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Career discussions, from people who have been there
The OnJob Community is where job seekers and recruiters compare notes in public — interview experiences, resume feedback, salary talk and honest advice. 92 public discussions across 7 communities, free to read without an account.
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- The Hiring Market Now
What is actually happening in hiring right now - AI screening, ghost postings, the junior squeeze, and what still works.
9 public discussions
- Jobs Update
New Job everyday
- Resume and Portfolio
Feedback on resumes, portfolios and profiles - what recruiters actually read in the first thirty seconds.
13 public discussions
- CBSE School
- QA Trible
Let join
- Recruiter Insights
Recruiters and candidates in the same room - how screening really works, what gets a profile shortlisted, and what hiring teams wish applicants knew.
14 public discussions
- First Job and Internships
For students, graduates and career changers landing a first role - projects, internships, and getting past the experience requirement.
14 public discussions
- Interview Preparation
Practice, debriefs and honest feedback across technical, system design and behavioural rounds.
13 public discussions
- Job Search Strategy
Tactics for running a job search that actually converts - where to apply, how often to follow up, and how to read a job description.
14 public discussions
- Engineering Careers
Career questions specific to software engineering - specialising, switching stacks, moving to senior, and what the levels actually mean.
14 public discussions
What are people discussing right now?
- Artee Sikarwar ·Need help from OnJob support
I registered as a recruiter and my account has 30 credits, but I cannot find the Pay-per-Shortlist Marketplace, Talent Requests, or Propose Candidates option a…
- A hiring process that takes six weeks loses candidates to processes that take two
Every additional round has a cost measured in dropped candidates, and it is usually paid by the strongest people in the pipeline, who have other offers. If a r…
- The rule that works for asking questions: try for a fixed period, then ask with your working shown
Thirty minutes is a reasonable default. When you ask, say what you tried and what you expected to happen. That converts a question that costs your colleague te…
- Requirement lists shape who applies, and they do not filter evenly
Long lists of must-haves systematically reduce applications from candidates who read them literally, while candidates who treat them as aspirational apply anyw…
- On coding rounds: narrate your reasoning before you type
State the approach, the complexity you expect, and the edge cases you plan to handle. If you go quiet for ten minutes and produce correct code, you score worse…
- The single highest-return edit: rewrite every bullet so it ends in an outcome
"Responsible for the payments service" says nothing. "Rebuilt the payments retry path, cutting failed transactions from 4 percent to 0.6 percent" says what you…
- Track your applications somewhere you will actually look
A spreadsheet with five columns is enough: company, role, date applied, source, and status. The value is not the record keeping. It is that after four weeks yo…
- Early in a search, rejections carry almost no information
Because most of them are volume filters rather than judgements. The signal starts once you reach interviews. If you get to a final round and do not convert, th…
- Titles are not comparable between companies and compensation mostly is
A staff engineer at one company maps to a senior at another and a lead at a third. When you are evaluating a move, compare the scope described in the role and …
- Once you have an offer, the balance of the conversation changes and most candidates do not act on it
Ask for the full package in writing, take a day, and come back with one clearly reasoned request rather than a list. Companies expect a negotiation round. The …
- What nobody tells you about the first three months: you will be slow, and that is the plan
New joiners are not expected to be productive immediately. They are expected to ask questions, learn the system, and gradually take on work without supervision…
- Working on an old system is not a career dead end, and it is often where the leverage is
Anyone can add a feature to a greenfield project. Making a fifteen-year-old system safe to change - tests, boundaries, an escape route for the worst module - i…
- On salary conversations
Naming a range early is not a trap in most markets - it saves both sides three rounds of interviews for a role that was never going to work financially. Give a…
- Treat an internship as an extended interview in both directions
Do the assigned work well, but also find out how the team makes decisions, how code gets reviewed, and whether people seem to have time to teach. A return offe…
- The market is not shrinking so much as changing shape, and the aggregate numbers hide that
Overall software postings were up modestly year on year in 2026 while security roles grew enormously and AI and machine learning postings grew nearly as fast. …
- For recruiters posting roles
The two additions that most improve applicant quality are a salary range and a concrete description of the first project. Both narrow the pool, which is the po…
- Feeling out of your depth in the first year is close to universal
Including among the people who look entirely comfortable. The useful version of that feeling is that it keeps you asking questions. The damaging version is whe…
- Learning a new framework every quarter feels like progress and rarely compounds
Underneath the framework churn, the durable things are data modelling, concurrency, network behaviour, and how to debug something you did not write. Time spent…
- A job search generates far more rejection per week than most jobs do per year, and it arrives without explanation
Two things help. First, decide in advance how many applications constitute a week's work, so that a bad outcome does not turn into working every evening. Secon…
- Outreach that gets replies has one thing in common: evidence the sender read the profile
One specific sentence about the candidate's actual work outperforms any amount of enthusiasm about an exciting opportunity. Candidates receive a great many tem…
- Cover letters matter in about a third of applications, and you usually cannot tell which third
The workable compromise is a short one - four or five sentences - that says why this company, why this role, and what you would bring to the specific problem t…
- Networking works badly when it is framed as networking and well when it is framed as interest
Ask someone about the thing they actually do - how their team handles releases, what changed after their last migration, what they would build differently. Peo…
- Contracting pays more per day and costs you the things employment quietly provides: paid leave, notice periods
Training budget, and stability between engagements. Run the numbers on a year rather than a day rate, including the weeks you expect to be unbooked. It is a go…
- One finding that got less attention than it deserved
In roles heavily exposed to AI, employment for workers over thirty actually rose while the youngest cohort fell. The usual reading is that experience is the th…
- If you do not know something, say so and then say what you would do about it
"I have not used that queue in production. I have used a similar one, and the questions I would want answered before choosing are delivery guarantees and how i…
- The management track is a different job, not a promotion from engineering
The daily work becomes meetings, hiring, performance conversations and unblocking other people. The feedback loop that used to close in an afternoon now closes…
- Apply one band up as well as at your level, and be honest about both
The band above is where posted requirements are least literal, and teams routinely hire someone slightly below the description if the trajectory is right. What…
- Small paid work counts as experience, and people undersell it
A website built for a local business, a script that saved someone a day a week, a short contract through a friend - these involve requirements, a client, a dea…
- A degree helps most at the very first role and matters progressively less afterwards
By the second job the conversation is about what you have built and shipped. If you do not have a degree, the first role is the hard one - which is an argument…
- What usually happens in the first pass on a profile
A recruiter checks whether the last two roles resemble the one being hired for, whether the location and work authorisation fit, and whether the headline skill…