Job Seeker, 21, Kills Herself After She Was Rejected for 200 Jobs.

reply to post by supremecommander

You clearly are looking at this from an Australian perspective.

Here in the United States, depending on where you live, you can't just run out and get "farm jobs". Council jobs? Do you mean for the government? A lot of time that depends on who you know. Most of the time in this country, who you know means a lot more than your personal qualifications. This is a system based on cronyism and nepotism.

You're taking me too literally. Also, believe me, most of Australia can't go out and get farm jobs, I just happen to live in a rural area and took that as an example. In more built up areas, how about garbage collection? Pest control? Janitorial work, for example public toilets? Jobs people don't want to do, that was the point I was trying to make.

And yes, Australia is the same, who you know means so much more than your qualifications. However, your actual ABILITIES mean so much more over your qualifications. Just because you've been trained to be a teacher doesn't mean you can teach. Just because you've read a book on programming doesn't mean you can go out and make a AAA video game title.

But I digress.

I thankfully got fed up and instead of doing something extreme like this girl, I went in my own direction.

That's great! You had the ability to make something of yourself outside the socially "normal" model (at least I assume so from your statement). This doesn't necessarily mean that everyone can.

Finally, I am part of gen Y myself, being born in '87 (do the math ). I do agree with you that people need to get up and do things themselves, but I also feel that we are too determined to achieve our specific goals (as was drilled into us in school) rather than accept anything less as a temporary measure.

Originally posted by Nephalim
Yea, HERES A FUGGING TIP!

People need to make a damn living, quit being so damn picky and TRAIN some of these people.

That state of Jobseeker's in Britain has become a total sham. I have claimed a few times over the past decade, and only when I've needed it. It should be there as a crutch to help you through the hard times, and help you find work, but in all honesty the people who work at the Job Centre's just don't care.

You used to go in once every 2 weeks and your appointed agent would look at relevant jobs, point them out, and you'd discuss what your options were. Now you're lucky if you get 2 minutes. You sit down, they look at your 'Jobseeker Diary' to make sure you've written almost anything, you sign a piece of paper and off you go.

It's not there for the people who need it either. I started looking for work months before my 3rd year of University ended, but couldn't find anything. Luckily I found a part-time job a few weeks ago and it's enough to pay the rent and eat rice and pasta each month.

The worst part is that because I'll be returning for 4th year at University in a couple of months I not entitled to any kind of benefits. I don't understand the logic there. As if, because I'm going back to Uni, there's lots of jobs out there for me; there are no special jobs for students, and being a student MAKES IT HARDER to find a job as employers think you'll leave once term starts again, or that your classes won't work around your work shifts.

Meanwhile, any alcoholic, drug addict, or anyone simply who decides to leave their job, can happily receive Jobseeker's Allowance, Housing Benefit, and Council Tax Benefit. All they need to do to stay on it is fill in a piece of paper every 2 weeks.

The system doesn't work and it's been bogged down by people who don't want to work. It would be fine if there were actually jobs out there to apply for, but there aren't. It's not like the old days when you actually got an interview and some feedback. No you apply for at least a hundred jobs, as I did, and hear nothing back - not a single email, letter, and not even a number you can call to follow-up on. The majority of the time, the job;s you are applying for are advertised by agencies so you don't even know which company you are applying for.

I know lots of people who are not too far away from what this girl did, and I can completely relate to how she felt before she took the plunge. I've had some dark days.

Originally posted by Gargoyle91
It's sad yes.. But the bottom line is maybe she couldn't get a job because she was mentally ill, You do not kill yourself over not finding a job you do so because something is wrong in your head.

The feeling of failure from hearing nothing from hundred's of jobs you have applied for can, and does effect your mood. Maybe she was a little disheartened to begin with, but this whole process of failed jobseeking is enough, in the long term, to give almost anyone depression.

It's a feeling of worthlessness. Once you are in that phase, any little hope you feel from a new potential job that you get rejected from, or hear nothing back from, just eats away at you bit by bit. She likely didn't know she was depressed, as the majority of people suffering from it do not.

