Almost one year, dozens of interviews, zero job offers

djmaxus.dev 2026-07-27

This is how the job market has been for me so far.

And some of these patterns occurred more than once:

Such a need is a silent deal breaker in reality.

In that particular area of work, there is no way there were other serious reasons for rejection. I would blame regulations instead of employers if not for the fact that there are entire industries in the UK where they truly do sponsor. What is the problem then? I’d love to know.

You aplied through a very strong referral in your opinion, but you get an automated rejection letter

Likely, a human being didn’t even see your application — a referred application where you met 100% of the requirements.

They were in strong doubt about whether they could rely on you

Although they couldn’t really explain what the job was in the first place.

Everything goes great until

.. the final interview, where they give you a certain type of LeetCode problem out of the blue, without explicitly setting expectations from you to know the top-150 list by heart.

So you didn’t solve the problem perfectly, not because you fundamentally couldn’t; you just didn’t know you were supposed to.

They don’t really hire, but waste your time anyway

And you applied through a referral again.

You cannot reapply within one year of your last application

You were very close, and one more round could have easily resolved any uncertainty.

And all this is when it comes to interviews at all.