Nobody Wants to Hire Me

[Anonymous]

You have to network.

The AI software is set to screen out anyone with a resume gap. You could send out two million resumes and you wouldn’t get a bite.

[Anonymous]

What am I missing...why are people suggesting adjunct professors, consulting gig, etc to Op?
All those types of jobs take a TON of time to establish, launch, and dive into...Op has no time for that.
Presumably, she can barely manage a PT job in her life; not to mention one that offers the perk of being remote .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a PhD in the social sciences and have been a SAHM for the past 10 years. I want to work part time and have applied for over 25 jobs (in my field, not in my field, including entry-level jobs). I have even left my graduate degree off of my resume in hopes I am not immediately seen as overqualified. I mist work remote and have applied only for those jobs.

I have gotten exactly zero interest. Zero.

I’m a woman in my 40s with seemingly zero opportunity to on-ramp.

I’m starting to get really depressed.

People here are being mean. Sorry.

Could you talk more about your work and your SAHM situation? Do you do anything with schools? Where do the parents around you work? What do you have to earn today? What do you have to eventually earn?

In my opinion, if you just want to slide back into working, you’re in the DC area, and you have a small kid:

- Try to get online tutoring work just to make some money, if you need money. Especially in language arts. It’s pretty easy to find math tutoring but hard to get tutors who can help kids go over their writing.

- Instead of trying to get hired, use your education and knowledge of Generation Alpha to start a Generation Alpha Consulting firm. Figure out how to do small, informal, online focus groups with small children in your community, and, ideally, nieces’ and nephews’ communities. Find some other little consulting firms’ BS reports and model your reports after theirs. Do little webcasts where you make lofty pronouncements about what small children think about the pandemic, insurance ads, etc. Name your kids to be vice presidents (if they want) and help them write Generation Alpha market blog updates. Make connections with people who actually know how to do national surveys of small children and what they charge, or figure out how to get what you need by surveying babysitters and nannies to find out what they’re thinking. Also, try to analyze the GenAlphaMom market. Try to get gigs analyzing that market for toymakers, tutoring companies, etc. If you get a client charge enough so you can hire the company that knows how to do the surveys for half the money and keep half. Or figure out how to use Survey Monkey and the like to do surveys. Basically, you could be a reseller of other people’s surveying and market research services, with Gen Alpha frosting, and maybe you could turn your kids into famous analysts (if they’d enjoy that).

Market research exec here and nobody legit would hire a joke firm like this especially if the owner does not have a reputation already.

Not to mention you need connections, know-how, etc. to work with the survey firms.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What am I missing...why are people suggesting adjunct professors, consulting gig, etc to Op?
All those types of jobs take a TON of time to establish, launch, and dive into...Op has no time for that.
Presumably, she can barely manage a PT job in her life; not to mention one that offers the perk of being remote .

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What am I missing...why are people suggesting adjunct professors, consulting gig, etc to Op?
All those types of jobs take a TON of time to establish, launch, and dive into...Op has no time for that.
Presumably, she can barely manage a PT job in her life; not to mention one that offers the perk of being remote .

+1

+2

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You have to network.

The AI software is set to screen out anyone with a resume gap. You could send out two million resumes and you wouldn’t get a bite.

I think it’s particularly true of part time white collar jobs. Employers are more willing to train or retrain, mentor and coach a full timer because they presumably will get 40 hours of work out of them, hopefully for a while. But a part timer only will work part time and is a flight risk in general so the investment doesn’t make sense.

[Anonymous]

OP you can see from this thread the bias that you’re going to face. The best strategy is to find a job through someone that has a personal connection to you. I know former SAHMs that found jobs through friends and acquaintances.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP you can see from this thread the bias that you’re going to face. The best strategy is to find a job through someone that has a personal connection to you. I know former SAHMs that found jobs through friends and acquaintances.

The problem isn’t that she’s a former sahm, it’s the “only part time and flexible and remote” requirement

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What am I missing...why are people suggesting adjunct professors, consulting gig, etc to Op?
All those types of jobs take a TON of time to establish, launch, and dive into...Op has no time for that.
Presumably, she can barely manage a PT job in her life; not to mention one that offers the perk of being remote .

+1

If she has a PhD she can probably get a lecturer gig at a local community college or university. Won’t pay much, very part time, maybe… remote (some CC really leaning into online courses) but not flexible

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Business technology has not changed in 10 years.

OMG - if the business technology you're using hasn't significantly changed in the last 10 years... I hate to break the news, you are seriously outdated.

I see it with my mid-40s/early 50s coworkers. Unwilling to start using collaborative features of Microsoft Office, never heard of something like Chili Piper/Calendly/Bookings, can't adjust to communication norms over Slack or Teams, run super disengaging virtual meetings, can't comprehend how to build team culture remotely, struggle to understand short communication forms like Twitter or short-form video, don't understand how to use data analytics and dashboards available to them in their existing tools. Massive under-utilization of technology. And they think they are with it because they know how to make something a PDF and didn't forget to attach it to the email.

If you're still using technology largely the same way you were 10 years ago, and if you still run most of your communication through email - you are equivalent of the people in the late 90s/early 2000s who refused to give up fax or asked their assistant to print out emails for them.

I was with you till email. Email is a killer app that remains unkilled. It’s openness, flexibility, portability is unmatched. But yes to the rest.

[Anonymous]

Has op ever responded? Is this a troll?

[Anonymous]

Teaching?

[Anonymous]

I agree online tutoring is a good idea. It doesn't pay much if you're going through a furm, but it's a start.

[Anonymous]

Scoring essays for Pearson is another super flexible and remote job, pay isn't great though.

[Anonymous]

How is your LinkedIn profile? How many connections do you have?