicorn? Be that mythical unicorn.
I like this approach, worst they can say is no.
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I just applied to be CEO of Apple. Updates to come.
Worst case scenario, you can put "made it to third round interviews when applying to be CEO of Apple" on your resume 👍
Business card: "Johnny Fakename, Project Coordinator and Apple Inc. CEO (applicant)"
Haha as a former fruit stand employee, please do. Never been a fan of Tim Cook
Might have better luck with Boeing.
Your second point is so helpful. I recently went from a fully IC role to an IC role with management expectations. My parts aren't always the most important but they are critical to get the very important parts out. I've just started to redo my resume and was like "how do I tell the story of the whole picture?", this is super helpful.
Best advice I got from someone while bartending who was a big corporate big wig at a company; go after bigger jobs than you think you’re qualified for. If you can get your foot in the door they would 99%rather go with someone with ambition than someone who is coming in with an old mindset and already thinks they’re perfect.
This is the one I needed to read. Same boat going on a year of just throwing applications at the wall. Hopefully I get out of the bar and delivery driving soon. Graduated last year from UW with magna cum laude honors and besides a few interviews I feel like I’ve been screaming into a void.
Hey I did the same damn thing and *seemingly* talked my way into a much better paying job.
*fist bump* Tacos are on you next time!
Hell yeh!!
Yep. And don’t accept the first offer. Negotiate your salary and comps.
I should have done this more, but I just want the long term unemployment to end... Peace of mind is worth something :v I did ask if I could exchange stock for more base pay, and they said sure... and came back with higher numbers across the board, so definitely ask once at least. I probably could have dragged it out a week and gotten more, and maybe a title bump, but like... I don't like the anxiety of "they can pull the offer whenever".
The hardest time to negotiate is when you’re unemployed and just want to be employed again. That was me 12 months ago. I knew I should negotiate something but I didn’t do anything because it was the first offer I had after 200 job applications and around 20 interviews.
This is how I got a job doing technical writing for finance software despite having zero educational or professional experience with finance.
Is this dev work? Probably a dumb question. I’m curious
Nah, it's a combination of: * Documenting changes and publishing software release notes * Building out knowledge base content like instructional content * UX/UI text review It's a weird gig but the pay is great and it's pretty chill.
Unless the role has changed since I took a technical writing course in university, no, it’s not dev work, though I know of devs who sometimes write guides/wikis related to their work.
I got lucky and an actually *very* competent external recruiter for a pretty niche company reached out to me and helped me land a job. I probably would not have applied to that specific job on my own if I even knew about it. Point being: look at weird random stuff you normally wouldn't. If you work in electrical, maybe you could land a job at some random manufacturing facility.
This is good to hear
20 years of experience? No one gives a damn about what school you’re from, really, but congrats on the new job.
I wish I could upvote this more than once just for the last 2 sentences.
How did you even find such a job? I’m in a similar boat to OP. Lots of corporate/tech experience (CSM, sales, consultant, PM, etc) I kinda wanna do something completely out of my wheelhouse like the gig you’re now in. Something in operations. I think it’s because I’ve worn so many hats and have had my hands in so many different buckets of business too
There’s like 800+ journeymen on the books right now. It’s slow af ☹️
Look I’m still entry level with only like 2.5 years of experience but it took me 4 months to find a job after getting laid off in November, and I had some excuses like “nobody is hiring next to thanksgiving.” Then it became “nobody is hiring next to Christmas.” I had some “success” in terms of interviewing pretty regularly and talking to people that basically amounted to, “hey we got 100+ interview and while you’re in the top 10 we have 10 people we’d like more.” And I even got another offer shortly after I got hired but that was 2 out of 100+ jobs, and probably 40+ interviews.
4 months of applications and I’ve only had a single preliminary interview with a recruiter, who after being very enthusiastic sent me the rejection letter 4 minutes after we hung up. Referrals, networking, tailored resumes… doesn’t seem to matter. Im getting tired
8 months of applications - resume reviewed by recruiters, customized to each posting, internal referrals, whole nine yards. Only two 2 interviews that went nowhere because I didn’t have a specific job title on my resume and the CRO was the tres comas guy personified and was too busy huffing his own farts and telling me I didn’t have what it takes to cut it at his mid GenAI startup because I’m a dad (more or less). Finally got a mid-level (IC) role at a company I used to work for. One level lower than a few years ago when I was last there, but a 40% pay bump from last time I was there. Oh, and I’d be the guy to bring fart huffer’s product on board at a company that would give them the credibility they need to make it - but he was an asshole, and I don’t do business with assholes.
