It Took Me Eight Whole Months to Find a Job. It Was Torture.

This story is based on an interview with the editors of The Doe.

I’ve been working in human resources for over 10 years now. I've worked within a lot of different industries—legal, financial, insurance, luxury hospitality, telecommunications, manufacturing. I have what I would consider a pretty impressive spread of different industries on my resume. I got my first HR job straight out of college, and I’ve had a steady job since I was 16 years old. I've always, always worked since it was legal for me to do so.

I've never had a gap in employment before. I'm that person who stops a job on a Friday and starts the new job on a Monday. I never took a few leisurely weeks off between jobs, mostly because I couldn't afford it. I feel like I live within my means, but I’m still largely paycheck to paycheck and I live in a very expensive part of the United States.

My last job was at a telecommunications company. During COVID, that industry was absolutely booming. There was so much going on and so much work. The company experienced their biggest financial year in 2020 and it was super-exciting. But 2021 and 2022 were the worst financial years they'd ever had. They hadn’t given me a raise since the beginning, so I started to look for another job just as we started doing layoffs. Every month for six months, I had to execute layoffs for the company and it was really devastating. I was laying off people that had been there for over 15 years.

Then, one day, an executive called me in and was like, “Hey, sorry, this is your month to get laid off.” All they could offer me was two weeks’ severance. It was really rough. I think they would have kept me if they could afford to, but it was so heartbreaking, because I was such a loyal employee. 

I applied to 422 positions during an eight-month period. I heard back from maybe 15 companies out of those hundreds.

At first I was like, “You know what? This is probably a good thing. They are forcing me to go and find a company that's willing to pay for my value.” I thought I would be okay at the job search—I mean, as an HR head, I really knew what went into hiring. I have conducted hundreds, if not thousands of interviews. I've looked at thousands, if not tens of thousands of resumes. I’ve trained recruiters. I feel like I truly, professionally know and understand how to get a job. 

But I started to apply and apply and apply and I wasn't really hearing anything back. I was getting unemployment, but it did not even cover my rent. Months went by. I had to empty my 401k that I’ve built over almost 20 years. I was babysitting for people and shuttling kids around and doing any random job I could. I'm a mid-30s, well-educated, experienced professional who was like, “Yeah, I would be happy to pick up your groceries for you.” So that was pretty demoralizing. 

Between LinkedIn, Indeed, and ZipRecruiter, I applied to 422 positions during an eight-month period—and that’s not even counting the applications that were directly to the employer website. I heard back from maybe 15 companies out of those hundreds. Sometimes I got to the last round of interviews. This one particular company had asked me to do this presentation after telling me I was in the top three. I did a 45-minute presentation on a 30/60/90 day HR strategy, super in-depth, all the things they asked for. And they were like, “Oh my gosh, this is exactly what we're looking for. Fantastic. All we need are your references so that we can just verify your employment.”

I followed up several times after that, and didn’t hear anything for weeks. Finally the Chief Operations Officer emailed me and was like, “So sorry, this isn't at all the company we want to be. We hope that you’ll consider us in the future.” No outright rejection, nothing. I saw a few weeks later that they hired someone with half my experience, after I handed them a robust HR strategy for free.

Towards the end, I was applying to anything that had “HR” in the title. I was applying for entry-level jobs, things that were way lower than my experience level. At that point, I needed to get any job. My unemployment ran out after six months. My 401k was gone. I was having really bad mental health struggles, but therapy was a complete luxury that I couldn’t afford. I felt really, really desperate, although I did have family helping out. They’d say, “can we pay for your groceries this month? Can we do this, can we do that?” It was an unexpected godsend.

Eventually I began to realize that you have to be in the first 20 or so applicants, because every position I would go to apply for, there would be a thousand applicants after being posted a mere three hours. The competition was completely unhinged. Even if you set up an alert, it’s not going to show up two seconds after somebody posts a job. I got a few interviews for January, and pretty much every single one of them was because I applied at two in the morning, so I was probably within those first ten applicants. 

That same month, I paid my rent and that was it—my money was gone. I was on food stamps at the time. I was on free health insurance from the state. There’s a subset of people who are always talking about how everyone abuses welfare programs, but these programs were genuinely challenging to get. I had to call every single day and follow up. It really was very humbling to recognize my privilege, because I cannot imagine people crushing their way through this terribly broken system who maybe don't speak English as their first language or are single parents with no time to wait on hold. I was really grateful that it was just me, and I didn’t have any financial dependents. 

I finally got a new job starting the first week of February. This company just moved the quickest through my interview and offer process. I didn't negotiate anything. I felt so much relief and immediately accepted it, despite the fact that they didn’t have me meet the rest of the team, which I thought was a red flag. I mostly really like my job. I’m really fortunate that it pays better than my last job and is also easier. But there are definitely some concessions I’ve made: I’m back to commuting pretty much every day, the position is technically a step back from my previous one, and the industry itself is not that interesting to me. Maybe before I could be more picky, but all of a sudden it was like, “This is the best I can do, and there isn't anything more.”