Over the past three months, I’ve been deep in the trenches of job hunting—scrolling through job boards, attending career fairs, and sending out applications like it’s a full-time job. And let me tell you, the outlook is rough.
Take any popular job board: right on the front page, you’ll find listings for entry-level positions with over 1,500 applicants. That’s more people than my entire high school. (For reference, my graduating class had 235 students. Multiply that by four years—that’s 940 students. This single job has more than that many people throwing their hat in the ring.)
I was in the top 10 percentile of my class, and even that feels meaningless in a market where competition is this intense. Honestly, it’s more cutthroat than trying to become valedictorian.
Career Fairs Are Just Real-Life Job Boards
Recently, I went to a local career fair hoping for some face-to-face interaction—something to make me stand out. It was hosted at a stadium with over 5,000 parking spaces. Finding a spot was hard, not because of an event, but because that many people showed up just to look for work.
Inside were 45 companies, each with their own booth. Out of those, only four took my resume. Most weren’t doing interviews or even accepting paper resumes. They just pointed to a sign with a QR code and told you to “apply online.” So basically, a real-life job board with a longer commute.
I get it—digital applications help companies sort through candidates faster. But after applying to ten jobs a week, going to a career fair just to be told to “go online” feels like pulling teeth.
The Digital Job Market Is a Mess
Beyond the oversaturation, the job market today is full of ghost job postings—ads for positions that aren’t even hiring—and outright scams. It makes it harder for legitimate listings to stand out, and even more exhausting for job seekers to stay motivated.
And then there’s the buzzword I’ve grown to hate: disruptive technology. As we near the end of Web 2.0, all these “innovative” startups don’t feel like progress. They feel like modern snake oil salesmen—breaking into industries under the guise of making things better, but really just making everything worse. Especially for people trying to find stable, meaningful work.
It Shouldn’t Be This Hard
Job seekers today are up against a bloated, inefficient, and increasingly impersonal hiring system. We’re drowning in online applications, wading through scams, and going to career fairs that don’t offer real opportunities.
If you’re in the same boat, I feel you. It’s exhausting. But if enough of us talk about it—openly and honestly—maybe we can pressure companies and platforms to fix the system before it gets worse.
Technology is best when it brings people closer, not further apart.
Maybe it’s time we stop chasing “disruption” and start demanding better—systems that serve people, not just platforms.
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