I’m about to expose the absolute idiot that I am but I figured if I can make someone laugh with this it’s worth telling.

I had a remote interview for an EA position, and the interviewer immediately started with making me solve riddles, which first of all who tf does that?

He gave me the wolf, goat, cabbage riddle: a farmer must move a wolf, a goat, and a cabbage across a river in a boat that holds only the farmer and one item at a time. The rules: The wolf will eat the goat if left unattended. The goat will eat the cabbage if left unattended.

The CORRECT answer:

Trip 1: Take the goat first , leaving the wolf and cabbage behind.

Trip 2: Return alone to the starting side.

Trip 3: Take the wolf across the river.

Trip 4: Bring the goat back with you so the wolf isn't left alone with it.

Trip 5: Leave the goat, take the cabbage across, and leave it with the wolf.

Trip 6: Return alone to the starting side.

Trip 7: Pick up the goat and bring it across the river.

MY ANSWER: and I said this with my full chest too: “well since the wolf will eat the goat and the goat will eat the cabbage, just put that stuffed wolf with the goat and cabbage inside it, put it on the boat, and take it over the river” (yes the wolf is fcking stuffed with the goat and cabbage inside it😭)

Let’s just say the interview IMMEDIATELY ended right there.

I cry laugh every time I think about this. My mom said “you definitely didn’t have the correct answer, but boy did you have the most creative answer”

2 interviews, one told me after I followed up a week later that I am not the right fit and they haven’t found the right candidate. They have decided to remove the current job post and will be reposting it with a more specific scope. That day they did just that!

Next interview was put together through a friend who knows this person. Skipping the long vetting process and straight to the top dog.
Meeting was great very nice person, told them I have applied to this company several times now, with no luck or word on my applications.

One of the first things they asked. Have you been laid off? Unfortunately yes I have. Well, there is very little to no chance you will get hired on or land an interview.

Summed up, this company refuses to hire people who have been laid off. CEO says there is a reason they have been laid off. As they are not highly valued employees, or top tier talent and wants only the best top tier talent out there.

At two companies where I went through multiple rounds of interviews, the hiring managers showed strong interest only to ghost me afterward. At one company, the hiring manager in second round had already read my work, was genuinely interested in implementing my work because they were tackling the same problem, and had even discussed it with one of my collaborators before interviewing me. At the other company, they were impressed by the breadth of my skillset and even asked if I would consider taking on responsibilities associated with another role too occasionally. It felt good to be recognized in the moment.
Despite all the positive signals, both companies repeatedly said they would follow up, then went completely silent even after multiple attempts to get an update.

The first time, I assumed it was an isolated incident. But having the same experience twice in a row is incredibly frustrating.

Had the weirdest interview experience so far. I am a data analyst and a few days ago I had a call with the hiring manager and we were discussing the task assesment I was given. He was so slow... Every single of my answers was followed by 5-8 seconds awkward silence. He was not asking follow up questions, his questions were all over the place and most importantly his eyes were floating in a way that was not natural.

Anyway, the vibe was so off that I didn't even ask my questions at the end. I just wanted to end the call asap. I know it's okay to use AI (I use it for interview preparation) but it was so arrogant.

Like how was that any different than talking to an actual AI?

Hi guys i had an interview today scheduled at 10:30 am and ended up waiting over half an hour for no one to show up. I emailed my interviewer and he said it was scheduled 10:30 EDT (9:30 MY TIME). I never had any interviews in the past that had different time zones so I completely missed this. will this affect how they view me? it was such a dumb mistake. i think we are rescheduling the interview now.

I’ve wasted so much time and effort going to interviews that “qualified” me by a bot to just sit in front of someone that’s clearly disconnected.

This occupation is for a Entry IT Help desk. I'm also a internal employee working at the company for 2 years and also having a HR recommendation and networking with another HR to get me into a interview.

edit: I dont have technical experience but I've gained personal experience with home labs for a year and ticketing simulations for 3 months so I nailed the technical questions. I have 2 years in customer experience as a cashier on-call and face-to-face.