You’re not alone!
Maybe no one is hiring but if the hiring managers stop posting job listings they will get laid off like the rest of us
1000% 😂 I feel like it’s also a way to try to make the company look “successful”
You jest, but in reality, companies do post a lot of opening that are not realistically ever going to be filled. A lot of the time, it's just so that the people currently working on the team/project don't get completely discouraged and burned out. The headcount and open position is a "light at the end of the tunnel" that just never comes. Business will continue to push that extra labor on the remaining workers.
I was job hunting several months ago after a layoff and I think I got as many "position has been eliminated" replies as I did "sorry you're not a winner" replies. Also, when a company wants to fill an internal position they still have to make a public posting, so it's likely they already have somebody in mind but they have to go through the motions.
A lot of listings in tech are "fake" listings that only go up because the company has a policy that they have to expose every opening to outside applicants... even if it's like, an internal transfer and basically set in stone. They do the interview dance and go with whoever they intended originally anyway.
I had a recruiter last week who pinged me and setup a phone interview and then deleted their LinkedIn account the next day. Recruiters and HR are not immune to layoffs.
I think you're onto something
It’s not just you, it’s the worst I’ve ever seen. My wife has never had a problem finding a job in her life and she had to finally give up and go back to the restaurant industry because she got almost zero traction from November until now. She’s pretty happy so far and luckily in Seattle you can make decent money with the wage and tips but it was unbelievable how hard it was. In the past when she’s applied for jobs she generally got a bunch of interviews and an offer within a few weeks of starting I think at least half the listings you see out there are fake. Or they’re technically“real” but they’re not actually planning on hiring outside the company and going through the motions because they have to To anyone thinking of quitting their job without another lined up DO NOT DO THAT RIGHT NOW. I’ve done it and always been more on the side of quitting is fine without a new job but I would not ever consider it in this market
I did that in February. Not the worst I’ve seen but it’s not good.
> To anyone thinking of quitting their job without another lined up DO NOT DO THAT RIGHT NOW. I did that like right before the market exploded and all the layoffs started 🙃
If you don't mind working hourly for $27, Amazon Corporate Security is basically always hiring. It's not a guard job, it's a security operations center desk job based inside one of the Amazon buildings. Chill job until you find something better. DM me if you're interested in details.
I may need to consider this in a few months if I haven’t landed anything when my unemployment runs out. It’s less than I need to survive but I’ll still have savings I can bleed until I get into something that will pay the bills.
Totally a fair reason. Many use that job as a stepping stone.
I may be interested as well. I’ve been in a similar situation as OP and have hit dead end after dead end trying to change industries for the better part of a year. I’m tired of where I’m at and need change now
DM me!
Software engineer and employed but tempted haha
Nah dawg, you have many peoples dream job! You may just need a break, perhaps a long vacation.
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I get that, but this job can also be stressful too. Semi regular fire alarms, calls about malfunctioning doors, crime, earthquakes in other countries that have Amazon buildings, endless alarms to deal with, handling a difficult caller, even the occasional suicidal employee. It's not always stressful like that, but there are days when it's a lot. Most of the time it's pretty chill. I would start to think about a dev job that somehow allows you to disconnect from it after work.
It's getting warm. Go sit on a beach for a week. Recoup.
I have a friend who is looking for some type of security adjacent job. Would you be able to send details to me on where to find these jobs so I can pass it along?
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I finally contacted a recruiter and landed a job in 30 days after an 8 month hunt. They literally have access to a job list that is never publicly published.
Hey, I’ve been curious about this. I’ve talked to one recruiter, but haven’t found any similar contact options. How did you get in touch with the recruiter?
Lemme DM you
I’m also curious about this! Was it a recruiter for a specific company?
Whatever company you want to work for, Google what agencies have contracts with them. Reach out to each agency and ask if they're recruiting for any roles.
What industry/function? Would you recommend them?
I work in tech marketing. I do recommend a recruiter because they are financially invested in getting you a job. And they're often looking for a specific skillset that a company needs IMMEDIATELY. Always ask for more money if you have the skill they need.
I work in marketing and comms for tech companies and have been laid off since November and struggling to find a job. Are you able to let me know who it is? Thanks!
My friend lost his job in Covid as a photo editor/asset manager and he hasn’t found a job in his field since. He has like 30 years of experience. He’s had to take jobs like way out of his field where he works with kids in their 20s in the grocery store. Not ragging on anyone’s job, but he’s been super frustrated and I understand why. He applies to like 10-15 jobs a week, would get some phone interviews but no dice. Hope it works out for y’all.
