12 The State of the Job Market for Black Women

For the past year, Black women have been facing job loss and the most challenging job market we've seen in a long time.

For some of us, navigating this space has presented exhaustion, hopelessness, and fear about our career trajectories and financial stability.

In this podcast episode, Mercedes Swan, the Career Love Coach sets out to inspire some hope by sharing what's going on in the job market for Black Women based on employment data, how this is impacting Black women, and how you can confidently navigate the job market with confidence by leveraging Brilliance Niching!

Start Brilliance Niching: The show featured two resources to help you start defining your Black Woman Brilliance!

• Get the Black Woman Brilliance Niching Workbook to get clear on your niche for your 2026 job search: https://www.mercedesswan.com/offers/8inUpAAF
• Watch the Black Woman Bliss Blueprint Webinar, which highlights Brilliance Niching and a 90-day Job Search Strategy: https://www.mercedesswan.com/bliss

Join the Black Woman Bliss Community

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Join now with a 14-day free trial: https://www.mercedesswan.com/offers/eJeeU6Va/checkout

Work with Mercedes Swan:

Mercedes loves coaching and mentoring Black women who are launching their job search, learning to navigate the workplace with confidence or are planning their 9-5 exit by building a business she loves.

Connect with Mercedes here to explore 1:1 Coaching or Mentoring: https://www.mercedesswan.com/connect

Referenced in the Show

• Economic Policy Institute Blog
• Economic Policy Institute Data 
• 2025 Lean In Report
•  Logan In the Future 
•  Tank Rhodes 
•  Why 300,000 Black Women Were Pushed Out Of The Workforce  

Transcripts

Mercedes Swan (00:00)
Black women are still getting laid off at higher rates and everyone is telling us to just keep applying. But girl, you and I both know that the job market is trash and I'm here to tell you that it is not your fault, okay? For the past few months, I have been monitoring the job market and doing a little bit of research and analyzing what's actually working for black women and what's not. So in this episode, I am breaking down what's happening in this job market and what you need to do.

to navigate it with confidence. If you are exhausted from applying to jobs, getting ghosted, and worrying about layoffs, this episode is for you, so let's get into it.

All right, sis, I am ready to get into it, okay? We have three big topics that we're covering in this episode. The first one is an explanation of the job market because I know y'all love to know why is this happening. You don't wanna just know what's happening, you wanna know why. We're gonna end up talking about how this is actually really impacting black women based on the factors that we are seeing in the job market and I have some really interesting, cool research to share with you. So hopefully I get to share those on the screen.

And then the last thing we're gonna do is talk about some strategies that are going to help you in this job market. Again, the goal of this is not to blame you, but at the end of the day, we do have to do some problem solving and see how we can make it work, okay? So again, we're not victim blaming here, but we are talking about what we can do, okay? And at the end of this episode, we are going to talk about this concept called brilliance niching, which is the only thing that I think is actually working for a black woman in this job market. So we're gonna go through what it is and how you can leverage it.

All right, let's go to topic one. By the way, this podcast is sponsored by the Black Women Bliss community. So to all of our members, thank you for supporting this work. Thank you for being a part of the community. And if you want to learn more about the community and join, learn more in the show notes. Okay, so let's get started with an explanation of what's actually going on in this job market. So we know in the beginning of 2025, things started to hit the fan. I think many of us thought it was going to hit the fan, but I think the like...

The fallout was more than I think we really thought it was. I mean, I'm gonna be honest, even as a career coach and somebody who was in the DEI space, I didn't think this was gonna hit black women as fast. I didn't think that we weren't gonna be impacted at all, but I didn't think it was gonna be this fast, right? And so in the beginning of the year, we start seeing all of these reports come out. I mean, we're seeing it, right? If you're chronically on LinkedIn like I am, you started seeing all the reports of black women losing jobs and I'm looking for work and all of these other types of things that had been ongoing, but it almost seems like it was just...

back to back to back, ⁓ beginning to mid 2025, right? And so we began to see this shift and then the reports came out that said, okay, the data, the Bureau of Labor Statistics is actually releasing things that say that black women's rate of unemployment is increasing exponentially. And by the way, this many black women, which has continued to increase from the 300,000, has continued to increase throughout the year and going into 2025, right?