It's a horrible illness, which you clearly don't understand very well, but let me assure you that people kill themselves all the time over similar situations to the girl in this story.

Relevant:

Originally posted by Gargoyle91
It's sad yes.. But the bottom line is maybe she couldn't get a job because she was mentally ill, You do not kill yourself over not finding a job you do so because something is wrong in your head.

Blaming someone that is in a tight spot and could only find one way out? I have been in her shoes or similar shoes and wanted out because the insanity of this place is getting to some of ous. The difference in my story than hers is that in her story nothing intervened and let her go from this place. In my story the answer came back you are not finished on earth yet and have tasks that needed to be done. Feel sad for the parents and the ones she left but her example should be a sign of the insanity of what have been created here. I can be sad for her struggles here but she has probably already left that behind and are playing again.

Hi, new here. First post/ reply.

I am reading a book right now called The Man Who Quit Money by Mark Sundeen - very thought provoking

It wouldn't surprise me one bit if Suelo (the main character in the book) comes across this site, or even has followers on this site. But this story struck me as pretty depressing. Like others have said, clearly there was more going on in this young woman's life to lead her to take her own life. But perhaps the fact that more and more people are living day to day without a paying job is clealry a stress on us all. I am just curious why not get off those food stamps and kick it up a notch? Go dumpster diving at the local Wolfgang Pucks? Walk about/ leave possessions where they are...just walk away from it all....you know? Just go live your life perhaps? Why are we getting so caught up with the idiotic/ imaginary invention of MONEY? Sure, it "works", but in all reality, it doesn't. Not for all of us...clearly just for some of us.

Anyway, my two cents on this topic. Hopefully I'll be able to add more thought provoking tidbits over tmie. Glad to be on ATS finally...been reading you all for a while, now it's time for me to speak up.

Thanks, Peace.

Something else was going on. I can't imagine someone killing themselves over a job at McDonalds.
My sons been trying to find a job for a year (at least, I've been ASKING him to find work). I might kill him soon but I don't think he'll kill himself.

Originally posted by NoRegretsEver
Very sad indeed, but stay till the end of this thread and lets see if there is anything that we can do for ourselves or others, to avoid tragedies like this.

A bright 21-year-old killed herself after more than 200 unsuccessful job applications.
Vicky Harrison had dreamed of a career as a teacher or a television producer, but gave up hope for the future, her family said yesterday.
A day after her latest rejection, and on the eve of her fortnightly trip to sign on, she wrote heartbreaking notes to her parents and boyfriend saying 'I don't want to be me any more' and took a huge drug overdose.

Her death last month tragically highlights the human cost of the highest level of joblessness since the mid-1990s. Rising youth unemployment has led to warnings about a 'lost generation'.
Miss Harrison's devastated parents called yesterday for more help for young jobseekers, telling how the never-ending search for work had driven their daughter to despair.

www.dailymail.co.uk...

I wanted to write this to add somethings, some from me and well, others from ATS members that can add ideas, information, and even support for those that are right now in need of something... anything to help this feeling that there is nothing left.

Here are a few of my ideas, especially those that I am trying to implement in my area.


....................

Dear NRE...

While your attempts to be helpful and show compassion are com-memorable, in all honesty I find them rather naive.

Doing any or all of those things will not nearly guarantee anyone a job. In fact, I think the appearance part is something most people indeed do pay attention to.

But the fact remains..... there are not enough jobs, or enough need for people and there are far too many applicants for the jobs there is. And however you choose to appear at or get to an interview does not change that fact.

This is a sad case indeed. I can't imagine being turned down 200 times (although most of them were probably not based on her specific person but simply because she was one of the weakest applicant amongst 200 other people.)

There is no easy way out of solution to handle this un employment crisis.

In Denmark our incompetent politicians have gotten the stupid idea that jobs will appear out of the blue if people get their unemployment check taken from them after a given time. Or that tossing unemployed people into re education that it will solve the most part (unfortunately 25% of applicants didn't get in this year).

We are simply in dire straits. We have been living above standards and now we are being punished because we let the banks and the big corporations take the money and store it away.