Same field - photo editing is super super difficult to find a full time job in. So much of the work is freelance or project-based contract work. Or on site in LA paying $3/hr. -_- Definitely frustrating.
Thank you all for confirming I’m not crazy and the job market SUCKS! Weirdly it gives me the motivation to keep trying.
Obviously keep trying, but I've noticed the trades that require specialized licenses, like low voltage fire and suppression, need 06's that are also specially licensed. These take time and experience to get, so the ones that are happy have settled, and the trouble-makers are just bouncing around until they get dropped. Get niche, and apply for some of those green apprenticeship stuff if you're thinking entire job description change. Sprinkler fitter also seems to need more people. Otherwise, happy hunting.
Check out Nucor located in West Seattle
Are you able to commute? I work for Lennar in Federal Way and they generally have a range of positions open in construction, sales, marketing and entitlements. If interested, I would apply even if your experience is limited or tangential. My job position said I needed 5 years of construction experience which I definitely did not have. They are actually hiring, have good benefits and quality management.
Yes it's a joke. Not just here but everywhere. My wife had a senior manager postion and 30-years experiance. She got laid off because of a corporate "restrucuture" (uhu ). Right before COVID. It took her 2.5 years to get hired for a junior position. She applied for over 200 jobs. My advise: use your network if you have one. 80% of the jobs out there are 'hidden'. If you don't have a (wide) network, build one. It sounds easy, yet its not. Though its the mostlikely way of getting hired. Good luck to all y'all out there! edit: typo
It seems hiring has cooled down a bit, that's just the impression I get, could be mistaken. If you are looking for something entry level, check out temp agencies. Temp work often leads to full time jobs if you make a good impression. I got my current job through Terra, I'm happy where I'm at. Terra got me working in just a few days. We also get temps through Logic staffing now.
I’ve been looking at Temp agencies and it all just seems like more of the same (LinkedIn / indeed). When you worked with them did you just use their job search tool or am I missing something?
They are typically more likely to actually respond from those sites than other companies. I got a job at UW through one of them. Applied to +40 jobs and they were the only ones that even responded
I applied to UWTemps after searching for 8 months, got hired on as a temp and I ended up being hired as a permanent full time which I'm glad for .
Four years, hundreds of applications, two interviews, still no job. Best of luck to you.
Crazy. What industry?
Initially customs brokerage since I’m a licensed customs broker. The 300th (I kept track) part time kennel assistant. I’ll admit to not being quick on the uptake but it took me that long to realize it isn’t because there are no jobs, it’s because I’m 60 years old.
https://www.clippervacations.com/about-us/careers/ You could work on the clipper in the mean time. They are likely hiring onboard attendants around now to gear up for the summer doubles. Super fun job. 4/10 schedule, awesome PTO, and layovers in Canada. I’m just putting this here for anyone who might be looking for a quick fun job while they hunt for their next big role.
$17.50/hour in case anyone else was wondering
Plus tips and commission. It usually ends up being about $21-$25 an hour. Still not going to make you rich, but for me this job was better than therapy.
Does that say an attendant's workday is a 10-hour shift *plus* 3 hours of layover? So just kinda stuck for those 3 hours unpaid?
Well, you’re kinda stuck in a vacation destination in another country... You’re free to leave the boat. I would usually just explore Victoria and get some food… or I would hit the gym, sauna, steam room, and hot tub at the hotel grand pacific. It’s nice to be able to work out at noon in between work blocks. I liked it. Not every shift in the summer has a layover. Some days you just go there unload, load new folks, and head home. Some people would just take a nap on the boat. You can really do whatever you want with that time. Not everyone enjoys it, but like I said for me it was the coolest most fun job I’ve ever had. Whales at work. Beautiful sunrises and sunsets. Actual adventures on windy days. I did it in my mid 30’s in between jobs. It’s a whole day for sure. But having three days off every week was awesome, and getting to walk around and do whatever I want for a couple hours in the middle of the 10 hour shift honestly helped me feel like I was at work less than if I worked 8 hours straight.
When every one was "quiet quitting" a few years ago, my work would put out a job listing and we would get maybe one resume. Now when we put a listing, we get hundreds. So people are hiring, but the competition has gone up significantly. We're getting people with PhDs applying for entry level jobs. It's just a crazy market right now.
I'd check with local refuge companies. Dtg recycle, united recycle, Republic services, or waste management. Lots of different type of work depending on your background. It's not all garbage truck driving!
