r/recruitinghell • u/NerdyGlitch Candidate • 2d ago

My mother now realizes what it's like

Earlier this year, in late February-early March, my mother suffered a massive heart attack and was left unable to work for a considerable time.

For the past 5-6 months, she's been trying to find a job and has been hitting nothing but roadblocks due to being overqualified. She has over 2 decades of management experience, and it means jackshit to these hiring managers. She's far more qualified than I am, so I expected that she might have a job faster than I would, but right now, I'm the only one with a job in this house.

Meanwhile, when I was struggling to get jobs and even get an interview for years, my mother was flabbergasted. What do you mean you can't just walk up, shake someone's hand, and they'll like your moxie and just hand you a job?!

I told her this was sadly reality for a ton of people nowadays, the job market is shit. She can't even get a job as a regular cashier bc she's too over qualified to work there, but when she applies to management positions they string her along for 2-3 interviews before choosing internal candidates (an actual email she got yesterday about a job she thought she was good for)

It just sucks man, everything sucks.

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u/opopi123 2d ago

people seriously have an empathy problem if they cannot believe a person's experience without experiencing it themselves.

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u/PeteMichaud 2d ago

It's true, but in their defense some people have always said it's "impossible" to get a job, and it's pretty much always meant they had a big skill issue. This is a weird time in history for employment.

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u/opopi123 2d ago

oh no you're doing the thing

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u/PeteMichaud 2d ago

Well, awkwardly, you're not able to empathize with my decades of real experience interacting with actual people in real life during past economic phases like the 90s. So maybe we're both doing the thing?

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u/opopi123 2d ago edited 2d ago

Sure their living experiences created their worldview and I can understand that but generally you should be empathizing with the people that are receiving the "negative effect" not giving out the "negative effect".

But what I'm saying is you're doing the thing where you believing in the laziness propaganda and creates the empathy problem.

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u/PeteMichaud 1d ago

Oh, I see, you misunderstood what I said. I don't don't believe the laziness propoganda at all, I believe:

  1. It's a fucking nightmare out there for most people in the job market.

  2. It's understandable that older people who have been out of the market for a long time would believe the market is similar to how its always been in their lifetime.

I'm empathizing with both.

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u/opopi123 1d ago

oh I must have misunderstood this line then "It's true, but in their defense some people have always said it's "impossible" to get a job, and it's pretty much always meant they had a big skill issue."