I meant to say this earlier, but cheers to one of the GOATs of public radio, Mary Louise Kelly, who hosted her last ‘All Things Considered’ show on Friday. She’s going to appear every now and again as a contributor, but it’s truly the end of an era. To NPR (because I know a lot of you read this!), I ask that at some point, Mary Louise Kelly, Audie Cornish and Ari Shapiro do a reunion episode. For old times’ sake.

When I published the first interview of our series on long-term unemployment in the media space, The Way Back, I got emails and messages on social from a lot of you about how Melayne’s story felt similar to your own search. I knew a lot of people would relate to what she said, but going into this project, I underestimated how many people actually would. So I’m back today with the second part of this series, where I speak to Alison Aves, who recently found a job after hunting for three years. One thing I did not touch on (but definitely should have) in Melayne’s interview was how appearing too senior can throw a wrench in an already wildly competitive application process. That’s something Alison dove into, including how she navigated it. Plus a lot more words of wisdom! This story is unpaywalled, because I think it’s important for everyone to read.

Then, more advertisers drop out from the ‘I’ve Had It’ podcast, how a former Houston news anchor is making a living reporting the news as an AI avatar of herself, what Dianna Russini isn’t saying about her comeback, the Vatican makes media Herstory, and more media intel, in Seen and Heard. 

Also, I messed up with I Said What I Said. This was supposed to be in today’s issue like usual, but I was going to do a special report and it turns out I need more time on the reporting part, so that’s returning next week.

xoxo,

Stephanie

We’re back with another edition of The Way Back, where we talk with women in media about how they’ve been able to land a job after spending years in the job market. Here’s the first part of this series if you missed it, where I chat with Melayne Cohen about how she landed a job at NPR after two years on the search. 

There are lots of stories out there about how crappy finding a job is right now, but I wanted to report a different side to this by finding women who went through the painstaking process of waiting years for a job and finally getting their big break. Something a little more hopeful than just “it sucks out here,” and something a little more useful than sharing career advice that doesn’t really apply anymore. 

Alison Aves spent years as an editorial director at a creative agency. She started in 2015, and her department was thriving: she says her team was bringing in 70 percent of the company’s revenue. In the summer of 2023, right after bringing in new business, Alison realized that she had hit her ceiling at the company, and quit with no job lined up. She expected to land something quickly. Instead, the search took three years. 

Her low point came two years in, when she applied for three openings at one well-respected company. Nine weeks, just as many interviews, and about 16 hours of unpaid test projects later, she was rejected from all three roles. That might sound shockingly egregious to someone who’s not in the job hunt trenches, but that’s the kind of bullshit a lot of people are dealing with right now. 

Thankfully, Alison can say that those days of jumping through hoops are now past her. Last month, she started a job overseeing editorial content for tech company Lenovo. I talked to her about her insane job search journey and the things she learned along the way.

How did you feel after you left your job?

At the beginning, it was like Christmas. I realized how much stress I had been under. I'd been having terrible insomnia, crying after meetings. But I loved my team. I loved my colleagues. So it really hurt that I had been with that company since it was founded, I had put so much into it, and I felt like they kept telling me I didn't matter.

I can say one thing very cleanly and with zero caveats: I have never once regretted leaving that job. Even though the three years of searching was extremely difficult, and I hit really low points where I doubted everything about myself, I never once regretted leaving. If anything, I should have left earlier.

Did you start the search right away?

I certainly slow-walked it at first. I definitely had no idea what I was in for — and I'm glad I didn't, because then I might not have left. I had not interviewed for a job since 2007, and the landscape had changed so much. This sounds like a major flex — and it certainly isn't true anymore — but at that time, I had never interviewed for a job and not been offered the job. So I definitely did not put the pedal to the metal.

The first three or four interviews I got, I probably blew. I hadn't figured out the tools for practicing for an interview the way people practice for an exam. I just wasn't prepared for how competitive it would be.

How did you manage financially?

