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Guy Applies To 60 Places That Said They Were Hiring, Only Gets 1 Interview, Shares How Something Doesn’t Add Up
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Guy Applies To 60 Places That Said They Were Hiring, Only Gets 1 Interview, Shares How Something Doesn’t Add Up

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You’ve probably heard of businesses around the US complaining of staff shortages, especially for hourly work. In the post-pandemic world when businesses are reopening doors and doing everything to attract customers in uncertain times, job vacancies are accelerating like crazy. Or so we are led to believe.

But if there are more vacancies and those willing to fill them up, getting a job should be a matter of seconds. Joey Holz decided to test if that’s the case and submitted 2 applications a day in September. “It was 60 applications, 16 responses by email, 4 emails turned into phone calls, and 1 interview,” Joey told Bored Panda about the underwhelming results his experiment has brought.

On a more solid account, there was 1 interview with a construction company that offered a full-time position on site to clean up for $10 an hour. But according to Joey, the company tried to offer him Florida’s minimum wage ($8.65) to start with, with full-time availability on the worker’s part, although he was scheduled for part-time only.

Scroll down below to see the eye-opening insights of Joey Holz’s experiment that sheds light on this alleged “nobody wants to work anymore” problem, showing that not everything is what the employers would like us to believe.

Businesses around the country have been complaining of staff shortages, creating an illusion that people just don’t want to work anymore these days

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Image credits: ABC15Patrick

Image credits: Flickr

37-year-old Joey Holz told Business Insider that he first became aware of the complaints about a labor shortage last year. It was when he called to donate convalescent plasma at a clinic near Fort Myers, Florida. He recounted: “The guy went on this rant about how he can’t find help and he can’t keep anybody in his medical facility because they all quit over the stimulus checks. And I’m like, ‘Your medical professionals quit over $1,200 checks? That’s weird.'”

The former food service worker and charter-boat crewman found it hard to believe that government money was keeping people out of the labor force, especially when the end of expanded federal unemployment benefits did not seem to trigger a surge in employment. All expanded benefits ended in September, but 26 states—including Florida—ended them early in June and July.

So, Joey Holz did the smart experiment, sending out two job applications a day in September and his results were pretty… shocking

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Image credits: Mohawk Joey

So in order to find out what’s up, Joey ran a smart experiment. Targeting restaurants that were openly desperate about their staffing shortages, he sent job applications willing to land a position there.From September 1 up to the end of the month, sending two applications daily, Joey had already handed in 60 applications.

Joey’s experiment has gone viral for exposing businesses that openly insist they’re desperate for workers

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Image credits: Mohawk Joey

Incredibly, all this work didn’t actually pay off as much as one would expect with desperate businesses seeking staff members. From 60 applications, Joey received 16 responses by email, 4 emails that turned into phone calls, and 1 interview.

He then shared an illuminating pie chart that sums up the results from #JoeyHolz’ experiment, although he addressed the fact that the results may not be representative of the larger labor challenges in the country.

Image credits: SandDollar04

Image credits: SandDollar04

After going viral on social media, #TheJoeyHolzExperiment didn’t end just there. In fact, he’s up and ready for yet another step. “I am now opening the data collection to submissions by anyone who has a personal experience like mine,” he told us. Joey’s goal is getting a full look, not just his, at what’s really happening in the labor market.

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“This is how we fight back!” says the slogan of his new campaign. In this form, the respondents are asked to submit details on their most recent job search, the amount of applications submitted, the percent who responded, and the interviews attended.

“There’s no way my story is going to tell it for everybody, but to move the Joey Holz experiment forward, I set up a Google form asking for anyone who wants to submit job search information in a way that we can quantify the data. That’s going to give us a more comprehensive picture of what’s really going on,” Joey explained.

He is planning to collect responses throughout a month and review the data at the end of November. Let’s wait and see what he tells us about the state of the job market right now, which should finally debunk the infamous “nobody wants to work anymore” we have all been hearing a lot lately.

And many people had a lot to comment on this whole situation

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Liucija Adomaite

Liucija Adomaite

Writer, Community member

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Liucija Adomaite is a creative mind with years of experience in copywriting. She has a dynamic set of experiences from advertising, academia, and journalism. This time, she has set out on a journey to investigate the ways in which we communicate ideas on a large scale. Her current mission is to find a magic formula for how to make ideas, news, and other such things spread like a virus.

Read less »
Liucija Adomaite

Liucija Adomaite

Writer, Community member

Liucija Adomaite is a creative mind with years of experience in copywriting. She has a dynamic set of experiences from advertising, academia, and journalism. This time, she has set out on a journey to investigate the ways in which we communicate ideas on a large scale. Her current mission is to find a magic formula for how to make ideas, news, and other such things spread like a virus.

Mindaugas Balčiauskas

Mindaugas Balčiauskas

Author, BoredPanda staff

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I'm a visual editor at Bored Panda. I kickstart my day with a mug of coffee bigger than my head, ready to tackle Photoshop. I navigate through the digital jungle with finesse, fueled by bamboo breaks and caffeine kicks. When the workday winds down, you might catch me devouring bamboo snacks while binging on the latest TV show, gaming or I could be out in nature, soaking up the tranquility and communing with my inner panda.

Read less »

Mindaugas Balčiauskas

Mindaugas Balčiauskas

Author, BoredPanda staff

I'm a visual editor at Bored Panda. I kickstart my day with a mug of coffee bigger than my head, ready to tackle Photoshop. I navigate through the digital jungle with finesse, fueled by bamboo breaks and caffeine kicks. When the workday winds down, you might catch me devouring bamboo snacks while binging on the latest TV show, gaming or I could be out in nature, soaking up the tranquility and communing with my inner panda.

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Ivana
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Employers are so desperate to go back to their old ways instead of keeping up with demand. Employees want more money, PTO, and to be treated as human.

Al Christensen
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

"They don't want to work" is a cover for "We want to keep staff low and underpaid and blame the resulting bad service on 'lazy workers'." It's an orchestrated move led by management organizations.

Jon Steensen
Community Member
6 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

yep and the few loyal employess who stick around, we will overwork till the breaking point, and then wonder why they went missing.

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Sky Render
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I thought it rather suspicious, given so many Southern states have lifted restrictions unwisely and how many in said states seem quite content to put their lives at risk so casually, that even there these corporations could find no employees. They're basically crab-bucketing because they figure that Average Joe will break first. Sickening.

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Ivana
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Employers are so desperate to go back to their old ways instead of keeping up with demand. Employees want more money, PTO, and to be treated as human.

Al Christensen
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

"They don't want to work" is a cover for "We want to keep staff low and underpaid and blame the resulting bad service on 'lazy workers'." It's an orchestrated move led by management organizations.

Jon Steensen
Community Member
6 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

yep and the few loyal employess who stick around, we will overwork till the breaking point, and then wonder why they went missing.

Load More Replies...
Sky Render
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I thought it rather suspicious, given so many Southern states have lifted restrictions unwisely and how many in said states seem quite content to put their lives at risk so casually, that even there these corporations could find no employees. They're basically crab-bucketing because they figure that Average Joe will break first. Sickening.

Load More Comments
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