News that hiring slowed or even has come to a standstill in the last month or so is not news to the millions of Americans like me that deal with this every week. While job sites like CareerBuilder.com and HotJobs.com have thousands of job listings, how many are actually hiring?
Last year just before the Holiday Season, I applied to no less than 12 different jobs at three different Toys R Us stores. I was denied all of them. I got one rejection e-mail just a few minutes after I had applied. Undaunted, I recalled that I had an old e-mail from
Dan Caspersen, VP HR at Toys R Us from months before when I had complained about how I was treated in one of their stores. At that time he expressed how sorry he was he wanted to call me about it. He never did. I e-mailed Dan and other TRU executives hoping that they might help me and I might get a job with them. They never responded.
Then there is
Robert Howell, HR Manager for SED International, a computer distributor. I applied online for a job they had posted on their own web site. After days of follow up phone calls and e-mails that went unanswered I went to the local office and got no further than the receptionist. Keep in mind that I have a list of over 800 customers that have bought from me at a similar position at my former employer and maybe I thought, SED would hire me and those customers might buy from them. So, I e-mailed the CEO and asked why I was being ignored. He asked Robert Howell who replied,
"To be considered for employment you must apply to a specific position posted by SED International. We just don't random resumes." The fact that I had applied to a specific position posted on their own web site seemed to be lost on Mr. Howell.
Lastly there is
Julie E. Vergara, a headhunter for Sanford Barrows Group. They are a staffing agency and I knew the ad that they posted was at my former job Tiger Direct, even though they did not mention the name. I did not expect to get that job, but I did hope that they would read my Résumé and find another job that that they were staffing. I guess not as she replied
"We do not have any other positions that match your experience at this time." Really? I thought a staffing company with no jobs that I was qualified for? Either Tiger Direct is their only client or she was lying to me. I'm not sure which, but I bet if I checked their web site I would find other jobs I could do.
Dan, Robert and Julie are all the same, just like every other HR Manager out there. Like so many others that are unemployed I run into HR Managers like them every week. I also know that being 50 and unemployed more than 2 years does not help. I know that I, like so many others, am being discriminated against.
If our economy is to ever turn around we will need jobs. But what do you do when the people in HR that control the jobs will not hire you? What do you do when they ignore you even when you may be the most qualified for the job?
There is little I can do. To use a baseball metaphor, all I can do is stand at the plate and keep swinging at what they pitch, eventually I'll get a hit and maybe even a home run.
Sooner or later I will find a job.