REVOLUTION is needed!

I feel for the girl and her family and have to be honest that I am in the same position as her, even to the point of feeling worthless and unwanted. Almost to the level of thinking of doing the same.

I have applied for lots of jobs and have no luck at all, changing my CV doesn't help, but I can tell you what the problem is, its the money, not from a wages point of view but from a companies profits point of view.

Companies want to maximise profits to their shareholders and bosses so the best and quickest way of doing it is to lose staff, so they get rid of them, either through 'natural wastage' ( such as retirement or resignation to as in my case making it impossible to work there and then when you cant better yourself they 'sack' you for 'not meeting goals' ( not to mention they move the goalposts so often you cant meet the goals')) or through redundancies.
They can then use the term, if you don't like it find another job. SCUM. ( which is happening in my brothers job at present).
Now take my wifes job, she works for a government office in London, they have just cut back through redundancies 350 staff and now taking on 200 ! WTF???

In todays market it definitely IS an employers world, you can get staff in cheap as people are desperate for a job, for example you had a member of staff who had full benefits, pension etc, and you think their costing you too much so you get rid of them through whatever channel, then you get another person in, pay them less and limit the package, i.e no pension and get them to do the same work as the previous person or even get the remaining staff who are now in fear of their jobs to take up the extra work, so costs cut and you still reap in the same amount of profits for the company.
Take my old boss from a few years ago, he wanted to 'cut costs' by stopping break times, and so we were offered a meagre sum ( in my case a few thousand quid- I certainly didn't refuse it) but the old boys who were on a lot more knew they were getting more in overtime anyway so the majority of them voted no, so 3 months later the boss changed the policy and cancelled the breaktimes anyway so no one got anything, but of course the company paid him £10,000 as a bonus for 'saving' them money.

Now I want to get a job but all I see are jobs going to foreign workers who are willing to take almost half of what I can see is a decent wage, so who is going to get the job?Me? or the immigrant?
The company KNOWS there are cheap labour out in the market and who are easily replaceble.

And when I look for a job online it tells me there are 100+ people applying for the role and that's with every job I see (its tops counting after 100 so who knows how many are really applying), so these people that lose their jobs where do they go? disappear into thin air?, don't exist anymore? NO THEY DONT, they are looking for jobs but because the government isn't paying the jobseekers allowance they can write them off their books and say unemployements down this month, NO the people are still there but your not paying them to be able to live, so if you not paying them money they don't exist in your eyes. GRRRR


Don't get me wrong I want to ****ing work, and because I can't get a job and trust me I have applied for all types not just the ones I am trained for but I am still unable to get one so I can see this poor girls point of view and understand why she took her life, but its a sad state of affairs when people don't give a shi* and just make soothing noises and then turn the page and not care anymore.

My wife and I are constanting arguing about money and how she is having to support me as the state won't but IF I were to have children they'd be all over me, the systems f***ed and I really don't know how much more I can take either.
As you can tell I'm rather annoyed at the world, I'm not asking for a job on silver platter I want to work, and I'm not being picky as my wife thinks I am but its embarrassing for me to be supported by my wife and for her to pay my bills or loan me money so I can get petrol.
And I can only think that the situation for a lot of people is going to get worse so expect a load more people to take their own lives...

I think one of the options many people overlook is being self employed. It's certainly difficult, and you need to learn many different skillsets, but it will definitely pay off more in the long run. Not to mention the fact that you won't have to be a wage slave, or be afraid of getting laid off on the whims of a higher-up.

Also, to all the people saying that there are plenty of jobs that no one wants because we're all spoiled little special snowflakes who don't understand our place as the bootlickers of our corporate overlords; that isn't entirely true depending on where you live. I live in a very rural area, and there very nearly aren't any jobs at all. It's quite hard to move to an area with better job opportunities when you're completely broke.

Reply to post by NoRegretsEver

Good on you mate.

Great tips. Really encouraging to see. I move to Australia in dec 2012 and I'm still struggling to find a job. This story is terrible. Sometimes I feel like giving up but I know I can't as I have children that depend on me. I feel like I have no where to turn to to vent my frustration so I just drink cheap wine to deal with the constant rejection. Sad I know and really unproactive but when you get so many knock backs it's so demoralising.

