Unemployable by Design? When Your Strengths Don’t Fit the System

People get labelled all the time. Not ready. Not the right fit. Not what we’re looking for. Sometimes it’s said directly, sometimes it’s implied. And once that label sticks, it tends to follow. But here’s the question we rarely stop to ask. What if the issue is not the person at all, but the environment they’re being asked to succeed in?

Merry Korn knows how quickly things can shift. Two months into what she thought would be her final role, she was fired. A moment that could have reinforced every doubt.

Instead, it became the starting point for something very different.

She went on to build a social enterprise employing more than 1,300 people across 30 states, prioritising those with the greatest barriers to employment. People often overlooked. People often labelled.

In this conversation, we slow things down a bit and look underneath those labels. Why some strengths are misunderstood or rejected. How organisations quietly define what “fit” looks like. What happens when people stay too long in the wrong place. And how traits that make someone “unemployable” in one setting can become exactly what’s needed in another.

This is not really a conversation about bouncing back.

It’s about paying attention earlier. And being willing to question whether the system is always right.

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