Weeks Nine Through…?
Oh hey there, remember me? It’s been :checks calendar: almost three months since I last wrote here. I started three separate job search update posts in that time, but life frankly got too intense for me to post any of them. Not intense in a busy way, though there was some of that, but intense in a rug-being-yanked-out-from-under-me way that made me feel like I was constantly behind the eight ball. Keeping up with a blog was frankly not my priority.
For anyone else who is job searching right now, I think we can all bond around the fact that it has been a rough time. Here are some stats to illustrate:
21%
warm referrals that resulted in an initial interview
<3%
response rate to cold outreach messages
four months
time spent applying/networking before I heard back from anyone
A couple notes on the above numbers
The overall number of roles I’ve applied to is fairly low, about 75. That pales in comparison to the number of roles that I see other people posting about on LinkedIn, with claims of 300, 400, sometimes more applications in a similar time period. I’m going for quality over quantity, and have spent the vast majority of my time networking. Networking has been fruitful, but most of those conversations just haven’t been the right timing.
Prior to this, I’ve never not gotten at least an initial interview from a warm referral at a company, so that 21% is vs. a normal baseline of 100%. I’ve gotten 19 warm referrals (thank you to my wonderful network for trying!), and four of those yielded an interview.
Prior to this, I’d also say that my response rate to cold outreach messages on LinkedIn is 30-40% (that’s anecdotal - I haven’t tracked this until recently). I write thoughtful, tailored messages with specific asks - not vague or pushy ones, and I specifically target folks who are active on LinkedIn. So to only have a 3% response rate (just the one person out of the 30+ I messaged) was surprising.
I started applying to roles in early February. I didn’t get a single reply until late May. The only responses I did get were two contract opportunities that I was working on 1:1 with a couple former coworkers - these were not posted roles that I applied or interviewed for. More on those below.
the bad
I mentioned that life got intense - here’s a summary:
Back in December, I had reached out to a former employer about a contract opportunity as a part-time gig while I job searched. The team had been understaffed for months, so I thought coming on ~20 hours a week to help out would be an easy sell. After months of back and forth, two verbal offers, and one written offer that I signed, it fell through in early April due to budget reasons.
In mid-April, we moved into what we thought would be our permanent home here in Colorado (at least as permanent as a rental can be), but right after moving in we discovered an issue that made the place unlivable. At this point our belongings were already being shipped from California and we had to scramble to find a new place to live.
After I posted on LinkedIn that I was job searching back in February, a dear former colleague reached out saying that she needed help with a project and thought I would be perfect for it. It was with a fantastic organization, with great people, and the scope of the work would both leverage my strengths while giving me a chance to grow. I excitedly accepted the verbal offer, but on the day we were supposed to finalize things with paperwork, I learned that the organization had faced some serious funding changes and could no longer move forward with my contract. This was the day after I learned that we would need to find a new place to live.
About a week after both our housing and my second contract offer fell through, I saw a missed call from my mother one morning (I keep my phone on do not disturb until 9am). I knew instantly something was wrong, even before I listened to her vague but choked voicemail. My aunt, my mother’s sister whom she and my younger sibling live with, had suddenly died the night before. Aside from my grandparents, my aunt and uncle are my closest relatives, so this was a major blow that hit me hard and left my family reeling.
After this, I struggled for a while. Too much uncertainty and too much loss (both the trivial kind and the very non-trivial kind) had piled up. I forced myself to go through the motions of job searching, reaching out to people, following up on my applications, but it was a struggle. I’m someone who prides myself on my resilience and motivation, and I felt both of those slip away until all that was left was defeat. I’ve faced all of these challenges before - I’ve dealt with loss of a loved one, navigating a job search, accepting rejection, moving to a new city and trying to make friends, finding a new place to live and moving multiple times in a short period - but this felt different. I was chatting with a friend who said that two bad things happening isn’t twice as bad as one bad thing happening; it’s exponentially worse. I think that is the best way to put it. With the exception of my aunt’s death, I knew that all of the bad things would pass with time - I’ve never doubted that I’ll eventually get a job, settle into a home, make friends, etc. - and even the acute grief from a loss heals eventually. But that rational outlook on the situation did nothing for me emotionally, and I spent the better part of May slogging through the day to day routine, endlessly grateful for my extremely supportive partner and my job searching buddy, both of whom absorbed more than their fair share of nihilism from me.
This is all very personal for what is supposed to be a professionally-focused blog; I’ve tried to keep this space honest but more tactical to date. That said, I know that my past few months are relatable to a lot of people. Maybe not in the exact details, but the feelings of overwhelm, defeat, like the universe is conspiring against you is something I’ve heard echoed among many other seekers.