God bless your soul.


Posted Via ATS Mobile: m.abovetopsecret.com

This is a tragedy that the girl felt so worthless she took her own life. It's so tough for young people to find work these days. When there is a surplus in Labour, companies can pick and choose and remind their employees ' they are lucky to have a job'. One slip up and there's plenty more willing to take your place.

In addition, it shows that 45 applicants apply for every low-skilled job, and states that the labour market is still a ‘battleground’ for job seekers, particularly those with less experience, skills or qualifications. The report also suggests that certain groups are excluded from the recruitment process, with 14% of employers saying that they would not consider employing school-leavers and 11% stating that they would not recruit from the ranks of the long-term unemployed.

www.workplacelaw.net...

..you mean I can't start as ceo making $250,000/year with my 1 month old college degree?

reply to post by Halekoch

Gee, I guess you don't understand the term I used:

On a tangential issue,

Let me put it in terms you may understand. It means on a RELATED issue. School is out now. Get a Thesaurus. I have no political agenda, other than making sure American rights are not trampled.

Originally posted by acacko
..you mean I can't start as ceo making $250,000/year with my 1 month old college degree?

No, but you can compete against 44 others for every low skilled job.

Gotta weigh in on this one.

I left school midway through my sophomore year, looked and looked for work, and here and there I have been able to find seasonal work; but the /real/ money that has allowed me to live relatively comfortably is online! I applied with demandstudios.com, odesk.com, textbroker.com, and essayshark.com, sites that have one-time writing gigs which don't pay very well but which - when putting in 6-8 hours a day, pay the bills. I also have craigslist ads up all over the place offering to write college papers, I get maybe 10 papers a week, do 5-7 of them, and make $200 a week doing that. I also occasionally take entire online courses for people for $200-400. On top of that I get people needing a speechwriter or transcriptionist, and I don't turn very much down unless I'm already swamped - and even then, I can sometimes take a paper, and sell it to another Craigslist writer at a lower price and make a small return on it. Over the last 4 years I have built up a solid client base that regenerates fairly well and maintains itself! I make about $20,000/year and supplement that with seasonal work A local greenhouse hires me during summer months, and a whole foods market that I volunteered at just to learn the business gives me occasional work now, for example. My girlfriend has photoshop/photography experience and similarly has a client base and steady work, and occasional seasonal work. We do ok.

Many of the college students whose papers I write have wealthy parents, or get more than they need in financial aid, or are foreign exchange students with poor fluency in English, but with large scholarships by virtue of being foreigners. These demographics have no concept of the value of money and are more than willing to piss it away; I generally name my own price. $10-15 dollars per page for papers, which comes to about 275-300 words, or roughly the length of this post up to this point. And to top it all off, there are about 20-30 essay prompts that must be circulating higher education all over the country. I get "universal healthcare in the U.S." maybe once a month. I've written it so many times at this point that I could do it half-asleep. I have put flyers up from time to time on college campuses but I'm not convinced that they're very effective; but, whatever you can do to get your service out there, do it.

Bottom line is, if you're not finding anything in person, or have poor people skills, the Internet has money waiting to be made. It won't cut it if you're raising a kid, but it's working for me for the time being. The wonderful thing about it is new networks, new types of work, new tricks of the trade, they sort of find their way to me. I didn't brainstorm any of this stuff. I was contacted by demandstudios and essayshark; online college courses, people asked /me/ to do initially; and paper-writing? I've been doing that since high school, and back in those days, people came to me with offers. It just sort of happened that when I was in a tight spot with money later on, I realized that was a marketable skill.

