Promising Conversations (Thank You for Your Interest)

July 2022

In late 2020 I was laid off. I’d recently completed a year program at Austin Center for Design and pivoted from Graphic Design to Interaction Design and had spent the previous year as an Experience Strategist/Design Researcher. I was optimistic about finding a new job! I had loads of skills and 20+ years of experience and a year of experience in the field I wanted to be in.

I wouldn’t be offered a job for another 8 months.

As a way of processing my feelings around it, I began working on a data visualization art piece of my job search. I’ll let the piece tell the story.

If it looks chaotic, it’s meant to. It was a chaotic time for me. I wanted this to reflect that.

What does it all mean? Let’s get to that.

The first slide shows where the journey originates. There’s a thread for every single job I applied for. Each thread could go down to “Declined,” or up and to the left for a “First Interview,” or left dangling if the company never got back to me. From the first interview, the thread could go down to “Declined,” up and to the right through the interview process, or dangle if I was ghosted. Yes, I was ghosted after a second interview.

87. I applied for 87 jobs over 8 months. I started working on this piece around job application #40 and made room for 100, just in case. Glad I didn’t need them.

Here are some things I experienced on this journey:

• I was told I was too senior for some roles but too junior for other similar roles

• I was told I had too much design experience for design jobs

• I was told I had the wrong experience for jobs that my fellow AC4D grads were getting

• I was told that I didn’t have enough research experience for jobs that supposedly didn’t involve research

• I was declined for a paying job but told that I could “stay involved” by “signing petitions, starting petitions, even volunteering for certain campaigns.” Hahaha no.

• I was declined in June for a job I applied for in March.

• I was declined by a local company via email in the middle of a winter storm power outage during which we were supposed to be conserving electricity. People were literally freezing to death and this was how you were using your literal and figurative power? Wow.

At any rate, I did get a job. I have a great team and I’m doing work I care about. I was contract for 12 months and was just hired on as a full-time employee. And I wanted to finish this in honor of that anniversary. But I had a hard time getting into the mindset to finish this project. Something about facing your low points and 86 flavors of rejection made it hard to sit with. Weird.

But it was important for me to share the story for several reasons.

• First, the application process is a complete mess. I just uploaded my resume! Why do I need to retype everything into your required fields? And if I’m going to be required to upload an introduction video, you should be required to send a response. I’m still waiting, a year later. And having to make a spreadsheet for all the created logins and passwords for every company’s portal.

• Second, the job search process is emotionally hard. Every day I had to wake up and choose to believe in myself despite seemingly non-stop rejections. I had to squash doubts that I was even on the right path at all. And then there was the shame and embarrassment and feeling like something was wrong with me. Not to mention anger and resentment. And pesky hope. A veritable feast of emotions.

• Third, people kept talking about how great the job market was. Maybe for 23-year-olds? It was not great for 42-year-olds who had recently made a career pivot and wanted to work in the tech industry.

• Fourth, and finally, maybe you needed to read this. Last summer I read an article about someone else in my industry who was struggling to find a job and it made me feel less alone. It’s hard out there, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Hang in there.