“My Job Became Defunct”: 54 People Share How Fast Their Careers Changed Around Them

I got rejected from a job yesterday because I express interest in growth within their company.

Not unemployed but currently hiring. We've experienced about twice the volume of applications we normally get. We don't get a huge volume so I don't use any AI sorting like some larger companies might, so I can't offer any tricks for getting past those. But just know not everyone is using them.

Those who do apply, about 60% of them are switching industries right now. Really skilled people have been obviously struggling this year and have been pushed into jobs that don't match their experience/skills, and people entering the job market are struggling to push into career industries. The market is trash. It's definitely competitive but showcasing your soft skills and your conversational skills is still working. If you're getting a phone interview, you've already beat out a lot of people.

If you're not getting phone calls, apply for smaller businesses. If small businesses aren't calling, it's not a AI-sorting issue like a lot of people immediately chalk it up to. There could be a red flag on your resume that you aren't seeing. I'm seeing a lot of decently formatted resumes that still do not have core information or have not even been updated recently. The bar isn't as high as some people want you to think.

None of what I said applies to the tech industry.... good luck out there if you're in anything tech related right now. It's a rollercoaster and it's changing every week. Startups get one deal, think they can hire 100 people, and go bankrupt next month.

My wife has an MBA, and 20 years of experience. Marketing is a ghastly graveyard, and until AI tools are charged at their actual cost to the businesses, everybody thinks they can do all of the marketing for basically free.

Been 2 months for me. I did 2 interviews with the same company - from what I understand, it’s down to me and someone else. Waiting to hear if I get an offer. Fingers crossed!

I’m already going crazy after 2 months, not sure how others are handling even longer unemployment.

It took me 2.5 years to get this job I recently-ish started and I only got it because I ran into my now coworker at a wedding. It's not great.

Canada, was unemployed for 6 months. Finally got a job that I am extremely overqualified for. Plus side is that everybody here seems super impressed by my basic level of competency.

In 2023 I left my job with no prospects. Within a month a company found me despite me only applying to a couple places per day

In September of 2025 the hospital I was working for closed and I started looking for something new.

I'm still looking.

It's terrible that I wake up every morning feeling like a failure.

14+ years of experience, 2 degrees, and a cert.

Laid off 10 months ago, nearly 2,000 applications, and barely any reponse.

Last interview saw me pushed through to final round with CEO, rescheduled, canceled while some things got updated, then rejected.

I get a lot of stuff like, "I know you did this as part of your last job, but we want someone who did only this for at least 5 years."
And
"Im sure you could do this, but we need someone who has already done this.".

I was unemployed for a year. Absolute hell. Hundreds and hundreds of well-written cover letters, solid references, and relevant examples of work. Applied directly on company websites. Literally ZERO contact for an interview.

I just accepted an amazing offer from a company where—you guessed it—a friend recommended me for the position. I would literally be homeless without him.

The job market is so bad I pivoted to starting my own business. Still been looking for work in my field and definitely not my field for years now while I run my own LLC.

I consider myself super lucky that I shifted out of my old career (graphic design) more than 10 years ago into a much more secure job in healthcare. Soooo many of my old college friends (tech school. So design/marketing, computer engineering/IT) are out of work and I'm really concerned for a few of them.

Incidentally, there's still so many positions in healthcare! If you have the wherewithal (and interest) to make that change.

It’s been 4 months for me and feels very demoralizing. I am able to secure interviews and make it through multiple rounds, but I keep getting passed up on for the role in the end. Rejection emails are just as generic no matter how far I get in the interview process and feedback is hard to come by.

Honestly, it feels like getting an interview is a job by itself these days.

I reached out to people and applied for positions I told myself I won’t ever consider doing.

In my country this problems has been going on for 40 years, and is getting worse year by years since the country is stagnating in every way possible you can imagine. You are dependent on your parents or partner in your older age, and you know your parents will be unable to live on their pension and you will have to support them when you finally get a job. Unfortunately many young people (79%) still live with their parent employer or unemployed...life is not fair!

I've applied to probably 150 openings. 

I have gotten 3 emails back, two telling me the position had already been filled and one saying they weren't moving forward with my application. Not a single interview. 

I recently graduated from law school and have years of prior work experience, I got okay grades from an okay school. 

Legal research, law clerk, tech writer, paralegal, secretarial work, hotel front desk, seasonal retail, driving a van full of inflatables around. Nothing. Not a single reply. 

It's rough.

I'm honestly completely screwed. Worked as a freelance animator for the last 10 years, was able to consistently get work, made pretty good money to where we were comfortable getting a home with a mortgage.

Now I can't even get a fast food gig or a dishwashing gig at whole foods. Gonna lose our home probably, gonna get divorced and my wife and daughter will end up living with her parents while I just end up breaking my sobriety and staying in a friend's couch.

I’ll give the other side of this. I’m a senior/principal level engineer with the kind of skills that could be used to make the next robot that takes all the jobs, and my wife has even better credentials to develop the next big LLM to take all the jobs.

The assorted evil empires of the world are all relentlessly cold-calling with disgusting sums of money for us (especially her) to sell our souls. But the companies that actually care about social good, the environment, and generally avoiding a technofascist dystopia are so badly outfunded that they’re not even posting senior-level job openings.

Finding a job is easy. Finding a job that lets you sleep well at night is equally bleak. (Obviously this is an incredibly privileged problem to have, but I wanted to share the perspective.)

I went back to school during Covid to transition out of education and into research. Got my masters last May.

I haven’t been able to find anything. I even slunk back to education, and I can’t get anything full time. I settled for a job as a para because I can’t find anything else.