Welcome back to After Careful Consideration, our show about looking for work, losing work, and trying to figure out what the hell is happening at work.

This week:

Chase applied to 130 jobs in three days (aka The Great Experiment); ghost jobs, questionable recruiters, recycled job-search advice; The Rejection Email Hall of Fame; the hidden executive job market; job hugging; and the weekly layoff report involving Netflix, Hasbro, and Airtable, 3 places where record profits and job security aren't on speaking terms.

If you've ever been called an exceptional candidate by a company that won't interview you, we made this episode for you.

Chapters

00:00 Intro + The Great Experiment

8:29 Ghost jobs, suspicious recruiters, and job-search advice

26:48 The Rejection Email Hall of Fame

38:19 Job-search burnout and the LinkedIn game

42:38 The Hiring Process Nobody Sees: The hidden executive job market

45:51 Job hugging, hiring freezes, and doing more with less

57:31 This Week's Layoff Report

Articles Discussed

• The hidden executive job market — The Business Journals
• Netflix workforce cuts — Reuters
• Hasbro's relocation ultimatum — Boston.com
• Airtable layoffs following acquisition — Business Insider

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• Threads: @aftercarefulconsiderationpod

Have a rejection email worthy of our Hall of Fame or a ghost-job sighting? Join the conversation, subscribe, and share this episode with someone who's also "genuinely impressive" but somehow still unemployed.

We'll give you your time back.