HuffPost Hill:
Here is the latest in our ongoing series PASTED: The Emails of the Jobless. “I was let go from a position as a Compliance Paralegal in March of 2009,” writes a 55-year-old Pennsylvania woman who asked for anonymity to protect her job prospects. She said she’d previously earned a $55,000 salary. Now she’s earning half as much at a part-time gig as a legal assistant. “I have applied to hundreds of jobs, I have had my resume professionally created, I have networked, I have attended workshops….My spirit is broken. I have very good support from my family, but this ordeal has shaken me to my core. I have been unable to perform well on interviews. I am so nervous that I freeze up and cannot talk. This will not get me a job. But I can’t get past it. And I never used to have this problem. I used to be able to ace an interview. Now I can’t even talk!”
Honey, I know exactly what you mean. It’s awful. I can’t believe what this has done to my confidence.
And yet and still these broken spirits continue to support a Capitalist economic system. What is the definition of insanity? Something about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result? Sheer foolishness.
Having been on the other end of such interviews, it pains me to say that the majority of hires seemed to come from the glib and articulate who perform well on cue.
Job interviews are more art than science and a crap shoot at best, and there is no way to get around it unfortunately. It’s a buyers market thanks in part to a perverted financial system that punishes some hard working stiffs who got screwed in the process.
I don’t know what to say other than DON’T believe for a minute that not having a job reflects on you or your skills. This is a programmed collapse of US labor orchestrated over decades by Our Corporate Overlords, their hired lackeys in Congress and their propagandists in mass media. The purpose of which is to create a disenfranchised, desperate and dejected populace willing to sacrifice any hopes of improving their quality of life. The minute you begin believing that somehow you are at fault, is the minute their campaign of lies has won.
Ron, you’re right, and even when someone, me, say, or the PA woman, is in the thick of it we know that in our heads. Where you don’t know it and can’t know it is in the cold sweat, the five answers to one question that elbow each other in your throat so that none come out, the stomach cramps, the feeling of your heart being being squeezed.
The only thing you can do for that is take strong enough tranquilizers, if you have the money.