Thursday, October 22, 2009

The job outlook, this is just sad

500 applicants for one, $13 an hour job. This is the real reality out here and while some say $13/hour is a decent wage, when you take taxes and benefits out that does not leave much of an income. But those at Goldman Sachs, Wall Street would totally disagree. That is why the 10,000 Dow Jones boom don't mean anything on Main Street. This is our reality, no jobs, no health care insurance, on unemployment, going through any savings we have, worry, stress, and uncertainty for the future. So, yes a $13/hour job is something versus having nothing. But rich folk will never understand that.

When Stacey Ross, C. R. England’s head of corporate recruiting, arrived at her desk at the company’s Salt Lake City headquarters the next Monday, she found about 300 applications in the company’s e-mail inbox. And the fax machine had spit out an inch-and-a-half thick stack of résumés before running out of paper. By the time she pulled the posting off Careerbuilder.com later in the day, she guessed nearly 500 people had applied for the $13-an-hour job. “It was just shocking,” she said. “I had never seen anything so big.”

Ms. Ross had only a limited amount of time to sort through the résumés. While C. R. England has not been immune to the downturn, it has added significantly to its stable of drivers and continued to hire office staff members to support them. Ms. Ross was also trying to fill more than two dozen other positions.

The 34-year-old recruiter decided the fairest approach was simply to start at the beginning, reviewing résumés in the order in which they came in. When she found a desirable candidate, she called to ask a few preliminary questions, before forwarding the name along to Chris Kelsey, the school’s director. When he had a big enough pool to evaluate, she would stop. Anyone she did not get to was simply out of luck.

She dropped significantly overqualified candidates right away, reasoning that they would leave when the economy improved. Among them was a former I.B.M. business analyst with 18 years experience; a former director of human resources; and someone with a master’s degree and 12 years at Deloitte & Touche, the accounting firm. read more here...

The Democrats will have cover with President Obama, as long as the Republicans continue to come up with zero ideas on anything, but if they do and the public starts to listen and believe, then Houston we have a problem.

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