High-strung heroes

Helluva week

Put up resignation, accepted a new job. Now it's the notice period month. 

Met a few many people during the job search, some fellow seekers, some hirers, some hirers who were also seekers. It's a crazy world the job market. Until it reaches the hiring manager, or in some cases the GM, the process is strange and unnatural. 

You'll need to basically convince a computer that you're good at whatever you're applying for. Worse, you'll have to deal with HR.

The urge to quit came from commute and some work dissatisfaction. But at multiple times it seemed that life was better before I started looking for jobs.

Trusting The Process

After quitting on the age old "Does the process trust me?" I finally took it serious and got ChatGPT Go. It was literally the same as it was before they messed up with the GPT5. I was copying JDs, pasting it in Chat and asking to optimize my resume to align my experiences to the requirements. 

Somehow it felt like playing with cheatcodes in Vice City. But nothing really happened. The call back rate was still low. Around this time, saw a post on reddit that someone did 1800 applications in 3 months. NGL that was a little depressing.
Nevertheless, placed all hopes on the statistics and with enough applications (just under 200) I was able to get a few decent offers. Oh yeah, I also got LinkedIn premium! - wouldn't recommend.

Why is job market the way it is? The seekers don't trust HR. The HR doesn't trust candidates. The HR don't trust quitters and nobody trusts HR. There's a fine display of multiple shifts of power dynamics across this process. 

I believe one can see the Maslow's need hierarchy theory at play here. The seekers who are late to battle usually go a bit delulu for a while. A job that pays well, less commute, flexible WFH options, many benefits. The economy can only afford to give this for a few. Everyone else will have to adjust. So gradually, you adjust your expectations - stable job, stable salary, decent work hours. But once you do get a few offers, your needs and preferences shift and you're tore between choosing a nice city/wfh flexibility.

So it's like this- if you haven't gotten an offer, you can't resign. So the first order of business is to get an offer no matter how bad it is - bad company? no matter, graveyard shift - no matter, company had filed for Chapter11 bankruptcy? slightly matters but you'll still try to get the offer letter. Once you get that, you either negotiate with your current employer for a hike, or you give them a warm hug and bid farewell.

Parallelly, you start looking for your the real job. You try to calm yourself telling that you have an offer in hand and you don't have to worry about anything. But the real voice tells you that it's panic mode and time for the real battle. You follow up all your important applications, reach out to HRs and hiring managers on linkedin.

Finally one of them responds.

That's when you breath. That's when it's all handed over to the HRs. The first one is figuring out if there's any interest in keeping you with the dept manager and trying to getting you to stay. "Recall the mail" they say, "you're getting more autonomy, better pay" they say. You know they're kidding themselves. So you don't budge.

Now the all but forgotten Plan B offer. Now the HR &/ hiring manager will either be surprised with a no show or if you're not an absolute jerk, you'll let them know that you've joined elsewhere once you get the new offer letter.

The idea is to workout the net positive. What you gain (-) what you lose?

With more people leaving than joining and the median tenure falling faster than your already broken self esteem (without AI doing most of your job), you also decide to quit; about the HRs who are "OpenToWork".