A Gen Zer allegedly rejected for a “shoo-in” job due to her age has been spilling her guts — and a few tears — on social media.
Ticked off TikTokker @fungalmicrobe managed to snag a fair bit of sympathy after sharing a disheartening conversation with a hiring manager — who reportedly denied her a role the twentysomething assumed would be a perfect fit.
“If you’re wondering what the job market looks like right now, look no further than my swollen eyelids,” @fungalmicrobe, whose first name is Alejandra, said in a popular post.
Alejandra claimed that a Gen X hiring manager told her she wasn’t hired because she’s Gen Z.
“That’s been making me cry for the better part of the last five hours,” the woman shared.
She explained that she applied to a job she felt “really good” about because it was at a company she previously worked for — with the same team that she had “excelled” with.
“Everyone on that team really, really liked me,” she insisted, although she noted that no one had alerted her to the job opening — despite making promises they would keep her updated when she left.
“I was a shoo-in. I had done the job before and fit in really well with the team.”
After not hearing back for a while, Alejandra happened to find herself in the elevator with the Gen X hiring manager when she learned the position had been filled.
She was told they had found someone who was “better fitting for the team and had a little bit more history” with the company.
But when Alejandra asked the hiring manager to be candid with her and let her know if there was anything she could do better at future interviews, she began to feel the situation was unjust.
The hiring manager admitted that the Gen Zer had “shared things they wouldn’t have” such as medical issues — and their passion for pursuing a social media presence.
However, what was “really concerning” was the fact that Alejandra admitted that she doesn’t have a five-year plan which the hiring manager frankly told her she believed to be “a Gen Z problem” that showed she’s “not good at commitment” and suggested she should have made something up on the spot.
“You have to understand it’s all about perception, it’s all about optics. Gen Z needs to understand that you don’t have to share everything about yourself,” the hiring manager allegedly said.
In the video, Alejandra defended that the team already knew that she had multiple sclerosis.
She also said that she only brought up social media after being asked what she was passionate about but insisted that not having a five-year plan at her stage in life shouldn’t have disqualified her.
Instead, she claimed that the insistence on having a five-year plan was evidence that the company would rather hire “someone who is lying” and “who wants to look good but isn’t actually good.”
She went on to argue that Gen X and Boomers should take a chance on younger workers questioning how they should know what they want and that they would want to stay in a career if they have yet to have enough time in the field to make that decision.
“I just graduated a year ago and no I don’t know what I want my future to look like,” Alejandra declared noting that her situation is exacerbated by her health issues.
“But I’m a good worker and my resume shows for it,” she said.
Thousands of fellow Gen Zers (and even some millennials) flooded her comments with their anguish about the job market, annoyance at how their generation is perceived and anxiety about the future.
“They want lying slaves who will tell them they want to throw their lives away to work for them forever,” one sympathizer snarked.
A surprising number of companies show bias against Gen Z during the hiring process, a recent survey found.
Resume Builder surveyed 1,000 hiring managers in March and found that 42% consider the age of job seekers when going over resumes, while 38% admitted to reviewing them with age bias.
According to the survey, hiring managers were specifically biased against Gen Z (36%) as they worried that these young job seekers lack experience, job-hop too often, are unprofessional and have a bad work ethic.
Younger workers are also seen as more likely to be “triggered” and galvanized by social media-driven political and social campaigns that could disrupt the workflow and create headaches for their bosses.
However, some experts and Gen Zers claim that these generalizations are historically thrown down the ranks to the freshest faces in the office.
