My Quest for a Job Helping Society

I really thought it would be easy to find a new job.  I had 20 years of writing reports, grants, information releases, and doing public speaking engagements both large and small.  I was a good manager of staff and raised $300,000 a year for a charitable organization. I had not been involved in any scandals or caused any public embarrassment for the organization. Maybe I was naive, or just arrogant, but I really thought my skills would be transferable to make me attractive to other employers.  The other thing that gave me confidence was assisting with the hiring of my replacement at my last job.  We got 86 applications and only six actually were appropriate for the job, or 7% of the total. I sat down and looked at every application and gave them points for the areas in their background in various categories that were important to the job.  I looked at how they had answered the job description, and then ranked them from most appropriate for the job to least appropriate.  93% of the applicants did not have the background to be an executive director, so I thought there must not be much competition out there. I wish I had the luxury of volunteering for eight months, which was the way I got my last job.

Unemployment was low last year, when I started my job search.  The economy had not seen the Trump depression, and I knew more about one subject than almost anyone else in the region.  I have nationally recognized civil rights victories and knew hundreds of people from my work.  I thought people would be asking me for help writing grants or doing government contracts because I was always fastidious.  My first job that I applied for in years, I was treated with a lot of deference and got well into the process.  I had applied for the Ohio ACLU Executive Director job and they instead hired a really good director who I could easily see had the skills to make his term successful in this critical position in our community.  The search committee wrote a nice note that was personalized and made me feel respected in the process. I had partnered with the ACLU on at least seven lawsuits over the years, so they were well acquainted with my background.  This also gave me confidence that other groups would recognize my skills and at least give me a fair opportunity to compete.  I was very wrong, and I prepared a chart to show my struggles.

I gave myself six months to find a job that I would enjoy and would improve society.  That passed on April 2, 2018, and so I have given up on finding a job that provides any benefit to society.  I will join the service sector or retail economy.  I need to have a job, and so I had to scrap all my old expectations and start over.  I redesigned my resume to take out all the housing and social justice junk and tailored it for real work like cleaning, manual labor or my supervision of staff.  What has amazed me is how unprofessional my peers were and how little respect I had in the social service community.  I applied for 21 jobs in the local non-profit sector and only received 3 interviews.  Only 33% of the local non-profits even acknowledge that they have "moved on" to other candidates. Some of these jobs were development directors, press relations, program directors or even outreach case workers.  I sent my resume to 140 local and national colleagues, and got 6 people who cared enough to send possible jobs.  I got lots of "thoughts and prayers," but just like in the gun debate, it does not help much.

I do not understand what human resources staff are thinking. I have no idea what they are looking for or why they do the things that they do. I have to wonder if they read the resumes/cover letters that are submitted or do they just hire people they know or people who are like them.  A friend of mine had a horrible experience with United Way Human Services staff, making me think personnel staff are morons.  I did not apply to agencies that hated me or that I knew to be hostile work environments. I did not apply anywhere that would kill me or would kill my soul like places that discriminate or treat their employees who are different with contempt.  With two decades of working with some of these groups and all my experience, it just felt like not getting an interview or a personal note was just dirty.  I did not get an interview from Care Alliance, St. Vincent DePaul, CEOGC, the United Church of Christ Headquarters or the Hunger Network.  What is most angering is that I know staff from these groups and did not even get a, "Hey Brian, sorry but we found this really dynamic person..." All of the trainings or information provided or the partnerships that I had forged did not mean much when I was out begging for a job.  Just like I indicated in the previous rant about how tough it was,  I did not even get an interview for a part time position overseeing a social service fair at HandsOn NEO that I helped start in Cleveland.  I just don't understand...

I applied for 15 government jobs and only got one interview for a supervisor job, but only 13% of the government actually send out a rejection.  There were good jobs at the City of Cleveland, Ohio Housing Finance Agency, Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Cuyahoga Franklin and Delaware Counties, but I did not hear anything.  I am a taxpayer; don't I deserve to know that my government fairly evaluated my background and selected someone else?  I applied for a legal secretary job with the US District Court and had to take a 3 hour test. In the end, I was told how I did and that they would not be moving forward because other applicants had scored higher or were veterans.  That is fair and respectful, and the way that a government-of-the-people should operate.  Unfortunately, most Government positions leave the applicant wondering if the new employee was hired for political reasons or because they had some relationship with the person doing the hiring.

