I have all the required skills and experience they want and they still won’t hire me!
This past week I located a job posting for a Regional Sales Manager with a large greeting card company located here in my home town. The position was basically managing the part time people who service the greeting card racks in large big box accounts. It carried with it all the other expected management tasks, staffing, P&L, sales oversight, inventory control, etc. It was MY job.
For the past number of years I have been performing that exact type of management for my former employer. I would recruit, hire and train my part time and full time employees, schedule their activities, meet with the management of the accounts they serviced and perform the other day to day functions that come with overseeing a fairly large team of employees. I also know most of the management personnel in many of the very accounts the greeting card company services and am extremely well versed in the accounts policies and procedures. I have been recognized with awards in the past for my management skills and been involved with various district, regional and national training initiatives and other special projects.
I applied for the position online and then searched my network to see if I had any contacts within the organization. BINGO! I was directly linked to one of their national account managers and we recently exchanged emails regarding a question I had posed to my job seekers group. I immediately contacted him about the position, my qualifications and mentioned that I have 3 years of college but no degree.
He responded that he knew everybody in that area of the company and would pass my name around. I’m now starting to get excited! Maybe, oh maybe…
About two hours later my balloon was deflated. Even though I had everything this potential employer could ask for their policy was no degree, no job.
I now have the unemployment blues.
I like many people of my generation do not have a degree. The reasons are varied but most of us have since worked our way up at our companies by working hard and learning new skills. We have adapted to the constant changes in our industries, learned new technologies and in many cases survived years of constant downsizing. We now find ourselves unemployed. I my case my company was sold and we were all let go.
So, why didn’t I finish my degree?
I attended a small private music conservatory in Princeton, NJ with all of 400 students in the undergraduate and graduate programs. I was working on my Bachelor of Music Education Degree and was in the middle of the first semester of my senior year. While completing my senior teaching I experienced a medical issue and was unable to complete the semester. The entire semester was lost.
My family was far from being wealthy. We probably just fit into the bottom rung of being middle class. In the 1970’s there was not the same kind of assistance available to most people to fund an education as there is today. The school thought my parents made too much money to be eligible for the few grants they had available and the bank would not loan them money for my education since they thought they did not make enough money. We had scraped together enough money for my freshman year and figured we would go from there. My father died just before exam week my freshman year and we used the meager life insurance my mother received to get me through the next two and a half years.
The money was gone.
I moved in with friends in the Bronx, the three of us, two dogs and three cats in a one room flat. Gene had the bedroom since he was paying the rent. Ken slept on the couch and I used a sleeping bag on the floor each night. I found a job in the Freight Cashiers office of Hapaq-Lloyd, an international steamship agency. It was Hell and I needed out.
A friend visited and he had come upon a job working carnival games back in Ohio. Like me, he was trying to save enough money to go back to school in the fall. We took the jobs and off we went.
For the next five months I worked a balloon dart game on the Ohio carnival circuit. “Hit em and get em here, step right up. I have snakes for your date; I have teddy bears for your love affairs, why I even have alligators for your mother-in-law. Hey Red, you won one for the brunette last night, how bout winning one for the blonde tonight!” We slept on sleeping bags in the back of the trucks every night and worked from around noon till midnight but by the end of August we had both earned enough money to at least pay our tuitions.
I returned to school that fall, located a cheap place to live and found a full time job as a night security guard in Newark NJ making rounds to a complex of old industrial buildings down by the waterfront. The setting was very reminiscent of a scene out of The Godfather or any other gangster movie where they “off” someone and then dump the body into the river!
Part way into the semester I lost my job. It was my fault. I was sleeping! Imagine that! With trying to carry a full course load, commute over an hour each way on US1 and working 10 hours each night I feel asleep at the job! It didn’t take long for me to lose my housing as well.
So now I was a homeless college student in the middle of November in NJ living out of my car and having friends sneak me food from the cafeteria because I had no money and no job. The college was no help. They just couldn’t conceive the fact that I was homeless and threatened to expel me if I was caught sleeping in someone’s dorm room or accepting food from the cafeteria.
I guess there just came a point where all of the events of the prior year overwhelmed me and I took any job I could. As they say, desperate situations require desperate actions and that was basically the end of my college education.
