Job Trials

It has been exactly three months since I've started looking for a job. The stats aren't looking great.

I don't even have a clever or cohesive transition into me venting about how it's been. Here are my stats as of May 19th 2026:

I have a relative that is at Senior level in their profession and it took them about 600 applications until they landed a job. I don't know what the success rate for trainee/junior usually is but this is not feeling good! Not at all!

Another thing I hate is when people try to "cheer me up" by telling me how their job hunt went. Case and point, it did not make me feel better when that relative told me they got to the 600s before they got hired! Not at all!

And worst of all, every time I try to bring it up to people there is a 50% chance that they'll tell me I'm missing or not doing something. "Look at listings on Linkedin", then "actually Linkedin is dead, use Glassdoor", then "just message companies directly", then "don't even bother, just go for public tender", then "there aren't enough buzzwords in your CV", then "ignore what the job requirements are and just send it anyways", then "just lie about your qualifications", and on and on and on and on and on and on and—

I do appreciate the advice. I acknowledge that you are giving me information that is supposed to help me with the intent to help me. But it also makes me want to maul you to shards.

How was I supposed to know all that? My parents didn't teach me literally anything I need to survive. I had to beg my mother to even let me do the dishes — not because she spoils me, but because she hates that I do chores badly (because she never taught me!!!) and would straight up redo them in front of me whenever I tried to do them on my own. My college teachers did not teach me how to put together a CV or how to spin all the knowledge I gathered in class into something that would get me hired. My highschool teachers barely even taught us things that would actually be on the college entrance exam!

I would have been satisfied if they at least pointed me towards things that I would have to learn on my own, but no! Nothing!

There are two things that if I had actually been taught about I would probably have a job by now:

Internships. I was definitely told about them, but I was definitely not told that they would be the only reliable way into the job market. Because internships are pretty much the only entry-level jobs that exist nowadays, and you can only take them while you are an undergraduate. And they weren't even mandatory at my college, so I assumed they weren't that important, but no. Everyone except me knew, and no one taught me about it.

Apprenticeships. You can actually take those if you've already graduated. However, the age limit for them is usually 21-24 years old. I started my job search some time after I turned 25.

Public tenders are technically a third option but realistically they aren't because all the IT positions are operating on a stack college doesn't even teach anymore because it's legacy.

So yeah, now I'm stuck in the infamous cycle of "can't get a job because it needs experience", "can't get experience because I can't get a job". Genuinely stuck, because I was not informed of the two reliable time-sensitive options that would prevent me from getting stuck. It's hard not to feel like my life is over and I should just kill myself unless I'm okay with working as a cashier.

And at this point I'm not even sure I'd get hired as a cashier. I've been applying for tech support which is kinda like the cashier of IT and I am getting rejected in the very few interviews I manage to score because whatever is wrong with my head and my mouth makes me not very effective at communicating with customers. And data entry jobs are virtually non-existant nowadays because of AI.

You know, I thought I would be blaming AI a lot more. And I should be, because I am 100% sure that those 112 pending applications got instantly rejected by AI and they didn't even bother to automate a rejection for them. But compared to the feeling of being disconnected from the rest of humanity, the thought of AI hasn't really brough me much distress.

Not to say it hasn't. The remaining entry-level jobs are all for "AI Trainer". And they don't even pay well.

I've seen a new strategy arise on Linkedin: make a public post humiliating yourself saying you are in search of a barely minimum wage job, and some retailer account will swoop in and comment with a link to their carreers page... which never really matches the CV you attach to said post. Terrible horrible, but it might be my only choice at this point.

I'm not even asking for much. I'll work for minimum wage, I live with my mother so I don't need enough money for rent (because I pay with my mental health). I don't even want a webdev position anymore, because they are all either asking for a framework/language I don't know, knowledge of a full corporate stack or 1-3+ years of experience. I'll take tech support. I'll take assistant. I'll take spreadsheet filler. I'll take fucking anything that is on the computer. Pay me internship rates, I don't even care. Just get me out of this cycle. Please. I can't do this anymore. I do not have 200 more job applications in me. I barely even have 99 more. I was rejected trying to apply for a cleaner job for a retirement center across the street. I should have killed myself when I was 20.

Needless to say if you read this post and try to tell me about some new platform or CV hack I haven't tried yet I will be blocking you. I have tried hard enough. It should not be this hard.