The job mar­ket looks sol­id on paper, but some peo­ple who are active­ly look­ing for employ­ment say it feels real­ly dif­fi­cult.

26-year-old recruiter Kourt­lynn Faith has recent­ly echoed their con­cerns, pro­vid­ing addi­tion­al details on the sit­u­a­tion from a busi­ness per­spec­tive.

In a Tik­Tok video that has since gone viral, she not only explained the chal­lenges that both sides face, but also shared advice on how appli­cants can improve their chances and get an offer quick­er.

Despite positive statistics, some job seekers still face significant challenges

Image cred­its: @kourtlynn_

It’s very hard to get a job right now. And as some­body who’s been in recruit­ing for six years, I’m going to tell you guys what has changed, what’s going on, give you all the tea, because it’s hard. And maybe this can get you a job.

I was laid off three times last year, it took me sev­en months to find a job. I was not the only per­son in recruit­ing or HR that was laid off. If you have a com­pa­ny that has 300 jobs list­ed, right, you might only have five recruiters for all 300 of those roles.

Image cred­its: Edmond Dan­tès (not the actu­al pho­to)

It used to be like, 12–15 recruiters to one com­pa­ny, one depart­ment in a com­pa­ny. So it takes a long time to go through resumes.

Every sin­gle job I’ve ever worked at, we have looked through every sin­gle resume. I have nev­er used AI and I’ve nev­er used an auto­mat­ed sys­tem. So if you have 300 roles post­ed, you have 2,000 peo­ple apply­ing to each role.

Image cred­its: cot­ton­bro stu­dio (not the actu­al pho­to)

How long do you think that takes? Of those thou­sands of peo­ple that apply, maybe more than half of them apply to roles that they’re not qual­i­fied for.

It used to be, six years ago, you could apply for roles you weren’t qual­i­fied for and you might get hired, it hap­pened to me. But now com­pa­nies are not will­ing to spend the mon­ey or the time to train peo­ple and it real­ly sucks.

Image cred­its: KATRIN BOLOVTSOVA (not the actu­al pho­to)

Num­ber two, you do not need to pay some­body to do your resume for you. You can down­load Star Resume or go to starresume.com.

It’s like a free app, or you can do it on your com­put­er, use that resume tem­plate. I have used it for years. It’s very sim­ple because recruiters only spend about 30 sec­onds look­ing at some­body’s resume.

Image cred­its: Markus Win­kler (not the actu­al pho­to)

Num­ber three, I can­not stress enough how a temp agency can help you get a job.

The amount of roles that are con­vert­ed from tem­po­rary to per­ma­nent in these com­pa­nies is insane, and not only temp roles, but some­times we out­source to these agen­cies and say ‘Hey, we don’t have a can­di­date that’s great. You guys have any­body?’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah,’ and then that per­son gets hired.

Image cred­its: Andrea Piac­qua­dio (not the actu­al pho­to)

Look at com­pa­nies like Rand­stad, Robert Half, there are so many more.  Indeed,  ZipRecruiter, let them go. Last thing, to be very hon­est, I am mak­ing less than I have ever made in a recruit­ing posi­tion ever because the job mar­ket sucks.

Com­pa­nies don’t want to spend mon­ey. It is what it is. I still have to do my lit­tle lit­tle things on the side to make mon­ey. It sucks, but it is what it is. And I wish things would change. I hope they change, but it’s real­ly bad right now and hope­ful­ly these things can help some­body get a job.

Kourtlynn’s candid video has been viewed over 1.8 million times

@kourtlynn_ I could go on and on. We have to do som­rthing cause this is get­ting out of con­trol #fyp #job­mar­ket #life­lessons #infla­tion #unem­ployed #life­hacks ♬ orig­i­nal sound – Kourt­lynn Faith

Kourt­lynn told Buz­zFeed that she’s nev­er seen hir­ing take this long. “Com­pa­nies are… more strate­gic and have small­er head­count, which results in spend­ing more time to find the best hire so they don’t have to spend more mon­ey on resources, train­ing, and high turnover repair,” she explained.

So for every­one who is cur­rent­ly look­ing for a job, Kourt­lynn rec­om­mends you go through your résumé and make sure it aligns with the skills in the job post­ings you’re apply­ing to.

“If a job post­ing lists some­thing that I know I can do but I don’t have it on my résumé, I will add it. I have mul­ti­ple résumés saved because my résumé is not one-size-fits-all for the posi­tions post­ed.”

Then, net­work. “At every com­pa­ny I’ve been at, all refer­rals must be con­tact­ed or inter­viewed at some point. The refer­ral may not make it past the recruiter to the hir­ing man­ag­er, but you will speak to some­one.”

Kourt­lynn also sug­gests being inten­tion­al in your job search and tar­get­ing only roles you’re cer­tain you’re a fit for. “At one point, I was apply­ing to every role I saw on LinkedIn — it was­n’t until I became strate­gic that I was able to land a job.”

The recruiter also believes that it’s worth apply­ing with temp agen­cies and stay­ing off the beat­en job-board path. “I would go to temp agen­cies. Research com­pa­nies and apply on their web­sites, not through sites like LinkedIn or Indeed.”

The met­rics say that demand for work­ers in the US picked up slight­ly in Feb­ru­ary in a sign that the job mar­ket remains on strong foot­ing, though lay­offs also ticked up that month.

There were a sea­son­al­ly adjust­ed 8.8 mil­lion job open­ings in Feb­ru­ary, a notch high­er than the pri­or mon­th’s down­ward­ly revised 8.74 mil­lion. That’s rough­ly in line with econ­o­mists’ expec­ta­tions. For con­text, the num­ber of avail­able jobs remains well above pre-pan­dem­ic lev­els, but is down from a record high of 12.2 mil­lion in March 2022.

“Recent num­bers, includ­ing job open­ings as well as ini­tial job­less claims, con­tin­ue to indi­cate that the US labor mar­ket has remained sta­ble,” Euge­nio Ale­man, chief econ­o­mist at Ray­mond James, said on Tues­day.

How­ev­er, sta­tis­tics also tell us that lay­offs increased to a 14-month high in March, and there were only 1.36 job open­ings for every unem­ployed per­son in Feb­ru­ary, com­pared to 1.43 in Jan­u­ary, gov­ern­ment data showed this week.

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