I was unemployed for 30 months after leaving Gannett, finally landing this position because I met the owner in detox.
I got jobs through my cover letters, and those are no longer read at a point in the process that would work to my advantage. My actual work history is rather scattershot because journalism was not a good field to get into, and layoffs every six months were the rule for a couple of years.
Of the 700-plus resumes I sent out (with fucking cover letters) for positions from juuuuuuust this side of my ethical boundaries in communications roles to pure-play coding, I got a single reply (and didn’t get the job). I then got a grant to do a full-stack course after getting frustrated with response levels, and that certificate didn’t move the needle, in addition to the company, which touted its placement services, dropping me like a rock as soon as I was done. A few hundred more resumes proved it did nothing for me.
If there’s a way to get people to accept that someone who has roles in several industries brings a lot of intangibles to the table, I haven’t found it. Coding positions seemed to want me having been in a cube for the past three years and no experience before that because it would make me too expensive.
I’ve gone to several networking events in Austin, tech, tech-adjacent and general purpose, and met three kinds of people at the tech ones:
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We’re not hiring, but you can think in code, and that’s all you need. You won’t have issues finding a job.
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We’re hiring, and it looks like you’ve only used X language for a few months. You need to go back to school.
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What the fuck are you even doing here? Go back to journalism. Editors can’t code.
So, again, outside of having taken coursework to shore things up and networking to the best of my ability, I’m at a loss for how to ever start making decent money. I feel I would be fairly compensated with my current skillset at $80K, and hope to grow from there. But I have to say, getting shown the door for projects that save up to seven figures and being told I’m being unreasonable about what my skills are worth from everyone is not confirmation that this work actually has value, even though others somehow get paid six figures for the same level of acumen and experience.
I am the poster child for what happens when you automate hiring to the point that all boxes need to be checked for any consideration, people with more than a couple years out of college are round-filed, and there’s no opportunity to sell yourself with a story.
Did I mention that all of this stuff is not where I’ve won national awards? Those are for writing … but only when I believe what I’m writing.
May I ask what your reasons were and how/why they changed? You’re correct that I posted about exiting the “real property” market completely, so I’m seemingly open to reconsidering things of late.