I had two major freelance clients that covered about half of the time I was unemployed, but neither was ever full time. This is where there's a big asterisk on my experience: I'm married, and my husband makes enough that we could survive. But I need to work. I had a daughter getting ready to go to college, and we got into some debt. It was really, really anxiety-provoking. My husband would say, "Find the right thing. You are great at what you do." He'd have to say that because I would be sobbing: "I thought I was really good at what I do. Was I wrong this whole time?"

What was the lowest point of your search?

Two years in. I saw a posting at a company everybody knows and that is really well respected, where I happen to have a friend who works. Then I spotted another one, and she told me about a third. In the first screening call, the recruiter said, "You'd be a really great fit. I'm going to recommend you for all of these. You could basically just think about it and choose which one." I knew that wasn't true. But it was very encouraging.

From that call until the final rejection for the third position was nine weeks. I had either seven or nine interviews, two of which were panels, and two test projects. For one, they didn't give me any kind of time estimate. For the other, the thing they wanted me to edit was nine pages long, and the time estimate was 90 minutes. Asking a job seeker to limit their time is an exercise in ridiculousness, because job seekers are going to do whatever they have to do. I spent something like 16 hours on the two projects. I was freelancing at the time. My time was my only asset, and they took a lot of it.

I was never cocky enough to think one of these was definitely going to work out, but I also couldn't get my head around the idea that none of them would. It was devastating. I would joke, "Maybe I should just start learning about underwater basket weaving." It felt like I was being thrown off this train, which was really hard, because editorial, writing, content-related stuff — it's all I've ever done, and I love doing it, and I think I'm good at it.

Did ageism come into play? Did you tailor your résumé to seem less senior?

I was getting signals in a lot of cases that I was too old or too experienced. At one of those three jobs, they said, "Do you think this job is big enough for you?" I don't think having a lot of experience should feel like a liability, but you're making me feel like it. At one point, I was applying for jobs that paid 50 percent of the salary I used to make.

I graduated in '97, and I decided to take the years off my college education. For some jobs, I would lop off my first two or three jobs, or narrow the window of how long I had worked at this or that place, so it could look like my career started six or seven or eight years after it did. I guess that's lying in a weird way. Not exaggerating, but minimizing my experience. I was careful about language, too. I would never have started anything with "After 25 years doing this…" I'm like, oh my god, I sound like a fucking grandma.

What happened after that rejection?

I'm not sure I sent out a single résumé for the rest of the year. I was so battered and bruised. Then a contract ended very abruptly, right before Christmas. I got thrown off the train again.

Around then, a friend I trust a lot sent me a free course on learning how to be a coach — not getting coaching, but being a coach. It was never on my radar, but it was the most amazing thing. You get to take off all your own shit and fully focus on the person in front of you, and try to help guide their thinking. There's a phrase I love: unconditional positive regard. It was probably the equivalent of what other people get out of going to a meditation retreat.

It did not help me get a job. It was just an unexpected bright spot in the middle of it.

Earlier on, you tried a paid job-search coaching program. How did that go?

In early 2025, a year and a half in, I signed up for one of those things you see: "We're going to teach you the interviewing skills you need." It was the worst experience ever. It was ridiculously expensive, and I did not have a coach. You get three or four one-on-one sessions, then access to a very janky website, and when you have a question, you send an email to a general info@ address. Red alert: they have you sign a non-disparagement agreement before you get into it. Later on, I realized why: because they are completely taking advantage of jobless people. If I decided I wanted coaching, I would do a lot of research and get a private one-on-one coach. Never a program.

Here's the thing I would do again — an idea I can tell you in one sentence, Stephanie, and I don't need to charge you $7,000 for it: cold networking outreach. I'd find people on LinkedIn at companies I was interested in, or in roles similar to something I'd want, and send an InMail: "Hey Sally, I saw that you work at blah blah. I'd love it if you wanted to chat about what you do." If you don't sound like an AI robot, enough people will respond.