So I want to talk about the different dynamics of why I think this is happening because I do know in order for you to keep moving forward in your job search, you honestly, you need to understand that it is not you. There are a lot of dynamics going on. ⁓ And so I think that, again, I'm gonna talk about the concept of brilliance niching and why that's going to be extremely important for you to move forward. But that being said, I'm gonna take us back kind of through history about how this job market got here.

and what that's doing to black women so that you have that concept before we actually go into strategy, right? Because I need your love on yourself, okay? So back in 2020, so my background, by the way, is executive recruitment, right? So in this 2020 to 2023 job market, I was in the thick of it hiring candidates. Like I said, I was an executive recruiter. I was also doing a lot of talent acquisition consulting and...

there was just a lot going on, right? So 2020, we all know the world locked down and that meant that there was a huge like decline in job loss, right? And I'll share the graphic that shares that for our communities, right? So there was a huge job loss across the board, not just for the black community and black women, but across the board due to the pandemic, right? And so we see that kind of bounce back as the world starts reopening and we see that

Right? The unemployment rate is improving and it's kind of normalizing. And then all of a sudden, I think because so many people were coming to work and employers were really trying to grab up talent to take advantage of this moment. Right? We know that there were so many organizations, particularly in tech, that were just booming because everybody was at home. Right. And so it was almost like a war for talent. And so that meant that it made it super easy.

to pivot and get a new job. I am one of the black women who quote unquote leapt over the broken rung. So the broken rung is a concept where a lot of marginalized candidates and particularly black women are not able to move from individual contributors where they're not managing anybody into a manager level role. Why? Because there's not access and support and development and also people aren't advocating for us. There's a lot of things that contribute to the broken rung, right?

probably link below so you can look at reports. think Lean In really talks about it a lot. I think it's actually their concept. Sorry if that's incorrect. But that being said, I wasn't planning on talking about the broken run. But that being said, I was one of those black women who moved into a management role, which is also coinciding with the glass cliff. So many black women were promoted during this very uncertain time in history in 2020.

So again, I was one of those black women. was promoted into my first manager, my first formal manager level role in 2020, of, close to the end of 2020. And so during this time as a recruiter, like literally in the thick of it, I was in a situation where I would open a position and there would be like 500 applications, right? And it was just wild because like 90 % of them weren't qualified candidates or they hadn't tailored their resume.

But also at the time we were so desperate to just hurry up and bring people back in from post lock like we're reopening, we're rehiring, hiring freezes are gone. And by the time I would actually invite candidates to an interview, they'd be like, I've already had a job. And so even though there was a large volume of applications, employers had to move very quickly in order to secure a new hire because people were just trying to hire as quickly as they possibly could.

And even though there were a lot of positions per requisition or per job posting, there were still, I would say it was still an employee's market, right? It was a job seekers market, meaning there were more opportunities for job seekers, or sorry, there were more jobs per job seekers, so was easy to get a job, right? And then we kind of come from the swing back, where a lot of these, like I think in between the 2022, 2023, 2024,

Job market a lot of these tech organizations that I think went through this boom post kovat right because we were all using technology We were all remote working all of those things I think led to a Shift in the job market where a lot of people were being laid off So now you have this quote-unquote prime talent that's worked for Fortune 500 companies into the job market meaning that for other people who don't maybe have that background or expertise

It's harder, right? Because those people are seen as the most desirable candidates, right? Because they've worked for these types of organizations, right? So then moving into 2023, it became a much more challenging job market, but it was still working that you could apply to a lot of different jobs with a more generalized resume and still get a decent amount of interviews, right? That absolutely happened for me. was job seeking in 2023.

And I was applying to quite a bit of jobs, but I was actually having a really hard time in that I wasn't getting, like I used to be able to apply to like 10 jobs and like half of them I get interviews for and the other half of like, whatever, cool, like fine. And then maybe one of those I got an offer for and was fine. That's how all of my other job searches had gone prior to this, right? So was really weird that I was applying to like 100, 200, 300 jobs and I was really not getting that many interviews. Here's the thing though.

even in that job market was more challenging, it just means that you had to play the number game and it was still going to work out fine. Now, because of the 2020 to 2023 slash 2024 job market, I think what happened is that we began to normalize that general resumes can just make it. That are like, we don't have to put in that much effort to network or follow up or to really ⁓ make our professional brand super clear because

we know at the end of the day, like it's gonna, it's just a numbers game. We gotta just get it out there. Now the difference with the 2025 slash 2026 job market and beyond is that it is truly an employer's job market. So they are not having agile ⁓ recruitment practices, meaning they don't care how long it takes a candidate to move through their process because they could wait six months and a candidate will still be in their pool, in their funnel, right?

