This is just a rant.
I (29m) work as an administrator for a manufacturing company currently. Got my Bachelors in Elementary Education and quickly realized the world of education keeps getting more demanding of teachers while pay and benefits simply do not make up for the amount of necessary hours in and out of school. That’s without addressing student entitlement and the fact parents these days are more likely to challenge a teacher rather than support them.
Anyways, my current role is fine, but I’m just shy of making 50k which sucks pretty hard for someone who has a college degree and is on the cusp of turning 30. At my ten-month review – I asked about a raise and was told it absolutely wouldn’t be more than 3%. At my six-month review, my manager gave me nothing short of flying colors. The company loved me, I was a great fit, and things were going well. This really just made it more irritating when I asked about raises/promotion opportunities in the future and was pretty directly told that there wouldn’t be any. My manager said “I don’t think we can provide what you’re looking for” which as much as I appreciate her honesty, was very much a change of tune from what they pitched me on when I accepted the position.
Since then, I’ve been trying to make a jump to some form of admin or HR role with a little bit of a better salary and man, this job search is just depressing. I feel like the majority of recruiters I speak with pitch me a position making 18.00 an hour and when I express what I’m looking for, they are just done with me (is 60k really that unreasonable?). I’ve had a couple interviews the last few months that have gone pretty well but I’m just disgusted with the way the world seems to be. I’ve avoided lying or making things up on my resume, but it really is starting to feel like there simply is no other choice to get ahead.
I’ve had a lot of frustrations with the couple interviews I’ve done and just wanted to share for anyone else out there who feels like they’re losing their mind.
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I Interview for an admin role at another local manufacturing company a bit larger than my current one. Initial phone screen, two separate hour-long phone interviews, and then an invite for the in-person interview. I was totally transparent that I currently have a full-time position and will need to coordinate PTO to take the interview. I was very direct with the recruiter about my salary requirements to try and not waste my time/PTO interviewing for the position. I go in, do the interview, and the recruiter follows up with “hey, we all loved you, but we can only pay you 50k”. No negotiation, no conversation, just take it or leave it. I debated leaving a scathing review on Glassdoor about the experience – this recruiter would constantly pepper me with texts while I was working asking if I could give him a quick call for 5 minutes. NO, I CANT. I’m at work and we spoke for an hour yesterday on my lunch break.
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I interviewed with a rather large law firm for another admin position. One phone screen, again, two separate hour-long phone interviews, and then an invite for the in person. Before deciding on the in person (as I didn’t want to waste more PTO) I did some research on working as an admin at a law firm and man – there are some horror stories of attorney’s being the rich entitled pricks you might expect them to be. The company was pretty clear that the day would be 8am – 6pm with an hour lunch. Some evenings would require being in the office until 7pm. Before the in-person interview, the recruiter called me up and said the highest they could go on salary was 53k. Are you fucking kidding me? Who the hell is gonna agree to work 45-50-hour weeks to be talked down to by lawyers for just 53k. I politely responded to the recruiter to say I would not be attending the in-person interview. They had some absolute trash reviews on indeed and glassdoor, so bullet dodged I guess.
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I interviewed with a property management company looking for an admin role for their new office. Again, one phone screen, two hour long zoom calls at the local Starbucks on my lunch break, and an invite for an in person. The job would’ve required me to commute into the local city for training for the first 8 weeks (roughly an hour and a 20-minute commute which would’ve been a real pain). I was planning to attend the interview and bite the bullet on the commute since once the training was over, the commute to their local office would’ve been about 40 minutes. I was supposed to have the in-person interview today and the company reached out yesterday morning to cancel and reschedule for another day. Mind you – Once again, I made it quite clear to the recruiter and the company that I would be taking PTO to attend the in-person interview. I had it scheduled and approved by my current manager. I can’t simply yank that around to reschedule for the next day in the middle of the work week.
Starting to just feel hopeless – like I’ll always be stuck working entry level jobs that go nowhere and amount to nothing. Fuck, it sucks living in the information age when you can directly compare yourself to everyone around you, knowing their position title and salary. I’m sick of hearing about net worth, networking, and all these fucking corporate assholes who just want to suck their own dicks all over LinkedIn.
That is all – rant over. I hope someone else out there feeling a similar way finds some form of solace or comfort in knowing they’re not alone. Good luck to anyone else trying to find a job with a decent salary that doesn’t make you just want to drop dead.