Now, I don’t tell you all of this for you to feel sorry for me or to ask for pity and I know some of you will question why I haven’t gone back to school since then. I’ll just have to cover that another day. If these events hadn’t occurred, I probably would have never meet my wife of almost 32 years or made friends with all the wonderful people who have so greatly enriched my life. I wouldn’t have the loving support system from the church I serve as Director of Music Ministries and probably wouldn’t be living in Cleveland writing a blog. It is what it is and I can’t change the past.
But, if you are reading this and just happen to be someone who runs a company or hires people, please remember that those of us who do not have degrees are not useless or unqualified. We are just that large group of people who have accepted the past and moved on. We are survivors. Many of us probably have more character, stamina and self-motivation than many people with degrees. We have had to work harder to move up in the companies we’ve worked for. We have had to prove that we too can do the job. Just give us all a chance.
Well, it’s a beautiful Friday morning, the sun is out and the water lilies are blooming in the pond. The bills are paid and we have a roof over our heads and food to eat so…Life is Good!
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I learned alot about you in this post I never knew before.
ReplyDeleteRob
Dale,
ReplyDeleteIt's like you were telling my story! I have been out of work for almost 12 months now with no prospects in sight and I agree that I have more character, stamina and self-motivation than many people with degrees. I also believe in a "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" philosophy and know that my time will come and hope yours does too!
Thank you. Fabulous post. I too have no degree and it always floors me that people would rather hire a degree'd moron than me who has years of proven experience.
ReplyDeleteWow, I can relate. I had an interview with a company as a training instructor. That is what I did in my previous job, but with much more complex machinery than theirs. The company insisted on a degreed person, but the recruiter talked them into seeing me. When I walked in, I could tell that their educational prejudice was showing through. I don't think they believed I created all of the training examples that I showed them. From the photography down to the highly graphical cutaway valves. They just couldn't believe someone without a lousy four more years of schooling could turn out such work.
ReplyDeleteNeedless to say, it was a waste of my time.
It amazes me that proof of high level accomplishment and above average intellect isn't enough for the corporate snobs whom have the openmindedness of a paranoid schizophrenic.
Signed,
Looking for a job 2 rungs down from what I know I can do.
I am constantly amazed by those who feel that a degree, any degree, qualifies someone to be a front-line manager or salesman.
ReplyDeleteDale, I totally relate to your dispare. As I told you I came from the same era with a mom who only made 15K a year without all the avenues today's society offers. My opportunity was as many in this same situation, get out there, work hard, establish yourself and prove you are not better, but just as good as a 4 year partier. I respect all college grads, as I've worked my way up and have put 2 through college. Now without a job my youngest suffers from my lack of assistance.
ReplyDeleteTo show just what people see from experience, this is not my first time I've seen job reduction from a poor economic slowdown. An earlier time in my career I was laid off and during my visit to the unemployment office the counsler asked me point blank, "You don't have a degree" With my head hung low I stated, "no mam". She was attonished. She said "son, with the experience you have you absolutely reflect the knowledge only a college student would possess, how on earth did you get this with no degree?" I simply said "it's a matter of priority. I didn't wait for anyone to show me. I took it upon myself to stay late, work on my own time, go from department to department sitting and watching how things were made and what the theory of operations was about". She looked in amazement and in her words, she stated, "Congratulations on your successes, I guarantee you a degreed individual would not have put in this much time to learn what you know. Most feel they don't have to do anything extra because they own a piece of paper." I left with my head up and knowing that the new generation has no idea what they're up against because although we may be feeling it as our generation grows older; the next generation will feel it even harder as technology becomes more vast with the pace it's growing now and then, as the future approaches. What will they do? They can look back and remember how they treated the people with their educational prejudices because IT WILL HAPPEN TO THEM! History always has a way of repeating itself, or as some believe, "Karma" what goes around comes around. Maybe by then we might still be able to reflect on it with them saying, "yep I remember when that happened to me" Best of luck to all! And Yes Life Is Good, and it's a beautiful day!
Dale,
ReplyDeleteGreat post. I can relate as someone who also worked for HDL for a number of yrs. without a 4-year degree. I also saw a job posting for a District Mgr. position that greatly matched my past experience. This was for the largest DVD rental kiosk company out there. I was fortunate enough to get the interview but was not offered the job. It is tough to get so close to that "perfect" job and come up empty handed.
Thank you for your positive posts. They are inpiring to everyone still looking for a job and those of us who are working but with no benefits and still searching for the "perfect" next job.
I have often suspected the want ads that say bachelor degree or a combination of experience and education simply meant anyone without the 4-yr. degree need not apply but I will continue to apply for those jobs and keep the faith.