It also means that because all of the, there's some other challenges I'll talk about, but because of the dynamics and what's going in the job market and how talent is moving, it means that employers get to be slower, pickier, and less efficient, if we're gonna be honest, in their search process. And I think there are a lot of compounding factors to that, which is why we've shifted so much in the last five to six years.

in the job market and just going to tell you about those compounding factors now so that you can kind of know what's going on. Compounding factor number one, anti-DEI. Whether you say DEI is performative or not, even in organizations that were engaging in quote unquote performative DEI, likely released training and resources and expectations around hiring that ensured that they reached a more diverse audience that

they had some equity measures to support marginalized groups and that they were inclusive, meaning that they could prove to an organization that they were actually taking efforts to hire individuals that were different and ensure that they felt comfortable working there, right? DEI, right? We got the belonging, the justice, the access. There's a lot of other things that we could talk about. But if we talk about that at a basis, like there were some big tech organizations that I heard of.

That was basically, I mean, they weren't doing quotas, but they were saying like you had to have a certain amount of diversity in your talent pool before you could start hiring, right? And that's very performative, but at the end of the day, it did result in more black and brown, black women candidates, right? Being in their candidate pool, more diverse audiences, right? Or more diverse candidates. And so at the end of the day, even if it was performative, it still worked.

Now organizations, whether it was performative or actually really they were really engaging in true allyship and change, a lot of those things either went away or they were made illegal or they were kind of put on a back burner or they were silent or they went together all together due to the pressures of our political administration, right? So there's all of these dynamics, whether somebody was really trying to do the work or they were not, that led to a difference and a result in how we showed up and

interacted as black women, but other marginalized candidates, right, in the candidate pool, right? So because those things went away, that meant there was less effort and there's less opportunity, which means that organizations right now are not training, to the extent, right, are not training their organizations against ⁓ unconscious bias, right? They're likely not training more around how to screen better in their candidate pools because those are, a lot of the times, that's like a product

of DEI training, right? We have to know how to vet people appropriately based on their knowledge, skills, and abilities versus what their background is or how much we connect to them. And those are most often led by DEI programs and professionals or HR teams that are actually connected and care about that work, right? It's not just DEI teams. ⁓ And then it also normalized whether or not you needed to care about it, right? And normalize the fact that you didn't need to care anymore.

Right? And so all of these compounding factors means that less black women were reached out to, and I'm getting into impact oopsies, less black women are reached out to, there's less opportunities for development. And by the way, I don't need to go set up all of these programs to teach people how to hire better. Okay? Which takes us to our next point with AI job screening and AI recruitment tools and AI resume tools. Okay?

So I want to do a shout out to Logan on TikTok. I will put her information in the show notes, but she made this post of this article that came out, which basically demonstrated that employers and hiring teams and hiring managers are completely ineffective at screening candidates, right? Evaluating them, understanding who's a good candidate and who's a bad candidate. Pre-2020, pre-AI, people are bad at hiring. People are bad at evaluation. Even if you say,

it's not bias related. People do a bad job at saying, I have criteria that I have for a job. There are certain things that I want to see out of a candidate and that they know how that's like aligned to actually being successful in a job. Right. And I say that because that's been my job for eight plus years. Right. And so because I know that it only made it harder or worse when we moved into the AI era. Right. So in this case.

people are leveraging more AI screening for candidates, right? Which we know has bias, right? There's a lawsuit, I, where is it? I think it's a workday lawsuit that's out. I don't think it's been resolved, but I think it's been like over a year where there were black candidates, particularly one that was discriminated against. ⁓ And so we have these tools where AI is biased. AI's lot of times not effective.

but AI is still screening candidates and AI is still evaluating. There's even AI reference checks. Can you imagine how biased that is? AI reference checks? my God, okay, I'm back, I'm back.

So we have ⁓ AI screening candidates ineffectively, right? And on the other hand, we're telling, I mean, as a career coach, I'm absolutely telling, but I created a whole bot for this. I am telling candidates to leverage AI to make sure that AI is going to effectively read their resume. I am, I promise you I am. And that's because it's most likely being screened.

by AI. Now there's other pieces to that where you do need to make sure that once it gets through AI that a human is going to like it, but I'm just telling you that it means that at the end of the day, job seekers are writing better resumes because there's AI that's actually designed to do that. And then as a result, AI is reading AI. And it means that resumes and skill sets are not distinguishable.

