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Received today — 5 May 2026 ⏭
Received — 28 April 2026 ⏭
✇The Independent Singapore News

Marketing professional sends 800+ job applications in 4 months, gets only 3 interviews and hits burnout

By: Yoko Nicole
28 April 2026 at 03:01

SINGAPORE: It’s no secret that many job seekers today have to submit well over a hundred applications to secure a role, but in a shocking Reddit post, a Singaporean marketing professional revealed that she has hit burnout after sending more than 800 applications over the past four months, only to land three interviews.

While some might assume her applications are being filtered out because of AI, she believes something else may be affecting her chances. She pointed in particular to the overlap between her work experience and her studies.

“My full-time work overlaps almost entirely with my degree timeline,” she wrote. “I’ve been told that this could raise red flags for recruiters or ATS (Applicant Tracking System), potentially making it seem like I’m misrepresenting my experience or that my roles weren’t truly full-time.”

She explained that she pursued her bachelor’s degree from January 2023 to December 2025. During that time, she also held two full-time roles, the first from August 2022 to October 2023 and the second from December 2023 to October 2024.

She eventually left her second job to focus on her studies. “I stopped working from late 2024 through 2025 to focus entirely on completing my degree. Balancing full-time work and studies simultaneously led to significant burnout, so I made the decision to prioritise finishing my education properly,” she said.

Now, she finds herself in a difficult position. She wants to highlight both her academic qualifications and her professional experience, but is concerned that the overlap may be hurting her chances.

To deal with this, she’s considering making some tweaks to her resume. “[I’m thinking]of adding ‘part-time’ next to my degree, keeping the degree title unchanged, but including a bullet point explaining I worked full-time concurrently.”

She also plans to “mention this context briefly in her professional summary” to clear out any misunderstandings.

“My intention was always to position this as a strength,” she added. “I saw working full-time while studying as a sign of discipline and resilience, but I’m starting to wonder if it may be creating confusion instead.”

“Mass sending of applications is not going to yield good results.”

In the comments, an HR professional chimed in, saying that they weren’t surprised by the jobseeker’s application-to-interview ratio, as the “job market for marketing has been really competitive for the past 1–2 years.”

They went on to share a few suggestions on how she can improve her odds of getting an interview.

They said, “Seeing you have just 2-3 years of work experience, keep your resume to just 1 page. Feel free to send me your resume if you would like, or you can have AI review your resume (just omit sensitive data).”

“On your job scope, keep it in point form and don’t make it 2 lines per point and end up having a cluttered resume. Font size shouldn’t be too small. I received a size 6 font resume before, and I just brushed it off because the whole resume is just a cluttered mess. Good luck!”

Another user, who said they work as a recruiter, suggested that companies might be rejecting her applications because she spent a relatively short time in her first two roles.

They explained, “You might have painted yourself into a corner there. The first thing on my mind as a recruiter is will this ‘fler chut’ pattern happen again if we hire? The best you can do is exclude the second job or call it part-time. Just tell them you wanted to work the first job for a full year and tendered at the 1-year mark with a 30-day notice.”

A third user also cautioned her against sending out a huge number of generic job applications just to try her luck at landing an interview, saying this kind of approach, often called the ‘spray and pray’ method, rarely works and can actually hurt her chances instead of helping.

They explained, “I find it hard to imagine any adaptation of your application to show you understand each company and role you were applying to, since there were 800 applications. Mass sending of applications is not going to yield good results.”

They added, “Have you written to companies unsolicited? Go out to network. Go to events. Meet people and put yourself out there. Tell everyone you know you are looking for a job. If I were in your position… I would write unsolicited to companies or people I love to work for and offer my services. Tell them you are willing to accept any opportunity just because you really want to work for them.”

In other news, a commuter in her 20s has vented online after an elderly woman allegedly confronted her for sitting in a reserved seat and repeatedly insisted it was “for seniors only.”

Posting on the r/SMRTRabak forum on Friday (April 24), the commuter said she had just finished a shift that left her “physically and mentally” drained.

Read more: ‘This seat is for seniors only’: Woman says she was confronted over reserved seat in MRT

This article (Marketing professional sends 800+ job applications in 4 months, gets only 3 interviews and hits burnout) first appeared on The Independent Singapore News.

Received — 23 April 2026 ⏭
✇PetaPixel

Update and Correction Regarding the Canon 14mm f/1.4L VCM Review

By: Jaron Schneider
23 April 2026 at 15:27

A person with salt-and-pepper hair holds a Canon 14mm camera lens toward the camera. The text "WE HAVE AN UPDATE" appears prominently on the right side of the image.

In February, PetaPixel published its review of the Canon 14mm f/1.4L VCM lens and found some issues with its performance in astrophotography. There were many theories from readers and viewers of the YouTube channel as to why this happened, but none of them were right. The truth is a little more interesting.

[Read More]

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