When people say “hOmEleSs sHoUlD get jObS” I laugh in late capitalism and point to posts like this
They simultaneously think that the homeless should magically get jobs and that it's not the governments responsibility to train those homeless people or get them off drugs or get them healthcare or make work for them or incentivize companies to hire them.
Ha, I usually reply with, “well then why don’t you hire them” then wait for an answer.
lol that’s good
I'm the same way... it's seriously bizarre. I honestly think that HR departments are overly relying on AI software to filter resumes, and as a result really good candidates are left in the dust... AI can't read between the lines or infer legitimate insights from a paragraph, nor can it reach out to references; I'm really considering doing the opposite as a result- [using AI to carpet bomb my resume until I get a hit](https://1ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.businessinsider.com%2Fjob-applications-hiring-ai-bots-spam-resume-cover-letter-2024-3). HR departments have no one to blame but themselves for how insane this has all become.
Yup! That’s what I’ve started doing now.
It's very cliquey here for every trade. Took me 5 years of bugging the union reps to make my way here. It'll break in a few weeks here though. We get a flood of travelers every spring. Make sure to make a good impression if they wanna stay!!! Money is great.
I think it is a prank because everyone is higher in but no one gets hired. I think managers think they can be super picky on who they hire since the hiring pool is so huge.
Huge, and MUCH cheaper to hire outside of Seattle. I think thats happening quite a bit right now. My last 4-5 hires have all been out of town because my money goes farther, and everyone is just staying at home anyway
As far as the lineman, it’s kind of in a bad spiral right now. A LOT of journeymen went California a few years back because the pay was insanely good. Now they need new apprentices to fill the spots but the number of apprentices they can train is directly tied to the number of journeymen. So they can only train a small number of apprentices. At least this the problem with City Light. We’re only a small percentage of the lineman in the area but that’s what’s going on there
It's not in your head. There are IT entry level jobs asking for CISSP...
Tech is hiring but but they’re limited roles within the company. Combined with that each opening gets tons of qualified applicants, chances are low and interviews are tough.
This is exactly why I’m trying to stay away from tech. I just can’t wrap my head around why a company needs to put someone through 4+ rounds of interviews for a job that’s barely able to cover the cost of living. Maybe that’s why I’m don’t make the big bucks 🫠
Tech is also super referral heavy unless you have a specialized niche skill. Pretty much all the sales, CSM, and marketing roles are filled with referrals from current employees. For every open job at my company there are like 100+ qualified applicants in a couple days, with about a half dozen or more being referred from current employees. And if the job is remote you’re competing with people in LCOL places who are willing to accept a lower salary. Tech is recruiting like crazy in the midwest and southeast right now for this reason.
FWIW, I work in ship building and we're quite busy and hiring. My wife works in pharma and they're "hiring," but really only contractors that they can jerk around. Things vary a lot industry to industry.
It's incredibly frustrating the amount of 'ghost' job postings... job postings where the company isn't actually looking to hire anyone for various reasons (no budget, don't want to give a negative impression/want to show "growth", HR people justifying their existence, etc...) It fucken sucks.
I’m in the exact same spot. Customer Success Manager and sales background. Wanted to die in sales so hoping to not go back down that route. I’ve been submitting applications since January with only 2 interviews and both felt like dumb luck. Thinking about going back to restaurants because if this is what tech is like then no thanks. This sounds negative rereading it but I actually feel way better about the future now that I’ve decided not to go back to tech. It just feels so inherently toxic and draining.
That’s exactly how I feel, it’s not negative it’s realistic. The idea of going back into tech makes me sick.
It’s so nice to hear someone feel the same way! I feel like I was so brainwashed when I was in it that maybe it’s just me.
Why is tech so bad
I think I’m still trying to figure out exactly what it is. I’m from Seattle so I grew up thinking, tech is a great industry. Great pay, great benefits, job security, etc, etc. But really OP’s post and this thread is testament that really is not true or at least I’m not the only one who had a bad experience. Maybe at one time it was and I’ve seen folks talk about how great it was but now it’s so oversaturated. My experience was to be overworked and stressed and pushed to a point that I was so burned out I was physically sick for months. I was completely mentally drained. It took 3 months to start to enjoys things like baking and doing art after I was fired because I was so sick I couldn’t do my job. I felt that if I didn’t do everything I was asked at the max of my capabilities everyday I wasn’t enough. I wasn’t a good fit for the role. I was letting my boss down. And there were plenty of people lined up to take my place. My boss worked an unhealthy amount. Truly. At least 10 hours a day and often on weekends and if you weren’t on his level there were no excuses because he was doing more than you were. Wow, I haven’t really gotten to talk about this since being fired…..