And then by the way, because people were already bad at reading resumes, it now means that when they read an AI written resume that's actually optimized, it has keywords, it has metrics, because more people are then having better resumes, it means that it's an indistinguishable resume.

Hey love, can we take a quick pause? If you've been listening to this conversation and feel that calling that says, know I meant for more, this is your side. I want to personally invite you to join me for the Black Women Bliss Blueprint Webinar.

It's a free webinar designed to help you get clear on your purpose, release limiting beliefs, and start building a career or business that actually feels like freedom. In this session, I'm breaking down how to identify your black woman brilliance or your unique gifts, strengths, and value. How to align your career or business with what truly lights you up and how to create an exit plan from that job, situation, or season that no longer serves you.

Contrary to what we've been told, you don't have to hustle your way to happiness. You can build success from a place of ease, clarity, and joy. So if you're ready to step into your Black Woman Bliss era, I'd love to see you there. Just head to the show notes or mercedeswan.com forward slash bliss to save your seat. All right, love, let's get back to the episode.

⁓ And that leads us to point three, which means that there's no longer agile recruitment, right? So when we go through this process, are people really being strung along in a job search so long for six months to a year? I mean, when that's happening, that also means that our average job search length is increasing exponentially.

And it's increasing exponentially because people can't evaluate because they're using AI so they can't make a hiring decision. So they're extending their hiring process to do better evaluation. And as a result, that's just lengthening the job market, the job search for others. Now I'm going to talk about something later on, which I guess I'm just going to call application fatigue. OK, that's happening. But this recruitment process shifted from, again, that 2020 to 2021, 2022.

job market to employers just dragging their feet which is extremely frustrating but I do think that is related to why people aren't getting hired the unemployment rate is higher because it's just taking people much longer to move through the recruitment process and as a result get a job. Let's talk about the recruitment boom okay so ⁓ I'm not trying to be elitist or I'm not trying to be a jerk but I can't tell you like between 2020 and 2022

So many recruiters were hired. I mean, I was just turning around and there was more recruiters. I'm like, oh, we're multiplying. And I mean, I say that I don't want to sound elitist because it makes me sound like, well, all these people were really recruiters. If they were hired and they were doing the work, they were a recruiter, right? But I just I'm telling you, like it almost exploded. And it was because of the hiring wars, like they needed more recruiters to hire more candidates. And so it just kept getting more and more and more. And then, you know, what happens when we moved into 2023 and that boom was coming back down?

All of those recruiters got laid off and there are so many people. mean, I go through LinkedIn and I'm like looking at people, random people's profile for like whatever. Maybe they commented on something and like, you know how many times I go blah, blah, blah, blah, they're in this career path, recruiter, and then they're like off in another career path. Cause it's just like in that time that was like happening everywhere. Okay, so.

Not only that, but when they were laying off all the recruiters, they were also laying off a huge amount of their HR teams as well for the same exact reasons they needed more HR infrastructure to navigate things post pandemic. And then when the layoffs came, all of those people got cut, HR teams shrank from the outside looking in, and a lot of them were on hiring freezes. And so what does that mean? That means recruitment teams and HR teams are understaffed.

That is exactly what that means. A lot of us were understaffed before this because people don't value HR. And if you are the person that's like HR is the devil, like you know what, sorry, the rest of this podcast isn't for you. But when we start, like we talk about things about like demonizing HR and like HR is not your friend, HR is not doing all of these things, like it is a factor that HR is not always positioned to be most effective due to staffing.

⁓ and due to resources, Monetary resources to have a fully functioning effective HR team. That's just a fact of the matter in my opinion, okay? So when we talk about why is recruitment so bad, why is it taking so long? It's because there's not enough recruiters, okay? And there's not enough recruiters advising, okay? And then the HR team who was kind of overseeing this hopefully, right?

doesn't have enough resources, right? And I was like, I talked to somebody the other day that was like, oh my gosh, I have like a hiring manager doing all the recruitment themselves.

Sorry for it, like not for the job seeker, it's not fair. Not for you as a black woman who's going through the process, but for organizations that choose not to staff HR teams to the extent that we need so that we can actually create effective, inclusive, high performing organizations. I can't help you. Anyway, okay. So the last thing in all of these, so I've talked about all these compounding factors, right?

