Going on four months here. Good luck. I heard from one recruiter they had 800+ applications to a role It’s rough out here.
Four months also. The struggle is real.
Ask HN: I found out that I'm about to be laid off. How do people find jobs?
11–20 of 22 posts
Re: Ask HN: I found out that I'm about to be laid off. How do people find jobs?
#12Semi related - If USA and you have a FSA - it is like an insurance policy, so there is no REAL balance. Spend it before you are laid off. Glasses etc.
Sorry to hear you are about to be in a struggle.
Get resume out, and start looking. You will get more if you are employed vs unemployed.
If USA apply for unemployment as soon as laid off. Companies have paid into this pot, you deserve the payout. Not collecting does not leave more for others.
Re: Ask HN: I found out that I'm about to be laid off. How do people find jobs?
#13Use your network. It’s the best way.
Yes, this. Because their network was how they got a head’s up about the possible layoff.
Re: Ask HN: I found out that I'm about to be laid off. How do people find jobs?
#14I'd say you could try to apply directly over company homepages. Find out about companies that you know existed for longer than 5 years, where you like the concept of what they are doing and look on there official homepages for a career section.
This is not strictly limited to your region, but I would start with companies you can at least call by phone for questions about the job listings.
Re: Ask HN: I found out that I'm about to be laid off. How do people find jobs?
#15For my current job a corporate recruiter at the employer found me. I had more than the required years of programming experience, the necessary education, a security clearance, and more than the required security certification. This was almost three years ago. Last year my HR reported receiving less than 11,000 submissions for just 19 positions that came open.
Before LLM filtering winning a chance to interview from resume submission online was like winning a lottery. Now I imagine that is still true but with even more keyword matching from your resume.
My best suggestion is get certifications in things like security and cloud infrastructure. The best security certs are not vendor certs, for example: CompTIA certs and CISSP. The cloud certs will be vendor certs from Azure and AWS. Resume filters will absolutely recognize those, but they won’t recognize programming capability beyond language name.
The lower half of software jobs, junior and senior developers, prioritize language experience and tool identification. The upper half, lead and principal, prioritize current capabilities expressed more in terms of accomplishment and business requirements.
Re: Ask HN: I found out that I'm about to be laid off. How do people find jobs?
#16I'm a hiring manager. We post jobs on our website, along with LinkedIn and probably some others. We review applications from that, and interview and hire those people. We get a lot of bots, but the software itself filters out 99% of that and then our recruiters filter out the rest. Referrals push candidates to the top of the queue for interviews, but otherwise it's literally just hiring people who cold applied to a j…
Why not charge $1 to apply ? Would drastically filter down spam applications.
Re: Ask HN: I found out that I'm about to be laid off. How do people find jobs?
#17So I was not laid off from Oracle , but I left Oracle just before the layoffs started and I felt lucky to be honest because I left on my own terms.
To be on subject, before I left, I have used Linkedin to find a similar job in my area, that turned to be a success , this is my try from July - August 2025 , but I believe now in 2026 is similar.
My advice: Apply to similar jobs in your area on Linkedin, it will work.
Re: Ask HN: I found out that I'm about to be laid off. How do people find jobs?
#18Don't have any meaningful advice for you, but, I hope this new struggle will make you stronger and lead you to better opportunities
Re: Ask HN: I found out that I'm about to be laid off. How do people find jobs?
#19> How do people find jobs?
By tapping into a network you've ideally built over the course of your career. In the 2020s, people get good jobs from whom they know, not what they know.
Re: Ask HN: I found out that I'm about to be laid off. How do people find jobs?
#20LinkedIn worked out for me, but I was being very selective, looking at companies to see if the company research is something I'm really passionate about. Then applied for multiple open positions at the targeted companies repeatedly. This was cold applications I did not know anyone at the companies I found.