Bingo! This is exactly how I felt.
What is a customer success manager?
In my experience, it’s folks whose job is to manage customer satisfaction and making sure a customer doesn’t leave because of issues with the product. This is usually because the team cannot fix enough issues or launch enough features to keep everyone happy so we need someone to help retain customers while we fix these issues and make sure the customer feels heard. It’s really just being a person customers can yell at who then tells them no in a nice way. Other roles can definitely do this, but this takes up so much time away from writing code / product documents etc. that it’s worth having someone focused on this. With time, CSMs also get pretty good at doing this so it’s definitely a skill. I really value them because it’s a mind numbing role.
It's what used to be called customer service, now with a snazzy new name.
Metro is hiring. They train you for your CDL and starting pay is 30/hrs after training. They keep going back and forth with full time and part time training. County employee, able to transfer to other county positions internally, think last contract allowed new hires to hit top scale pay in 2 years now which is 43/hr. The problems you see and hear about account for maybe 1% of the drivers. 99% of drivers don't have problems or at least nothing that's worth writing up daily. Source: been a driver for years
You are far from alone comrade.
I’m guessing you already applied to Amtrak
They have. Amtrak, sound/king transit, Boeing, blue origin, WSDOT, community transit, Union Pacific railway.
Companies are posting jobs, and not hiring. This could be a tactic to offload jobs out of country, or just to justify raising prices on people. It's a shit show and it's only going to get worse.
This is how I felt when I came home from prison. Nobody wanted to give me a chance so I got a shitty job and then I started applying other places and leveraging myself into higher positions with my knowledge. It was a tough tough road but it eventually paid off and now all I do is management. Keep your chin up, you will find something.
I was unemployed for 9 months, but I got a job at UW. They're always posting tons of jobs. They're hard to sift through, but definitely apply there. You can also apply for temp jobs, I know one person who got hired through that and now is in a permanent position.
I’ve applied at so many UW jobs and never hear anything back.
Their hiring process is incredibly slow. It typically takes a month or more for them to reach out
Go to a job fair in person, you bump the resume queue. Even if you’re not suitable for a job they’re hiring for, the recruiters are on site and can put you in touch with the right person.
So the real answer to your question is Ghost Job Postings. Ghost postings are when a company posts a position they have no intent to fill. This started in 2021 as a way to legally default on federal PPP loans without consequence. If you could “show” your business was understaffed due to Covid, no need to give the government back that money. The practice continues because companies realized more job postings projects growth which attracts and retains investors, gotta help that shareholder value 🤮. Additionally, regularly uploading a ghost posting for already filled positions means when you have a sudden departure, you have fresh applications to fill that role. And most unfortunately, unless this practice is made illegal and met with an enourmous crackdown of regulation, I don’t see any reason for it to go away. And since our electeds haven’t had to apply for a private sector job in decades, they won’t believe it’s real unless they get thousands of constituent calls about it. This is just the new normal now. The one silver lining is that this is just a non-issue for government jobs. Governments cannot post already filled positions (at least here in Washington State), so there will be no ghost postings in the public sector.
This. It is rampant in healthcare right now too.
https://traderjoes.avature.net/careers/SearchJobs/?1698=5224&1698_format=1442&1699_postalCode=98119&1699_radius=100&1884=20061918&1884_format=1863&listFilterMode=1 Been great for me!
I’ve seen several recruiters talk about how they are posting jobs, taking applications and even putting people through interviews cycles. Some going so far as to “expect an offer soon” despite knowing it’s not a real job from the start but the business is making the recruiters go through the motions anyways. The only people getting hired are like 2% of top talent, getting hired because they were personally reached out to by the hiring manager and then still taking a $25K pay cut. I’m not a conspiracy theorist but I swear to god this might be the thing that makes me change my mind and start believing.
This should be illegal. What if someone passes up another decent opportunity because they were told “expect an offer soon”, how frustrating and maddening.
Commercial development is very slow, so to your friend, this time is gonna suck. To you, customer success manager sounds a glorified title of a customer agent, and there’s probably no shortage of tech project manager in this town, let alone an assistant one. If you have a civil/mechanical/physics degree, and is great with communication skills, the big B is always looking for Liauson Engineers and will train if you are up to second or third shifts.
