The year 2020 was was like none other, and most have faced work and financial stress. There seems to be two significant hardship situations. There are many professionals that have lost their jobs through no fault of there own, and they are anxiously seeking a new opportunity. Secondly, there are many that are employed, but overworked because of pandemic driven cuts in staffing. Each of these situations has its own set of challenges.
Meet Yvonne. She has found herself in both of these situations. Until about a week ago, Yvonne was a 44 year old employee at an insurance company. She was there for more than ten years, and she held a variety of roles during her tenure with the now bankrupt insurance entity. She worked as a field marketer, and then she moved into their corporate office where she handled just about anything that the company’s owners needed an industrious self-starter to do.
I have been hoping that Yvonne would lose her job since I met her about three years ago. I continued to hope she would be laid off or even fired through out the pandemic. I wished this fate for her despite the extreme uncertainty that the pandemic has brought to our job market. I assure you that I only have Yvonne’s best interest at heart.
Since the day that I met her, I have felt that Yvonne is an example of the misplaced workforce that is ramped in America’s work force. She has strong job skills in the form of technical knowledge, industry knowledge, problem solving, and solution design. She spent nine years steering clear of the political nonsense that ultimately drove the company she worked for to shutter. She focused on being a major contributor and acquiring valuable job skills.
What kept her there? First it was the era of, “The spell of the cult,” she says. One of the executives was idolized, and the rest follow. Charisma is a real thing. Then there was a time where she had been there for so long that she was afraid to leave a secure job for uncertainty. In the last phase, when it became evident what the company’s fate would be, she felt a bond with her coworkers. They told themselves, “we are in this together.” The end was in sight.
“Everything about my job that I thought was important is no longer, it is literally over,” Yvonne explained.
Yvonne sees this as an opportunity to take pause, and think about what she really wants to do? “What is going to make me happy?” she asks.
Yvonne exemplifies the very reason that MyBlankJob was founded. Yvonne has skills that can successfully take her to an executive level or an entrepreneurial opportunity. It is about knowing what is out there and being able to weigh one’s options whether that be higher education, certifications, career counseling, a side gig that one is passionate about, or franchise and entrepreneurial opportunities. MyBlankJob brings all of this together in one place, and the chat forum helps us all find that we are not alone.
I look forward to telling you about the next chapter in Yvonne’s story in my next post.