I’ve been unemployed since November last year. I work in the financial industry for remote customer service roles.

I had an offer rescinded due to credit back in January, which i understand from a bare bones level that it makes me a risk, but how can I get my finances in order and work again if I can’t get the chance to start working to improve my credit?

The one I’m more concerned about is a job offer I received afterwards at another company. I had been in the background check process for a month now, everything had cleared (they checked credit but told me that they don’t really look at it until onboarding when setting up the FINRA licenses) and I was just waiting for the pre-hire check for my licenses before they send the official welcome letter. They started my broker license check last week and brought up a termination on a U5 from 6 years ago. In a nutshell, during the pandemic, we started working from home, and call center calls were routed through our cell phones instead of a soft phone system. There was an update around that time where my iPhone had started going into do not disturb mode unprompted (trying to be “smart” and guess when I might need it turned on) and caused calls to go straight to voicemail unknowingly. I had also picked up some late shifts at the time overnight, and the call volume had died down after some time passed from the market crashing in 2020, and it wasn’t uncommon to have a bit of time between calls, especially for the late night shifts that I had picked up (they had overtime opened for it when it was busy, they let me schedule ahead, but then the volume overnight had gone back to normal, and there would be sometimes 30-45min between calls). When I realized that my phone was doing this sometimes (within a couple days of it starting) I had reached out immediately to my manager. I fumbled this though (it’s dumb, I panicked and should’ve known better) and messaged my team’s Microsoft Teams chat instead of a direct message or email to my manager. Because I made this mistake, the message had been missed in the group chat and the issue was considered unreported. Due to this, I got fired on the spot. My U5 specifically says “Discharged - Concerns that individual did not attend to customer calls in accordance

with company call handling procedures. Not sales practice related.”

I bring this up in my interviews when asked why I left that employer or if asked if I was ever fired, since I cannot hide this fact, and I always make it a bittersweet lesson that I had grown from and that it is not a repeated mistake at any of the 3 other companies that I worked for since then.

Despite explaining all of this though, my offer was rescinded today, for a mistake from 6 years ago. The ONLY other time that an offer was rescinded for that U5 comment was for an offer received a month after being fired back in 2020, the recruiter was shocked too and said that it’s likely due to the recency of it at the time.

I don’t mean to ramble, but I am shocked and defeated. I need this job, so much was being bet on this job and I have nothing else.

I plan to reach out via email, phone if I can as well, to get a specific explanation as to why my offer was rescinded, and to please reconsider, especially as we are 2 weeks away from the start date, and I see on their website that they are still hiring like crazy.

Thoughts on any of this? Advice?