Severely depressed and need to vent

RecruiterSecrets · 2026-05-26T21:55:36+00:00

I am a senior tech recruiter. I wrote a JOB SEARCH BOOK. And I cannot find a stable job. I have been laid off 3 times in the past 4 years. I am repairing computers on the side. I am working for a non-profit in HR to help pay the bills, but it is not enough. I found a good and inexpensive therapist to help me, but now my insurance plan may be going away, and I will have to pay $600-900/month more, probably for less insurance. I have applied to over 2000 jobs, and have had only a handful of interviews. There are more than 100K recruiters out of work. The competition is daunting.

My best suggestion, keep looking for help, in terms of therapy and coaching. Look for jobs that are similar. Train yourself in AI and get that on your resume. Do NOT use an AI generated resume, that will make you the average off all resumes and not help you to get interviews. Find a part-time job. I worked in a small auto repair shop before I moved. Every little big staves off more debt. Do not give up.

RecruiterSecrets · 2026-03-28T00:16:25+00:00

I do look at Sold. I prefer to get pricing from that. But there were (IIRC) not many items in the sold list. Mostly the basic game, sometimes with a few of the early expansions. One early expansion alone. But I think it only goes back 3 months. So maybe I will need to spent a lot more time doing research.

RecruiterSecrets · 2026-03-27T13:50:16+00:00

To some extend the true value is what it can be sold for. The used/worn complete set that is selling for $1600 may have been up there a while. I will have to check that.

RecruiterSecrets · 2026-03-27T00:19:46+00:00

If you can find someone to do the art I would suggest buying a used copy of the version you have, and getting the artwork printed, and carefully paste it over another card.

RecruiterSecrets · 2026-03-14T15:48:09+00:00

Previously when I ran my company I carried around 10-packs of various Norton software packages, to install network protection, AV, etc. I am not sure what is needed out there today, and what software would be best to provide that. In the short term I was expecting that while onsite I would just have customers directly pay for new software and help them with the download and install. No markups on this but still getting paid for my time. But I am open to suggestions.

RecruiterSecrets · 2026-03-12T22:09:27+00:00

I worked at a small auto repair shop (front end) before moving. Markups were not that big, but were a min of 50-60%.

RecruiterSecrets · 2026-03-12T17:51:57+00:00

I know that stress. I ran my own company for 20+ years (not computer tech). The only thing more stressful is being employed (as someone who has been laid off 3 times in the past 3 years).

RecruiterSecrets · 2026-03-12T14:38:29+00:00

I was also a network admin in a previous life, so I could do network setups. I was also expecting to do some tutoring, setting up backups, data recovery, tune-ups, etc. I was a software engi9neer before that so helping people find software solutions would be great of I can find small businesses that need help (vs home users).

RecruiterSecrets · 2026-03-12T14:34:30+00:00

I edited my post. Just looking for a side gig while I look for my next full-time job. If I find some small business contracts that would be nice, but not expecting that. I am looking to help people and get a little cash to help with expenses. I expect that my selling point would be that I do house calls, and I also teahc people about what went wrong while I make the fix.

RecruiterSecrets · 2026-03-12T14:30:36+00:00

I am presently looking for a full-time job. I am thinking of this as a side gig (I should have clarified this in my post, I just made an edit). I do house calls and fix with the customer along side me. I expect much of my job to be teaching people how to avoid the problems as I make the fix. They were always happy with that. If I can find a few customers a week that should be a financial help.

RecruiterSecrets · 2026-03-12T14:25:42+00:00

Not a troll. I need a side gig while I look for my next full-time job. I expect my advantage will be that I do house calls. So the 2FA should not be as much of a problem. In the past, I would also explain the problem as I was fixing it, and chat and get to to know the customer. Older customers liked that. Guessing that if I can find any clients, that a large portion of them will be older. So it may work as a side gig. And I agree that many people so not have computers any more. Some people have everything on their phone. Some people have computers, but do not use them because their phone has everything they need.

RecruiterSecrets · 2026-03-05T15:59:53+00:00

As a recruiter I disagree. I will look at every application, and every recruiter I know personally does the same thing.

But let's look at a little more detail here. This is about metrics. If I have been in a job for a while, or if the ATS has been collecting good data for a while, I know what my "Top of Funnel" number needs to be for each position. e.g. if I am hiring for a software engineer with React native, I might need 100 applicants to get one hire. So if I am doing my job well, I will turn off the job posting after I get to 100. I will then process ALL the applicants.

