To think 5 months is a long time to be unemployed?

[MerryMarigold]

Dh made redundant end of April. Had couple of interviews in June but did not get the jobs and nothing since then. He's looking at all sorts but over qualified for most. Do people know others in this position? How do you get out of it? Who wants to employ sometime whose been unemployed for a while? It's all new to us. Dh is 47 and never been unemployed.

No. That's no time at all. Especially in this climate.

How many applications has he sent? Is he tailoring his CV for each application?

My OH in that position now, since March - so 6 months now. It's terrifiying.

We've gone from being double income, no kids, renting in a nice area paying off some debts towards being able to buy our own home... to being homeless in 8 weeks if he doesn't find a job ASAP. No family to help, nowhere to go, very low on the social housing priority list. Not able to borrow money.

Nobody's hiring him for the available jobs - delivery driving, supermarket warehouses, Civil Service - because he's enormously overqualified in a very specific field and there are lots of other people applying who are probably less likely to leave when a job comes up elsewhere. But because it's such a small field, nobody is moving roles (so nothing is coming up). I don't have answers (and this has turned into a self indulgent rant - I'm sorry) but I feel your pain, it's a very scary time!

In this economy, no, not at all.

Massively depends on his industry and experience. Current job market is pretty awful unless you're medically trained or want to do care work for very little pay.

Generally it's not ideal, but in the context of a global pandemic I don't think any future employer is going to question a gap on his CV

delivery driving, supermarket warehouses, Civil Service

Um, Civil Servants are not unskilled labour y'know! CS jobs are like hens' teeth these days, hundreds of applicants for every vacancy.

Welcome Covid!

In the current environment it's not surprising at all.

Not really in this current climate, however he needs to be prepared to do anything.

No time at all unfortunately OP. DH was made redundant in November and still nothing on the horizon.

My son is heading for 2 years. He's not disabled but does have health issues that mean he can't do jobs like retail or barwork. He's also worked for quite a few local companies his field in the past but he has untreated depression so lost them when he had days that he couldn't get out of bed. He's 31

@goose1964 can your son do any voluntary work, Goose? For his own mental health?

Well as others say, I guess it's not unusual,just now.

When I was a couple of years younger than your DH I was made redundant from an industry which was in a place that made it difficult to find anything similar (we didn't want to move).

I was out of long term work from October to the following June. I got a job in a very different role (education) and finally retrained in that role. There is hope for sure. The initial education job was not well paid but the school,was happy to take me on.

Im in the Same position let go in march in a job i had just started and they said they would have me back after lockdown but think we were all assuming lockdown would be few weeks , they were shut for months and my job went , been looking since and just not a lot about , couple jobs have even been put on hold that i have gone for

I was out of work for 5 months during the last financial crisis. Over that time there were precisely 3 jobs I was able to apply for (couldn’t apply for ones below a certain salary level as it would have stuffed up my mortgage insurance)

It’s a long time in normal circumstances but I’ve found people are really understanding about a gap in employment in terrible economic conditions. What I would advise is that he gets a couple of personal references lined up as some employers will want that for longer gaps, but if he can provide those then it shouldn’t be a problem.

Nobody is going to question being out of work for a long time in this climate.
Definitely wouldn't need to be explained.

I've not worked since day before lockdown. Was furloughed by agency and that stopped beginning September as apparently work was becoming available but no phonecall to be asked to work yet.

I was unemployed for 2.5 months. I actually got the first job I applied for but it took maybe 6 weeks to get the interviews done and get the offer, and then a month after the offer for them to set me up to work remotely and start. It totally flew by! I can imagine how fast 6 months goes when you're hunting.

It's not that long.

Is he on LinkedIn? That can be quite good. I have mine set up with job alerts as well so I thought about what jobs I really want to do and how far I'd be willing to travel for those and set up keyword alerts within a certain radius and also specific company alerts. Then I thought about which jobs would be OK and set that alert to a much smaller radius.

Because it has your experience, qualifications, skills all added to it (a bit like a virtual CV) it lets you know how well matched you are to a job ad and also recruiters can pick you up that way if you have relevant experience as well. He can also "follow" organisations relevant to his industry as well in order to stay in the loop with new developments, products, market changes etc.

I found it really easy to set up, a bit like Facebook. It does seem a bit overly skewed towards white collar office type jobs but there is all sorts on there, and it can't hurt to have a well set up profile, if somebody googles him and finds it matches his CV it's all points towards him.

It would take a special kind of heartless, judgemental person to think badly of five months of unemployment in 2020 of all years. It really is nothing, and things aren't "normal" at the moment anyway.

He also needs to know how job applications are looked at these days - a lot of them are first fed through a computer program which picks out certain words and phrases and if those are missing, you won't even get looked at by a human - I can't remember the proper term for this now but someone else will know. Google optimising CV. Some older pieces of advice are now invalid, such as making your CV look really fancy and smart - things like tables can mess up the formatting and cause the computer program to miss important details. Just keep it clean and simple.

Nobody's hiring him for the available jobs - delivery driving, supermarket warehouses, Civil Service - because he's enormously overqualified in a very specific field and there are lots of other people applying who are probably less likely to leave when a job comes up elsewhere.

Strip his CV down. Remove stuff.

My dh had to do this a few years back after redundancy. Whilst looking for a permanent job in his field he wanted something to tide us over and quickly realised with his ‘proper’ CV he couldn’t get an interview for shelf stacking etc.

He stripped his CV down and minimised past roles until it looked like a school leavers CV. He got a Tesco delivery drivers job after that.

[quote DonnaQuixotedelaManchester]@goose1964 can your son do any voluntary work, Goose? For his own mental health?[/quote]
I think this is a good suggestion for anyone struggling with longer term employment. Local charities here relied on older volunteers pre covid and now many of those are not wanting to take the risk, so many charity shops and warehouses that sort donations are appealing for staff.

Husband has been out of work (or SAHD) for nearly 8 years. Obviously we don’t need the second income but he’s been looking for a long time.

Good idea about the charities. They might want him now.