After my previous job was acquired, several colleagues were laid off despite the initial assurances of job security. Unfortunately, I was included in the layoffs due to my relatively short tenure of six months and my position as a higher-up employee. My job search, which lasted for two and a half years before my last role, has become a rigorous process that I now meticulously track in a spreadsheet.
While the only solace it provides is a sense of order, the routine involves customizing my résumé and cover letters for each application, leading to emotional investment in potential opportunities.
However, the overwhelming majority of applications lead to being ghosted or receiving generic rejection letters, which can be demoralizing. Despite my extensive qualifications and experiences, including five degrees and a background in electronics engineering and semiconductor research, it seems that my efforts are often unacknowledged. In the face of countless rejections and ghosting episodes, maintaining an emotional balance has become increasingly challenging.
The reason I posted it was maybe someone would find this funny. I was also thinking maybe some recruiters are going to see this and maybe it'll change the way they do things. Maybe they'll start thinking about applicants as people who need to make a living instead of, "I posted this on LinkedIn yesterday and I've got 4,000 applicants." That's 4,000 people. We need to be able to eat and stay warm during the winter and you're just letting the software go through and weed out these qualified people. Hopefully, they'll see it. They'll be like, "Wow, there's somebody who has this much education and experience and he's having this hard time getting through. Maybe we should look at them differently."
I've tried using my network
I had a contact through my girlfriend at one of the major mobile carriers. I would love to work for a company like that — for any of these major mobile carriers — because they have the money to pay me to do what I do at the level that I'm at and they have tons of work so they'd keep me busy. So I get in contact with the woman on LinkedIn. She's like, "Oh, I'd be happy to help out. It sounds like you're qualified for a lot of stuff that we need. Go on the company website and find something you want to apply to." So I find something and I go through the process. And I sent it to her but she didn't get back to me right away. And I was like, "Well, I don't want to be a late applicant." So I applied to it. Then I heard back from her and I said, "This is the position. I went ahead and submitted it because I didn't want it to be too late." Her response was, "Oh, that's not a real position. That's one of our generic positions that we post to generate interest about the company."
So how many jobs that are posted aren't even real jobs? And people are applying to them, spending time. This is why I don't put a ton of work into my résumé anymore. I'm applying to jobs that don't even exist.
To make ends meet, I started doing Uber Eats again this past spring. I did that during my prior job search, too. I'm grateful for Uber Eats because I can just sit in my car and listen to podcasts and you make 20 to 30 bucks an hour doing that. The only thing is it's $75 for a tank of gas and it puts wear and tear on your car.
I think hiring software has made itself obsolete because so many people can apply for so many jobs so quickly. It's not really a viable resource to get in the door at any company. It was supposed to make it easier, but it's actually made it harder, and now the only way that you can get a job is if you know somebody. It's harder at my age to not have the income to go out to events but I'm still trying.
As I said in my cover letter, "I just need someone to give me a chance."