5 people on what unemployed job search is right now

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Despite reports of the labor shortage in the United States, many job seekers are still struggling to find work.
Former RN Donna Fields Brown, 70, says she applied for jobs at Target and Safeway with no response.
Bilal Waheed, 29, has a master’s degree but sent nearly 70 CVs without landing a single interview.

Despite reports that there are more jobs available in America than there are people to fill them, people across the country say that getting hired is a different story.

Candidates say they are ghosted by recruiters, their CVs are screened out by Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), and they struggle to find remote work opportunities. At the same time, unemployment benefits were abolished.

From graduate students to those looking for work after retirement, Insider spoke to five currently unemployed people to learn what job hunting looks like during one of the worst times in economic history.

Here’s what they had to say:

Lauren Daly, 30, Henderson, Nevada

Due to a corporate restructuring, I was terminated two weeks ago from my job as an educational technology sales representative and received two months compensation.

The irony is that in addition to this job, I teach an online course I created for a university that focuses on career preparation, covering everything from cover letters, resumes, interview tips and the best way to use LinkedIn to navigate the job search.

When I told my students that I had been fired, they asked me, “How could you be out of work? You are literally teaching a course on getting a job! I resisted the urge to say that maybe I should create a course on how to keep a job.

I assumed that with my PhD and my experience, I wouldn’t have a hard time breaking into the area of Scrum Master I wanted to be in, but right now the market is insane. No one is ever really safe.

So far, five different recruiters have reached out claiming they are a “perfect” fit for me, but they’ve all haunted me.

Bilal Waheed, 29, Astoria, New York

I’ve spent my life following an imaginary checklist based on societal and family expectations, but now that I’ve ticked the required boxes I’m in limbo.

My parents are Pakistani immigrants who have always insisted on the importance of higher education. I got my bachelor’s degree, worked for four years, and then went on to graduate school to get a master’s degree in applied statistics.

But since graduating in May and sending nearly 70 applications for data science and analytics positions, I haven’t had a single interview and feel lost in a sea of other applicants. . Dealing with so much rejection has been difficult.

My savings having run out, I just applied for unemployment. I have $ 120,000 in student debt, so this is another battle to face.

I wish I had been better prepared to network and tap into social capital like some of my classmates had.

My dream is to work in data science for Spotify, but at the moment I don’t need to fight for big jobs. I’m not ashamed to climb the ranks.

Donna Fields Brown, 70, Pearce, Arizona

I am a retired RN looking for part-time work to supplement my Social Security Income (SSI).

Working for over 30 years, I never really found my niche and made a lot of job changes, but there were also plenty of jobs back then.

In 2017 my husband and I retired, sold our home, and traveled across the country for two years in our 23ft long travel trailer. We quickly discovered that life on the road was more expensive than we thought.

When the pandemic hit, I took a part-time position as a Walmart cashier to complete my SSI, but left after a month. Since then, I have applied for several jobs at Target, Safeway, and a nearby national park, but have received no response.

I don’t know what is more intimidating, filling out online applications or trying to find work during my “golden years”. I have to say that both feel like full time jobs.

Amanda Dexter, 35, Wathena, Kansas

I was an English teacher for seven years, but left the field in April after being completely exhausted. I was offered a teaching contract this year, but turned it down for mental health reasons.

I started applying for a job two months before I left my teaching job. I had heard all these reports of how many jobs were opening up, so I figured I would have no trouble finding one fairly quickly.

But it’s now seven months later and I haven’t had any luck when it comes to jobs outside of classroom teaching. Looks like I can never get through the front door.

Personally, I think my CV gets wiped out by applicant tracking systems before it can even be seen by a human. ATS software only searches for relevant keywords and job titles. When the system looks at my resume, all they see is “teaching” and “education”, not all the transferable skills that a human being would recognize as part of my work experience.

For example, I’m an experienced content writer and have applied for a variety of content writing jobs, but on the surface, for an ATS, it seems I don’t have any applicable experience. A human would understand that an English teacher would be a good writer or at least have some of the skills and potential for the job. Even applying for something like secretarial work seems hopeless because my resume doesn’t include the types of keywords an ATS is looking for.

I tried LinkedIn Premium and even got a $ 29.99 per month subscription to a career coaching company called Work It Daily. I have followed their resume templates which focus on surpassing the ATS and are easily navigable for recruiters and HR staff. I even asked one of their coaches to review my resume to make sure everything was okay. Although I have noticed a slight increase based on my revised format, it has yet to yield a full-time opportunity.

It has been unbelievably futile to receive rejection after rejection or to be completely a ghost.

Caitlin Tolchin, 38, New York

Caitlin Tolchin and her daughter. Jenny Powers — Caitlin Tolchin and her daughter.

I was fired from my role as art director in April 2020, a week after finding out I was pregnant with our first child. Recruiters said no one would hire someone who needed maternity leave so soon after I started, so I temporarily put my job search on hold.

Our daughter is now 10 months old and my unemployment has just run out. In the past four months, I have applied for around 300 positions and have only received five or six callbacks, all for in-person jobs, which is too great a COVID risk right now with a baby at home. .

I want to return to work in a remote, freelance or project-based position with the possibility of a hybrid schedule down the line.

For now, I will continue my research and in the meantime I plan to take courses to develop my skills in hopes of becoming more marketable.

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