When someone tries to scam me while job hunting: dude, the only thing you’ll get from me are dirty socks.

100% true. It's a perfect storm of political instability + economic downturn + AI bots everywhere. We are in an employer's market right now.

Let's not forget that the job advert was probably created by ChatGPT to begin with. There's also a bot processing incoming resumes. It's all bots talking to bots. And no one is going anywhere.

It's not only that the HR is now an AI. They hope to replace white collar jobs with AIs. It's gonna take a while until they realize this won't work.

It should have a label attached: "Job hunting can harm your mental health."

Use several platforms (LinkedIn, InDeed, Monster, ZipRecruiter), but only for research (do not apply there). Go to the webpage of the companies apply there. Do this every day and keep track of results. Get feedback: let others read you CV, tell you how realistic your expectations are

They might be just scams ... or desperate recruiters ... or people fishing for information for whatever reason. Who knows? Job platforms are broken.

Job hunting 2025 is: loads of scams, ghost jobs, AI screening candidates, AI bots posting jobs, political instability, and a shrinking economy.

Normally they want a senior developer for the price of a junior.

If someone asks for money for applying for a job, there's no job. It's just a scam.

You can easily skip it. Use LinkedIn (+ similar sites like Monster, ZipRecruiter, InDeed) only as a research tool. Do not apply through them. Once you find a company, go to the career section of their official webpage. By-pass recruiters, middle men, scams, crypto/ai bros, ... and the LinkedIn algo.

Totally get you. 2025 is a horrible year for a lot of people. But this too will pass.

There are lots of jobs like job hunting: cold calling, telemarketing, or door-to-door evangelizing.

Well done. It's not as if our abilities would mysteriously disappear just because we didn't work for awhile.

Job platforms like LinkedIn have become almost useless for me: it's scams, posers, wannabe headhunters, ripoff CV writing services, ... Unless a platform had some filtering mechanism, I would not use it.

I find it baffling that so many companies consider CV gaps a big no-no.
You were under "scheduled maintenance." It's not a memory reset.

Add to this the irony that AI bots are plagiarizing machines.

Mostly they are offering some sort of CV writing service or career advice. It's pretty scammy in the sense that their services are worthless.