It was crystal clear from the start that popular vote loser Donald Trump likes to take credit for anything and everything “good,” regardless of if he had anything to do with it. It’s no surprise he brags about jobs reports and consumer spending—when it reflects well. If only he spent as much time doing things to improve middle-class workers’ lives as he does stealing credit for helping the 1 percent, maybe his dismal ratings would tick up for once. Because right about now, lots of people could use an assist. The Great Recession may be over, but for so many of us, the damage to millions of lives and dreams rolls on.
Many of us find ourselves looking for gainful full-time employment, although this time it’s a much better job market and most are in much better shape than during the terrible post-recession days. In my case, I’m already employed, with an improved skillset and a far more frugal lifestyle—I’m just looking for something better. And that’s what this post is about: millions of people already employed, but in short-term contracts and/or in relatively poor-paying jobs.
As examples for this post, I have two good friends in this same boat. Their experience has been exactly the same as mine: dozens of resumes submitted and applications completed for jobs well within our skill set, in a strong job market, and in fields we are each employed in now. I just put in my 40th application a few minutes ago, for a job listing skills so closely matching mine it’s almost as if the job requirements were written with me in mind. But the results so far are indistinguishable from the darkest days of 2010.
There is no shortage of suggestions and guesses as to why all three of us have been unsuccessful so far. But none of them come from people actually working as recruiters and hiring managers. Out of an even 40 submissions, so far I've had three callbacks and one face-to-face interview. And I can speak for all three of us and probably millions of others when I ask of people who are reading this and actually are recruiters or hiring managers: Is this normal in this job market?
All three of us are currently employed in the field[s] we are applying in now. All three of us are usually applying for jobs where more than one person is being hired. These are jobs paying only in the $15 to $20 per hour range; we’re not being unrealistic here. We are looking for jobs in Austin, a city referred to as Silicon Hills for its strong tech start-up market. The most common complaint we hear from employers here is “we can’t find the qualified people we need.”
All three of us have strong tech skills and college degrees in serious subjects. One is a former tech account exec who took a few years off to raise her two kids. She has since worked for the same company for three years in customer service and sales making $18,000 a year. The other friend is currently a contract database admin and all around tech savant making $24,000 a year. I guess out of the three of us, I’m the “lucky” one working a dead-end contract job with no benefits that will end soon making $30,000 a year. We all three need real jobs, with actual benefits and, ideally, a living wage of at least $36,000 a year.
It’s rare that we get any insight into what ultimately happens with a job. But sometimes we know people who work at the prospective company and get some anecdotal feedback. In one case, one of us got a rare callback on, but no face to-face interview followed, and we found out the job ultimately went to a 20-something year-old with zero experience, no relevant educational background, and who was working a part-time job in a local sandwich shop. To say the applicant in question, one of us three, was more qualified than the person who was ultimately hired is a laughable understatement. Admittedly this is a tiny sample—a sample of one, in fact.
We’ve tried including social media and job link footprints, and not including them. We’ve tried pasting resumes versus attaching them in various formats; we’ve included keywords and juggled those around; customized submissions to that specific company and general cookie-cutter resumes; we’ve tried following up with phone calls and emails. I’ve included cover letters for writing or tech jobs featuring recommendations from world-famous scientists and best-seling authors singing my praises—so far, to no avail. We have no idea why we’re getting nowhere, and no one we ask seems to be able or willing to explain it.
There have to be others in our shoes, and there have to be people reading this who work in the recruiting and hiring fields. So we’re wondering: what the hell is going on? My best guess is that it’s so easy to apply for a job nowadays, with the click of a mouse or two, that companies get hammered with resumes and apps the moment they post an opening. But even then it’s hard to understand what actually transpires behind the scenes. I’ve put in resumes on jobs so closely matching my skill set that it almost seems like someone wrote it just for me, within minutes of that job appearing on the company website, and heard nothing back, or received a form rejection email, only to see that same job posted again within a week or two.
Let’s be objective and analytical. On one side of the equation we have lots of qualified people looking for a job. On the other side we have lots of employers looking for qualified people. In between them we have better technology than has ever existed before to connect job seekers to employers. Let’s assume both sides are sincere. Then the only variable is the connecting technology and/or the human factors behind it. Right?
There is one item that keeps coming up, over and over, in this conundrum. It’s age, pure and simple. The people who are not getting noticed seem to be, mostly, the ones who are middle-aged. But we’re not getting to the point where age would be apparent. Is it possible the technology is filtering middle-age applicants out, or the people running the technology, or some combo of the two?
It would be easy enough to test: simply compare the average age of those who are applying to the average age of those who are hired for a given job. Repeat on multiple data sets. That’s how you test for loaded dice and it only takes a few minutes. A couple of hundred dice rolls, record the results, and compare them to statistical distribution. There comes a point, say after snake-eyes pops up way too often, that the odds of it happening by chance on fair dice become astronomical. The same methodology would work on age versus new hires.
Anyway, age is just a guess, too many applicants to adequately handle is just a shot in the dark. The three of us don’t know if this is normal or not, or why it is happening to us if it is not normal. But we’re past frustrated, we’re not even annoyed anymore—we’re simply baffled, and I bet there will be more than a few comments below from people who feel precisely the same way.