It worked and I got a in-phone and yesterday a in person interview and now tomorrow I have another interview with the director.

I fear deadly that I might not get hired but also what more questions would they even ask me?

I already went through so much and even the 2nd interview they ask repeated questions from the 1st (only like 2 repeated questions.)

What should i prepare for this time?

Job hunting right now is lonely. If you're in the middle of it, this one's for you.

The job hunt sucks and here are seven things every job seeker is going through right now, in the middle of all this AI powered hunting.

1. Getting ghosted after interviews. You prepare for days, you think it went well, then nothing. No email. No update. Just silence.
2. "Tell me about yourself." Five words that ruin everyone's morning. Too long and you ramble. Too short and you seem uninterested.
3. The salary question. Say a number too low and you've capped yourself. Too high and you're out. It feels like a trap because it kind of is one.
4. Nerves stealing your answers. You knew this one cold. You practiced it out loud. Then your heart starts racing and the words vanish.
5. Dozens of tailored applications sent into the void. Zero replies. It starts feeling personal. It's not personal.
6. Rejections with no feedback. "We decided to move forward with other candidates." Okay but what did I actually do wrong? You will never know. Recruiters don't have the time to tell you, they are swamped with applications too.
7. "What's your greatest weakness?" Give a fake strength and they see right through it. Give a real one and you talk yourself out of the job.

Hear me on this. None of this means you aren't good enough. The process is just terrible at recognizing good people. It's honestly pretty broken right now.

My friend told a wild story of how she got rejected by a manager in a coffee interview because of sparkling water.

So my friend, let's call her Lucy, had a few rounds of interviews for a sales position and the manager wanted to interview her for the last round over coffee. Lucy said she did all the interviews well and hoped to get approval from the manager as well.

Lucy meets the manager for coffee and the manager welcomes her.

The manager asks Lucy if she wants to order something (Manager didn't order anything yet).

Lucy asks if she can get some sparkling water (normal water is available on the table). The manager was confused and said that water is already on the table. Lucy replied that she wanted sparkling water. The manager asked what was "sparkling water". Lucy was confused, but said it's "water with carbon dioxide"

The manager asked Lucy if she was referring to "Soda" but Lucy denied and said that she wanted sparkling water not soda. The manager asked the waitress to bring sparkling water for Lucy and coffee for himself.

The waitress bought both and the manager said it looks like soda to him (sprite?). Lucy thinking not to make it awkward just laughed and took a sip and said it's sparkling water.

The manager asked some questions and Lucy said she answered them well and the manager said they will get back to her.

She gets rejected the next day.

She thinks it might be because the manager was hurt that she corrected him about the sparkling water and maybe it's because she didn't order coffee.

I'm not sure why the manager thought sparkling water was soda or he never heard of the term sparkling water before. Did something like this happen to anyone?

What is going on with the job interview process these days? I've gotten a flurry of calls for interviews (four to be exact) over the past 6 weeks. I had gone thru a dry spell over the summer and felt pretty good.

One place called and we chatted about my background and availability for an interview. They specifically said that they were flexible about the time if I wasn't able to make the proposed time. I couldn't make the interview time they set. I emailed the recruiter three times and called once. I even declined the Outlook invite and proposed a new time. Long story short, I never near heard back from her! Then 20 minutes before the original interview time, the recruiter emailed thanking me for letting her know that I couldn't attend. I was pretty bummed out. But, after following up with her four times without a response I don't think there was much more I could do.

The second place sent me an email inviting me to set up an interview on the recruiter's calendar. The only time available was a single day three weeks later. I figured that I would get a calendar invite prior to the interview. However, I never got a confirmation email or calendar invite and never heard anything more from the recruiter. They reposted the position with a different job description; I wasn't too interested in the revised job and never followed up. But I would have expected to hear something one way or the other from the original email.

