r/Careers

Most people prepping for a job search will rewrite their resume three times, tweak their LinkedIn headline, and research every company on their list.

The profile photo stays untouched.

It is usually whatever was uploaded years ago. Sometimes cropped from a group. Sometimes clearly from a different chapter of life.

The problem is that photo is loading before a recruiter reads a single word about you. It is forming an impression before your headline, your experience, or your skills get a chance.

A few things that actually help without needing a full shoot:

• Window light and a plain wall gets you 80 percent of the way there with a phone

• A current photo matters more than a perfect one

• AI headshot tool let you generate a clean professional version from photos you already have, trained on your actual face so it still looks like you

The resume gets all the attention. The photo does a lot of quiet work that most candidates are leaving to chance.

I've been pulling the career portals of every team in the five major North American sports leagues.

Here's a snapshot of what I'm seeing right now:

Overall:

• 1,500 open positions across 100+ professional sports teams
• MLS leads in hiring right now with 400+ open roles
• NHL has the fewest at 240~

What they're hiring for:

• The most common role type across all leagues is Marketing/Sales roles
• Intern, part-time and junior roles make up a bigger chunk than you'd expect...roughly 33% of posted jobs don't require years of sports-specific experience

One thing that stands out: Most of these jobs will never show up on LinkedIn or Indeed. Teams post on their own career portals using whatever ATS platform they've set up and every team uses something different. If you're only checking one or two job boards, you're seeing maybe 20-30% of what's actually out there

A few things that surprised me:

• A lot of roles that sound sports-specific (like "Partnership Activation Coordinator") are really just marketing/event management jobs with a sports wrapper — the skills transfer from other industries more than people realize
• Betting, prediction markets, and gaming-adjacent roles have been growing fast across multiple leagues

I built a free site that pulls all of this into one searchable place if anyone wants to check it out. happy to drop the link. Otherwise feel free to ask questions about the data, I can look up specific leagues or teams.

Heyy so im a class 12 student in india looking for a career in finance

Im really confused between a CA and BSc. Finance, any opinions ??

😊thanks

Hi so I recently started a new job as a Author Relations Specialist at Harbor and Stone Press. Should you ever need information please check my employers website or me on IG through Bookstoldbycourtney. I have lots of experience with various author launch teams and helping out authors is something I enjoy very much!

This is possibly not the correct subreddit to post this; I'd appreciate being redirected to the appropriate one. My question concerns developmental editing. I believe this is the career I want to pursue, or at least adjacent. I have experience translating and some experience editing texts. (I've helped an indie author refine their work and make their ideas clearer.) If I could connect with someone who'd be able to tell me more about the developmental editor role, maybe let me shadow them, and show me the ropes, I'd appreciate it very much. How difficult is it to build a career in this field? Again, I'd appreciate being pointed in the right direction.

I'm in my mid-20s. I worked as a marketing coordinator starting in local government, then a nonprofit (laid off at 18 months due to restructuring), and lastly at a startup (2 years). The startup laid of 20% of us because of poor finances in November 2024. 

Overall, I’ve had junior-level marketing experience in 3 different sectors (public, nonprofit, private) and want to continue being in tech. I've done a lot of marketing generalist duties, but I haven't developed seniority in a specific area of marketing. I have been applying to associate field marketing tech jobs (hosting events is the strongest part of my resume). 

After the last layoff, I took my savings and went backpacking for half a year in Asia. I heard the job market was bad at the end of 2024, so I hoped it would be better after I came back. Unfortunately, I was shocked that the job market in 2025 seemed even worse. It's been 8 months since I returned from backpacking. I sent out 300 applications so far, and with an 18-month gap on my resume, I'm getting stressed out. I have much fewer interviews this time compared to the first time I was laid off from the nonprofit. I entered three final rounds and didn't end up getting them.

A referral got me a contract job in operations at a FAANG company. It is slightly less pay than my startup job, and it requires me to move to NYC (I’m from SF). I think it would be a great way to get exposure to how a corporation works (as I've only worked in smaller companies), and it would also be a good personal development chapter in my life as I would begin anew in a different city. The hiring manager was supportive, saying I should leverage my time and jump to a full-time position if I found one that interests me later on. The agency said the contract is set to be extended for the foreseeable future as there’s huge need on that team. I honestly am not super familiar with how contract roles work as this would be my first one, but I do get benefits like PTO and health insurance, just not as good as regular employees. 

