LaToya M. Davidson-Perez

I have recently realized that sometimes in life we go through a period of false starts. Over the course of the past few months I’ve had two employers and am now down to none. It’s an odd feeling, really. Going from working for a singular employer for over a decade to rejoining the land of the job seekers, it’s a road filled with many ups and downs. For anyone who’s been without a job for an extended period, you know that the road seems to be filled with a lot of downs. Sometimes you must take several steps back in order to move forward.

There are days where I am on the computer for hours on end applying to jobs. It often feels like I’m throwing my resume and applications into an abyss. So many sites require you to provide job histories going as far back as fifteen years. While I don’t have a problem with that, it’s hard for individuals like myself who have a thorough list of work experience and education to list them all without being sucked into the time chasm. I suggest building LinkedIn profile and creating a Taleo universal profile to assist you in easily importing some of the data. However, be prepared to still have a lot of tweaking and editing and sweat equity to put in.

If you’ve been out of the job market for a while, there are some changes. The last time I job hunted you had to more literally pound the pavement in search of a job. And despite having spent the past several years in HR, I must constantly remind myself that there’s no one perfect résumé or any guarantees in making your qualifications stand out. I’ve found that I’ve become one of the very people I’d hope to never become, I’ve made myself so over-qualified that employers automatically think, “she won’t stick around.” I’m reluctant to dumb down my qualifications as I want to be able to paint the most accurate picture of myself that’s possible. Read the rest of this entry »

I’d set his alarm for 5am. I can only assume that it was only moments after that I felt him elbowing me to wake up. I’d only been asleep for a few hours and my groaning as he woke me was testament to that fact. I didn’t fully understand his almost palpable excitement. I was cranky and slowly dragged myself off to the shower. He seemed to have a little extra pep in his step as well as an understandable nervousness. Of course I’d accompany him on his big day. It was a day that I would never have myself but one that he’d been waiting for since his arrival to the United States. It was the day he hoped he’d become an American citizen.

We fought, as many married couples do, prior to even exiting our neighborhood. It was early in the morning and tensions were high. I’d still been on edge about our finances. It was a constant weight that I’ve carried for months. My mood and thoughts were forever in that space. I’m sure that I could’ve and should’ve been far more understanding of what he must’ve been feeling. I was born in the United States. Like many others, I often take that for granted. I wake up most mornings never thinking about the fact that I’m in pursuit of my own American Dream, a dream that was essentially my own birthright. I suppose that as someone who’s born here it’s lost on us. We have expectations and demands that many want and dream of. My husband, having moved to the US from Trinidad in the late nineties, was always in pursuit of this dream. After years of waiting he was finally reached the point where he could seek citizenship on his own. He’s never had the opportunity to do the handful of things that we as Americans often lament. He’s not yet experienced the excitement of casting his ballot nor has he had the privilege of being summoned for jury duty. These were both among the list of things he’d desperately wanted to do. Read the rest of this entry »

One thing you can count on for sure is this: there are always going to be things in life that disappoint you. It may be a daily or occasional occurrence, but it’s guaranteed to happen. Bad people and bad situations happen to us all. No matter how good of a person you try to be, it’s impossible to escape life. And while it’s often said that you are the author of your own destiny, that destiny will include some unforeseen as well as some obvious pitfalls along the way.

As I grow older, I become more guarded. In my youth I was very social, so much so that my adult self barely recognizes the transformation. Life has a cruel way of beating us down. Whether we allow it to or not, we’re impacted and changed by many of life’s defining moments. I’ve had a history of trusting and caring for the wrong people. Friends, family, coworkers, you name it, I would blindly trust them even when their own actions and behavior made others think and do otherwise. I’d grown accustomed to believing, even as an adult, that accepting this was a part of life.

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I tried to be careful by contacting my insurance provider upon deciding to resign from my job. I suppose no matter how careful you try to be, life happens. When I thought that I would be insured for another month, I was rudely awakened by being told I was misinformed and that I was now among the millions of Americans that are uninsured.

It’s a very strange feeling. I’d been insured through my job for over a decade, and during that time, like many, simply considered it something that was not worth thinking about. I’d grown accustomed to the system. I was even my former employer’s benefits coordinator. I knew how the system worked and had finally figured out how to maximize those benefits. Now, unemployed, I felt alone. Frustrated. The shock of it is still something that I’m adjusting to. To be fully insured one minute and then uninsured the next is not something I had thought would realistically happen to me.

I suppose if there ever is a good time to be without health insurance, now would be that time. There are now more options out there for the uninsured. Regardless of what your political views are, there is something to be said about the ability for you to get insurance where that wasn’t available before. Although I’d looked at the healthcare.gov website out of prior curiosity as a benefit coordinator, now I looked at it as someone who needed it. Read the rest of this entry »

How do you lose a job in one day? I can now tell you. You can lose a job in one day by being overqualified. Trust me, the pain is no different than losing it in any other way. However, what I realize is that just like any life experience, it’s all a matter of how you deal with it.

I had put in a full day, stayed late, and prepped my boss for the next day. I got myself quickly acclimated and learned a lot more information than most even before my first day. On my first day I assisted with processing new hires and even shocked one of them when I informed her that it was my first day. I was even told to make myself at home and personalize my workspace. Imagine my surprise that within less than an hour I was told, in a roundabout manner, that I was overqualified.

Here’s the thing, I was overqualified when I applied, overqualified when I was interviewed and overqualified when I showed up and worked my shift. I wasn’t insulted by the rate of pay because I am not afraid of starting from the ground level and working my way up. I’ve amassed a large skill set and feel dumbfounded that doing so would work to my disadvantage after obtaining the job. Read the rest of this entry »