A father of four faces more than a decade of disappointment trying to find a stable job despite having an MBA.
Marcial Quinones, 48, remembers when he could find a full-time, well-paying job in technology without even having a high school diploma, he told Business information.
But he is well aware that those quiet days for job seekers in the tech industry are a bygone era.
“I wish there was an easier way, but traditional ways of job searching have been overshadowed by artificial intelligence and the lack of human interaction,” Quinones speculated to the outlet.
Marcial Quinones, 48, was able to find good jobs in the tech industry in the 1990s without even a high school diploma.
Over the years, he has held various part-time jobs and has also developed his own inventory software that he sells to businesses.
But at this point, you also realize that, probably thanks at least in part to automated hiring systems, gaps on your resume are now a major factor holding you back.
From the beginning, Quinones seemed to overcome difficulties and grew up with an abusive father before dropping out of school in the seventh grade.
At 18, finding himself in a transitional independent living facility and suddenly on the verge of becoming a father for the first time, he vowed to get his life back on track.
“At that point in my life, I was trying to change everything and be better because I knew I was going to be a father… I started taking things more seriously and trying to figure out what to do with my life,” he said.
Without a high school diploma, he became a senior technician at an Arizona computer company.
In 1999, Intel hired him as an IT manager and he held the position for a year before being fired in the midst of the dot-com bubble.
In the following years, he earned an associate’s degree and later a bachelor’s degree in computer programming.
Due to bad luck dating back decades, he has been unable to find a stable job in his area of expertise since 2010 (file image)
He then enrolled in an MBA program in “technology management” before landing a job in New Jersey as chief technology officer for an import-export company.
But just two years after taking office, in 2010, he lost his job due to an unspecified difficult situation within his family from which he found it “extremely difficult to recover”.
Since then, she has been struggling to find a stable job, but it is definitely not for lack of trying.
Quinones began posting on Facebook looking for work and visiting local businesses to inquire about hiring, only to be ignored time and again.
He even created an inventory management program that he sold to several clients over the years, although even this original invention was not enough to generate a steady stream of income.
His wife has helped support the family of six through a remote sales job, he added.
In the meantime, Quinones has found work through jobs like printing images on products and driving for Uber (though he only makes $70 a day after expenses), while doing car repairs and plumbing himself to save costs.
In 2015, she began a master’s program in marriage and family counseling, but was unable to complete it because her financial aid ran out.
When she attempted to pick up the program where she left off a few years later, she discovered that many of her credits no longer counted thanks to a change in curriculum requirements.
He told BI he had redone his resume about 25 times, and even paid $300 for a professional review that still failed to land him any interviews.
The publication also verified that it received “between five and ten rejections a day this year,” through screenshots it shared.
Quinones also surmised that he’s in a strange middle ground, as he’s overqualified for an entry-level job in IT but doesn’t have the qualifications to get a foot in the door in another industry.
He further noted that his race may be another factor holding him back, as he suddenly started getting more interviews when he changed his first name on his resume to Tony (a shortened version of his middle name).
In an ideal world, since you live in rural Pennsylvania, 30 miles from any city, you would also need to get a remote position.
He is also aware that his skills are probably behind what many companies are looking for right now, given the rapid pace of opportunity in the tech industry.
“If you haven’t had a job for a while, I can’t magically snap my fingers and make it happen,” Quinones said.