I applied for 24 jobs with either State or National Non-Profits, especially with groups that I admire, but most did not even respond.  Nothing from the National Low Income Housing Coalition, Center for Community Change, or Center for Policy Studies for jobs that I spent a lot of time crafting the best cover letters that were specific to the job description. My worst experience was with the Advocates for Ohio's Future executive director position. I did get an interview, but then the group did not hire anyone.  So, basically I lost out to no one.  They re-opened the job because they could not come to terms with the two final candidates (not me because I would have taken the job at $40,000 per year).  I had worked with John Corlett and the Center for Community Solutions for decades and they are a co-coordinator of this agency down in Columbus.  In fact, we shared the stage, both receiving an award from Care Alliance a couple of years back.  I had also done advocacy with Lisa Hamler Fugitt who was on the search committee for the Advocates for Ohio's Future and her Ohio Foodbanks Association was the other co-sponsor of the group.  It was truly humiliating.  I asked for clarity, but got nothing. I got two other interviews from state or national non-profits, but never made it to the second interviews.  Maybe, I just suck at interviews.

For-profit companies, universities or foundations have not even bothered to interview me.  So, my 20 years of being an executive director were not transferable to these industries.  I wrote a snarky letter to CWRU about how horrible they were for not even offering an interview to an alum.  I did not get acknowledgement for a secretary job or a custodial job at CWRU. While looking for a job, I did write a few other snarky letters marked "larks for fun" basically to call attention how ridiculous some job descriptions are for expecting the world and not paying for those skills.  Many of these groups that I have applied have some connection to the public or customers and yet still treat applicants with such disrespect.  I would never donate to CWRU or many of the non-profits after the horrible treatment I received.  I would never move my banking to PNC or KeyBank, or recommend a partnership with a few local law firms who do not even acknowledge worthy candidates for jobs.  I can now talk about this since I have given up on getting a job based on my history and I am starting over.

So, I am now down to "real work" as a custodian, retail worker, service industry or a secretarial job.  I have had a few follow ups in the last few weeks since I redesigned my goals.  24 applications over the last three weeks and already have seen 12% of the jobs providing an interview.  That is not bad for a short period of time.  I appreciated Habitat for Humanity for the respectful process with their administrative assistant job. They provided me a first interview and a personalized rejection (I knew I should have worn a tie so I would have gotten to round 2 of the interviews).  Still a few strange things like these entry level jobs asking for social security numbers.  Why the hell would they be willing to take the risk of securing that highly sensitive information for someone they do not have a professional relationship with?  Giant Eagle did not select me for a job standing at the door greeting people and preventing thefts for some unknown reason.  I tried to ask, but of course they don't respond back. A total of 107 job applications and only 10 interviews.  It is rough out there, and I have not figured out the code for getting a good job.

by Brian Davis

CWRU Has Not Helped With My Job Search

April 13, 2018                                               Brian P. Davis

                                                                           Cleveland Hts., Ohio 44121 

                                                                       

Case Western Reserve University

Cleveland, Ohio 44106

I am submitting my resume and background information for The Director for Research Administration at the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences.  I am pretty sure that no one at the school reads these cover letters since I have applied for five jobs and have yet to be dignified with any response.  As an alum of CWRU, I thought I would deserve at least a “we are moving forward with other candidates” type of e-mail from the school that prepared failed me for the workforce.  I have spent 20 years as an executive director of a charitable organization and I am a graduate of your fine institution and did not even get a rejection letter for my application for an administrative assistant and a custodial position at CWRU.  This affords me the luxury of telling you the truth about the school and the jobs that you have posted.

I have spent the past 23 years administering the local homeless coalition and working to keeping this small non-profit organization functioning.   As executive director of the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless, I have had to perform nearly every function necessary to administer a non-profit organization, including listening to people struggling with housing, interaction with a volunteer board of trustees and preparing a yearly budget for the agency.  You have an exalted opinion of your place in society that does not match the current reality.    The Trump-supporters do not trust anything that you Brainiac’s say, and feel that academics are the source of many of our problems.  Liberals don’t use your research because we know that we can get studies to say anything based on who is paying the tab for the information.  Policy makers do not rely on research to pass tax cuts or change the rules for receiving welfare.  So, basically, you are performing studies for other academics in what can only be described as a research circle jerk.  Besides, the research you are doing is solving the problems of 10 years ago.  Have you come up with any academic recommendations for dealing with the crack epidemic yet? Society has moved on without academic research.

