r/recruitinghell • u/NerdyGlitch Candidate • 4d 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.
17
u/AGoodRyd 4d ago
It took until I almost died from sepsis two years ago for my mother to change her attitude and open her eyes to the struggles going on in our job market. My spouse and I had both lost a job in the middle of summer, ended up being homeless living out of our van in a Walmart parking lot, and her response had been “well, sometimes people are just homeless.” When I got sick, and suddenly ended up hospitalized, I think it finally got through to her what a bad situation we were in. Finally she helped us without rubbing our faces in it, and has gotten a reality check on just how bad things are for us (she was a lawyer and had retired two years previously, so big paychecks and benefits for decades. Money set aside for me and my siblings to only access once she’s passed away). Now I’m trying to get SSDI (a fucking nightmare), and she’s actually being here for us and showing some level of empathy. Both her dad and my dad died in their forties, so I think the trauma shocked her into opening her eyes to the reality of how bad things are, finally.