Of course nobody/nothing is conspiring against you, it’s just been a shit market for job seekers these past several months. My job search buddy said something yesterday that stuck with me: “not having a job can feel so shameful.” We live in a society where so much of our perceived value is reflected in our careers. When I was unemployed by choice, as I have been for the majority of the past 14 months, it was empowering - I was operating outside the system by choice, defying it even. But the moment I started job searching again my entire mindset flipped. I was trying to get back into the system but was being denied entry. Every week that passed with no movement echoed, “you can’t sit with us!” While rationally I knew it was not a reflection on me, and merely the current job market, I couldn’t help but internalize being ignored, which inevitably led to me questioning my every career decision and wondering if I should go back to school to somehow make myself more marketable.
the better
Thank you for journeying with me into my pit of despair. I hope you trusted me to not end on such a dismal note - this is a big part of why I didn’t end up publishing any of the drafts I worked on over the past few months. Living in California and working in education for nearly a decade has helped me embrace vulnerability, but I still grew up in New England. Between the British, Irish Catholic, and Puritan influences I’m still inclined to believe that suffering in silence is a virtue, so any vulnerability needs to be balanced out with “I’m fine, things are all fine.” And things are definitely better now than they were.
snapshots from my job application tracker in early May (left) vs June (right)
So, what was the turning point?
I wish I could say I found the strength within myself or disciplined myself mentally by training for a triathlon or something like that, but frankly the thing that helped me was finally seeing movement in my job search.
Since the end of May, I have heard back from and had interviews or conversations with eight different roles/companies. I didn’t change anything about what I had been doing, I think that the job market just relaxed a little bit. I remember seeing LinkedIn pundits forecast that hiring would pick back up in May, and from my experience, they seem to be correct.
I actually got a job offer a couple weeks ago! I had gotten nothing but good impressions from the hiring manager, CEO, and people at the company I talked to. They have great reviews online and it’s a small enough company that it seemed like there would have been ample opportunities for growth. With that, there were a few things about the role and offer that just didn’t quite align with my goals and priorities. When I got the offer, I felt relief, but not excitement. I wanted so badly to just be done with the job search, but I realized that was the only thing driving me to accept. I recalled what a friend/former coworker had said to me a couple months ago when the second contract fell through: “it’s so easy to feel like you don’t have options when you’re unemployed and to forget how much it sucks to have a job you’re not excited about. But try to remember that, because you deserve to have a job you love.”
That’s where I found myself with this offer. I knew I wouldn’t hate this job and I was fairly confident that I could have shaped it into something I enjoyed. But I also knew that I’d probably grow out of it within a few months; it was too firmly in my wheelhouse. While the company seemed very supportive of my growth, I also knew they wouldn’t want to bring me on just for me to get bored and want to move onto something else in <6 months. After over a year of not working, I feel genuinely excited to sink my teeth into something new and challenging, and I couldn’t in good faith accept a job that doesn’t check those boxes.
And while I didn’t have any other offers on the table, I was/am in process with a few roles that do spark that excitement in me. It nauseated me to think about turning down this offer, not getting an offer from any of the other processes I’m in, and having to start from square one. But that alone was not enough to push me to accept and I sent a grateful decline email a week and a half ago. I feel good about my decision, I know it was the right one. I continue to be endlessly thankful for my partner; he’s almost as eager as I am for me to start working again (neither of us love relying solely on his income!) but he was steadfast in his support for my decision, and pulled me back down to earth when I started to spiral in the “what ifs” that caused me to question my gut.
what’s next?
Since I turned down that offer, I’ve heard back from three more roles I applied to and have connected with two other people in my network about potential opportunities. I wrapped up interviews last week for a role that I’m very excited about, and hope to hear back soon about next steps. While none of these are concrete or guaranteed prospects, they are steps in the right direction and reflect a shift to seeing consistent results from my search, which is a huge boon to my confidence. If I’m still unemployed in a month or two, I will probably regret not accepting the role I did get offered, but that’s the risk I took, and I’ve made peace with that possibility.
I hope that anyone else who has been job searching in this terrible market has found ways to push through the awfulness. I’ve talked to a few other friends who have been job searching for months now, too, and all of them are seeing movement in their searches, so I do not think that I’m just getting lucky; it does seem like the market is finally settling down in searchers’ favor. The advice I gave in my How to Get a Job post still rings true. Despite these things not providing me with results for nearly four months, those are the things that are providing me with results now, and I feel pretty confident saying that the lack of movement before was a result of of the market, and not what I was or wasn’t doing.
If anyone needs a second set of eyes on their resume, or someone to bounce ideas off of, reach out. It would bring me great joy to help even one other person get to the other side of this horrible process, so please see me as a resource!
