Back On the Market
Over the course of my short professional career, I haven’t been so lucky. I want to start by acknowledging that talking about job loss tends to be taboo, but it shouldn’t. It happens to almost everyone and often for trivial reasons. However, not many people my age can say that they have been let go twice.
I’m sure my parents are reading this right now going, “No, no, no, don’t share this Liv; you’ll never get hired again.” But my employment history is not a reflection of my performance, and any future employers will know that. It’s a reflection of people way, way above me looking at their employees as dollar signs, liabilities, obstacles to progress through economic uncertainty. That’s business, folks.
And because of my bad luck, I have found myself roaming the job market what seems like endlessly over the last two years. The job market is not conducive to roaming. It’s more like a scavenger hunt, forcing you to seek out the few places hiding golden tickets. You look to people in your life—and people in the lives of people in your life (aka, 2nd tier connections on LinkedIn)—for clues on where to find the buried treasure.
Job hunting is extremely demoralizing. Most of the time, you never hear back on your applications, one way or another, and when you do hear back, it’s a form letter of rejection. (I wrote a great humor piece about this in college, which has no place here, but holler if you want to read it.) There will be dozens of jobs you are perfectly qualified for and passionate about that you don’t land, just because. You don’t know who else applied, who gave them their scavenger clue, whether the company eventually hired from within or kept an intern, or if perhaps someone with a mere month more of professional experienced eked out the win. And these are answers you will never get. Instead, you accept defeat and push forward, confidence in yourself fading with each cover letter.
Job hunting is stressful, because regardless of when it falls in your career, there is always pressure to get it just right, to land the gig that will ensure you never have to go job hunting again. You think, oh, I can’t apply there, because I don’t care about the product they’re peddling. Who knows? Perhaps the people and the nature of the work itself will eventually convince you otherwise. There’s no way to tell when staring at a job board. In the [slightly altered] words of Hamlet: to apply or not to apply, that is the question.
Job hunting is also an extremely rewarding process. Eventually, though it may take a while (especially in this economy and during the holiday season), you’ll land a job, and it will be because of all the hard work you put into crafting your resume, networking, interviewing well, impressing the right people, and over all, proving your worth.
To anyone out there on the market, I feel you. I am sending good vibes through the air waves. And please take a look at my LinkedIn network to see if there is anyone I can connect you with. I’ve been there. I am there. And I am happy to help point you in the direction of the treasure.
We are all talented individuals, worthy of challenging, meaningful work. Eventually, the right company will realize that and turn your bad luck into their good. Happy hunting!