Job Hunting Burnout

Advice

So I'm at such a loss here and not sure what else I'm supposed to be doing.

Background, I had my own house fire last year and something clicked in me with that. I got to see examples of good and bad when it came to desk adjusters, public adjusters, mitigation, etc. And it hooked me. I wanted to do that.
Specifically, one of the PA's showed me how to do contents reports while working my claim and I fell in love. I know many people don't like doing contents and that's fine, but I do. When my claim was over, I continued helping her with other claims and got a great six months of experience out of that and by the end of it I've researched, priced, and documented $1.2 million in contents.

They ended up having to step back from adjusting due to some health concerns and so I pivoted and got my first IA license for Florida, then grabbed Texas'. Since then I've gotten:

  • State Farm auto and property certified
  • FEMA IS-100.c & IS-200.c
  • Encircle contents modules certificates
  • Attended a Crawford hosted webinar for Property/Contents for flood claims
  • Am about to complete TWIA certification
  • Am about 2/3 of the way through course material to take the NY license exam

Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like that's a meaningful amount of work done for where I'm at. And I've been attempting to apply for jobs but just keep getting rejection after rejection with only having one interview. 67/116 applications, to be exact.

I'm on the CAT rosters for Crawford and Pilot, but unsure of if I'm fully on the list for Eberl as they wanted me to do a mock inspection by photographing inside and outside of my home and I do not feel comfortable doing that.

My biggest hold up is that I can't do field work, as I'm in a wheelchair. So it'd need to be a desk position, and I am absolutely aware that a lot of people get their x amount of years of experience by doing field work of some kind, be that CAT or otherwise.

I can do the job. Have already done it for what I'd be wanting. I've written reports exceeding $400k, I've done the carrier dispute reports, I've assisted with drafting emails for clients having ALE issues, and I've even worked through two claims that got slapped with EUO's. I know what I'm doing and just need to be given the chance to show that. And yet, I think I'm stuck behind a barrier that I physically cannot get past.

I'm at a complete standstill on where to go from here and could use any help on what I might be missing and what more I could do to see some results. Ideally, I'd love to be on the PA side but that's a much smaller pool, it seems, to try and get into. So I don't want to recklessly burn the IA bridge.

Please note, I've seen how people in this field can be to one another. Any comments of "just quit trying" or the like are not appreciated. I get that there seems to be a bias against people entering the field, and I don't plan on stepping on any toes. But any attempt to put me down before I even really get started will just be ignored.

Posted Jul 23, 2026, 10:10 AM UTC

414
Loading comments…