This is how I’ve been conducting my job search since March.
I open my browser, then a job searching site. A majority of the listings were posted 30+ days ago. A handful of listings are new, and fewer are entry-level. The listings are part-time, contract, and temporary. The next day, I will see the listings again, except on a different site. I click on one. The position requires two to five years of experience and extensive knowledge of every cataloging standard with an acronym. There is no listed salary. I close it. I check my bank account. I return to the listing. I start an application. While writing the cover letter, I’m resigned to the fact that I don’t know every standard with an acronym. I bookmark the application. I check my student loans balance. I go back to the bookmarked application. I finish and submit it. I close the browser. I re-open my browser to a job searching site, and it begins again.
Sometimes during this process, there is a domino-effect of feelings. First I feel frustrated that there are so few open positions, and the few that exist have no long-term stability. Then I feel insecure and inadequate from reviewing job descriptions written for librarians with more experience. I feel uncertainty due to the lack of listed salary. I feel angry at advice from the profession that encourages–or even demands–free labor. I feel helpless and desperate. I feel resentful because I hear familiar family voices reprimanding me for being lazy and useless. I feel frustrated at myself because I start to believe them. I bargain with myself, thinking that I should just apply to jobs and stick it out, no matter how little the pay. I feel guilty for being angry at my family because they were trying to move forward in their own way. I feel ashamed because I start to believe I don’t do enough for my career. I feel avoidant and rationalize my unemployment as situational. Even so, I feel anxious from anticipating judgement and disappointment. I feel alone with my thoughts because I’m afraid to go outside and I don’t know how to talk about it. I feel afraid because of the anti-Asian racism in the profession and outside my window. I feel targeted and wary. The feelings come and go, so they don’t feel worth talking about. I fear that judgement of me as a failure is judgement of my value as an individual. What people think of me is more important than what I think of myself.
Sometimes I feel fine.
I started thinking about these feelings. Can they be attributed to believing in meritocracy? Maybe they are a result of pressure from non-negotiable, unconditional family obligation? Maybe they are a result of a bad hiring system? Most likely, it’s all of it at once.
I think about the uncertainty created by the way job listings are written, and the opaque institutions that write them. I have questions about them, especially during COVID-19. Is the position actually on hold? Is the institution even hiring? Did they terminate or furlough workers? How much are they paying? Institutions with terminated positions can remove postings, but sometimes they don’t. Some institutions announce a hiring freeze, but not all of them do. Institutions can list pay, but more often than not, applicants have to gamble and hope for sustainable wages. Institutions can be transparent, but many are not.
In addition to navigating a difficult search process, institutions are creating precarious positions. These positions require a huge investment from workers, but they are the first to be cut with little warning and no safety net. The job search process is difficult because institutions made it difficult, and it hasn’t changed. This was true before COVID-19. Now, it is worse.
The reason I’m job searching in the first place is because my former employer terminated all part-time and intern positions in reaction to COVID-19. But before termination, I was working with no company health insurance, no retirement benefits, no vacation days, and little opportunity for that position to become full-time. I had no job security. And, this is not the first time. I’ve been in an endless loop of precarious employment since high school, which was always paired with required free labor. This structure reinforces social hierarchies and privilege.
Precarity in the profession is a catalyst for emotional harm and financial instability. It creates uncertainty, insecurity, frustration, anxiety, and fear. On a larger scale, it reinforces a system of oppression that normalizes the illusion of meritocracy. I came into the profession with the hope that I can do good work, and am disillusioned by—and now keenly aware of—the ironic poor treatment of workers. This is vocational awe, and it is a problem. Why do I continue to perceive my struggle completely as my failure, rather than a failure of an unjust society?
In the past weeks, after the end of my final semester, I allowed and continue to allow myself room to work through these thoughts and emotions. Maybe some of my feelings come not just from how others see me, but how institutions treat workers. On a deeper level, I’m working through that aspect of self-worth. I continuously untangle myself from meritocracy not in the job hunt process, but from beliefs I’ve taken granted as truths my whole life. I have plenty of time to try to make sense of it.
Resources
“All I did was get this Golden Ticket”: Negative Emotions, Cruel Optimisms, and the Library Job Search by Dylan Burns and Hailley Fargo
Precarity in Libraries research project and accompanying Twitter account @LISprecarity
“Troubleshooting the Job Search” by Madison Sullivan, Kristina Williams, and Rebecca Hodson
“Vocational Awe and Librarianship: The Lies We Tell Ourselves” by Fobazi Ettarh
Care Package by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center (Photosynth, a soundbath by Low Leaf, Alex Abalos & Adam Labuen)
Editing assistance provided by Jessica Dai.