The third job I actually chatted with the recruiter. Our one-hour Teams interview went 90 minutes and we had a nice conversation. I sent a thank you note and a few work samples related to our conversation. I followed up 2 weeks later and have heard nothing back. Three weeks after the interview, I've apparently been ghosted...again!

And finally, I had a recruiter text me multiple times over 7-10 days about a contract-to-perm position. Then, 20 minutes before we were scheduled to chat on the phone, she called and said the position had been put on hold.

This is all getting very frustrating and I'm starting to feel like I'm just banging my head on the wall. So much effort on my part with so few results.

I’m honestly exhausted by the constant cycle of applying for jobs, updating my résumé, preparing for interviews, practicing the same questions repeatedly, and putting on a smile just to receive another rejection.
It’s frustrating to invest so much time and energy into the hiring process, only to be asked to complete a second or third round of interviews with no guarantee of an opportunity.

At this point, I’m tired of pretending that my primary motivation for joining a company is its culture, mission, or team-building activities. The reality is simple: I work to earn a living, provide for my family, and build financial stability.

I’m not looking for a company to become my second family, nor do I need my career to define who I am. I want to do my job, perform my responsibilities well, be compensated fairly, and go home to enjoy the life I’m working so hard to support.

I understand the importance of professionalism, teamwork, and contributing to an organization’s success. However, I wish employers would recognize that not everyone is searching for a deeper purpose through their career. Sometimes, people simply want a good-paying job that allows them to take care of the people who matter most.

At the end of the day, I don't live to work. I work to live. And I'm tired of having to pretend otherwise just to get an opportunity.

Started the day with an HR mix-up because I accidentally clicked “No” on the calendar invite, which canceled my interview, so I had to email them to clarify that I would still be attending.

Still arrived on time and sat down with a three-person panel consisting of a manager, the CFO, and an analyst.

All behavioral questions, but when they asked about my five-year plan and why I wanted to switch from being a paralegal to a finance role, I basically gave them an answer that implied I wouldn't be staying with the company for more than five years...

My brain completely froze when it was my turn to ask questions....but asked three decent quetion

The interview was scheduled for 30 minutes and ended right on time. Got some firm handshakes, and both the CFO and the manager gave me their business cards.

Heading my ass home. 💀

We pulled every open posting from 81 companies' public Greenhouse boards for seven roles and counted which words actually show up. 3,518 postings in total. Some of it surprised us.

Software engineer postings mention mentoring more often than Kubernetes or React. Almost half of them do. Python, the most common language, comes in just below that.

Product manager postings say "roadmap" in more than 85% of cases. Jira? Seven out of 421. Marketing looks the same: Google Ads came up six times in 347 postings, while "pipeline" is in over half.

Every time we could compare the two, postings named the practice, not the tool. Observability, not Grafana. SIEM, not Splunk.

So if your resume is mostly a list of tools, it might be missing the words the posting actually uses.

Big caveat: mostly tech companies, one ATS vendor. Sales, cybersecurity, DevOps and accounting are here too: https://www.zoevera.com/resume/ats-resume-keyword-study

Initially interviewed for Job A at Fortune 500 in August. Passed the recruiter interview and moved on to the HM interview. HM invited me to connect on Linkedin.

Silence until I was contacted 3 weeks later by the HM work email for a quick pull up. The conversation was that I wasn't chosen for Job A but that the HM would think I’m a good fit for upcoming Job B and that HM would send the link as soon as it was posted. I asked how long it would take and HM said next week. After 1.5 weeks of silence I had followed up on the posting and HM said it would be out later that week. I guess it took longer than HM expected but low and behold HM sent me the link to the workday job posting the day it was posted! Important to note the job posting was to be closed next week on a Saturday.

I applied the next business day and 2 business days later got an interview invitation. They had me bypass a recruiter interview this time. The only availability was for the following week later.