I did not get a job, or even a single interview, through any of them. But I found them very energizing. Three years is a long time to be without coworkers, without a place where you feel valued for what you bring to the table. It was like conditioning, like a professional athlete going to the gym in the off-season. Talking shop reminded me of what I was good at.

How did you finally land the job?

I wish I could say, "Here's what finally worked for me." I did nothing you're supposed to do. The only way I can put it is: it was my time. In the great cosmic line, I was up.

I had applied to a job through a recruiting agency. The next day, I got cold outreach on LinkedIn from another recruiting agency about the same job. She tried to get me to sign a right-to-represent agreement, basically trying to poach me, so that if I got an interview, the commission would go to her. According to the internet, when an employer gets your résumé through two different agencies, they'll usually throw them both out. It's a nasty little game they're playing, lining their own pockets at job seekers' expense.

I wrote her back and, to put it politely, told her to tell her bosses to go jump in a lake. I was not at the end of my rope; I was off the end of my rope.

Cut to five days later: the other agency got me in, and I got the offer the same day I talked to the hiring manager. No big, crazy panel or test project. They were like, "We don't have time to waste." It didn't fit anything people are being told to do.

What was your reaction? I’m sure that must have felt like a relief, and probably pretty surreal to hear, after three years on the job hunt.

I cannot overstate how excited I was. When you've put a lot into your career and you're getting punch after punch, signal after signal that you might have to hang it all up, it's very bad for your sense of identity. I couldn't make sense of the fact that you can work really hard, be sincere and authentic about all of it, and still have nothing turn out. So the second I got that job offer, that disorientation and disillusionment lifted. I literally screamed my head off on the phone. I was running around the house like a dog with the zoomies.

I submitted fewer than 150 résumés overall. I was picky. And about a year and a half in, I started leaning way harder into hybrid positions, because at least then I'm narrowing the applicant pool. This is a hybrid position — that was actually my pie in the sky.

Well, congratulations on the new job! Tell me more about it.

It's at Lenovo, which has one of its two world headquarters 30 minutes from where I live. They're bringing their marketing content operations back in-house, and my title is managing editor/content lead. It's almost like a startup — we're going to be building the car while driving it. I haven't worked in an office in 14 years. I can't wait to have an annoying coworker who microwaves fish.

How did you explain the gap on your résumé and in interviews?

First and foremost, can I just say that is the most infuriating fucking question? "What have you been doing?" Looking for a job! I think it is so cruel to make job seekers feel bad about how long they've been looking.

I was able to say I'd had long contracts with Vox Media and Reddit, which kept my skills fresh. I took an AI course at Cornell and several Google Coursera courses on project management, data analysis and prompt engineering. And the coaching course took 10 or 15 hours a week. When I was in it, I thought every person who's going to be a team leader should have to take something like this — learning how to really hear what people are saying and help them. So I was able to spin that as [bolstering] my leadership skills. I didn't have to lie or anything like that.

How did you keep your sanity through three years of this?

I started volunteering for Meals on Wheels and another local food-insecurity nonprofit. When I needed a little boost, I would go do that. Just fucking being outside — not staring at LinkedIn, not in my head. Maybe one out of 10 or 15 people I delivered to would say thank you, and it was like somebody throwing rainbows into my bloodstream. It really helped keep my head above water.

I also took on a lot of creative stuff. That was a big way I self-soothed. And my therapist is incredible. Whatever my insurance is paying her, she deserves six times that much. Whatever I was doing to take care of myself, though, there were still moments where I felt like garbage. I was taking care of my body, taking care of my family, throwing my heart into creative stuff, volunteering, and sometimes I still felt terrible. I don't know exactly what to say about that.

There were times I felt so confused about being an adult without a job that I would duck out of social plans, but I really think that's the wrong move.

What we’re seeing and hearing around the industry.

‘I’ve Had It’ with Chewy. I’ve been working on a story on whether “Woke 3.0” will actually happen in the media world after the Democrats swept last week’s election (that was supposed to be today’s I Said What I Said, which, my bad). If anything, I think the ‘I’ve Had It’ podcast drama is a deftly timed litmus test for this.