But the reality is, is if you go to an interview and you don't feel like the interviewer was engaged with you or they understood you or if the questions even made sense or anything like that, these are all signs that all these factors are resulting in at the end of the day, poor evaluation of tools of candidates and poor tools that are resulting in even worse evaluation. And so you take all of that and you say,

That is really why we are where we are in this job market, right? Yes, there could be shrinking jobs. Yes, the economy is not expanding inflation. All of our economic and political upheaval. Yes, those are all things as to why the job market was shrink. But it's not an explanation for things like ghosting, ineffectiveness, long recruitment times, right? Those are all ⁓ an extension of workplace culture, policies and procedures.

that result again at the end of the day, poor evaluation. And that is seriously impacting black women who are in the workplace and who are job seeking or even laid off right now. ⁓ So as we wrap this section, I know that was probably a little bit more than I intended to share, but I do think that understanding the dynamics and also like how I'm seeing it evolve is extremely helpful to know because again, if you don't hear back from a recruiter,

If you think somebody is discriminating against you, if you find that questions are weird and that AI is screening you out, you are probably correct because these are all of the compounding factors that I've just mentioned. I would love to know from you, whether you're on Spotify or on LinkedIn or YouTube, wherever you're listening to this, let me know if you've seen this. Like where has this been showing up in your job market? What are some of the sneaky suspicions that you have?

Have I like affirmed anything for you? I would absolutely love to know. And yeah, I'll be in the comments with you girl because we're child together. All right, now we're gonna talk about how this is continuing to impact black women. Let's get into it, next point. All right, so let's talk about the impact that this job market is having on black women, right? And I talked a little bit about how the rollback of DEI has really been connected to the impacts, right?

But I do think it is, like a lot of us are saying, well, it's not necessarily the like political pieces, but I think a lot of it is when you actually look into the data and it's having reverberations in other sectors and organizations. So we're gonna go ahead and talk about it, but I want to really call out that DEI, even though it's gotten a lot of slack for being performative or not being effective.

I think that when we see the reverse of how DEI has been demonized or anti-DEI, anti-wokeism, all of those things have been ⁓ positioned as a political tool of control, tyranny, whatever you want to call it, ⁓ to control organizations, to control people, and to limit this, limit the impact of ⁓ civil rights, ⁓ the diversity, equity, inclusion movement, all of these different things, we can see that at the heart of this,

It is normalizing bias. It's normalizing palm supremacy culture. It's normalizing all of the things that exclude black women as historically marginalized people, right? And I talked about in our last segment that DEI, even if it's performative in some ways, can still have an effectiveness. I don't mean I want any performative DEI. Please do not take that from this. But what I'm saying is even if

Black women have gotten more opportunities because an employer mandated that they did more outreach to black women. If more black women applied and more black women were hired, at the end of the day, it was effective, right? And so as a result, because we have, I don't know, unnormalized ⁓ inclusive hiring, right? We are seeing more bias show up in the hiring process, right? Which is negatively impacting black women, right? Because of all the stereotypes that we deal with.

One of the things about recruitment and HR that I know for sure that people are gonna say well you don't know that this is actually really impacting black women at that level right? We have seen some of the weirdest like totally avoidable lawsuits this year like if you just look up hiring discrimination in the news and all the lawsuits that are coming out of that you will see there's an uptick like and even with organizations for example SHRM which is the Society of Human Resources Management now I don't think the the person

suing and that litigation is a black woman, I would have to go back and check. But what I'm saying is that there are basic minimums of like what is actually legal in the workplace outside of going beyond like having a training program, right? I just mean not discrimination, not discriminating in the workplace. A lot of those people, a lot of people think because DI isn't being supported that those types of lawsuits are not going to be effective and like.

