24 May A cautionary tale
Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay
The problem with listening to the hot air & hopium crowd and/or burying your head in the sand about the job market is that it can really, truly bite you in the behind in a major way. How long will you use ignorance as an excuse? How long can you afford to use ignorance as an excuse?
As I went to take a look at the side panel for LinkedIn news, there was a post that came up that is very sad, although not shocking. I will omit the person’s name and location and all of that, but I do want to read the text of this post to you as a warning more than anything. If you still have your head buried in the sand, if you still think everything is sunshine and roses, 3.5% unemployment rate, labor shortage and all of that, it’s way past time to wake up in my opinion. So here’s what the post says: ‘I write this on what was supposed to be my first day of a new job I was very excited for however after working out my two week notice that my previous company the new company, I fully accepted an offer to pass background and filled out all required information I decided to rescind my offer the Friday before I started. I sit here now just in complete disbelief and without a job. I have a wonderful family and no way to support them at this time. I have never heard of a company doing something like this but this company did and it is the worst feeling in the world. I now ask for your help in my two as I begin my search for a new job.’ It is very sad and it is very depressing. But this is not an isolated incident. I understand what this person is saying that he had never heard of a company doing something like that. However, it’s been all over the news about rescinded offers, and I think we need to be careful about normalcy bias. I think we also need to be careful about, ‘Well that might happen to the guy down the street or that might happen to Sally Sue, that might happen to Billy Bob, but it would never happen to me.’ Well, it could. That’s the thing– it could it absolutely could. And I’m not saying that to fearmonger, I’m not saying that to victim blame. What I’m saying is: if you’re still putting your head in the sand thinking that everything is unicorns and lollipops and sugar gumdrops, what’s it going to take? Seriously, what is it going to take?
-“Saturday Broadcast 11,” published on August 13, 2022 https://www.buzzsprout.com/1125110/11102388
After we heard one story after another after another, someone still said, “Golly gosh. I had no idea a company could yank a job offer. Why, I never even heard of such a thing!”
🔮 Prediction alert: the same thing is coming with the broader job market. You will have a plethora of people who say, “I had no idea. We were told the unemployment rate was 3.4% and there were all these open jobs. How could I struggle to find something?!” Mmhmm.
Cue the beginning stages of this:
“When Michael Keach was laid off in January after five years as a senior manager in the customer-service department at Wayfair, he was tentatively optimistic. After all, Keach had been laid off before and had found work again quickly. He figured his experience at Wayfair — where hundreds of people reported to him and he launched a new communication platform — would make him a standout candidate for a new role. Plus, the broader job market seemed strong: Companies were adding hundreds of thousands of new employees. Given these prospects, Keach wasn’t prepared for what happened next: He couldn’t find a job.” –https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-chatgpt-hiring-ghost-interviews-job-search-weird-labor-market-2023-5 emphasis mine
There’s a mouthful right there.
- Experienced a layoff even though it sounds like he’d been a good employee.
- Felt optimistic because it had been easy before.
- Thought his previous experience would make him a standout.
- Thought the MSM lies about the job market were true.
- Thought we really have all these legit open jobs.
- Wasn’t prepared to get smacked on the head with an anvil.
Please don’t let this be you.
I’ve been reporting that I think we’ve moved from the Opening Prologue of this mess into Act 1. These “early” warnings about a recession causing millions of jobs to vanish and how white collar workers will be hit the hardest may be the only warnings you get from MSM sources.
By the time we reach Act 2, it may be too late to adequately prepare. Do you have an RTO Survival Plan? Do you have a Job Loss Survival Plan? If not, what are you waiting for?
-“⚠️ We’re in Act 1 ⚠️” https://www.buzzsprout.com/1125110/12885167 published on May 22, 2023.
“In March, Keach, who is 51, described his job search on LinkedIn: ‘I have participated in about 20 hours of interviews, have received no job offers, ghosted by recruiters and have my fair share of rejection emails,’ he wrote. He said the job hunt ‘has been one of the most mentally challenging experiences in my adult life’ — more taxing than his 20-year career in the US Air Force.
Keach’s experience may sound extreme, but many found it relatable. Thousands of other users shared comments commiserating with how surprisingly demoralizing they’ve found their own job searches. Their anecdotes, and those of the people I’ve spoken with, suggest the world of hiring is strange right now. Economic instability, opaque hiring processes, and the destabilizing rise of technologies like generative AI have converged into an environment where it’s hard for job seekers to feel like they have even a basic sense of what is going on.” -Business Insider, Ibid.
People find it relatable because this is reality now. For those of us who are involved in the job market every day, we can plainly see there’s no way in hell we have a 3.4% unemployment rate. It’s not possible.
“Only a year ago, new hires were ‘ghosting’ employers by never showing up for work. Today, faced with economic uncertainty, employers are ratcheting up job requirements and slowly walking prospective candidates through endless rounds of interviews. While the unemployment rate is at a 54-year low, layoffs in white-collar industries are rising — and postings for these jobs have fallen by 500,000 since the end of last year. AT&T, for example, cut its office-job postings by half and is receiving three times the number of applications for each one that it saw last year.
Continuing claims for unemployment benefits have gone up 40% since their half-century low last fall, per WSJ, in another sign of how much longer it’s taking Americans to find new jobs.” –https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/white-collar-jobs-now-more-elusive-6309418/
Play games if you want to, but I sure don’t recommend it. Believe MSM lies and listen to the hot air & hopium crowd at your own risk.
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