I just realized something: recruiters have never gotten me a job.
Every single job I’ve had came from talking directly to the team or a manager.
Recruiters are one of the worst things that happened to tech.
They’re useless.
To be clear, most recruiters are actually very nice people. The interviews often go well. I’m not nervous. I have a solid story about my work and my career, and I know how to tell it.
And yet, nothing.
I once had a recruiter tell me, “They really liked you, but your WordPress background didn’t really fit us.”
Bro, I haven’t touched WordPress in like eight years. How is that even relevant?
Another one told me, “They really like you, but you don’t have enough leadership.”
Bro, I’ve been running teams since 2018. Taking care of people. Scaling teams , Planning work for entire teams. Handling conflicts. mentoring juniors and interns, Delivering projects.
I’m even taking a leadership course now just to get it “down on paper.”
I had a recruiter from London calling on behalf of another recruiting company in Stockholm to offer me a job in Malmö, Sweden.
Read that again. That’s not global talent acquisition, that’s a bad game of telephone.
I had another one ask me, “What do you do for sustainability?”
Bro, why is that important in the first interview?
What a stupid question.
I still gave a good answer. I’ve stopped using plastic for the past few years.
But seriously, why does that matter at this stage?
I had another interview at 11:30 with some recruiter. The moment I saw her, she looked tired, hungry and annoyed before the interview even started. She didn’t listen to anything I said.
She just went, “Yeah… now can you do our stuff?”
Bro. That is the worst question I’ve ever heard.
You’re having a bad day, and now I lose a chance at a job because of it?
I’ve also had interviews with AI systems.
Three of them.
The first one went horribly. It didn’t get me at all.
The other two went pretty well.
That alone should tell you something about how random this process is becoming.
I also noticed recruiters constantly reschedule interviews because of “something.”
Meetings move. Calls get delayed. Things get pushed.
But when you miss a detail, suddenly that’s a red flag.
I have a portfolio website that clearly lists every stack I’ve worked with and how many years I’ve worked with each one.
They never look at it.
Instead, they ask me the same questions again during the interview.
Why did I even send the link?
Recruiters spend half the interview telling a story about the company that I honestly don’t care about.
All I care about is:
- the team
- the product
- how you manage people
I will fix everything else inside the team.
I will work cross-team.
We will solve problems together.
That’s how real work gets done.
Then they ask a few technical questions they don’t even understand themselves.
Recruiters cannot sell me.
They don’t understand me, my work, or my value.
So how do I even get a new job now?
Last year in the UK, I applied to 2000+ jobs.
I got 4 first interviews with recruiters. Then nothing.
In Sweden and Copenhagen, I applied to 70+ jobs.
I got 20+ first interviews. Then nothing.
Now, about me.
I discovered programming at 14, doing networking and linux setup, Moved to FrontPage. Then Dreamweaver with PHP/MySQL.
Fought with Photoshop just to slice images and use them as background images.
Worked with Flash and Fireworks.
Later I moved to WordPress because everybody wanted WordPress. Then Drupal and Laravel,
A few years of Ruby on Rails and NodeJs.
For the last 8 years, I’ve been working with React and most of the JavaScript frameworks.
I’m also worked with Spring Boot, playing with Java, and Electron JS to build desktop communication app that was used by 1 million users worldwide.
I do, Front-end, Backend, Design, DevOps, Managing projects, people and product roadmaps.
Besides coding, and certificates just to prove that I actually know my stuff, I’ve worked with different people in different situations, with different types of customers.
Years of experience solving weird, messy, real-world problems.
I’m a team player. I learned early in my career that you create far more impact as a team than as a solo hero.
That lesson stuck.
I regularly hold workshops and presentations for my team to keep everyone up to date with the latest tech. Not because it’s required. but because knowledge should move fast inside a team.
I’ve worked across different industries:
advertising, helping people in different branches, telecom for the last few years.
Right now, I’m taking an AI course and a leadership course.
I’m building applications with a Go backend and a Wails app.
My favorite language? i use to say js but now I don’t have one.
I can start a project in NestJS and move it to Go.
Start a frontend in React and move it to Next.js or something else.
The tool is not the point. Solving the problem is. That's what am good at! That's what i want to do!
I am a generalist builder, a systems thinker, and a team-first engineer in an industry that keeps trying to hire checklist-shaped humans through people who don’t understand the work. That mismatch hurts more the more senior and adaptable i become.
The strange part of the universe here is that the more capable you are across time, people, and technology, the harder you are to reduce to a keyword search, and the worse recruiters become at seeing you at all.
So tell me, what does that say about me? How do i get a job now?
Top comments (0)