I was lurking on another board, and found a thread titled “Job interview question”. It was a recent college graduate who (naively, I should add) interviewed for a job selling life insurance, because she’s been unable to find a job.
As a person who considers myself removed from the workforce and early-retired, I made the big mistake of lurking, and got all :(. I do think about what would happen if I ever NEED to look for a job, and can’t find one. And I shouldn’t, because there’s no point in worrying about the future. I’ll worry about that when and if it happens, KWIM?
I know it can get really depressing for people who struggle to find a steady job, but I think its crucial for them to stay motivated in spite of failures and dead ends.
While the job market and geography do play a big factor, I think its easy for people to assume they are giving their 100% effort the whole time when in reality they are getting progressively more discouraged/unmotivated the longer it takes to find a job. People are quick to blame outside forces beyond their control for unemployment and often overstate the amount of effort they really put into it.
Basically, she didn’t realize that the job was probably commission-only and may be a pyramid or MLM scheme. This isn’t something like being an agent who also sells house, health, and car insurance on top of legitimate life insurance policies.
On the other hand, living in a time where companies unabashedly put in their job ads “the unemployed need not apply” I can’t help but think that yes, there ARE “outside forces” working against qualified long-term unemployed people.
It doesn’t help to have a degree that is now useless in my field, one I don’t want to work in any more anyway, and also prevents me from getting a job doing anything else. :rolleyes:
I don’t remember if I was just out of college or if it was the summer before I graduated, but I managed to get snowed into a sort of cattle call interview thing that turned into a day-long pitch for pot and pan sales. I couldn’t believe I had fallen for it, and to add insult to injury the guy running the seminar stopped me in the lobby on the way out to tell me he “liked my look.” Yeah, whatever, fuck off.
And that was when job hunting wasn’t so bad. I can’t imagine how pissed I’d be if that happened today.
I got sucked into the whole Vector Marketing thing. Boy did I feel dumb when I realized what I had gotten into
I confess I also got fleeced by an ad saying the the USPS was hiring, and paid $50k a year. I called the number, and it turns out they sell ‘test prep’ books, not connected to the USPS at all. I stupidly bought the damn book for $80, then looked into testing locations/how to actually apply for the job, and found that they weren’t hiring in my area at the time. I probably should have fought for a refund, but cynically assumed everybody is going to try this when they come to their senses, and they are going to make it as much of a pain in the ass as possible.
I’m 29 now and have lots of friends my age or younger who’ve never had a real career in their field, despite appropriate educational credentials. I always feel like a bit of a hypocrite being sympathetic because I’ve never had any problems on my own.
But one thing that’s always been clear is they’re trying really hard.
Personally I think that these days t’s even more important you get off on the right foot, even if it largely comes down to luck. That sets you down a path you either keep building on or you flounder trying to establish yourself at all. If you don’t, soon you’re in your mid to late 20s with no career and a degree and nobody seems to seriously consider you.
It’s cruel and as a friend I feel bad but as a manager I can’t blame them other people who’re hiring. I’ve gone from college grad to someone who is almost 30 and if I’m hiring for an entry level position I’ll hire a recent graduate. If I want someone with more experience there’s plenty available. There’s not a lot of room for people in there 20s with no professional experience.
Yeah, yeah, I understand both points of view - but the problem with the resigned, “that’s the way it is” regarding those that are consistently overlooked is that you’re basically throwing a hell of a lot of people on the social trash heap. I find it a shameful failing of this nation that we offer nothing for those people who did everything right, who tried hard, and still didn’t get the luck of getting on the first rung of the ladder any alternatives to poverty and being despised by those more fortunate.
The sad thing is the view that it’s only the unemployed who suffer from not having work. It’s actually everyone who suffers from unemployment: roads that aren’t getting fixed, medicines that aren’t invented, or patented, or delivered, education that’s not being delivered, patients not getting nursed, airplanes that aren’t getting the proper maintenance, houses not getting painted or repaired, food that’s more expensive that it needs to be, etc.
You might think unemployment’s not affecting you if you have a job, but it means your quality of life is poorer than it would otherwise be.
And it could be easily fixed. There’s no good reason people who are ready and willing to work shouldn’t be working.
I posted this on another board, and someone pointed out that I’m better off worrying about the possibility of not being able to get a crummy job, than having to go to a crummy job in the first place.
