A Maze On

 



You may have heard that Expedia just announced they are laying off 160 in Seattle. Which is small, compared to the 330 people being laid off at Meta in the good old Puget Sound. Which is tiny, compared to the estimated 14,000 people at Amazon who are losing their jobs in Washington, most of whom are in my backyard. That’s marginally more than the 13,000 people Microsoft laid off here last year.

All of this means I’m going to have some very smart, highly educated people serving me my coffee. Unfortunately, it also means my prospects of obtaining employment so I can pay for said coffee is waning.

I applied for an editorial content specialist job with an international travel company that has an office in Seattle. It wasn’t that great of a job, and had some pretty specific criteria to be met in order to apply. They received more than 450 applications, and ended up only interviewing people who had worked for them before (I’m assuming part-timers looking to move up to full-time).

I decided to take a moment to review where I’m at in the process and consider the job sites I have been using.

Usajobs.gov: 11 applications submitted in the past nine months, resulting in two job offers, both of which I turned down.

LinkedIn: 14 applications submitted in the past 9 months, resulting in not a single interview.

Indeed: Applied for 12 jobs in the past five months, resulting in one of my applications being “viewed”.

GovernmentJobs.com: 50 applications submitted in the past year, resulting in some progress (suitability tests all passed, four interviews, offers still pending) in a high-demand field in which I do not have a degree, training or professional experience (which I may tell you about later). I haven’t heard from all of the other 45 positions I applied to, where I have a degree, training and decades of experience.

Glassdoor: Applied for 36 jobs in past eight months, resulting in one video interview (with a bot, not with a person). 

A lot of online advice says to focus on one job rather than applying for a lot of different jobs, but that's hard to do when you see new jobs being posted and you're waiting to hear back. I know someone who got a rejection today from a job she applied to about nine months ago. 

I think I'm going to need to adjust my approach. 


Comments

  1. Molly KoenigFebruary 11, 2026 at 10:20 AM

    Hang in there ... job seeking is no fun. But I'm a firm believer that the right job will open up at the right time. One foot in front of the other.

    ReplyDelete

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