The interview was supposed to be 30 mins between the HM and their Director, however on the call only the Director showed up. The Director had stated there was a misunderstanding in scheduling with the HM so they were unsure if they would join.

Well I believe I really did well in this interview. The Director and I had continued engaging conversation for nearly an hour. The Director invited me to connect on Linkedin and gave me names of individuals I would meet and expressed verbally mutual excitement and that the Director heard a lot from HM I had interviewed with last time. The Director said they will have to meet with HM and then they would contact me about next steps.

Since that interview (last Tuesday) the job posting official closed this past Saturday. I haven't heard anything since. I recognize it's only been 7 BDs since my interview and 4 BDs since the posting closed. I have really optimistic thoughts due to the advantages I have explained but silence really does mess with your head. As they have shown 2 examples in the past of delayed timing, I’m still hopeful.

Also note: this company uses a 3rd party system for applications/interviews. They do not release work emails. I only have the HM email because he contacted me personally to set up time to discuss Job B with me.

Thus if I wanted to "follow up", id have to either email HM on the thread regarding that Job B conversation OR shoot either of them Linkedin message. I don't feel like the latter is appropriate

After going through 95% of the application process, the dreaded "Copy/paste your resume that you already uploaded" page came up. The job was a good fit for me, but I have a good job and just wasn't in the mood to waste my time with that BS. So I typed "See Resume" in the first spot and left the rest blank, and submitted the application anyway.

I got a "we've received your application" email. At the bottom, there was an email for the recruiting team for any comments. Well, I decided to send a mostly professional email telling them that they were losing out on the best candidates by making the application process too onerous.

I figured I wasn't getting the job anyway, but then I realized I probably screwed myself for any future roles there if I actually really needed a new job.

When I saw the "Dear John" email come through that I didn't get the job, I wasn't surprised. However, the reason for the rejection was because they rescinded the new position entirely.

Then a few days later a recruiter from that company emailed me and asked if I wanted to apply to a higher position at the company.

Seriously? How does this happen?

(I'll never get the other position, she clearly didn't read my resume, it's a completely different role)

I recently left a startup to work at Capital One after a recruiter reached out to me about a position. After passing the coding assessment and power day, I was put into team matching since the original position was filled during my process. Team matching went super quick, I met the manager the day after starting team matching, and he seemed nice and aligned on what I was looking for.

At this point my contact was the recruiter for this position, whom my original recruiter connected me with. I followed up with her to say I enjoyed the meeting and wanted to match with that team, and immediately received news that the match was mutual and an offer letter the next day.

The background check and pre hire tasks were straight forward. I got my start date and gave my employer notice.

At this point is where everything went to shit.

My start date was a couple Mondays ago, but my recruiter said I would need to wait for my laptop to be provisioned. The onboarding team said my manager was in charge of ordering my laptop. I received an email from my manager last week asking if I had received my laptop, then this week I got an email from him that directed me to his manager for all future communications. I replied to confirm, and get an automated reply that his email no longer exists.

At this point, my recruiter also had not responded to me in over a week nor has the manager that my original manager directed me to. The good thing is that I have an employee ID and confirmed with HR that I am on payroll and will be paid on the regular cadance, but without a laptop I cant set up benefits or direct deposit or anything, and my manager who appearently was laid off or quit is supposed to order it.

I’ve worked for more than 5 companies in my career and haven’t experienced something like this. Absolute shit onboarding process by Capital One. I’m basically being paid for nothing which might seem cool, but I need to start working and my contacts haven’t even given me the courtesy of saying “we’re working on it”.

Not sure if anybody else has been onboarding while their manager left the company but this seems very unique.

I’ve been looking since March, and have come down to the final 2 four times. I’m in a senior role and it feels a lot different to interviewing for individual contributor roles.