By the way, DEI was saving a lot of y'all employers who were just out here dealing with discrimination, harassment, inequitable employment practices. These are all things that will legally get you in trouble. I do not care what the orange oligarchy has to say about it. All right, let's continue, okay? All right, so I wanna dive into the data really quick to really support what I'm saying about how the un-normalization ⁓ of DEI is essentially impacting black women. And I found this really great report

Shout out to the Economic Policy Institute where they have a blog and then they have data on the back end of that that you can actually play around. So I will link it below and if you're watching, that's what I'm looking at. So I'm not going to be making eye contact because I'm looking at this. even if we like see or hear the headlines, if we actually look at the data, it is absolutely wild. But I'm going to I'm not.

talking about the points of the job loss, I'm just talking about the ratios here, which I think is so important. So for example, it says in 2025, black women's employment rate fell by 1.4 percentage points to 5.5.7. This is one of the sharpest one year declines in the last 25 years at 55.7 % black women's employment to population ratio was well below the most recent peak.

of 57.8 in 2023, reflecting employment losses that started in 2024 and accelerated in 2025. So all we're seeing is a continuation of that. What I thought was extremely interesting in this is when I look back at the data, if you look at 2020 to essentially 2023, you can see

from the employment to population ratio for white males and black women, the chart starts going like this. It gets closer. And now it's not like super close, right? But it gets closer, right? So in 2020, right? Which we know the catalyst of that 2020 was in the catalyst of DEI initiatives, And allyship and putting in these programs to support black women, right? So when we see that the...

employment to population ratio for white males was 62.3 % and it was 52.6 % for black women, right? And then right before this happens, right? The gap's kind of closing at 64.2 % for white males and 57.8 % for black females. And you can kind of see, like you can just visually see the chart like coming closer, right? And then right when we get to 2025, we do see, like I'm not like, okay, like I'm not gonna say that

other communities are not also having job loss because they are. This job market is bad for everybody. But when you see the gap, it's the trend down, slope, the negative slope of that line is much worse for black women. And so the gap is widening and the gap is 63.2 for white males and 55.7 for black females, right? So what we can take from this is that the plans of this political administration ⁓

to continue to marginalize these groups and employment and access to resources and tools is absolutely working. It's not just rhetoric and it's impacting so many black women in this regard because of these other things that I'm noticing, right? Like I'm not just making this up. When I go back to this other chart, we're seeing that the group with the largest challenges in employment are actually black women.

with a bachelor's degree. So high school, some, some college, more, bachelor's degrees, black women with bachelor's degrees, the highest, and with advanced degrees, some. So it's interesting, right, I was just having a conversation with a beautiful man in human resources, and he had this conversation where people were like, oh, you just need to go get the degree.

And I responded back saying like, no, don't get the degree because it's not actually helping black women. because I'm getting that from clients and community members that are not that are very highly educated or not having any more success in the job market. And this actually proves that black women who are educated are having a more challenging time in the job market, which is going to take me to this thing that I'm calling like application fatigue. If that's the case, then black women with a bachelor's degree

are not likely to be making effective career decisions because they are so tired. Okay, and here's the other thing that I wanted to mention, right? Political pieces, anti-DEI, let's think about where this is actually effectively working and the displacement of black women, right? So we know that black women are more ⁓ represented in government and nonprofits, ⁓ social services, those types of things, right?

And so when I look at this other report that's called Black Women's Employment Tanked by Large Public Sector Losses in 2025, okay, so when you look at this chart, which like I said, I'm gonna share, the majority, the majority of that loss was in the public sector and federal government, okay? And the other one is very interesting. I'm actually gonna look at this.

manufacturing, financial activities, and professional and business services. I really want to look into that a little bit more because that was actually shocking to me. But guess where black women are getting jobs right now? Private sector. Okay, black men as well. Private sector and educational and health services. So if you're like, I'm trying to look for a job to pivot to that's more safe, more safer. Private sector and educational health services. Okay, so now what is this?

How does this actually impact black women, right? A lot of us are losing hope. We're making decisions out of desperation. We're taking jobs that are under our skill set, which means we're underemployed. And that means that that ramification of being underemployed or unemployed in any way, shape, or form, I don't even want to begin to think about the economic impact that that's having now and in the future for black wealth and black generational wealth.

But taking that further to say that black women are so tired and so frustrated that it often means that we're probably making decisions. And I think this is the real impact, right? That's going to lead to career misalignment, right? So, for example, when we are we have application fatigue, we're tired of applying or we're just trying to get another job. we under we we apply to jobs that we're kind of not qualified for. It leads to misalignment because when we get those jobs and it looks like we've had.

