After Months Of Job Hunting, I Finally Understand Why So Many People Have Just Given Up Entirely
Peopleimages.com - YuriArcurs | Canva Man. It’s amazing to think that I worked my first on-the-books shift at a job I enjoy in almost six years. Though I have put in thousands of applications in my field, I still do not have a W-2 job in writing, editing, or marketing.
Rather, I got myself a perfect part-time job as a secretary at a doctor’s office. It’s actually a really nice fit for me. It’s quiet, fun, and a great way to just spend time organizing and filing.
Words cannot describe how much relief I felt when I got the offer. I actually had to speed off the phone because I had to scream, jump, and cry for joy. It’s wild, really. Six years, man. Six years of madness.
Though I'm now employed, I’m still traumatized by the absolute nightmare that is the American job search
Surface / Unsplash
You know, I consider myself a strong person. I survived stuff most people die from, repeatedly. I struggle with CPTSD every day, but I don’t let it own me.
Things like hearing gunshots? Seeing violent crime happen in front of me? That stuff doesn’t faze me. (Make of that what you will.) So knowing my tolerance for horror, I find it very telling that I remain deeply traumatized by the stuff I endured during my job search. Job hunting remained one of the most deeply destabilizing things I’ve ever had to go through.
I’m far from alone in that sentiment. Studies show a direct link between long-term job searching and depression. In fact, there's even a name for it: Job Search Depression.
Job hunting in America is designed to break you
Think about it: The modern job hunting experience doesn’t really seem to be about finding the best fit for a company’s culture anymore. It often seems to be more about dotting the i’s, crossing the t’s, and covering HR’s behind.
With every month that rolled by, I noticed that jobs wanted people to jump through more and more hoops:
- You need to have a keyword-optimized resume these days. ATS, or Applicant Tracking Systems, use AI to filter out people who are not deemed to be suitable. They do it via tracking keywords in a resume. If you don’t have the right keywords or don’t phrase your resume well, you’re boned, even if you have all the right skills and then some.
- You have to have a degree for almost any corporate job. The number of times I was told that I needed a degree to prove my value after working in publishing for decades was shocking.
- Companies also don’t want to hire people who are unemployed or overqualified. I was desperate for a job, but kept being told I was “not a good fit” because I was unemployed and focused on writing. Despite my being one of many to have this issue, corporations keep saying that “people don’t want to work anymore.”
- It’s also an open secret that companies are trying to lowball workers. They often make a point of asking questions that make you doubt yourself, or trying to show how little your experience means. There are even reports of people asking for five years of experience in a two-year-old program!
Whatever happened to just being able to do a job?! It seems like most companies operate by trying to get the most submissive, desperate, and hungry people possible.
Then, there’s the issue of the complete and utter lack of feedback, piled with rejections
The way employers reject applicants is also cruel, in that weirdly inhuman “mean girls” way that only businesses can be. Most businesses don’t even give a reply saying they’ve moved on.
Even when they do offer a reply, it’s always the same automated, canned response: “We had so many great applicants, but we have decided to move forward with other candidates. Please try again later.”
After a while, it’s hard not to take those rejections personally, even when you get the feeling that the job that you applied for could be fake. Sometimes, you just want to know why you weren’t hired beyond the trite “other people were more qualified.”
I don’t know if other people have done this, but I started asking hiring managers and recruiters what was wrong with me. I wanted genuine feedback. After all, how are people supposed to improve if they don’t know what’s wrong? You really can’t improve without knowing what you’re doing wrong in the first place!
All I ever got from anyone was an awkward, “I’m sorry…” or “It’s hard…” Maddening, much?
HR notoriously can’t give feedback because they are worried that they are going to get sued if they say the wrong thing. In many cases, the people reading the resumes don’t even see yours because ATS just decided your resume was not enough.
Rather than offer help and feedback, companies and recruiters do nothing. And in that weird, messed-up way, that silence makes you feel less than human.
If you’re not hired after a year of searching, that silence starts to feel like a subtle way of the world saying, “You’re not even worth helping.”
Trying to get help via government programs or nonprofits is an unmitigated disaster, too
It's a mess trying to get nonprofit/public assistance in my job hunt. Long story short, I got no help. I didn’t qualify for any job search help, despite being a human trafficking survivor and being unable to afford to pay rent.
If I divorced my husband, I would have qualified for a program that helps women who are moms/divorced re-entering the workforce with training. That was the only program that was even remotely interested in helping me find a job.
So, if I were to leave my husband, I could have gotten free training to become a Certified Nursing Assistant. However, I am not interested in divorce, so I was not “qualified” to have that job training.
Not for nothing, but I really searched high and low for non-profits and government programs that would have been able to help me find a job. Most of those programs were either full, never called me back, or didn’t want me in.
Trying to get government assistance in job seeking or even getting job search help often meant I’d have to navigate an infuriatingly poorly-built spiderweb of programs, referrals upon referrals, and time wasters.
Weirdly, it adds salt to the wound. It’s almost as if society wants you to know, “Hey, you’re not worth helping.”
The excuse of 'trying to find the right fit for our culture' is also dead as a dodo
Getty Images / Unsplash+
There was a point in time when there was an excuse that HR was “busy at work, trying to find the right culture fit.” It’s true. In an ideal world, HR would be working on a human fit because hiring is a somewhat human practice.
That got shot to hell with AI.
People are posting videos of botched job interviews where AI interviewers and screenings make zero sense. Some even glitch out so badly that it’s embarrassing to even consider.
A lot of great candidates are failing job interviews because of AI. Somehow, CEOs think this is a good move for their companies and claim that it’s great for them to find the “best fit.”
Yeah. No. Let’s cut the nonsense. I don’t think even CEOs know what they want anymore. The fact that HR seems to back this just shows how ridiculous some of these companies really are.
There's a very easy solution to the 'nobody wants to work' whine
People do want to work. Companies regularly ignore those in need of work.
There’s an easy way to handle this: offer “instant hire” lines for people based on their skills, complete with basic living wages and healthcare. The way it would work is simple:
- Line people up based on the skills they have. If they want to get customer service skills, have them write that down. Clerical? Write that down too. Farm labor? Write that down. Construction? Cool. Willing to learn? Write the specific trades you would be willing to learn there.
- Have companies post openings for all their jobs. The companies will not be allowed to turn people away unless they don’t pass a background check. They must say yes and fire them only if their work is inadequate or if they are chronic no-shows. People are not allowed to quit their jobs until one year has passed.
- Give people the job openings that fit their skills, closest to their home address. Boom done. Everyone gets labor. Everyone gets a paycheck. The economy is saved.
- If a job requires certifications or education, tell the companies that they must pay for the education to get any workers from the program. And tell workers that they must work a minimum of one year at the job if they accept it or have their checks garnished for the remainder of their tuition.
- If the workers no-show, quit, don’t work adequately, or act inappropriately, they get a strike on their resume. Three strikes and they’re out of the program for good. They can appeal this process.
Done. Simple. Easy. Oh, and it’s what I’ve gathered was the basic way that jobs were doled out in communist Romania. And sadly, this process I just outlined is a lot more empathetic, calm, and orderly than what we’re doing right now.
America’s work culture stopped asking if people can do the job in favor of servitude
When I hire someone, I want to know if they can do the job adequately. If they can? Cool. Hired. I don’t care how old they are, how weird they are, or what they do on their weekends. I just want them to work.
When did that stop being the case? I don’t know. But that sure explains why so many larger companies are failing.
Ossiana Tepfenhart is a writer whose work has been featured in Yahoo, BRIDES, Your Daily Dish, Newtheory Magazine, and others.