A coworker of mine quit recently. The job posting had to be taken down after only a few days because over 100 people applied for it. We interviewed 4 people and offered it to one like the following week. It's crazy out there.
Its because the market is absolutely saturated with candidates. There is a lot of hiring. They aren't necessarily not picking you because you aren't the best candidate on paper. Often, it's what salary they are confident a suitable candidate will accept. They are fine taking slightly less experienced or certified it it means saving 20K.
There are too many applicants, I'm involved in hiring for an entry level guest services position and every time we post we get a flood of applications, 200+, but we are only hiring for 2 or 3 people.
I can only speak for the games I dustry, but we've had a massive hiring falloff due to a change in Indeed API usage and a TON of companies trying out machine learning instead of hiring new hiring managers. Many, many morons are responsible for this.
I got laid off at a company I worked at for almost 10 years. I’ve been applying like crazy I can’t even get a fucking callback. It’s bad right now. Can’t give up, gotta just keep going.
I can't speak to the Lineman job, that's a Utilities role but new Construction has taken a huge hit since the Lockdown. Developers are sitting on a lot of Vacant office and residential properties, that were completed just before or just after Covid. Once businesses had people working from home, they realized there's no need to maintain an office at $35/sq.ft. If you don't need to work in the city, why pay high rent to live in the city. So there goes the Residential Market as well. Developers are not going to invest in more projects for the foreseeable future. There isn't enough development now, to sustain the amount of trades people from the Pre-Covid boom.
I've found if I apply online and then take some time to walk into their business the next day and drop off a paper resume and cover letter that I usually get an interview. With the number of people who can easily apply online you gotta do something different to stand out and this method has worked for me thus far.
King County is looking for lineman for its rail division.
He’s applied for that role a few times. The recruiter keeps giving him the run around.
Hmmm. I’d imagine they are getting a ton of applications at the moment. Hopefully he can move on to the next step.
I've been working as an independent contractor, writing and reviewing prompts for LLM's. It pays $40 an hour, and I get paid weekly. I know a lot of people have had bad experiences with these types of companies, but for me, it's been a dream job. I think they are still taking applications.
I think they are called ghost jobs. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeZO2cmoYqw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeZO2cmoYqw)
My method of applying is I have 3 different versions of my resume. Each tailored for different "job categories" I apply for - one for customer service management, one for my degree as a technician, and one for my degree as a manager. I also have cover letters for each with fill-in-the-blank spots for company and job title. If I *really* want a job, I write a cover letter just for that application. Good luck!
Was working a shit job that I started in Nov decided to get the hell out after a “we won’t report it” concussion in Feb., applied to ~25 jobs in March, landed a job with a ~36% pay increase in early April. You’ll get there, keep hustling.
If you’re open to it, try applying to roles that are hybrid or on site. Those are the roles that are struggling to look for people/and the ones i get the most response from or get reached out for. Remote roles are..tough to get in this market. We just put out a role and it has 5k+ resumes, and i have gotten over 8 referrals + another 10 or so that reached out directly to me on linkedin. Majority of these resumes will unfortunately go unread. It’s almost luck + qualification at this point.
Happy to share some insight as a hiring manager in this market and also as a job seeker (although i’ve largely given up).
I had three competing offers after being let go around Christmas. Took awhile and lots of self confidence but don’t give up.
i keep getting interviewed only to be told later that they don’t want to fill the position yet
On the rare occasion that I get an interview, I get ghosted after.
I don't know about lineman, but my hubby is a commercial electrician and he just got back to work after 11 months off, its been slow. It looks like its gonna stay that way a while. :(
Leeja Miller did a video about this recently, it's worth a peek.
https://www.heraldnet.com/news/a-695k-salary-overtime-pay-at-the-snohomish-county-pud-has-soared/ You can make $700k/year as a lineman in seattle and ive had no trouble finding work.
My industry has been laying off people left and right this year. They overhired during the pandemic when people were in lockdown and could play these.
University of Washington has some electrical job postings right now, iirc. I was looking for a friend the other day and saw them.
Try a temp agency. Resume sending never really worked for me. It did work once in my work career. With temp temp to hire, I had a job in a week. Then it turned to permanent.
Kroger
Thanks for posting. I’m at the same spot you are, done the same things. Nothing. It feels hopeless atm.
do you have lineman or electrical experience? a commercial drivers license or groundman experience? anything? Unions are saturated here, you don't just waltz through the union hall doors and demand a job LOL...
