Dear Santa,
I never thought I would write to you as an adult. But I am looking for work and this market feels strange in ways I cannot quite explain.
I apply to roles I am qualified for and sometimes overqualified for and nothing happens. Jobs appear, disappear, stall and freeze. Emails go silent. The rules I trusted do not seem to work anymore.
And Santa, I am not sitting on the sidelines. I tailor my resume for every job. Two networking events each week, at least. My elevator pitch gets practiced like I am auditioning for a Hollywood movie.
I am doing everything I was taught to do. So why does the process feel disconnected now? Why does progress feel impossible to measure?
I am not writing for a miracle. I am writing because I want to understand what changed. I want to know if it is just me or if others feel this way too.
With hope, A Job Seeker
SANTA'S REPLY
Santa looked over his office. A whiteboard plainly visible was on the wall to the left of his desk. The to-do list built with colored markers seemed infinite. His eyes moved back to the pile of letters on his too small desk. He grabbed the closest one and read it. After reading, he furrowed his brow in thought and then put pen to paper.
Hi Job Seeker,
Thank you for writing. Let me begin with something simple and true. You are not alone. Many others have written with the same mix of effort, confusion, and quiet fear that something might be wrong with them.
Nothing is wrong with you.
As he was reading through the letter again, considering what to write next, Mrs. Claus walked into the office. She took one look at the cookie crumbs in his beard and the tone of the note and said, "Santa, this person needs more than comfort. They need an explanation."
MRS. CLAUS RESPONDS
Dear Job Seeker,
Santa is right. Nothing is wrong with you. What you are feeling is the result of a job market that changed faster than anyone announced.
The rules you learned, the ones that feel broken now, those were built for a pre-pandemic market. Before 2020, traditional job postings were the primary pathway. Companies posted. You applied. The process had transparency…mostly.
The pandemic accelerated changes that were already beginning. Remote work erased geography. Competition intensified. Companies experimented with new ways to source talent.
What we are experiencing now is a market correction. Companies became more conservative and selective. Hiring bars rose. Budget scrutiny intensified. Hidden hiring became standard. Direct sourcing replaced public postings. Temporary changes became permanent infrastructure.
The result is a submergence problem. Public postings still exist, but they no longer reflect the full market. Many mid-career roles now never reach the surface.
So when the old rules stop working, it is not because you forgot how to execute them. It is because they were designed for a market that no longer exists.
This shift creates specific challenges you encounter every day.
First, ghost jobs are real in the sense that they reflect a system under strain. Some roles open before budgets are confirmed. Others freeze halfway through. Some are filled internally. A few remain online because no one removed them. Others exist as evergreen listings that gather applicants for future hiring cycles.
As a job seeker, that lack of clarity leads to wasted energy. It creates doubt every time you click apply.
Second, artificial intelligence is often pointed to as the blocker that keeps people from getting hired. And it is easy to lay blame on the machine and put it on the naughty list. However .. It is a tool that big companies with big budgets have deployed in an attempt to triage hiring workflows. Success has been uneven. Smaller or more conservative companies still hire much like they did before the pandemic.
And yes, some vendors slap a "now with AI" label on the HR systems they sell, however the promise of true Agentic AI hasn't caught up with the marketing hype.
A few companies have even faced legal challenges as they learn how to use AI responsibly. Technology is not the problem. It's the implementation, training and oversight that determine the outcome. And many companies are still struggling with that challenge.
Third, your effort still matters. It simply lives inside a landscape where visibility influences opportunity just as much as experience and skill.
This does not mean you should abandon traditional applications. Cold applying still creates tangible progress and opens unexpected doors. It gives you visible output at the end of each week. It provides structure when everything else feels abstract. The psychological value of that productivity matters just as much as conversion rates.
But here is the reality: cold applying and networking alone do not scale over time. They are essential starting points, but the world has shifted toward discoverability.
Companies now search for candidates before they post roles. Which means your presence matters everywhere they might look.
Your LinkedIn profile. Your portfolio. Your GitHub contributions. Your thought leadership. The professional organizations where you show up. The alumni networks where you stay connected. The volunteer work that demonstrates your values.
These are not extras anymore. They are the infrastructure of modern visibility.
Companies still need people. They are simply finding them in new ways. This is the shift you are feeling.
You are not failing. You are having to adapt to a world that changed without giving you fair notice.
The opportunities are still there. They are simply harder to see because the visibility layer has thinned. The key is learning how to be discoverable in a world where companies search before they post.
As Santa likes to say:
"In the world ahead, you become your own job posting."
Warmly, Mrs. Claus North Pole Chief Operating Officer & Head of Career Dynamics