Exactly how is the US supposed to recover if businesses are going to adopt this attitude? I understand they are swamped with applicants, but this kind of thinking seems short-sighted at best.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Outofwork-job-applicants-told-cnnm-3498252371.html?x=0
Welcome to the world of corporate HR. With a few rare exceptions, HR basically means Huge Retards. Truly the dumbest folks I have ever worked with. Proactively stupid. They have the brain power to understand the failure that is their work, but somehow overlook that to implement policies and practices that pretty much guarantee of loss of revenue/profit.
The good news is that these practices eventually catch up with them. The best way to fix this problem, is increased competition in the market place. Dumb companies get to fail when their competition is smarter.
I was unemployed for about 3-5 months last year - got blank stares in interviews for waiter positions, now no problem. I do hold down two jobs at a time now, in case I get bored with one, or one starts to suck - which all restaurant jobs do at some point - there is a new german bier hall near one of my jobs, but i'd have to give up a better paying seasonal job for it 
oh well, I'm not drinking anyway.
A friend of mine was the victim of a restructuring. Great guy, great accountant. He's still looking for a job six months later.
Businesses aren't "adopting this atittude", they've had it for a long time.
The trick to getting around this until you get a foot in the door is to be self-employed instead of unemployed. Its semantics but for some reason if they think you are a contractor its perfectly acceptable to be "between contracts" but if you were let go and unemployed you must be unemployable. There are lots of short term contracts available in the tech sector right now.
It is just the lazy being lazy. No real change from anyone else.
Unless you are "unskilled" labor, after 6mo, you should quit looking for a job. After that time, it's time to start fresh and for yourself, IMO.
Brian
My best friend spent nine months, and countless interviews, searching after losing his job as a marketing director. Now he's training to be a firefighter. Market sucks, man!
Timeormoney wrote: Welcome to the world of corporate HR. With a few rare exceptions, HR basically means Huge Retards. Truly the dumbest folks I have ever worked with. Proactively stupid. They have the brain power to understand the failure that is their work, but somehow overlook that to implement policies and practices that pretty much guarantee of loss of revenue/profit.
Funny, where ever I've worked, the HR people are fine, it's the marketing people that couldn't pour water out of a boot with instructions printed on the heel.
I think this affirms two things.
Business ethics is an oxy-moron. It would be ethical to hire the most qualified candidate - whether currently employed or not.
Businesses are not logical. There is a fallacy in this country that if you're making money...you must be logical and therefore smart. I disagree.
Although...
After writing that I think about the one or two guys I know who don't have jobs.
Bachelor #1 - Lost his state gov't job by running his mouth over email. He'd say something bombastic to someone and then let his supervisor know about what he referred to as "incoming!" Like he was warning his boss to an artillery strike. He'd been warned about his behavior before. He's been out of work for 12+months.
Bachelor #2 - ran a training shop at the same government entity. He was a good guy but I'm not sure what specific skills he brought to the job. He'd run the training program for years so had specific experience with this position. When the economy tanked, and their funding dried up, he was first on the street. I don't know if any other company would find his skills particularly desirable.
Are both these guys performance problems? I'd say no. Bachelor #1 is. Bachelor #2 is not. He's just an older guy who worked his job. I think his problem was assuming he had a job for life and didn't need to keep his skills marketable.
They're both nice guys from a personal standpoint so I wish them the best.
Just the natural progression of things getting worse for the average joe over time. It'll just be the same as the "need experience to get a job / need a job to get experience" conundrum. You just need to keep hunting for that rare opportunity to get your foot in the door.
When going for my first real job - not long out of university - the HR department expressed concern at my 6 month "employment gap." 
nderwater wrote: My best friend spent nine months, and countless interviews, searching after losing his job as a marketing director. Now he's training to be a firefighter. Market sucks, man!
I just got screwed over big time in this regard. Something about cities (in Jersey), having to hire layed off firefighters and police officers before taking new applicants off the civil service test. Atlantic City and a whole bunch of other towns have just layed off cops and firefighters.
