After continually hearing about businesses trying to fill positions only to find themselves high and dry amidst a reported worker shortage, a Florida YouTuber named Joey Holz decided to perform an experiment.
Holz, who is currently employed, applied for two jobs per day throughout September.
“I chose the jobs I applied for by finding Facebook posts in our local Fort Myers/Lee County groups where employers were talking about how hard it was to find help,” Holz said in a Facebook post. “I specifically sought out employers who blamed unemployment benefits for them not having employees.”
Here’s the post from his account at Mohawk Joey:
He tracked his applications and any responses in a spreadsheet. By the end of his experiment, he had 16 email responses that resulted in four phone calls and only one interview to date.
“The most hilarious thing is the one job interview I have done so far was offering minimum wage for pay which is around $8.60,” Holz said in his post, “and when I said that’s weird because you’re (sic) advertisement says that you’re starting pay is $10 an hour, they said it’ll be $10 when the minimum wage goes up later this month.”
The interviewer told him he would get 20 hours to start, even though it was listed as a full-time position and required full-time availability. The business — a construction company hiring for job site cleanup — let him know he might be promoted to full-time after six months, based on performance.
Others are echoing on social media with their own similar experiences.
“Let’s talk about my 17-year-old son Ryan’s search for employment,” Danielle Belusik Stroffolino posted on Facebook.
Stroffolino wrote that Ryan applied twice to a local store — online and in person — that continually closes early due to a lack of workers. However, he never heard from the store.
Next, he applied to a local grocery store and followed up with a phone call two weeks later. He was told a manager would return his call but, again, received no communication from the store. And after applying to a large retail store, Ryan was rejected with no contact within 24 hours.
Here’s her post on the topic:
Stroffolino is no stranger to the hiring process.
“I’m a Recruiter for a large international company. I do the hiring from entry to executive level. I review each resume. No bots here. Not all places use technology to screen resumes for keywords … especially smaller businesses. You receive a response from me. It’s required,” she wrote. “These are not high-level positions he applied for, so even with bots, no reason not to consider him, and other entry-level folks if you are that desperate.”
She wonders whether the positions actually exist.
“Are these places really hiring or are they receiving financial kickbacks/support for continually and supposedly not having enough employees?” Stroffolino wrote. “What’s the real story? Because when it comes down to it, hiring doesn’t seem to be a priority. ”
Holz asked a similar question after his job search experiment.
“Are these places hiring? That’s what their internet ad said,” Holz’s Facebook post stated. “Are they desperate for HELP? Yes, according to their loud lamentations on Facebook, but so far 1 interview (where the advertised hours and pay were misrepresented) after 58 applications says y’all aren’t desperate for workers, you just miss your slaves.”
Holz acknowledged that other people’s experiences may not match his, but his viral experiment is making some question whether large employers are playing fair or creating a narrative that isn’t necessarily true for their own purposes. Some are asking for more studies so the truth can be determined, although others say this is just an example of confirmation bias.
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