Hello, I just want to get a sense of what others might have experienced during the past year and half. Here is my story after almost 10 years with same company as an executive; I have been looking for close to 3 months now, using multiple strategies, networking, linkedin, investigating who the hiring managers are and contacting them, Internet postings, recruiters and search firms; Two years I was constantly solicited and was turning down offer from the competitors... So It is truly bad out there, Regardless of what your credentials or education might be, companies are simply not hiring....I live in Texas DFW Metroplex Please share your stories, success stories will be great or any advice you might have! PS: I understand that 3 months is not that bad relatively speaking but nonetheless
I to have been looking, I have a job starting 01/2011 as an intern, but boy did I look. There was nothing out there. I was just reading an article on how we are doomed in the US to keep eroding our employment base. Companies keep moving all the staff and factories they can out of the US. Obama gave a speech at the Ford plant and talked about Ford creating 1,200 new jobs right down the road. What he left out was they (Ford) created over 3,000 in Mexico over the last two years and laid off more than that in the US. The majority of the consumers of US manufactured products and services are people in the US. Now the economy is growing (slowly) and we are still losing jobs. Sooner or later it will all come down. I love the idea of a charge of 25 cents every time someone in the US calls a US company and is transferred overseas.
I love that idea too. We also may have to create tariffs on outsourcing to make it as expensive to outsource as as it would be in hiring US workers.
The increased costs to manufacture in the US would drive up the price of all the products we use to ridiculous levels. Then people would bitch that things are too expensive. As workers in China and India demand higher wages you see the jobs moving to other countries (the big move is to Vietnam now). Eventually, it may become more cost effective for US firms to manufacture their products domestically, but that is several decades away and politicians exasperate the problem by making campaign promises that they will bring jobs back to areas that are being effected by outsourcing. What these people need to hear is that these jobs likely aren't coming back anytime soon and they need to gain some training in a viable career field.
Yes but consider the jobs we created in IT when we created the technology to allow us route calls overseas for next to nothing. I see things quite differently - maybe it's my industry, maybe I'm just lucky. I've been steadily employed without interruption since 2000 in the same industry. Last year I accepted a promotion with a competitor taking almost a 50% pay increase. Since I've started, our office is doing better than it ever has. I just hired somebody last week for a new position created out of growth.
At some points there are no more jobs though and no more people to buy the goods they are selling. I'm sorry a Ford made in Mexico sells for the same as a Ford made in the US. A great example of this would be the company Weather Tech, they moved back to the US and they still are making a profit. They ran a full to page add in Car and Driver about this topic. When company’s left the US cost of goods never went down, profits went up. The CEO of Weather Tech makes another good point, when will a company ever earn enough money. It is greed that makes them move out of the US. Before Etech moved half there telemarketing over to India, they had a stable company that show quarterly profits. After they moved there operations to India they showed increased profits. Do you think they started charging any less for their services? Just to add this a Ford F-150 sells for $10-12,000 less in Mexico....hmmm...It’s just illegal to import them to the US market. The F-150 is made in the US. They charge what the market can bare.
True, but more people would have jobs. The problem is unions that are driving the cost of production up on many products.
Outsourcing has hit the education business as well. It is just a lot cheaper to hire online adjuncts than full time faculty. Online adjuncts come different places of the world where it is affordable to live with poorly paid wages. Place like smarthinking (SMARTHINKING.COM - Online tutoring and writing services that help students succeed) can afford to hire PhDs from India for minimum wage. There are also few companies like embanet.com that are starting to offer online teaching services to American Universities and hire people for peanuts.
During the Recession of '91 I was out of work for 9 months, so I can relate. I was about to lose my unemployment benefits and I got desperate. I literally picked up the Yellow Pages one day and just started calling companies I wanted to work for and asked if they were hiring. The very last place I called indicated that they had somebody leaving and they were hiring, and I applied and got the job. In the textbook I had to read for my Economics course at PFC, it indicated that as countries become more educated they move move their manufacturing base to less educated countries where the labor is cheaper. The U.S. is becoming an information and service-based society. We really don't build much of anything here anymore. Skills that can't be outsourced will be in more demand than manufacturing type of jobs.
Re: Horrible Job Market Well, I have been looking for 22 months now with no results. I have applied locally, regionally, and nationally for over 400 openings with no results. I have tried newspapers, online job boards, networking with friends, former co-workers, complete strangers, job clubs and anything else I can think of, and here I sit. I have 12 years experience as a mid level manager in a manufacturing setting, 5 years in sales, and 7 in customer service. The problem is that those who are actually hiring are cherry picking amongst the glut of applicants. They list something like 15 bullet points of qualifications and if you only have 14 of them, sorry. Another trend that I am seeing is that less than 1% who do respond are taking forever to make a decision. I am currently in the running for a position at Hallmark in Kansas City. I applied back on June 4th and the various levels of interviews are still going on two months later. I have never seen anything like this in my professional life. I have a lot of experience, am not looking for a million dollars for a salary, am willing to relocate to almost anywhere, and am willing to take a step backward in order to prove myself. I will soon have an MBA to add to my list of qualifications but am beginning to wonder if that will really make any difference or not.
I do my job well. Most times I do it better than well. Extra hours, no lunches, always hit my deadlines, routine tasks are always done routinely, show initiative, help out when asked, sometimes even when I'm not asked, still I know that I'd be replaced in a minute if something turned south. From the perspective of the top of the ladder I'm completely expendable. I am like a clutch on a car - an interchangeable part. There is a heartlessness in this economy and while it's most apparent to those who are seeking employment, it's also part of the current employment experience. My sincere best wishes to you all who are seeking employment. Maybe DL will help us all.
This. +1 Used to be you could make a decent middle class living with a semi-skilled labor/manufacturing job. Somewhere along the line somebody got it in their heads that semi-skilled labor should pay as well or better than people with bachelor's and master's degrees...
That's true about Unions, look what the workers of Checker's did, they drove the company out of business while trying to increases their wages. They knew the company was on the brink and they still pushed it over. Of course this was all a few years ago.
I just wanted to add this seeing how the topic of people being over paid has come up. I was in line at the post office the other day. Two older ladies were in front of me, they were talking about how the post office was having finical problems. One looked at the other and said "that's what you get paying someone $25 an hour to work a cash register or deliver the mail. Anyone else that works a cash register makes minimum wage, children delver newspapers for a few dollars, what the difference?" It made me laugh.
Corporations would not outsource under these types of restrictions - they move their entire operations to other countries and never look back.
It took me three months after getting my MS in 1993 (B&M) to find a job. If I had known it would only be 3 months it might have been fun. The not knowing if I would get a job made it stressful. Now I am employed and am surprised by how our entry level people wonder why they aren't doing better. I asked one what she thought she should be doing with a CJ degree and no experience. She didn't have an answer. I suggested that was part of the problem. For the OP. Nothing I say will come as news to you. Don't be shy about taking an entry level or temp position. It might be the foot in the door that allows you to move up. Most supevisors at UPS started out as drivers. Many managers of fast food places started out flipping burgers. It's not fair to have to start over, but it might be reality. I wish you all the best.
In November of 2001 I was laid off from a job that paid a six figure salary and six figure bonus. I felt pretty cocky and thought that I wouldn't have any problem to find a good position since I had a technical undergraduate degree and 15 years of IT experience at the time. After about 2 years and acquiring several certifications I was able to get a contract position paying $20/hr without any benefits. My son who graduated two years ago with a B.A. in Psychology (3.65 GPA) from Montclair State University has only been able to find a position watching patients at a local mental institution for $12/hr. He is constantly applying for other positions but hasn't had any luck yet.