Also anyone who has ever worked HR ,or run their own business and posted job listings knows there are a ton of applicants just putting in applications just to keep up there quota to retain their unemployment checks. I would not want to deal with them either.
It might be a wake up call to the unemployed to go flip burgers or whatever job you feel is is below you. Around here Subway has had a "help wanted" sign in the window for no less then 4 months. Along with almost every other fast food joint. So the berkeleying check says whatever company name these people feel is beneath them at least it would not be a berkeleying hand out.
I would be willing to bet that if they started a large scale public works program half of the "unemployed" would not even show up because the work would be beneath them.
The greatest generation is done. America turned into a bunch of Lazy spoon fed losers who are unable to find their boot straps let alone pull them up.
They can all learn a lesson from THIS GUY
xd wrote: Around here Subway has had a "help wanted" sign in the window for no less then 4 months. Along with almost every other fast food joint.
Our boarder (mid 20s, restraunt server, out of work 5mo.) has been into a dozen of them around here. The first question they ask is "Do you speak Spanish"?
No, he doesn't.
friedgreencorrado wrote:xd wrote: Around here Subway has had a "help wanted" sign in the window for no less then 4 months. Along with almost every other fast food joint.Our boarder (mid 20s, restraunt server, out of work 5mo.) has been into a dozen of them around here. The first question they ask is "Do you speak Spanish"? No, he doesn't.
I have been turned down at local fast food joints because my response to that particular question is "not well." I'm still looking. I don't even get any unemployment.
I've got a friend who just had his unemployment benefit run out last week. He's 29 and may be looking at moving in with his parents. He lost his position due to looming state budget cuts and health issues. The health issues are largely resolved, but he has to find something with insurance off the bat. He's looking for work in four states and while he's had a couple phone interviews it's tough.
griffin729 wrote: I have been turned down at local fast food joints because my response to that particular question is "not well." I'm still looking. I don't even get any unemployment. I've got a friend who just had his unemployment benefit run out last week. He's 29 and may be looking at moving in with his parents. He lost his position due to looming state budget cuts and health issues. The health issues are largely resolved, but he has to find something with insurance off the bat. He's looking for work in four states and while he's had a couple phone interviews it's tough.
Yeah. And y'all should know..the anti-immigration comment I made was actually from the mouth of a "lefty". Thirty years ago, it was easy to say, "..they're just taking the jobs most Americans won't..", but now that thirty or so years of Corporate deregulation has taken hold, those "jobs Americans won't take" are rapidly becoming the only jobs left for working-class people in the US.
Griffin, I don't know what your friend's going to do. Yeah, part of the new (alleged) health care reform law is supposed to stop insurance companies from denying coverage for "pre-existing conditions", but in practice-they'll find a way around it. My own employer recently almost got away with firing my best ex-girlfriend (who'd contracted Multiple Sclerosis) in direct contravention of the Americans With Disabilities Act. It was actually a pretty brilliant legal strategy by our HR department. The company said they shouldn't actually know what her disability was (in the spirit of "equality" for the disabled, of course-all disabilities must be treated equally!), and then attempted to terminate her for taking too many bathroom breaks (which was actually a side-affect of her medicines).
Lucky for my old friend, one of the best MS centers in this country is in Atlanta. The docs & staff had seen this tactic so many times that they told her, "..okay, your employer's going to do this, and then that, and then the other. When they get to "that", call us, and we'll get our lawyers on it."
And they did. At least now, she actually recieves the payments from the disability insurance she'd paid for (offered through our benefits program), instead of having to wonder how she was going to keep her house and buy all those medicines at the same time.
That being said, I think she'd still be struggling, except for the fact that a rich guy fell for her, married her, and promises to "take care" of her.
EDIT: Sorry to be so long-winded, but this kind of stuff really makes me angry. Please recall that the situation I described with my friend wasn't even about a "working-class" person trying to find any kind of job at all, but about one of the leading companies in my field actively attempting to jettison a college-educated, highly experienced professional. How much more common is this kind of behavior when they're not worried about the skill level of the applicant?
