Career Confidence

33Mister Rogers

I received a note from a young lady on LinkedIn asking me for some advice. She was seriously struggling in her job search. An HR professional, she'd been ghosted, rejected, and passed over more times than she could count, and really, really needed to land a job. I chatted with her through messages, gave her some job search advice, but the tone of her note had my “mom” radar on high alert. So I got real, really fast. “What's really going on here?” I asked her. Without hesitation, she poured out her heart. “I have a new baby,” she told me. “We have no food, no money, and no family in a position to help.”

She had been laid off from her previous job. Unemployment had been delayed, and she was down to her last few dollars. So, I said to her, “Let's solve your immediate problem, give me your address, I'm sending you a load of groceries.” Within a few hours, I'd ordered up a big delivery of milk, bread, diapers, meat, household items, snacks, and enough food to get her through the next few weeks.

She was dumbfounded. I'm a stranger. She's a stranger. But we are both moms. I've been where she was. A few hundred bucks spent; faith in humanity restored. A month or so later, I received a note from her that she'd just accepted a new position that's going to allow her (and her darling little baby) to not only survive but thrive.

While I like to think I'm a generous person (dropping money in the Salvation Army bucket and making donations to the local food bank), I'm not normally ...