Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

There are no jobs. I've been looking for two years. A couple of humongous rounds of interviews (one company in Sydney had me do 15 interviews plus a presentation, plus meetups with the CEO for lunch and the CTO and a case study), all for one mid-size startup CPO role.

No hire. Two weeks later they announced another 25% of layoffs.

I've tried and exhausted all my contacts, from work, Stanford alumni, everything. There's no one hiring. At least 500 applications either led to no reply or "sorry but you're not the person we are looking for". Week later the same job is advertised again. It's all ghost jobs.

There just aren't that many jobs for management roles (CPO/VP Product/etc) compared to applicants.

Being in HK probably isn't helping either because there are plenty of qualified candidates across China and ASEAN now as well - especially in the hospitality and B2C space.

Oh 100%. But of course I am not limited to HK at all (in fact I am planning to move to AU next year as I got permanent residence there through their Global Talent visa programme). But nothing there either. And I'm not limiting myself to CPO or VP roles but yea... this is what it has been