I’m 23 years old, and was fired from my last job as a financial advisor due to failure to bring in enough new assets during my first year. It’s fairly common within the industry to be fired for failure to meet goals, as something like only 10% make it past two years.
I have two bachelor’s degrees from a decent state school and professional licensing, as well as some professional experience during school.
I’ve been applying for job after job, only to never be contacted for an interview due to stiff competition for finance jobs in my metro. In the past two weeks (weeks 5 and 6) I have been to two interviews where the hiring manager questioned my length of unemployment. I was tripped up both times because I never expected that question, and the second time especially because I never expected it to be asked again. Essentially the hiring managers said “Why have you been unemployed for so long? I question your work ethic if you haven’t gotten a new job in over a month.” I replied both times that I had been applying for many jobs, but just hadn’t heard back. I didn’t know if “I’ve applied for many jobs” was a good answer or a bad one, but I’m not sure how to positively answer that question.
I always thought that a month or two was typical to be unemployed, but I may be wrong. I also know I’m fairly young, but I had a good salary that I’m trying to replace, so I’m being somewhat selective in the jobs I apply to, and I expected a fairly lengthy time of unemployment. Is it because I’m 23 that employers believe I should have accepted any job at this point, or are employers always shocked at a two month unemployment? I didn’t get either job, so I’ll be running up on seven weeks soon and am concerned I’ll be looked at even more negatively. I know a 6 month or one year gap could be viewed negatively, but it seems to me that 6 weeks is normal.
Submitted July 07, 2018 at 10:04AM by Amartin22 https://ift.tt/2zj7BVo