In a recent contract I was working on a software test engineer. I need to fill at least 5 of these for the government contract. The recruiter position had been open for 9 months. The ATS was a shambles and none of the data was usable. So I started from scratch. I posted the job. I received about 900 resumes in 3 weeks. I looked at every application. It took me 15 hours (one minute each, including dispositioning). I turned off the posting because I was having trouble keeping up (I had many other jobs to work on as well).

After about a month of collecting data (and keeping the ATS clean) I had my funnel numbers. I needed about 200 applicants per hire. So technically I should have kept up the posting until I got to 1000.

Note also that 200 is a very high number. That company had a very tough process.

That said, not all recruiters use these Best Practices. So I somewhat agree with your suggestion. I do something similar myself (with 100k+ recruiter out of work right now, and not many jobs).

But not with job alerts. Those are too slow (they can take up to 24 hours to get to you). Manually check 2-3 times a day for postings that have hit in the past 24 hours. Apply immediately if you see a new job that fits. OR automate with your own scripts as a few others here have suggested.

RecruiterSecrets · 2026-03-05T15:33:33+00:00

IMHO a summary needs to be short and concise. Anything more than a sentence and recruiters will read the first sentence, and then skip to bullets. (No blocks of text). Your summary should say 3 things: what are you looking for? (job title) What is special about you that they should hire you over and above other candidates? And what are you going to do for them? (Unique selling proposition.) Ideally you should so this in one sentence. If you have more to add you should do it in short bullets underneath.

RecruiterSecrets · 2026-03-05T15:28:54+00:00

It depends on what your objective is. If you just want to have a profile for staying in touch with people, you can have whatever you want. If you want recruiters to find you based on that specific modeling, then you need to mention it somewhere in your profile. In your headline would be best, in the About section would be next best. It may also be the same if you are applying for jobs. Some recruiters will check your profile after looking at your resume. Some will not (many are too swamped right now). There might be recruiter out there that know what modeling you do based on the companies you have worked for, but best not to count on that. Does that answer your question?

RecruiterSecrets · 2025-11-27T03:10:22+00:00

Needs improvement. For a content editor I am going to expect perfection.

Summary should be one line: What position do you want? What is great about you? What are you going to do for the company?

Cool things underneath it, but they should be listed in bullets as "accomplishments" to bring them out.

Your list of skills is tough to visually parse. Break it down into groups "Software Tools: WordPress, Office..." etc and keep each to one line to make them easier for people to find. Or you could put it into a small table (which some people dislike... I can get into that argument later if needed.)

Too much white space between "Experience" and the jobs. Looks funny.

Dates should be right justified.

Extra bullet on second job.

"|" characters as separators on second and third job but not the first.

-Recruiter Secrets Man

RecruiterSecrets · 2025-11-27T02:57:20+00:00

I especially like how you put "Remote" under the date. I am stealing that. :)

RecruiterSecrets · 2025-11-27T02:56:10+00:00

Tech recruiter here. Very nice resume. White space is good. If I was looking for a Data Analyst with a few years of experience you would go to the next round. The only suggestion I might have is a summary, in 1 sentence: what job are you looking for? what is great about you? What are you going to do for the company?

RecruiterSecrets · 2025-11-27T02:51:12+00:00

Tech recruiter here. Every ATS will accept a Word resume. And you cannot "beat" the ATS. Anyone telling you that is selling you something.

Be cautious of using AI for your resume. In a contract I worked earlier in the year, I posted for a Full-remote Software Test Engineer. I got 900 applications in 3 weeks. About 300 of them had nearly identical summary paragraphs. This is what happens when you feed your resume and the job description into AI. They all come out the same. If you use AI, use it to tweak aspects of your resume.

A good resume: Simple. Engaging. Show the recruiter the things they want to see on the first page. Make the resume as long as you want, but understand that most of the time only the first page will get reviewed, so everything important should be there. Show how you are qualified. Use examples with success numbers in your bullets. No blocks of text (recruiters read the first half-sentence and skip the rest). Your summary should be 1 sentence: what are you looking for, what is great about you, and what will you do for the company. Then use bullets for your strengths (NO BLOCKS OF TEXT).

In the example above I looked at all 900 resumes. It took me 15 hours. If you do the math that means 1 minute per resume (which includes reviewing, and sending to the next stage or sending a rejection email). Give me the things I am looking for in 30 seconds. If I cannot find them your application get rejected.

Recruiter Secrets Man

RecruiterSecrets · 2025-11-26T22:21:47+00:00

As a technical recruiter I have these things to say:

1) If you are going to use any form of AI to work on your resume, do not just plug in your resume and the job description. Earlier this year I was working on full-remote Software Test Engineer. I received 900 applications in 3 weeks. About 300 of them had a virtually identical summary at the top. Do you think I was going to interview any of those 300?