Edit: One of the things that I truly enjoy about writing papers, is the chance to inform people about how #ed up the world is, matter-of-factly. For example, I wrote an essay titled "Pathologically Specialized Personhood"... highly relevant here. I was suggesting that the sciences (as one example) suffer greatly from over-specialization. Within the paper, I wrote:

"For example, high altitude nuclear blasts in the 1950s strengthened the lower of the two Van Allen radiation belts enormously while creating holes in the magnetosphere that persist today. To combat this, aerosol metals like aluminum are sprayed from jets at high altitudes daily around the world to reflect solar radiation away. Had meteorologists generally had a grasp of biology and neurology, they would know that bioavailable (chemically unbonded) aluminum is actually highly toxic to many forms of life including humans, and builds up in the brain, leading to myriad diseases such as Alzheimers. Furthermore, these instances of geoengineering are thought to be responsible for the creation of a third radiation belt around Earth that persisted for 4 weeks in 2012 - an unprecedented event. The media began scarcely reporting the news after it was no longer an issue."

The client wrote back to me after reading the paper with a "WHAT THE #? Seriously?" response. We had a good conversation about chemically available aluminum after that, and how the power structures in the world are (perhaps) attempting to drive people insane by saturating us with soft metals. I try to fit hard-hitting information like this into any paper I can. Hopefully some of it circulates into the public.

reply to post by Samtzurr


Hoo boy, I bet you could SEO enrich an article faster than I could blink.

Really good advice though, and article writing only scratches the surface of what you can do to earn some extra income online. While pretty saturated, you can still make some money creating wordpress templates, graphic design, or relatively simple sales videos.

Originally posted by Basilis
reply to post by Samtzurr

 

Hoo boy, I bet you could SEO enrich an article faster than I could blink.

Really good advice though, and article writing only scratches the surface of what you can do to earn some extra income online. While pretty saturated, you can still make some money creating wordpress templates, graphic design, or relatively simple sales videos.

Very true. Just about anything written online was sourced out to freelance writers - blog posts, descriptions of videos, testimonials, comments, you name it. My girlfriend, being a natural graphic designer, does a lot of work similar to those things that you named.

If by saturated, you mean that there's a lot of competition, I agree with you. The main thing is to do everything in your power to impress a client, put work in even if you're not sure they'll choose you - most of my competitors apparently aren't willing to. For essays, I will write out a 100-200 word introduction and give it to them free of charge. You'd think they would take the free intro and just finish the paper.. because formulating a thesis is half the battle.. but they don't. Either my intro is too dense for them to be able to match or they are interested in seeing where it goes. I don't get many dishonest clients, truthfully.

What I've learned about jobs is they are disposable, not people. I have seen ridiculously over-qualified people stocking shelves and cleaning houses and people with zero qualifications in positions of authority telling others with far more experience and talent what to do.

I gave up working for others long ago when I realized how big the gap was between what I was capable of doing and what jobs would require me to do. Shame she didn't put the same time in to developing a home-based business she did in filling out applications and doing interviews. Seemed like a very bright and promising young lady.

Young people: Don't let jobs or a lack of work change your perception of who you are and what you're capable of. People put way too much stock in that and allow it to control their future.

Job hunting is a crapshoot, full of dead ends, nepotism, hiring quotas and other nonsense. I can't count the number of rejections I've gotten over the years looking for work. I've been told I would get bored with this position so we won't hire you (even though I have cleaned bathrooms without complaint) and also that I have no experience so it doesn't matter if you can learn quickly.

It sounds as though she set her sights high but upon finding nothing to her preferences tried to find any work at all with no success. It sucks the very soul from you when nobody thinks you're good enough to hire. When you're that young you don't have the experience to know that neither your job nor position is a real indicator of who you are.

If you don't have a job then spend some of that spare time you have working for a charity. It may give you valuable experience and looks good on your resume.

Eta: Keep learning new skills whether you think it will bring work or not. Developing your mind is never a waste of time and often pays off in unexpected ways and may help you find the line of work you really want to do in life.

Do you have any idea how many truck drivers are going to be needed over the next 10 or 20 years? It's in the millions, due to retirements, death, injury, etc. But no one is interested in being a truck driver, because it's looked down on as a job.

I hate to say it, but if you want work, and you want to keep food on the table, you're going to have to do those jobs that others don't want. I've worked jobs that sucked, but they kept food on the table, and a roof over my head.