Just tell 'em you're an architech for Vandalay Housing, Inc.
Seriously though, this is a call to start your own thing. I've owned two brick and mortar storefront businesses in my life; the first was a miserable failure, the second an unqualified success. Sometimes you stub your toe, and sometimes you get your foot in the door.
You never know 'til you try.
xd wrote: It might be a wake up call to the unemployed to go flip burgers or whatever job you feel is is below you. Around here Subway has had a "help wanted" sign in the window for no less then 4 months. Along with almost every other fast food joint. So the berkeleying check says whatever company name these people feel is beneath them at least it would not be a berkeleying hand out.
There's a catch-22 though. You can't just take any old job without it actually being a reduction in money. When I was on unemployment, I had to make at least $12/hr or getting a job would actually result in less money, plus then I wouldn't be spending that time looking for a more suitable job.
I can sort of see the "logic" behind this. I mean, if you were a really good employee, you probably would have seen any corporate re-structuring coming, and "jumped ship" before you became unemployed OR, like a friend of mine on the West Coast....he was called by head hunters at least 2 or 3 times a week. They had all sorts of job openings they wanted to offer to him.
However, the article mentioned a company that was looking to fill a supermarket manager opening....is it really a good idea, for such a "run of the mill" so to speak, job, to limit applicants you will consider just because you are too lazy to screen some other way?
integraguy wrote: I can sort of see the "logic" behind this. I mean, if you were a really good employee, you probably would have seen any corporate re-structuring coming, and "jumped ship" before you became unemployed OR, like a friend of mine on the West Coast....he was called by head hunters at least 2 or 3 times a week. They had all sorts of job openings they wanted to offer to him.
Yes and no. When Layoffs came here at harrah's atlantic city.. we thought our department was safe. With only 18 people total and a HUGE property to take care of.. we could not see how they could lay any of us off without affecting service to our all important customers and guests.
that was before they decided they did not give a rats ass about the customers and slashed my department by half.
As it is now.. out of the four properties in Atlantic City that Harrah's Entertainment owns (Bally's, Ceaser's, Showboat, and Harrah's itself) we STILL have the smallest staff and the largest and busiest building
mad_machine wrote: that was before they decided they did not give a rats ass about the customers and slashed my department by half. As it is now.. out of the four properties in Atlantic City that Harrah's Entertainment owns (Bally's, Ceaser's, Showboat, and Harrah's itself) we STILL have the smallest staff and the largest and busiest building
Oh, yeah. I always laugh when I hear the business "pundits" talk about how "American productivity is going up!" Yeah, that's because your management guts your department and still expects the job to be done. And, idiots that we are, we have enough personal pride in our own performance that we make the attempt. Where I work (a large cable TV content provider), we started a major experiment in technology-we want to make videotape obsolete. Full digital, from the moment a piece of media is converted to a file, to the moment it is thrown up to the sattelites and into your homes. We started this project when we were still an independent company. After "the merger", the new suits continued to brag about the concept..but declined to give us the resources to perfect it. "Think about the stockholders!" Yeah. Every time I visit the pistol range, I'm thinking about the berkeleying stockholders. 
It's a madhouse. Fewer broadcast operations techs, working with experimental (spelled unreliable) applications and hardware, and things are beginning to fall through the cracks. We've been set up for failure. And of course, when the mistakes happen, management doesn't want to hear about their responsibility for that environment-and HR is there to "document" the "fact" that something went wrong is only because the individual employee is an absolute moron.
If another "major player" decided to build a new facility in Atlanta Metro, I'd bet 20 Euros that our operations building would be half-empty in two weeks. I know I'd go. People with no ties to the town are already leaving (and seldom replaced, making the workload even greater).
And again..this is a leader in the industry, and a group of college-educated professionals. I can only imagine how much worse things are for the working class.
