u/hastag-geenah

Hello all, specifically looking for some feedback from recruiters.

I was laid off from a job after 15 years.

My situation is that I worked for a company for 15 years. My last role with them was Director of Product prior to that I had been in a few other mid management roles and started in project management.

I do not want to go back into a director level role. I enjoyed doing the work versus directing it. I have submitted about 120 resumes for individual contributor roles and I’ve only gotten two hits. I get through the screen and then never hear back. I did ask one of the recruiters for feedback but she did not respond. She did ask me during the interview why I left my company and why I was looking to take a step back and I thought I did a good job answering both.

On the way, I left was honest, and I said it was a reorg, and as to why I didn’t do you want a director role was because I like to be more hands-on in delivery.

That being said, what do you think is hurting me the worst? I am getting really down about the whole process. I’m feeling like I may never get another job. Everything is writing on getting reemployed at this point.

Do you think that they think I am a flight risk once they hire me and the market gets better? Do they see me as a loser because I got laid off? Do they think I can’t do the job because I was a director and not a doer.

I’d appreciate any feedback and anyone that is an expert would love your thoughts on my résumé and how to tackle these hurdles.

Any feedback is welcome, I don’t mind if it’s rough or not just let me have it bluntly.

Hello,

I was laid off of my job that I had been for 19 years and since have started my job search from the first week in June. I am at the point where I am doubting everything. I have 2 degrees and 1 prominent certificate for my profession. I see the same jobs reposted over and over again even though they received hundreds of applicants, I've had recruiters call and sound promising and then poof and lastly am hearing nothing from employers.

I have had to stop paying unsecured bills and this alone has really made me sick, as I worked so hard on my credit. I know others likely are going through the same experience. I hate complaining but after 100+ applications and 50 variations of my resume I'm feeling down for the first time in my life. I feel as though I will never find a job in this market.

I worked so hard for my previous company, nights, weekends, missed activities to find myself unemployed and desperately looking for a new company I can help build like my last. I was so respected and then a new CEO came in and just laid off anyone she felt aligned to the previous leader. She started with messaging on "culture" (did I mention she was an HR leader?) She made us all feel comfortable and encouraged us to be vulnerable sharing she enjoyed the devil's lettuce. I was not in the mood to socialize in the evenings so maybe it was my fault for not jumping on her culture train... I digress I know, I just needed to say this, been holding it in too long.

Is anyone else feeling hopeless, bitter or just frightened by this job market? Are you finding anything that at least gets you an interview?

Hello All,

I noticed they are trying to price PM jobs at $30-$40 an hour. I am refusing to apply for these. Is anyone else following suit or am I being unreasonable? I have 19 years of experience and can do easy gig work for $30, it just doesn't seem worth it.

8/29
Updated, not sure how, but I passed with AT in all 3 categories…I am genuinely shocked. 😳 but relieved…it makes my latest job rejection palatable ❤️❤️❤️

Thank you for all the kind words ❤️
Gina
——————————————————————————————-

OK, so I have been a project manager for many years in both Waterfall and Agile. In fact I led my last company through a waterfall to agile transition successfully. I finished my BSBM last year and this year I finished my MBA, so I am experienced at testing. I even took project management as part of my BSBM.

I was laid off last year and took a sabbatical to finish my education. I started job hunting in July and it has been a nightmare recruiters, ghosting me, absolutely no callbacks on resumes. It has been hell so I decided to enhance my résumé with the PMP. Luckily, I got approved very quickly and jumped right in. I studied utilizing ChatGPT and PMI Study Hall. I wasn’t missing any questions on ChatGPT no matter how hard he tried to make them and I came in around 74% on Study Hall.

Anyway, I took the exam today feeling pretty confident. I was actually shocked at how the questions were worded. It was nowhere even close to what I experienced in Study Hall, it’s like a whole entire different methodology. Perhaps I got a terrible version of the test but around 90 questions in I was pretty certain I was going fail. I pushed through just in case by some freaking fluke I guessed right enough.

The case study questions are completely ridiculous, they are super long and pointless because the question tells exactly what it’s looking for so I was able to shorten the time and not read through them in their entirety. The rest of the questions were just multiple-choice situational stuff. in fact, every single question wa situational, now I know the exam has a reputation for being hard and it’s prestigious, etc. but I found it quite ridiculous…overkill even. I don’t know for the life of me why they thought 180 questions was necessary, it is overkill and I can say by question 170 I was spent. I breezed through the last 10 questions because I was beat and was so disappointed.

I am now awaiting my score, they say it’ll be ready in 24 hours and for the life of me I have no clue why it’s not automated it is just multiple-choice. Why am I posting? I guess it’s just to share my general discontent with PMI and the PMP. It is like this company has its talons in the profession. It’s about 200 bucks to be a member 500 bucks do the test 59 bucks to do the study hall and I have a feeling I will be paying a retest fee very shortly… so it makes me question. Do they set it up so we have to retest🤔

Also, I noticed in Study Hall that the content isn’t aligned to the newest version of the exam and my suspicions are this is what did me in. If you were using study hall right now, please note there’s a banner at the top stating the misalignment. I would be very careful trusting any post saying that study hall is more challenging than the test because in my case, it was not, not even by a little bit.

Has anyone else had a terrible experience with the exam? Did you feel like you were going to fail and then passed?