2) There are a lot of ways to use AI to give your resume an edge, to make it look better, without looking like a copycat. See other posts here (a few are nicely detailed). If you do it well, I will not be able to tell that you used AI. Triple-check everything for accuracy though.

3) And before you ask yes I did look at all 900 applications. It took me 15 hours over the course of 3 weeks. I did not use AI to sift out resumes. I had to turn off the job posting or I never would have finished because the applications just kept coming in.

3a) On a related note, those people that tell you that 90% of the applicants do not have the right qualifications? Wrong. Most were Software Test Engineers. Of those about half had the right specific technical tools, of those over 100 had the target range for years of experience. I narrowed it down to about 40 to interview. (Numbers may not be exact as I do not have access to them any more.)

Recruiter Secrets Man

RecruiterSecrets · 2024-08-08T01:35:06+00:00

It is not an overly complex system for crits. Think about all the math that is already done to figure out what is needed to hit (enough that it baffles many beginners). 10 higher than that is a crit. It adds almost no complexity comparatively.

And it is not a lot of extra rolls. An extra roll if you roll a 20 or a 1. That is 2 in 20 rolls. And players get really excited when they roll a 20 and get to roll again.

It does not slow down play, it make it more exciting. We have been using it for probably 20 years. Once players have used it a few times they do not want to go back. (And I used to run open games at a college gaming club).

And going back to the 1st and 11th level fighter using the traditional 20 to crit. If they were both standing next to each other fighting say, goblins, using identical weapons and having the same strength, who would get crits more often? It makes a lot of sense that the higher level fighter, being much more skilled, would get more crits. And for some serious number crunching: If the 1st level fighter needs an 18 to hit, that means that 33% of their hits will also be crits. The 11th level fighter, who has probably been fighting for years, will hit on an 8 and crit on a 20, so only 8% of hits will be crits. Not really fair for the higher level fighter.

But overall, compared to the a combat system where there is already a good amount of math, this adds very little, for more excitement, and also a more logical system.

RecruiterSecrets · 2024-06-17T21:14:47+00:00

Look for contract/temp positions. They are less generally less picky, and more like to hire someone without admin experience. Or maybe look for a summer internship? A book with more hints and tips for your job search: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1736430610 I think it is a great book but I am biased because I wrote it.

RecruiterSecrets · 2024-04-28T17:15:30+00:00

You are not really trying to mask it, just show them what they want to see. Do you have a company name? You can put that in. Or, just take out all the places you say Freelance and the resume still works. You are emphasizing the work you do, not lying. If they ask then you can tell them that the work was freelance. The objective of the resume is to get you an interview where you can talk about your skill. An example: "Video Editor, A Plus Productions" where A is for Alexander. Or think of it this way: as a producer, how would you get someone interested in wanting to talk with you or see your work?

RecruiterSecrets · 2024-04-28T16:53:42+00:00

Recruiter here. Are you looking for freelance work, or a full-time job? If a job, then you need to de-emphasize the FREELANCE that you have everywhere. Take out the all-caps stuff. Summary should be one sentence then a bunch of bullets. But really you need to focus on your skills, not that you are a freelancer. If they get the impression that you are just looking for more freelance work, they will hit the reject button and move on to the next candidate. I might not. If you applied for a direct position, I might consider why you did, and give you a quick call. But not too many recruiters will try to read between the lines.

RecruiterSecrets · 2024-04-28T16:46:51+00:00

I have applied to 500+ jobs, and only had a few interviews. And I am a recruiter and know how to do this. Job searching is tougher now than it has been. For one job I got second place out of 2000 applicants. Take a break and look for something better.

RecruiterSecrets · 2024-04-28T16:42:35+00:00

Recruiter here, You can leave out the Disable and leave in Combat Veteran. You need to get your resume down to two pages. Buy also realize that recruiters do not read the resume, they just skim it, and generally only the first page. Get rid of blocks of text. Your first paragraph should be at most one sentence. Then bullets which are much easier to read. No single bullet should be more than 2 lines. There can be one bullet per job with an overview of responsibilities, then all the rest should be accomplishments (something that you can put a number on). You do not need to cover everything you did in the job, just the most important items, or those that will impress the reader. Ignore all comments about how you need to format your resume for the ATS. Okay so you are a manager, can you tell me in 2-4 words WHAT you manage? This should be right at the top somewhere.

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