⁓ a career trajectory change, right, which shows up as a red flag and it's harder for us to move back up the ladder. And then it also means that we might get jobs that we are under, like it's under utilizing our skill set, which means we're underpaid for our, example, our bachelor's degree, right? It also means that in those roles, we can become targets of the pet to threat because we are overqualified. And so as a result, we then are penalized or we have challenges navigating the workplace because

We're gonna trigger other people because we're amazing, we're fabulous, but we've been hired into a role that's not the right fit. And then at the end of the day, if we do say, my gosh, I've applied to 100 jobs, I just need to take a step back, it's gonna be easier. A lot of times that does not do what you think it does, it actually extends your job search because people are wondering why such a qualified black woman would be applying to this kind of job. Okay.

And then particularly if we were laid off, that leads to desperation in our application process. It is more likely to trigger the toxic work cycle because you accept a job even though there are red flags and then six months down the road you have mental health issues, you're being laid off, you're being terminated due to workplace performance or whatever because this is not an organization that values diversity, equity, and inclusion because you kind of settled.

And there's just a whole lot of impacts that I think right now, yes, we are talking about the layoffs, but I think in a couple years, we are really gonna be talking about the negative impacts that this had on financial, ⁓ of wealth building, financial stability, and all of the other things that financial instability ⁓ attacks, such as education and healthcare, mental health, all of these things. So yeah, okay.

it's not depressing because we're going to talk about things that you can do to actually move forward in this job market even if it is a mess. Okay, so to combat all of the things that I have mentioned thus far, the job fatigue, the terrible AI resumes, and everything in between, I'm going to talk about three big points that I think are actually going to help you in this job market even if it's challenging. So the first one is a little bit soft but

To dream bigger, don't settle. So I'm actually seeing black women who are applying to next level or higher level roles, meaning they are stretching themselves or taking on more. There may be like, so for instance, if you were an individual contributor, maybe you are actually seeking a manager role. If you've been in manager roles, seek director level roles, bigger organizations, bigger tools, all of those things. I think that's actually working out to be more effective for black women in this market instead of shrinking. It's also going to keep you safer in the long run. Okay.

The second thing that you can start doing is actually conducting a job search audit. So a job search audit is when you look at each stage of your application process or the recruitment process and see where the bottleneck is. So for example, at the top of the funnel,

or at the top of the process, you have your applications, right? And at the bottom of the process, the end of the process, you have your offer letters. So if you are experiencing something where you are applying and you're not hearing back from any jobs at all, then it likely means that you can take time to rethink your resume, right? You can decide, hey, maybe I can switch my branding up. Maybe I can realign my skillsets. Maybe I can niche down and get more specific about my skills.

versus being more general. If you are like halfway down the funnel, right, and you are actually getting a lot of interviews, then you don't need to do anything about your resume, right? And actually changing your resume up can actually damage your job search, right? Because you were actually getting interviews with the resume that you previously had. But it also can mean that at that point, you aren't communicating your skill set or your story or even your impact more effectively. And again, it doesn't mean for you to...

take this to heart and think that you're failing and that you cannot get a job. But it does mean that like at the end of the day, the job market is what it is. And so we can do our best to try and evaluate and see what's happening. And so if that's what's happening, you're getting to final interviews, but you are not getting an offer letter. You need to think about your positioning in your interview and how you're connecting your skills with the job. Right. So in this case, don't fix things that are working. Focus on what the bottleneck is and see how you can optimize that.

with different things, right? So go deeper in interviewing if you need to, go deeper in resume writing, get an AI tool like Bliss AI to help you out with that, right? There's a lot of different things that you can do to make sure that your audit is effective. And my last piece of advice would be to engage in experimentation. I know you're like, girl, it's a job search, should not be an experiment. And I honestly totally get that. I know that it is so frustrating.

But at the same time, if you were able to say, let's see what happens if I apply in this industry, or I update my resume to have this angle, or if I shift how I interview from this to this, what's actually happening in my job search and is it effective? The thing that's very scary about this job market that I'm finding is that things that traditionally I have thought as a recruiter have not worked are working.

and vice versa, okay? And it means that there's no cookie cutter that's going to necessarily work in this job market. Why? Because as I mentioned, people are really bad at hiring and so there could just be one little thing that's different and that makes sense to that person that's reviewing your resume or that gets through AI and is effective for you and gets you to an interview and gets you to an offer. So just keep trying things out. One of the...

wild things that is working right now is getting really really specific about your skill set and really trying to niche down into a particular skill set which is what we are talking about. Next it is the concept or the topic of brilliance niching. Let's get into it. Okay so I've been talking a lot about black woman brilliance niching and it is based on what I see actually working for my career coaching clients and community members.

