Seventeen months out of work. More applications than they could count, sent to companies all across the country, willing to relocate anywhere. There were stretches living in a car, then on a friend’s floor. There were plenty of video interviews — and plenty of rejections, or nothing at all.
They were fifty-one, and they suspected the age was doing most of the deciding.
Then came one more video interview. They did what they always did: researched the company, researched the role, showed up prepared. Twenty minutes in, the interviewer offered them the job. The company had interviewed many people, they said, and normally would not make an offer during an interview at all — but they thought this candidate was the perfect fit. The written offer arrived the next day.
What they noticed most was that the same thing that had been a liability everywhere else — the age, the years — was the reason this one wanted them.