I need to leave where I am, and I’m under a time pressure. Losing out four times has taken its toll on my confidence a bit but I recently applied to a vendor we do a lot of work with. I spoke to my manager as I wanted to at least let him know where my hard was at and not blindside him, given the relationship, and he sent a message to their CEO saying he was supportive of me applying.

I went through 3 rounds, ending with separate meetings with each of the two founders. I also met the exec who would be my manager. It’s all gone wildly brilliant. I also should have such an advantage coming from the same industry and having worked with them frequently.

But I’m so wracked with nerves. All the other interviews went brilliantly but I lost out four times. Feedback for all was I was brilliant and a hard decision but the other candidate just had something specific they were looking for. Maybe that’s the, maybe they just say any old thing. I started questioning my interview techniques and reviewed how I would answer things in previous conversations.

I keep thinking - on the one hand, I’m the obvious candidate. I know the product, I know the market, I know the buyer. So many reasons to pick me. But on the other hand, who knows who else is in the process. There could be someone else who just has that…special something.

That last interview was Tuesday. We’ve since all been at the same trade event, bumping into each other and chatting about the market and the event. It was so strange knowing I really wanted to work for them and I was literally waiting to hear if they would offer it to me.

I really want this one. The others, though they stung a little, I didn’t want so much and wasn’t bothered too much. This one will hurt a lot.

Biomedical Engineering college senior graduating in May 2027. I have a strong resume and been getting a good number of Video Interviews after applying to companies. All have been rejections post Video Interview. Any suggestions how to get to a real person round?

Hi there,

I have an interview scheduled with microsoft for SDE 2 role (5 YOE) as a fullstack developer in 3 days.

I have about 3 days time to revise DSA since thats what I'm expecting the first round to be.

Can anyone please share commonly or recently asked questions in microsoft ? Would really help a lot. Thank you!

Like the title says. Had a fantastic final interview last Thursday and sent a follow up today. Recruiter called me letting me know that the hr manager is on PTO, but they said that im still under consideration. Rest of the interviews got pushed back to next week. Yall think its a bad sign?

I applied for a job 2 1/2 weeks ago and I heard back less than two days after I submitted my application about my first interview. My first interview was over the phone and it went well. Good enough that my second interview was with the director of sales. That was a Zoom call, but it also went well. Besides my camera not working. We did talk about it and he said it’s not an issue. I’m more worried about what you tell me and how you can speak during a normal conversation.

This is where I start to worry because I want this job so bad and I think I’m getting in my own head, but I just want to hear what other people think.

That second interview was Monday night and he said the next step is to come in and meet the team. The person who did the interview on Monday, lives in Maryland and he would need to commute out of state about three hours to come into the headquarters where I would be meeting the staff for what I would assume is the final interview or when I get an offer. He had to relay all of this information back to the vice president, which is the person who did my first interview. So I’m thinking it takes time to set something like this up, especially if they’re trying to formulate an offer and if there are a group of important people that need to make their schedules work for this.

When should I expect a response? When should I send a follow up email to try and understand where they’re at in the process?

Any input is greatly appreciated

I applied to a job and had an interview a week ago. Thought it went well. Have not heard back and now I see that the job posting has been taken down. Is this a 100% no from the company?

About 5 years ago, I joined a firm as a Growth PM. This sounded exciting as it was a new field. Till 1 year things were good, but slowly the company’s performance started deteriorating.. investors pulled out money, the company did mass lay offs and much more. During this time they made us do sales work, gave revenue targets, we did project management, delivery, creating pocs for clients, CSM, basically everything apart from actual PM work.
I feel my role has been diluted and I haven’t been able to get many interview calls and the ones I get I don’t have concrete examples to show.
I am applying to program manager roles but I haven’t heard back from any company yet.
At this stage, I can’t take a fesher job and for my position they will look for someone highly experienced.
Today, I don’t even know what I kind of roles i should apply to. I am stuck for a while and some guidance will help.