Tough Times Finding A Job in Cleveland

I have been looking for work for six months now, and have given up on finding a job that provides a benefit to society.  I am down to finding a job that provides income for my family.  I thought my 20 years of writing grants, administering a non-profit agency, assisting with social justice lawsuits would easily land me a new gig.  I thought that my writing skills, ability to solve problems and my willingness to spend long hours to make a project successful would be attractive to any employer. My dedication and integrity have to be values that can transfer to any industry.  My knowledge of homelessness, housing, public policy, voting, civil rights would be sought after by groups struggling for social justice during these tough time of the Trump era. I really thought that people would put aside their personal feelings and realize I was causing trouble because I was serving a constituency.  I was wrong, and so I threw away all that I did over the last six months in order to start over.  I dumped all that social justice stuff from my resume and tailored it for jobs that fit better with my current job path.  I included the manual labor jobs and service jobs that I did as second jobs to make ends meet when I was first starting out.  I highlighted my diverse skills in bartending, restaurant management and maintenance jobs while only mentioning managing a non-profit agency, but not providing the specifics.

I now understand why this process can be so difficult on a marriage or your mental health. I have not been without a job for the past 36 years so I have no real experience with this.  I understand that after a couple of months of this torture, a person would take any job for any income. Here is the kind of response that you get that is a real kick in the teeth:

Dear Applicant,

Thank you for your interest in Care Alliance Health Center and our Supervisor, HIV Prevention position. While we are impressed with your qualifications, we won’t be moving you forward in the selection process. Currently, there are other applicants whose qualifications more closely align with our needs for this position.

Please continue to check our website at www.carealliance.org for updates and future job opportunities. Best wishes for success in your professional pursuits.

Sincerely,
HR Dept.    

I worked as a partner of Care Alliance for 20 years for this form letter.  Sure, I protested their mistreatment of homeless people 15 years ago, but since then I have been a strong colleague.  They got rid of an awful director and since then I sat in on evening Strategic Planning meetings for six months. I worked with their staff every other day and invited them to present at nearly every training I offered.  The last job I applied for with them I did not even get a form letter.  All the work in coordinating outreach or promoting their new facilities and they did not have time to even put my name in the form letter.  I did not even deserve an interview for publishing their annual stats or delivering street cards to their clinics every couple of months?  I would give back the award Care Alliance gave me (left) for my advocacy in exchange for a little respect now that I am not directing a local non-profit. They did not even have time to spell out Department for a guy who worked with them to keep homeless people from freezing to death.

The same thing happened to me with HandsOn Northeast Ohio.  They had a part time position available to oversee the Homeless Stand Down in Cleveland.  I helped to start this all day service fair called the Homeless Stand Down in Cleveland back in 1995 by opening it up to all homeless people rather than just veterans.  I oversaw the Stand Down when 13,000 low income people attended at Cuyahoga Community College.  I know everything about staging this event and sat on the organizing committee for all those 25 years.  Jeff, the previous director of HandsOn NEO, was no longer in charge so maybe the new person was worried that I was over-qualified.  But how about talking to me face to face?  How about, at least, having the decency of sitting down with me for an interview? Don't I deserve a half hour of the director's time for this part time job? If nothing else we could talk about all my experience with the Stand Down and what could be improved.   It is unbelievable that so many people who work in social services just reject a person by e-mail after my long history of working with all these groups.  I don't understand what happened to honor and respect in our community.

by Brian Davis
PS: I have tried to look at the 50 Reasons that I have not been able to find a job.