- Michelle Valera, 28, got laid off from her "dream job" a few weeks ago.
- But she says she doesn't feel "betrayed" because the company is not her family.
Michelle Valera is starting to feel the weight of unemployment.
On January 19th, the Orlando-based 28-year-old was laid off from her "dream job" — a digital marketing role she began last March with a Fortune 500 commercial real estate company.
In the weeks since, Valera says she's applied to "close to 100" jobs but hasn't had much luck, and that she's beginning to "get very anxious" about her finances.
But despite all this, she says she doesn't feel "betrayed" by her former employer and thinks others shouldn't feel this way either — at least for too long.
"Feel what you need to feel," she told Insider. "Feel angry, feel sad, feel betrayed for a day, for two days maybe, but then let it go and move forward because the company has already moved forward and you need to do so too for your own financial benefit."
Valera is on the growing list of Americans who have been laid off in recent months. She's also among the many young people who have taken to social media after learning the news to share their stories and seek support. But while some workers have expressed feelings of anger or resentment towards their former employers, Valera says it's best for her to take a different approach.
Companies will do whatever they "deem necessary to make money"
She says it's "completely understandable" for people to initially "feel betrayed" after being laid off, and that she experienced a rollercoaster of emotions herself.
The same day she learned the news, Valera posted an emotional TikTok video for her roughly 200 followers. She says it "just started blowing up" — receiving over one million views, bringing her follower count to over 5,000 today.
"I wasn't even paying attention to my phone," she said. "I was just crying at this point because I lost the job of my dreams. Losing that, it was a shock."
But despite her initial reaction, she says she doesn't think it's good for people to let their negative feelings "consume them."
It's because your company — like it or not — isn't your family, she says. Ultimately, most companies and their workers have the same core goal: make money. If letting you go is what they "deem necessary to make money," then it's best to just "let it be," adding that workers often switch jobs with the same goal in mind.
The best thing, she says, is to just try and move on.
"In reality, the only thing I could do, and any other individual could do, is work on their next steps, work on finding a job, work on getting a resume. With anger towards the company, it doesn't help them move forward."
She says moving forward, however — and ultimately finding a new job — has been far from a cakewalk.
"What percentage of the job postings are actually real?"
When Valera was laid off, her company gave her a "two-weeks notice" — allowing her to stop working that day but remain on the payroll for two more weeks — in addition to a month's salary worth of severance. She says she hasn't applied for unemployment benefits yet but is planning to look into it soon.
She's concerned about having to dip into her savings, which is why she began sending out applications the day after she was let go. As of earlier this week, she said she'd had eight mostly preliminary interviews, the majority of which with companies she says either weren't a good fit or haven't followed up.
It's left Valera feeling frustrated by the whole process. While she says there appear to be plenty of job openings — there are over 11 million as of December per official BLS data — she's beginning to suspect some of them are "ghost jobs," listings employers are no longer actively hiring or recruiting for.
"For close to 100 jobs at this point, it's like, what percentage of the job postings are actually real?" she said.
If there really are "ghost jobs" sitting on job boards, many potential explanations have been raised for why this could be happening. Valera, a digital marketing expert herself, says they could be a "form of marketing."
"It makes you think, are these job openings real or are they just there just to have people have eyes on the brand?" she said.
If she hasn't made substantial progress within the next three weeks, Valera says she might expand her job search, perhaps turning to something like bartending, which she says she has prior experience with.
"It's not what I envision myself being, given I've been in a corporate world for years now," she said, "but if need be, I guess it is what it is."
In the meantime, Valera says she's started posting more on TikTok because the response to her video showed her how many people are "going through the same thing."