‘Rejection email after rejection email’: Exhausted job seeker throws in the towel, Reddit understands why
A post on Reddit’s r/recruitinghell has talked about someone who was drained by rejection emails; they state that they were bewildered by interviews where their background and experience are praised effusively, followed by automated rejections that suggest the praise meant nothing. They have reached the point where the disconnect between what they are being told and what is actually happening no longer makes sense to them.
“Stop looking for the perfect candidate,” they wrote. “Look for the right candidate, and see the full potential that they can bring to the company.”
Then: “I’m throwing in the towel, boys.”
The phrase reads as giving up on the job, and the thread responded in kind, with solidarity, analysis, and dark humour that often emerges when a community has been sitting with the same frustration for long enough.
What Reddit said
The most immediately practical response came from someone who acknowledged the soul-crushing nature of the process while recommending a brief reset: “Take a week completely off from applying. The fake praise during interviews, the automated rejection email, it is genuinely soul-crushing. Step away for a few days to reset your sanity, then get back to it.”
A second commenter pushed back on how realistic that advice is: “Taking a week off to regroup is not feasible for a lot of people who depend on a paycheck and put food on the table. For a lot of people it is a dire situation given the market conditions and everything going up in prices.”
One commenter offered the clearest structural diagnosis in the thread: “This is what happens when there is too much supply and too little demand for labour. Workers suffer. Businesses can hold out for the perfect candidate because their employees are scared to quit, and each job will get hundreds of applications.”
The thread’s most striking point came from someone describing what happened when a friend finally received an offer after a long search: the salary was a third of what they used to make. When the friend asked if it was an error, they were told other candidates would say yes. The offer was then rescinded.
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And one commenter described their situation in terms that illustrated how far the desperation has spread: “33 years old, my job has been automated away and I’m seriously considering joining the coast guard or being a cop even though both would be miserable. Just to pay my bills.”
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