Stroke, Mental Health and the issue of Unemployment

To Dr Lisa Murphy at the Stroke Foundation (in case you missed my LinkedIn Post),

For an organisation that claims to ""supports survivors to live their best possible life after stroke" I am surprised that you would find sending a rejection letter late Friday acceptable, especially to a stroke survivor.

You see, I thought it might just be me who was having trouble with it, especially given the frustrations of my stroke experience - spending two weeks in coma, waking up to strangers unable to talk due to a tracheostomy to find that my family had been denied access unless was end of life.
32 days in hospital, denied physical access to loved ones, does take a toll on one's mental health and wellbeing.

Instead of just walking away, I thought I would do some research. I found I am not alone in feeling the way I do. There is plenty of evidence that others feel as I do. Here is one of the results.

Receiving a job rejection late on Friday feels cruel and heavy. It traps you in a weekend loop of self-doubt and isolation. Companies send them then to clear their desks, but it ruins your rest and spikes your anxiety before you can talk to anyone.
Why It Hurts So Much
- Bad Timing: It steals your weekend peace right when you want to relax.
- No Support: Offices close, so you cannot ask questions or get help right away.
- Overthinking: You spend two whole days alone with negative thoughts.
- Exhaustion: Rejection takes a lot of mental energy.

Some results go further, adding
No, sending job rejection emails late on a Friday afternoon is generally considered a bad idea because it negatively impacts candidate experience and employer branding.
Job seekers frequently label this timing as a "dump and run" tactic.
Perceived Cowardice: Candidates often view late Friday emails as an intentional strategy by HR to avoid dealing with emotional responses or follow-up questions.

One of the suggested ways to deal with it is to talk to someone. I did, to several in fact, including some fellow parkrunners because another suggestion is to Step Away: Go outside for a short walk. Fresh air helps calm your brain. Thank you parkrun for keeping me sane.
Apart from the horrified looks, it confirmed what I was thinking which helped immensely.

To me, a brain bleed (stroke) is not an abstract experience, it was a real life or death situation where I was called upon to make hard choices in my diminished state. As someone who worked extremely hard to get where they are today, I am not going to let that achievement be diminished.
I was reminded of this on Saturday night after speaking with someone who had lost their wife of 5 weeks to a brain bleed.

Having composed the BALANCE of my anger
I would look you in the EYES,
FACE - to - face,
Raise ARMS to highlight my point,
SPEAK UP about how bad an experience this is, and
Call TIME on such behaviour continuing.

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ADDENDUM

One of the most ironic things about this situation is that one of the two key work areas for this position I applied for is:

Mental Health and Wellbeing: this work aims to improve mental health and wellbeing outcomes for survivors, families and carers through improved Stroke Foundation services and offerings.

Add to that requirements such as
- Co-ordinate the delivery of online mental health training for stroke peer support group facilitators, ....
- Ensure people with lived experience have a positive experience of engagement, by supporting participation, asking for and responding to feedback, and connecting people with information resources and support services as needed.

Let's talk about that last point.

Feedback - My experience has been terrible and unbecoming of the Stroke Foundation. Who ever gets this role should probably identify more staff than just the stroke peer support group facilitators in getting mental health training.

Connecting people with information resources and support services as needed - Finding employment after stroke, what services or information is there? Have I missed something or is that a gap?

In terms of my own journey, having met with multiple rejections, I recently changed my strategy and decided to meet the market by using AI. I settled on using Claude as it appears more nuanced to this task. Something I picked up along the way was that you can score your resume and help tailor it to the needs of the advertised job.

In my case, I have been experimenting with the iterative use of "Act as a senior recruiter and give this updated resume a match score out of 100. List the top 5 missing keywords, if any, and flag any red flags a hiring manager would spot in 10 seconds. Provide a truthful response."
BTW - If anyone has something better to use, I am more than happy to hear what works best.

As someone who loves something tangible like a score, this method is great for immediate feedback and providing suggestions for making improvements (and I understand the issues with AI when using a method like this). For the application associated with the above rejection letter, I used this method for my application and got my score to 94/100.

My problem is that while I can understand not getting a job after an interview, I find it hard to reconcile that a 94/100 won't even get you an interview. Is the market really that tough? As someone over 55 who receives a rejection late Friday, it's hard to discredit discrimination.

So my feedback is, if the Stroke Foundation really wanted to "support survivors to live their best possible life after stroke", please tell us how we can find work (or even get an interview) when a 94/100 resume doesn't cut it (and that is just for a 6 month temp position).

Before anyone mentions the IEA (Inclusive Employment Australia) service, let me tell you my experience of it. While I don't receive any NDIS funding, I was able to get voluntary access to the program.

The IEA so far has been a huge waste of time. In summary, my initial job coach was a newly employed 19 year-old with some retail experience who didn't know what FTE meant on a PD. What no one from the provider (WISE) could answer was why this person was employed when I had applied for the same position and given no consideration. For that one, a meaningless rejection email arrived about a month later at 4am Sunday. Friday is bad, but Sunday.... The next coach was not much better so after 6 months, no interview, no job. Currently arranging to transfer to new provider.

If you are unhappy with the IEA service, processing a complaint takes ages due to the volume and when it does progress, you find that it has gone to the VEO for a reconciliation process. The VEO has no power to ensure a response from the provider so it pretty much goes no where. Talk about wasted taxpayer dollars.

To put bluntly, it was easier to recover from stroke than it is to find employment.

From a mental health perspective, it does leave a person asking the question, "Why did I bother recovering from the stroke, when I could have just died and been done with it."