Interesting thing happened last week. I’d finally said out loud what I’ve been feeling for months: that I have no skills that any employer would value, so there’s no reason for me to be competing in a hugely cutthroat job market. I’d stopped even looking at the job search alerts LinkedIn sends me five times a day.
But the thought of having to depend on Social Security
(which the Republicans have been trying to kill since FDR implemented it during
the New Deal), Medicare (which they’ve been trying to kill since LBJ got it
passed in the 60s) and my 401k (as we head into administration whose policies
the vast majority of economists say will tank the global economy) really wigged
me out.
I was in a bad way.
Then, Wednesday I saw a listing for a PM job that I thought
I could do, generally useless though I be. But their applicant tracking system
crapped out every time I hit the submit button on the application. (Tried
multiple times on three browsers.) I looked on LinkedIn for a connection, and
there was a product manager connected to a friend/mentor of mine. I reached out
to the latter for an introduction, which he graciously gave. Thursday morning
the PM responded, saying he’d already passed my “very impressive profile” to
the hiring manager, who’s already in interviews, but was interested. He sent me
an internal referral link to the application, but I still encountered the
submit problem. He also contacted a recruiter, who at least looked at my LI
profile.
I can’t tell you how much this basic interest and
acknowledgement lightened my perspective.
But then, also on Thursday, I was scrolling through
my Twitter feed and came across this tweet:
It had only been posted a few minutes before, so I was the
first to stick up my hand. The poster DM’d me with the job description and a
link to the internal referral. It’s a job I cautiously think I might be able to
do, and my background at least carries gravitas in this field. As I was filling
out the application, a guy I know only on Twitter, CISO for a law firm and an
elder in cybersec, tweeted, “Recommend!”
As of time of writing, I’ve heard nothing further on that
first job (remember—they were already interviewing), and I have a screening call
tomorrow with a recruiter for the second job. (The tweet got 17 replies, and several were from people also interested.) I’m not delusional—scores of people
go through multiple rounds of interviews for every job in tech out there and
still don’t get hired. But the fact that—after months of considering what I
need by way of Plans B through R to feel financially secure in the coming
chaos, to have two actual human connections, from people willing to help
me, is such grace; it makes me cry. Whatever the outcome.
And that’s my gratitude for today.
©2024 Bas Bleu
