{"id":812,"date":"2018-06-09T00:42:06","date_gmt":"2018-06-09T04:42:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/wordpress\/autisticme\/?p=812"},"modified":"2023-11-26T16:31:22","modified_gmt":"2023-11-26T22:31:22","slug":"guessing-the-factors-behind-unemployment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/2018\/06\/09\/guessing-the-factors-behind-unemployment\/","title":{"rendered":"Guessing the Factors behind Unemployment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve blogged many, many times over the last decade about my employment situation. Most recently, I posted a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/wordpress\/autisticme\/2018\/05\/15\/podcast-episode-009-unemployment-and-autism\/\">podcast episode and transcript on the topic of unemployment<\/a>\u00a0addressing my low morale and general sense of failure.<\/p>\n<p>The problem is, I don\u2019t know how much of a factor my autistic traits are in my unemployment compared to many other factors that limit my marketability.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Age: 50 years old this year (born 1968).<\/li>\n<li>Employment Gap: graduate school from fall 2004 through fall 2017, a 13-year period of part-time teaching and two full-time but temporary posts.<\/li>\n<li>Market Challenge: academic job markets stink, especially in the humanities, and have since the 1990s.<\/li>\n<li>Self-Employment and Executive-Level Employment: companies would rather not hire someone accustomed to being in charge for entry-level positions.<\/li>\n<li>Credentials: tech jobs now require college degrees in specific fields that didn\u2019t exist or were not essential.<\/li>\n<li>Immobility: not, as in physical disability, but as in \u201cWe can\u2019t move with foster-adopt children.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>None of the above would help anyone locate a job and restart a career. Any good career coach would say you need to be willing to move, have the right education, and pursue industry opportunities. As a friend said, \u201cYou don\u2019t seek a career as a cattle roper in New York City.\u201d She said that\u2019s what I\u2019m trying to do when searching for visual and digital rhetoric jobs where we currently live.<\/p>\n<p>I tried to adjust my expectations. I\u2019m not going to be a visual rhetoric or rhetoric of economics professor where we live. Accepting that reality, I started applying for anything that seems to align with my education, or at least an employer will assume that there is a relationship to my education.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTechnical writer\u201d seems like a good fit. I have a journalism degree, a technical communication degree, and I understand the technology used to deliver content. Not a career about which I\u2019m passionate, but few people are passionate about their jobs. It\u2019s a good field, and I could do the work.\u00a0This is the typical response I receive to those applications:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Thank you for your application and interest regarding the Technical Writer position with XXXX.<\/p>\n<p>We are reaching out to let you know that after carefully reviewing your background and qualifications, we have decided to move forward with other candidates whose backgrounds are a closer match with our business needs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In this case, the employer wanted a writer with a bachelor\u2019s degree and at least one year of experience with (basic) CMS platforms (WordPress, Drupal) and MS Office.\u00a0<strong>I meet the requirements<\/strong>. I have written about technology for nearly 30 years, from compiler manuals to my monthly tech column. I have a Ph.D. and an MFA.<\/p>\n<p>Am I overqualified? Is it too obvious that this position was not my dream job?<\/p>\n<p>This is my 200th rejection in three years. I know because I track these things. That&#8217;s 200 applications, counting academic posts for which I focused narrowly on visual and digital rhetoric \/ communications so I would have a strong portfolio of works and publications.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s 200 jobs and less than a ten call backs.\u00a0Special milestone\u2026 200 job rejections since 2015. Yipeeeee.<\/p>\n<p>I had two sit-downs during my last academic conference. They were both to tell me that the lines were cancelled or converted to one-year posts, unlikely to be renewed.<\/p>\n<p>My wife \u00a0took a chance and let me complete the MFA in Film and Digital Technology so I might have a better chance on the market, as a digital media person.\u00a0I appreciate how many times (too many) she let me try.<\/p>\n<p>The K12 substitute teaching paperwork is on my desk. Going to get the fingerprints and apply for the substitute gigs. I was already told by an administrator that my education now works against getting hired full-time anywhere local. There&#8217;s a surplus of teachers as they continue to consolidate schools.<\/p>\n<p>This job search thing is a recurring topic because so little has changed since I started this blog. I\u2019m still dreaming of the day when I have a potentially permanent, full-time job.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m just old, grumpy, and frustrated. That\u2019s not an autistic thing. It\u2019s an old-guy thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve blogged many, many times over the last decade about my employment situation. Most recently, I posted a podcast episode and transcript on the topic of unemployment\u00a0addressing my low morale and general sense of failure. The problem is, I don\u2019t know how much of a factor my autistic traits are&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/2018\/06\/09\/guessing-the-factors-behind-unemployment\/\">Continue Reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Guessing the Factors behind Unemployment<\/span> <i class=\"fas fa-angle-right\"><\/i><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":4014,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"iawp_total_views":15,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[127,397,398,566,653,742],"class_list":["post-812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-employment","tag-career","tag-job-interviews","tag-job-market","tag-private-industry","tag-social-skills","tag-universities","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2023\/12\/Podcast-HD-1920x1080-comp-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1440&ssl=1","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pfivLC-d6","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=812"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3685,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812\/revisions\/3685"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/autisticme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}