Finding a job is a full time job!

Trying to find a job should not be a job.

And yet… here I am.

Waking up every morning like a caffeinated LinkedIn intern — fresh out of dreams, high on delusion, and armed with nothing but a résumé that’s been “finalized” more times than the Fast & Furious franchise.

You know how most people get up, shower, and head to work?

Yeah. I get up, make coffee strong enough to qualify as pre-workout, and then mentally prepare myself for career cosplay:

• Today I’ll pretend to be a project manager for a fintech startup.

• Tomorrow I’ll be an “operations ninja” for a company that pays in exposure and kombucha.

• Friday I’ll morph into a “thought leader” with a Canva account and a prayer.

By 10 a.m., I’ve logged into eight job boards, completed three personality assessments, uploaded my résumé into six portals that instantly lose all formatting, and answered at least one question that makes me question my own humanity:

“Would you consider yourself more of a dolphin or an acorn?”

Around noon, I’m knee-deep in rejection emails that all start with “We regret to inform you…” and end with me whispering, “Oh really? I regret you too.”

By 2 p.m., I’m emotionally negotiating with the LinkedIn “Easy Apply” button like it’s a Vegas slot machine:

“Come on, baby. Give me that recruiter who reads past the first line…”

By 4 p.m., I’ve already made up backstories for the job posters:

• Chad, the “culture-forward” team lead who wears Yeezys and ghosted me after asking for a 90-slide pitch deck.

• Karen, who wanted a Zoom call at 7 a.m. on a Saturday “just to see how hungry I am.”

• Susan, who asked if I “saw myself still working in 5 years” — ma’am, I’d settle for a pay stub in five days.

And don’t even get me started on the interviews that require homework.

Sir, if I wanted unpaid labor and impossible expectations, I would’ve gone back to dating in my 20s.

Let’s be honest: the job hunt in 2025 is less “let’s match skills to roles” and more “Hunger Games: Applicant Edition.”

Where 700 apply, 8 get interviewed, 3 get ghosted mid-process, 1 gets hired, and the other 698 get a webinar invite titled “How to Stay Positive Through Repeated Soul-Crushing Rejection.”

And yet…

Here we are.

Still showing up. Still clicking. Still hoping that somewhere out there is a company that doesn’t need a TikTok account, a 4.0 GPA, and a time machine to 2010 just to hire someone who actually knows what they’re doing.

So if you’re also out here, working full-time at the unpaid role of “Job Seeker,” just know:

You’re not lazy.

You’re not broken.

You’re not “bad at interviewing.”

You’re just trapped in a system that treats finding a job like auditioning for America’s Next Top Intern.

We see you.

We’re with you.

And when we do finally get that offer?

We’re submitting PTO on day one.

Because we already put in the hours.