Experiencing Rejection Through My Immigrant Mother’s Job Hunt
By: Kim Te
Tags: Growing Up, Relationships, Family, Life Lessons, Immigrants

Experiencing Rejection Through My Immigrant Mother’s Job Hunt

Photo by Simon Launay on Unsplash

We prepared for the prospect of a new job for months and finally received an opportunity for a 30-minute Zoom interview call on a Friday morning before Christmas.

My mom and I only had 2.5 days to prepare for her first interview in 30 years. With this time pressure, we crammed. I had already shared bountiful interview tips, questions, and practical YouTube videos for her to watch so she had some basics down. However, as a 53-year-old woman who raised 2 adult children, 1 teenage son, and currently the sole breadwinner of her household, she was wracked with nerves. She spent hours preparing and we had 3 separate 1-hour practice interviews leading up to that Friday.

That morning, she was as ready as she could be after we ran through our last 1-hour practice session. Her interview was at 10am so we ended our call at 9:50am so she had time to hop onto the interview’s Zoom link. I bid her good luck and told her to try her best.

At 10:11am, she video called me on WhatsApp and told me her interview was over. My heart sunk and my stomach hurt. I could not believe that they only gave her 10 minutes, if that. After the countless applications and hours of prep, her first interview took only 10 minutes and they had only asked her one question — whether she knew a specific tool functionality that was not even listed on the job description.

I hid my crestfallen emotion as I told her that it was only her first one and that we’d get another shot so don’t worry about it. She was disappointed as well and a bit bewildered by the brevity but not entirely surprised. We discussed next steps and hung up.

After 30 years as a bookkeeper, my mom asked me to help her look for a new job. She is high school educated and while fluent in English, you can’t ignore the broken grammar and frequent mispronunciations. She came to America from Cambodia as a refugee during the brutal Khmer Rouge movement. At that time, she spoke no English, had nothing to her name, and was thrust into the American culture as a foreign teenager. Yet she still managed to secure a bookkeeper job at 23 and successfully raise 3 privileged Asian-American children. While my older sibling and I can now financially support her, my father, and teenage brother, it’s not a sustainable long term commitment hence her job hunt.

I did not expect to take the rejection as hard as I had. I experienced 3 main emotions:

Anger at the interviewers for only asking one question and then disqualifying my mom. If they thought just one question could test competency, why not just send it via email rather than waste everyone’s time? Disbelief that this was my mom’s first experience back on the job market and how discouraging that might feel for her. Resentment that my parents lacked financial stability at this age and still required such basic help. I feel guilty about this one but it was how I felt.

However, after mulling it over for a few hours, I thought there was nothing we could do but move forward. I feel like I have my own adult child that I am now responsible for and need to remain positive for them. I take comfort in knowing that at least we have started with 1 interview and things were moving in an upward direction. Even more comfort that my mom has this new experience under her belt and will be able to react more appropriately next time. I sent her a text message later -