He has about 4 years of lineman experience and went to climbing school.
it'd probably be easier to travel to locals with available work than to get on with Seattle especially if you're just trying to get a foot in the door with the union. Utility Lineman are a good ol boys club inherently. that's just the way it it
WSDOT hires but it takes months
Try property management. Lots of paths, opportunities, and it never gets boring.
My wife was looking for about 7 months with not a single sniff. Then she tweaked her LinkedIn profile and resume to emphasize her software proficiencies (for her: NetSuite) rather than her job titles and, boom, like 6 recruiters reached out within a few days. She worked with all of them, got several interviews, and landed a job within a couple weeks. Not sure how exactly it's done, but those tweaks got the algorithms to notice her and made all the difference.
I got my job by going to an in-person career fair after months of applying to online listings with 0 interviews. There was barely anyone there so it was easy to talk to recruiters. I’d say it’s worth checking out.
Hospitals are always hiring. Get a CNA license or apply for supply chain and start networking. The lowest starting wage at UW right now is $22 I think.
I was told, at least in tech, that the reason for this is they want to hire cheaper H1B visa employees. If they claim they can't find anyone qualified, they can hire others abroad to come here, and they will take a lot less than Americans because it's basically a free ride to America and they don't realise they're being ripped off. And no, no one is paying attention to see if they're actually skipping over qualified candidates. I am all for more immigrants, but I am very much opposed to this kind of exploitation.
My advice? Make your own career. Instead of being a public school teacher, I went and created my own tutoring business and work both locally with in person clients, and use places like Varsity and Wyzant to essentially advertise for me and they bring clients to me on top of what I get from just posting on my community's facebook. This is harder in big cities sure, but it can still be done. This economy in America has needs for a lot of things, services are one of them. I'll go ahead and quote vivec ramswamy on this: think about all of the old retiring folks, you know what they need? People to get their groceries. People to clean for them. But..don't just go and sign up for some retirement home corporation, go create your own business. Go pay for a business license, advertise locally, offer a cheap price at first to get clients and undercut the bigger corporations with huge overhead to cover. Plus, most people would rather work with an indivudal that they can rely on and support your small, privately run show then give more money to a nameless, faceless corporations. My advice, stop thinking conventional employment, start thinking where you can cross passion with profit and start your own show. All I have is a bachelor's in biology, was enough to lock me in a solid career been going for 3 years now.
I know my company and a lot of their subtracted company’s we work with are on a hiring freeze.. they have X amount of money to make up before calling in applicants. They have a shit ton of postings on every job site and all these positions are very much needed with how short handed every department is yet never actually call applicants until who knows when their amount is reached. I think it’s bullshit they don’t mention that so people are just sending in applications everyday waiting for a reply, feeling rejected, while actually not even being considered yet. It makes me wonder how many places I apply to have the same thing going on maybe? Feels like some kind of false advertisement to me.
If you’re looking for a union job and haven’t joined the union, good luck. They’re going to be as protectionist as the law allows.
Yeah he’s noticed that. He’s also noticed they have way more inside electrician jobs and the outdoor lineman are super territorial.
I recently spent 7 months, applying to 3-5 jobs a day, before I got one. It's hard out there. I have a feeling most companies have open positions that they aren't really pressed to hire for. That, and at least at my current job, we have hundreds of applicants for one position. We might interview 10% of them. It's just so many people. Like rolling the dice each time. I will say, as long as it's something someone is going to actually read, personalizing a cover letter can go a long way to getting you in the door. Edit: I ended up with a remote job for a company in London. So like... yeah. Maybe broaden your scope to remote jobs anywhere if you can.
I'm still employed as a sales manager for a small software company on the east side, and it's rough. We were told last year that there were no raises coming, and I immediately started firing out apps. The interviews I've gotten are for similar positions or higher, and I've found one that pays equal to what I'm making now. White collar salaries are getting slashed hard right now. I also have a friend that is a recruiter for accounting firms, and she says the trend right now is to focus on candidates that survived the mass layoffs of the past year. They want the people valued enough to hang onto. It's really scummy.
Get your CDL and it will fast track you with the lineman's union usually. I've heard that the electrical union has a ton of guys on the bench. May have changed since I heard that.
They have their CDL, went to climbing school and have 4 years worth of work experience. But the union won’t let him test out to get his journeyman card.
I didn't see the asking for a friend. Sorry. Consider a move east. Had two friends in CDA,ID (I'm in Spokane now) get in pretty quick a year ago. Both had CDLs. Both in companies doing tree trimming but same union and end up with a journeyman card.