Oh, yeah. I always laugh when I hear the business "pundits" talk about how "American productivity is going up!" Yeah, that's because your management guts your department and still expects the job to be done. And, idiots that we are, we have enough personal pride in our own performance that we make the attempt.
and when management has half the people doing twice the work for the same pay, why not milk it for as long as possible?
more responsibility and wider skill set required but don't even think of a pay increase:
"you're lucky enough to even have a job and you want a raise?"
imagine how much worse things are for the working class.
as a blue collar guy, my conclusion is that the working man = society's fool.
impulsive wrote: as a blue collar guy, my conclusion is that the working man = society's fool.
I had a bit of a debate with a coworker just yesterday about the plight of today's American serfs (myself included).
He contended that we all start life at the same point; anyone can aspire to, and achieve, any position. I believe that while the POTENTIAL each person has at birth may be close to equal, the real limiting factor, OPPORTUNITY, most definitely is not.
What could Chris Langan have accomplished if his parents had enrolled him in a $30,000 private school as a child like the former trader's children?
Would he have been a bouncer for 20 years or would he have gone on to an Ivy league school and become the next heavy hitter in the scientific community?
We all see it every day at work; people who are nowhere near as intelligent or qualified as ourselves who have somehow achieved positions of authority or the title of "expert" when their actual knowledge of any given job is not any greater than that of the average layman, they just happen to have the right connections. This is not only infuriating for the better qualified individual it will weaken the company and eventually the ineptitude will reach critical mass and the company will collapse which will send the serfs out searching for other jobs that only the "working class" will accept. Meanwhile, the inept with their Administrator, Manager, Engineer, Analyst, Trader, etc. experience will go on to other similar positions with different companies and the cycle perpetuates.
Which person from the above situation will be able to enroll their children in a private school and foot the bill for their higher education? And the cycle continues with the next generation...
Sorry for the rant, I'm really not as bitter and cynical as I seem...
Flame suit on.
Wow, reading some of this would give a person the impression that some people think the world owes them a job. Guess what, this isn't the USSR, this is the USA. Nobody owes anyone squat. These companies don't care if unemployment is 20% or even higher as long as they can make money. They aren't running a jobs program, they are running a business. They want the best people they can get. They want the most productivity for the least cost. As an employer I can tell you the biggest expense is labor. Anything you can do to reduce costs is good. If I can steal an employee from another company then I don't have to train him. He is productive immediately, not six months down then road. That's the way the world works. It isn't about being fair. It isn't about the recession. It isn't about helping someone find a job. It's about staying in business and turning a profit. Sit on the other side of the desk for a while. When the decisions you make not only affect you and your family, but everyone that works for you and their families as well, what the guy filling out the application feels isn't so important anymore.
Datsun1500 hit the nail on the head and drove it flat. The only way to better your lot is to do it yourself. The only thing holding people down is themselves. As long as they think they are victims of the "system", they always will be.
In reply to Toyman01:
Fair enough, but please remember where this kind of thing eventually ends up when inequality gets big enough.
http://www.solutionsabroad.com/en/security/security-category/kidnapping-in-mexico.html
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46826
Fortunately, for the moment, impoverished US citizens would rather work. What happens if things are so bad for so long that they dont?
I'm happy that your business is sucessful, but wouldn't you hate it if you had to waste your profits on barbed wire around your house and bodyguards for your kids?
I didn't mean to sound like a communist in my previous posts..the reason I'm so angry about what's going on in my workplace is because I want my company to do well. And it makes me seriously angry that they're willing to eject talented people at the drop of a hat in the name of "cost reduction", and not giving us the tools & manpower we need to excel at our task.
Of course, I'm still an old "lefty", and suffer from the old misconception that people are actually more important than money..but some of my leftist friends still are angry with me because I still think capitalism can acually provide better rewards to more people than communism.
I guess I just want the capitalism I was taught in elementary school, where a slice of the profits went to retain talented workers (and give them enough dough to actually buy things), and to improve the product..instead of into the pockets of people callous enough not to care about the quality of the company's products.
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