This is a career pivot as I'm going from marketing coordinator roles to now an operations analyst role. I know I would learn a lot just from being at a FAANG environment. I can always come back to marketing, but I'm just self-conscious that I'm not going up the marketing ladder and I'm unsure of what my career narrative would look like. 

The alternative option is to reject the role, stay home, and keep churning out marketing job applications. I have a safety net living with family now, and they are understanding of my situation, but I feel guilty being here rent-free. I am not in any interview funnels right now and the ambiguity is stressing me out. I feel like life is passing me by with unemployment restricting how far out I can plan my future. The worst case scenario is I will be unemployed for several more months, making a 2-year gap on my resume.

Has anyone made a pivot like this? What would you do in my situation?

Hi! I am currently in a senior individual contributor role in for a large enterprise company and will potentially be promoted to a management role. This is a brand new role for the company to manage some new company initiatives. I would manage a small team (2-3 people) as well as build new processes to drive these new initiatives.

In this situation, how much would expect the financial raise to be? We haven't talked about the money yet, but I want to walk into the conversation with an amount in mind, but I want to have reasonable expectations. My current salary is approximately $95k.

Turning 27 soon, reaching 5 years of experience this July, specializing in low-level software development, so OS and OS-adjacent projects, embedded systems, compilers, high-performance systems with low-level optimization work, anything made in C or a similar language, or that needs to be optimized to the last CPU cycle, I'd love working on.

Thing is, young and inexperienced me has made a number of mistakes career-wise, so anyone on here wiser and more experienced than me when it comes to that, giving me advise, I would highly appreciate it.

I graduated with a 1st class honors in my BSc Computer Science in London, got my 1st job in Cambridge but got sick of living in England and wanted to see how things on the tech market scene are like back at home in Bulgaria. Leaving that job was my first gargantuan career mistake - I was in the team that does the primary development of one of the leading hypervisors, basically any low-level systems developer's dream team to grow in. Young and inexperienced me wasn't realizing that. That job lasted a little under a year.

Going back to Bulgaria was my next gargantuan career mistake. The number of companies actually seeking advanced developers here and giving them a chance to grow into senior devs (rather than severely underpaid code monkeys) and work on the kind of projects I wanna work on, are counted on my fingers. Most are web or app development companies using Bulgaria as a low-cost center, nothing more and nothing less.

Despite that, I did have a job lined up before I decided to return to Bulgaria, as an OS developer, it was an in-house operating system almost nobody has heard of, but still low-level programming. Stayed there for nearly 3 years and left due to poor growth, usage of languages and tech the rest of the world has never even heard of and poor management. Had 2 short jobs after that, first one was over partly my fault partly company's fault, 2nd one they loved me but unfortunately client cancelled the project I was supposed to be getting placed in, so they had no choice but to let me go.

That was in December, been jobless ever since. I have been getting interviews at a steady pace, which is good news, but all have concluded in my rejection so far. I'm using this in-between jobs time now to get started with my first ever Free and Open Source software contribution, contributing to GCC. Started with an easyhack, looking to move to more substantial contributions later.

Question for you guys is - which country should I try to move to, if I just wanna grind at a job hard, see my career skyrocket and earn tons of money, for the foreseeable future, as a developer of operating systems / embedded systems / compilers / anything low-level and optimized?

I do have my UK work permit still too and obviously all of EU. I've heard Germany is quite
bad right now. What countries in Europe, as well as outside Europe, are available for me to easily go and get a job at? I'm open to go anywhere in the world, my circumstances allow for that. Where should my sight be turned to? Japan? China? Scandinavia? Switzerland? Cyprus? Back to the UK? I also have a US visa but for some reason it only allows me to go there, not get a job there. Is there a way to get that upgraded?

I just wanna grind like crazy for career growth for the next few years, basically. Bulgaria is far from a place where I can do that, as a low-level systems developer, it seems. Thanks to everyone in advance for any career advise.

Hey everyone,

I’m looking for some information or even guidance on possibly going into HR.

I’m currently a student majoring in IT in my 1st semester and am considering switching majors in HR. I’ve also previously served active duty Air Force as a maintainer for 8 years and am currently in EMS as some background information. Although I enjoy being in EMS, it’s just not a long-term job. I’ve always had a passion for technology hence of why I’m majoring in it, but as of late, I’m beginning to realize that I just don’t love it like I used to.

I’ve looked into past posts and seems like being HR varies a lot day to day which is fine for me!

As someone who loves making relationships and advocating for people, is a HR career something I should consider? For others that transitioned from one career to another, what was it like? Did you end up regretting it or loving it? What drove you?

Thanks!