Yesterday marks the one year anniversary of my being laid off. In that year, I have applied to over 500 jobs. From those 500+ applications, I had a "skills assessment" with 6 companies, and interviews with 4 companies. I have ten years of experience in my field as a software quality engineer.
Feb 4, 2026 18:04"Skills assessment" is in scare quotes because all but one were actually a combination of personality tests, IQ tests, and questions that don't actually measure skills for the job, like the timed and mental completion of complex algebra equations.
In that time I also applied for a variety of customer service roles, for which I also have over ten years of experience. I didn't hear back about any of these applications, presumably because I am "overqualified."
What I have gotten in the last year is a veritable mountain of form rejection emails all saying some variation of "we're moving forward with someone whose experience better aligns with the role," despite the job description looking like it was written directly from my resume.
And my experience is not an outlier. Week after week, thousands more employees are being laid off and thrust into this broken job market, often with very little to help bridge the gap until they find something new.