I have worked to solve problems facing real people without housing while you have been studying the problems associated with poverty.  You act like the jobs that you have at CWRU or the Mandel School are so specialized and complicated that it takes highly educated or decades of experience to publish information that will be read by eight people.   You realize that Thomas Edison, Henry David Thoreau, Richard Branson, Charles Goodyear and many others advanced our society without a college degree.  The single mom trying to get her kids to daycare and navigate the Food Stamp and voucher lottery is dealing with a high stress environment, while you are fooling yourselves if you think anything you do is as complicated as getting a day care voucher while sleeping in a shelter.  I find it interesting that you exist in an educational institution, but want to hire people who already have the experience working with specific programs such as your demands for “utilizing electronic research administration systems (SpartaPre, SpartaCOI, Spiderweb, PADS, OSPARS,)” whatever that means. It seems like your hiring practices only trust vocational education and you do not believe that you can teach a person to use a research tool or computer programs, which is odd for an institution of higher learning. Have you thought about hiring talented people and teaching them the skills they need to do jobs that they would enjoy?

Your primary reason for existence is to educate our young people, and how is that going? Well, I have a degree from your prestigious institution on my resume and have not found a job after applying for 110 positions.  Giant Eagle was not impressed with my degree from Case Western Reserve University and did not hire me to stand at their door to prevent shoplifting.  From my experience, you are sending our nation’s young people out into the world saddled with so much debt that they have to take any job for any salary to pay back your tuition.  You are forcing our young people to delay buying a house, finding a dream job or even getting married because you have placed a boulder of debt on their backs.  I don’t think that the ever escalating costs for a university degree can be justified in our current society.  My experience is that employers today care less about the name of the institution as long as the applicant marks that they have a college degree.  This is again your fault for not producing quality graduates with high moral authority and allowing fake colleges like University of Phoenix to proliferate in our society.   

I believe that I have demonstrated an ability to think critically and solve problems, but that does not seem to matter.  I believe that I have the “ability to work collegially with faculty in developing and submitting proposals, and possess the skills necessary to work collaboratively with a number of external organizations,” but I am not sure how anyone who has not worked at CWRU with your faculty could ever demonstrate that skill.  The next five skills that you require:

• “Ability to make complex decisions with minimal background information;
• Ability to think entrepreneurially and engage creative solutions;
• Demonstrated understanding of steps in grant proposal development;
• Demonstrated knowledge of major federal (e.g., NSF, NIH, DOE) and state agency guidelines for proposal submission is essential;”

seem mutually exclusive.  My experience is that creative types do not want to waste their talents on completing grant proposals.  Can you imagine Mark Cuban, Langston Hughes, or Steve Jobs wasting their talents on writing stupid federal grant proposals?  It seems like you are looking for the person who held this job in the past, so why don’t you just clone that person? The next five skills that you require:

• “Skill in project budget development and forecasting, sound fiscal management skills relative to projects are necessary;
• Scientific proposal writing skills; experience in editing and proofreading grant applications and proposals;
• Must be highly motivated, driven to succeed, but with a focus on what is best for the organization;
• Ability to influence rather than dictate action utilizing strong interpersonal and leadership skills;
• Ability to manage and motivate professional staff in a high stress, rapid pace work environment – must be able to keep environment calm and staff focused on goals and objectives;”

seem to show that you are looking for a person who does not exist.  Think about it, who has all of these skills to keep people calm, can work with budgets, fiscal management, good writing skills, and forecasting ability, and wants to sit in an office all day administering research in Cleveland, Ohio?  The person who meets all these qualifications is a liar if they say they are “highly motivated” to use all these skills to direct research at the Mandel School.  The person that you have described here should be nothing less than Governor of the State of Ohio or a frequent visitor to the International Space Station. 

Good luck with your search.  I guess you have to justify a reason for having a human resources department by glorifying the university with a claim that CWRU is “a high stress, rapid pace work environment that must be able to keep environment calm and staff focused.”  Have you visited the kitchen at a Bob Evans on Sunday morning?  Maybe you need to re-evaluate your selection process to screen out law school deans who will seek “threesomes” with students or police officers who cannot tell the difference between a Cleveland City Council members and a toothless panhandlers or metallurgical science professor who steal trade secrets or high profile professors who can’t keep their hands off the colleagues.  I could go on, but you must be busy interviewing the next Maya Angelou for your grant writing jobs. 

Sincerely,

Brian Davis

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.