Where do the unemployed turn to set their own agenda?
Following this question, my first stop was işsizler.org. One answer. But not a finished one. It was a period in which I began to think, and by moving forward and gathering stones one by one, I sought to produce more comprehensive answers.
Of course, to fill in this answer, I had to look at what the unemployed actually experienced. I started with my own experience. My own unemployment.
When I applied to ISKUR, unemployment benefits were activated for me, and I began to receive them regularly. But when I spoke with my advisor, I noticed that there was nothing concrete they could suggest regarding the sector I worked in or the positions I was targeting. The institution's only tool was the payment itself; there was no mechanism concerned with the process itself or with where a person should be directed. Examining the practices of public institutions one by one is why işsizler.org occupies such a central place on its agenda.
Another thing I noticed during this period was isolation. When people around me asked "how are you," I thought they were actually asking about my unemployment, and I avoided talking about it. Unemployment gradually became a topic that became increasingly difficult to discuss. This observation led to a goal: to break through this isolation created by unemployment and make the experience shareable. The scope of işsizler.org also serves this purpose.
The more I applied, the more I was buried in silence. Some did not respond for weeks, others never did. At one point, I felt like I had become a ghost in the market—invisible, unheard. This experience showed that hiring processes and the platforms that claim to facilitate them also need to be examined.
As I saw dozens of people sharing similar stories on LinkedIn, I realized that the voice of the unemployed is not actually so small, but fragmented. Everyone is telling their own story in their own corner, unaware of each other; these voices disappear in the flow before they can come together. This led us to another goal: to bring together these scattered voices and make them heard.
Another point was that mistreatment, lack of response, and disrespect experienced in interviews were not systematically recorded anywhere. One person describes how they were mistreated in an interview, another talks about applications that have gone unanswered for months, but none of these come together to form a pattern. There is no coherent data on how particular institutions or companies behave; everyone tells their own story, but these stories do not pass on to the next job seeker. This gap is also the answer to why işsizler.org makes data production a priority.
We want field meetings to gradually become a research ground. In the space we created to bring people together, it becomes possible for common threads to emerge from what is shared, and recurring practices to become visible. We value the unemployed's participation in their own research. Setting the agenda not from a desk but from voices coming from the field is the working method işsizler.org has adopted.
So işsizler.org started with a question and grew into what it is today through individual lived experiences being layered upon each other. Questions were asked, answers were given. Now it is time to act.