I recently interviewed for a job, and got rejected within the same week. Honestly, I was gutted. Partially because I thought I had kind of smashed it in the Zoom interview and was able to prove I had the required experience. But mostly because the job looked amazing. It was in a major media agency, with opportunity for upward progression.

In recent years, I’ve been hopping between short-term contracts, the occasional corporate comms job, and a heap of freelance writing gigs. But as I reach the tail-end of my 20s, I’m doing my best to settle into a role that people will take seriously.

Thousands of recruiters checked out my profile, but none of them came knocking. Credit: Getty Images

What was worst of all about the rejection was the reason the employer gave. Over the phone they told me that my answers hadn’t seemed genuine and that it looked like I was reading off a screen.

In hindsight, my undoing was the years of experience I have in doing job interviews. By this point in my career hustle, I can see where the misperception that I was “reading off a screen” might have come from. After all, how many different ways can I say that a corporate comms job from 2023 gave me valuable workplace experience and taught me strong time-management skills? But it also felt like I was being punished for being........

© The Sydney Morning Herald