There are six elements of Brilliant Sneeshing and I'm going to list them for you here. But if you really want to get specific about Brilliant Sneeshing, I'm going to share with you a resource that is going to help you actually plan that out, map it out in just a moment, okay? So, the first element of Brilliant Sneeshing is to figure out what your next step is. I said that black women who are looking for the challenge or the stretch role are being, are much more effective in this job market. And that is...

why I highly recommend that you don't think about a lateral roll or a step back. You actually think about what might be next in your career trajectory on your career path. Okay. The second is the position. I do want you to get very specific about which type of position you are applying to and by selecting one position, you can make sure that your resume fully aligns and that you're not having any gaps on your resume. It allows you to be much more specific and relevant to the jobs that you're applying for when you pick one position type.

Number three is mission. So if an AI cannot discern who's a good candidate or a bad candidate based on skill set or competencies because all of our resumes are good and great and even better, then the only thing that might set you apart is your mission. Why is it that you do what you do? Why are you passionate about this field or this industry? Right. And how can you actually embed that into your resume like your your opening summary, your professional summary, your executive summary at the beginning? All of those types of things are things that can actually set you apart.

And actually you can still embed those in your your bullets, right? Maybe there are particular audiences that you work with. Maybe you do add pieces of passion into what you do. And so think about your mission and why you do what you do and how you can get that in your resume. Number four is industry, right? I did say that there are some industries that are hiring more black women and some that are not. And so if you can identify an industry that you are excited about and make sure that your resume fully aligns with that industry.

That would be really great, right? So maybe you're going to work for tech. Maybe you're going to work in finance. Actually, maybe you can make it way more specific and say, I work in FinTech. OK, like just get really specific about your industry and then tailor all of the information on your resume to that industry. So the next one is specialty. And specialty can really set you apart when you talk about what makes you great. So for example, in my case, right, I was a DEI professional, but I was a DEI professional that was specialized in HR.

Okay, and that's what set me apart in my last job search, right? I know it's that simple, but you gotta think about where the intersections of where your special combination of skills fit and how can you leverage that in your resume and in your job search. And the last one is thinking about market opportunity. So market opportunity means that you've gone out there in the market and understood what jobs are trending, what's happening, what skills are they looking for so that you can tailor your resume.

to the job that is most abundant in the market, right? And also where black women are getting hired, right? So if it were me, I would take one keyword, which would be DEI, and I would put it into LinkedIn or Indeed, and I would see what's coming up. What are the job titles? What are they looking for? What are the trends I'm seeing? What are the industries? And how can I better position myself for those particular industries in this market? That is looking for a market opportunity. And once you find that, it may shift.

all of the other things that are part of your Brilliance niche. But again, this is something that can really help you stand out in your job market so you can find your niche and get hired, okay? So if you feel that Brilliance Nation can really help you, I actually created a resource, a PDF downloadable resource to help you really research and define your black woman Brilliance niche.

You can find out more about it below and you can pay whatever you want for it, but a minimum of a dollar. And it's going to help you really outline everything that we've talked about, your next step, your position, your mission, your industry, your specialty, and the market opportunity. So go ahead and check out the show notes or the description to download it. Again, you can get it for whatever you want, but a minimum of a dollar. By the way, for the Black Women Bliss community members,

This is already included in your membership. You do not have to pay more, so just go ahead and log in. It will be uploaded.

if you haven't accessed it already, okay? All right, beautifuls, I hope that this episode has really helped you. I know it's a lot to unpack here, and I know some of that may be challenging, but I did really want to give a job market update for black women because I think we deserve to know what's going on. We deserve to not internalize the challenges that we have, and we deserve to believe in ourselves and have some options to actually implement some strategies that are going to help us be successful. So again, I hope this episode helped you get closer to your black woman bliss era by

getting the job, okay? Do not give up, sis. And by the way, if you like this episode, please make sure that you like it and share it and give us a review. And of course, follow us so that you can get updates on the next podcast episode. We have some really exciting things coming up about black women in the workplace, including sometimes it'd be your own black woman boss that be giving you a hard time. Okay. And we're also going to talk about the nonprofit space and how black women can learn more about that. So I will see you next time. Love you, best.

For the community members, I can't wait to see what you think about this podcast episode and I will see you all later. Bye!