WTF Job Hunts?!
This is not a new topic for me. In fact, the topics of unemployment and employment searches have featured heavily on this site. And despite the many times have I ranted about these topics, I am never satisfied. This past week has been just another week of frustrations as I struggle to reestablish myself in the workforce. On 29 February, I interviewed for a position so suited for me one would have honestly believed that things were turning the corner for me: WRONG! As you know, the interview did not satisfy my meticulous standards for success (in fact, I wrote about the interview across the duration of two posts last week): I stumbled on words, I went off on tangents, and I may have been too blunt for the tastes of my interviewers. But I still felt confident in the fact that my strong resume and professional experience in related fields would carry me forward into the position; I was wrong again.
All my life, I have been told that employers would hire the "most qualified" person for the position and that our nation's workforce was built on a foundation of success based on merit. And yet, I remain unemployed (and in many cases, I do not even garner an interview) while woefully underqualified individuals sit in positions that pay nearly twice as much as I have ever been paid. Look, I am not looking for handouts and I am not looking for pity, but if you are one to feed a line of bullshit about merit and qualifications; then I am going to call you out for being full of shit and spreading lies to impressionable youths. I am sick and tired of the endless games, faceless screeners, and bold-faced liars I have encountered during this employment search. I am desperate to work in a position I love, but the doors keep being closed on me before I even have an opportunity to prove my worth.
So, seriously? WTF? How am I and millions of others in my situation supposed to believe in the "American dream"? Simple, we are not. The American dream is dead and even before it saw its own demise many decades ago, the "dream" was only accessible to a handful of people that met certain "qualifications". Instead, rather than reach for a dream that was never within our grasp, we must strive to carry on and raise a middle-finger to the corporate shills and the purveyor of false hopes and lies. The search for work continues, but the belief is diminished.