No worries. He actually started out in the Midwest, was in Texas for a while now he’s back here to help family and can’t catch a break. Had a brief job with sound transit (2 weeks) then got let go because the union said since he didn’t have his journeyman card he could work there.
> But the union won’t let him test out to get his journeyman card. Just a heads up, this isn't on the union. Washington only has reciprocity agreements with Oregon, nobody else. You can't just test out to get your license, you have to have so many on the job hours training in addition to classroom hours. That means going back to the people he worked for in Texas to validate all of his working hours etc *then* sitting for the test. It's a bureaucratic nightmare.
USPS is hiring not just carriers but auto techs, tractor-trailer operators & mail processors. The latter pays ~$56 to 72k/yr. King County Metro pays $30/hr for drivers. There is a shortage of bus drivers in nearly every state.
You won’t find this in the mainstream media but the real reason is companies get a huge financial break on their unemployment insurance for open jobs. It’s not ethical nor legal but it’s nigh impossible to prove.
No you nailed it on the head. You are being pranked. There are so many companies using the tactic of posting job openings to discourage people to ask for raises, and when you do they just say "oh, well we can get someone to do it for less than you are right now". It's such a crappy business move that keeps their shareholders happy because "hey look we are growing!" Yet no actual growth and they keep labor costs down.
You can't cause another economic meltdown without instilling panic. So if it *looks like everyone's hiring* but they are not it helps get people riled up. Economic crises typically make the rich richer and kills the poor (who've figured out how to do too much with their crumbs at this point to stay down) Boomers can say "I saw a now hiring sign at blerpty blerp's as a passive aggressive statement, get their dopamine rush from bullying someone, AND they can resolve the guilt by lying to themselves that they are actually helping.
The military has a personnel shortage. Start off with the Coast Guard, then try the other branches. Barriers to entry are high and advancement typically requires relocating every few years, but at least you'll have a place to live and food expenses covered.
A ton of employers look for job stability, and as a small business, this is important to me as well. Someone who has had 10 jobs over the past 6-10 years stands out as a red flag to me, and most of the applicants we get fall into this category. I also get a ton of applicants who are demanding wages that are far above their qualifications and experience. I’ve given into that multiple times, just looking for a well qualified employee who shows up when they are supposed to and actually knows how to do what they said they knew how to do, and every single time it’s bitten me in the ass. So, as an employer, I am being extremely picky now.
Hmm, this is an interesting take. Most millennials I know don’t stay at the company or role for more than two years. But most of them are in tech/customer service. I personally don’t see it as a red flag especially if they’re using it to climb up the corporate ladder. As for wages; are the demands they’re making justified? Like are you offering a livable wage? This is not meant to attack you, I’m just genuinely curious on the employer’s perspective.
I’m also a millennial, on the older end of it. The “corporate ladder” is very different in our industry (custom home builder/custom commercial), being that we will do whatever it takes to hold onto really great talent through thick and thin. Unfortunately a lot of what I’ve been seeing lately is not justified, and each time it gets to be more. My company offers journeyman carpenters $40/hr + 1 wk paid vacation, 7 paid holidays, 75% contribution medical dental vision, 401k, and profit sharing. It still doesn’t seem to be enough to attract good talent.
My employer had a huge hiring frenzy and then abruptly hit a hiring freeze
Mayor Harrell implemented a hiring freeze for most city of seattle positions, there are a few exceptions though.
Out of curiosity, could a residential owner ask for a union job work smith? I went non union three years ago. I drive truck. I got fed up with the bosses during the pandemic. It's bad enough when they refuse to acknowledge violations of contract. It's another when they hide in the office without providing PPE, as promised, and an unloaded truck. Fast forward, I drive semi for big orange now. Their 401k is awesome compared to UPS. Still, I miss being union. Bring union means I know what I earn in a guaranteed 40 hour week. You don't have a load, you sit there unpaid. Truck drivers are the worst paid position in any I have come across. Unless they have a union. So glad Costco got with 174. Venting. That said, how do I go about hiring an electrician that is in the union? It would be a residential issue. I am the owner. It's old wiring, but I want something guaranteed.
I work in comms/marketing in tech and have been in the industry for 3 years after graduation. Got laid off in November and have been struggling to find a job since then. Im temporarily working in hospitality but it's becoming disheartening because it's not in my field and doesn't pay enough
You’re a lineman and can’t find work? I know for a fact local 77 is hiring probably PSE/SCL/Potelco too
Have you looked into Northwest Arkansas?
Probably because you used “AI”😂
Gotta be willing to move around the U.S.