[zontar]

Late to the game, but thought I’d add my story.

Laid off in early 2017 from my O&G IT job (with a move from the tech side to managerial) in my 50’s. From there it was 18 months of applying over and over, little human interaction and then in one form or another of, “you’re over-qualified”, “we’re going with another candidate”, “your technical skills are rusty”. Despite 20+ years in IT with constant learning, I was never the right candidate. And despite keeping busy (3+ hours daily for job search, working out and starting to blog), it got depressing. Fortunately, I had a good network of friends and colleagues who I could talk to and that helped.

Then, after EI ran out, a recruiter from Winnipeg contacted me, and before I knew it, I was moving out there to keep working while my family stayed here. Hard decision but we needed a pay check coming in.

There were some silver linings though - company is fantastic and with COVID I came back to shelter with family and am now full time WFH.

Those 18 months of banging my head against the hiring wall were some of the most frustrating times of my life. And only seeing family every 6-8 weeks sucked as well.
One thing I took from that chapter was to keep my CV and my network up-to-date.

Now I just want to ride out a few more years and then enjoy my grandkids!