I recently came across the news of a Bengaluru man spotted near a traffic signal holding a handwritten note in English and Kannada that read: “I don’t have job, no house, please help me. I have 14 years working experience in banking.”
This act in general is not new to me. In a world of LinkedIn “Easy Apply”, where candidates just press apply even without going through the entire job advert, the chances of your resume with negligible experience being noticed is minimal.
Graduates search for new ways to get noticed and I have seen students holding placards near Euston, Bank Station or Canary Wharf in London with relative success. This was considered novel, going the extra mile to gain visibility, being vulnerable in public and all this brings with it opportunities that would never have come up if you were applying in front of the computer screen.
But what made this news stand out for me was how some people raised the question if this was the result of Society’s failure or personal choices?
It wasn’t really a tough question in this particular case after what I read a couple of days after. A young guy had a conversation with him near a temple, exchanged email addresses and promised to see what is available within his company.
As promised he sent a few job openings within his company and asked him to apply with his name as reference. His response, even though thankful, was that “this does not match my experience and hence would not apply for it”.
As much as I respect his choice in not applying for some random job so he could at least pay his bills, it also shows me how wrong personal, career & financial choices compound over time.
But zooming out a bit from this singular person would show that he is not alone in this situation.
This is a person who studied IT and worked in the Banking sector for 14 years. I have no idea what work he was actually doing from 9 to 5 but somehow got an identity that this is where my experience lays.
Because that is what his resume says.
I’m sure he didn’t study managing ledgers during his 4 years of IT education.
But the moment, people start working, they cling on to the identity because that shows progress.
Going from a Clerk to Assistant Manager to a Manager to a Senior Manager shows progress both on your resume and in your paycheck.
But rarely do they think what happens when they are kicked out of this mutually-validating ecosystem.
What is left behind when they are stripped off their title? Instead of building a healthy body we go shopping for a better suit.
And the suit works—until it doesn’t.
The title, the designation, the “14 years of experience” become the fancy suit we wear with pride. But the moment the system strips away the suit, what’s left is the body you’ve built (or neglected). And for too many professionals, that body is fragile—underdeveloped, dependent, and unprepared to stand on its own.
And this is what I’m afraid of. So many mid-career professionals face an identity crisis the moment their job is gone.
They have gained some value inside a closed system to meet their lifestyle goals and yet don’t know how to build their own recognition out of just being an employee.
They didn’t build portable skills, adaptability, or a sense of value that could exist independently of a title. Instead, they built loyalty to an ecosystem that will never be loyal to them.
The market doesn’t care about how many years you’ve spent. It cares about the value you can create today.
The man near the signal is a mirror for what happens when we forget to invest in ourselves beyond our titles.
It is heartbreaking and this is how blindly our system conditions us.
We are programmed to obey not build and if you don’t build you will remain depending your entire career on a single resume.
While this week's reflection might have ended on a gloomy note, I thinking of exploring a solution to this in my next edition. So watch this space!!!
