The lack of employment/Laid off/Thread

zookiemike

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Grand Ledge MI
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Well i caught the axe. After four years and dodging the bullet for three major ones it was my time. I worked for orchid orthopedic solutions in
Holt Mi. We manufacture medical implants for many medical firms around the world. Zimmer,smith and nephew,stryker, So on. Knees and hips. I was in coatings and final inspection. Moved to cnc operation and setups. Then i was doing NDT and visual grinding and finish grinding on various parts. It's a bad deal. Michigan has sustained a pretty hard blow. the medical industry is fluctuating bad with the loss of jobs and insurance cost. I have seen for years every summer these multi mill companies take to many orders and have a huge slow down when the parts are not being sold. I'm
young(26). I have options. The only thing that was binding me to mi was my job. My family and sister stay here, but I need to get some roots. I want a start. I have tons of mechanical knowledge and im pretty good when it comes to being comunicative. I would love to find another factory
position somewhere. we will see.. The vice ceo of the company, great guy. He said that i was getting a call back. So we will see. I think i may pursue some college. Im not sure.

What does final gear think? who eles has had this happen and is in these kind of shoes?
:huh:
 
There is alot of it about - presently I am what is known as 'on the Bench', after a period if no customers require my skills its goodbye to me. I have 18 years seniority so I should get a decent redundancy package if it happens.

Many of the original IT jobs my company did do have been offshored to India and Vietnam so it is really only where face to face interaction is needed that there are still people around. As a Business Analyst this includes me, but it seems that no one is commissioning projects in the UK at the moment. Grrrrrr.
 
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Entry level jobs are so scarce here, Caucasians are working landscape and mowing lawns.

And I not making a joke either.
 
Entry level jobs are so scarce here, Caucasians are working landscape and mowing lawns.

And I not making a joke either.

Where?! I've yet to see that up here. I know of one guy who owns his own landscape company but that's because he doesn't like retirement.

And not to be racist but, I thought most white guys figured they were too good for landscaping? I used to do it on my own when I was 14-16 if you can call mowing someones yard for 20 bucks landscaping.

+1 on the entry level jobs. Well, strike that, they're there but you're not good enough. I applied to at least 15 different places, even called them. Never got a call back. Eventually I got a job with friend doing seamless gutters. If you leave in Northern IL and your gutter fell off, I'm sorry! Lack of motivation got the best of me when boss of the year didn't pay.

If you're looking for CNC maching job, I was hearing on the radio non stop a few months back that a shop near the Illinois and Wisconsin boarder was looking for people skilled with CNC. If you're interested, I'll get more info.
 
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The people next door have landscapers come, the usual team of probably illegal workers is now replaced with one white guy.

When I was working at walgreens since I was at the photocenter and it was usually the customer service use register there were plenty of people come in and apply (help wanted sign in the window, we were understaffed everywhere) and no one was ever hired. People were getting turned down for run the register at a drug store jobs, you can tell shit is fucked up then.
 
I got lucky, when I was laid off I found an entry level tech support job in a few months. Hard to do when everyone wants "2 years minimum experience." The company had a new client and needed a couple of agents very quickly, interview to on the job in 3-4 days.... now, at least I have the experience to fall back on if something happens. The company just changed ownership so we'll see, luckily no problems so far.
 
I could tell at walgreens only hired someone after they fired someone. One of those times they hired one of the manager's kid and they did absolutely nothing but sit there :|
Thanks walgreens, big help for all of us picking up slack so his daddy has more money to pay off his Porsche! (yes seriously) Don't worry about the desperate single moms and such that needed that job.
 
As of yesterday I'm officially in the "went to college partially, had to quit and now need a job" doughnut hole.

Unless I can figure out whether its normal for students to only get around 30k total in financial aid, I'm looking for full time stuff.

Its hard to find anything other than retail sadly: after experiencing a taste of the IT field I don't want to go back to retail but my newfound lack of degree or 2 years of experience means I'm SOL in most places.

I tried applying for the support.com tech support job, but I was lost by the first question: "there are 5 ways a program can auto start in windows, name them in detail "

I only really know 2 to 3 at most, so yeah I feel like shit and just gave up. Besides, part of my fear is getting in too deep during a support session and having no one to get help from. So there's that.
 
zookiemike, how about skilled trades (Auto mechanic, electrician, plumber, HVAC technician)? You have to get licensed by taking a 2-year college course, but the pay will be much better than working in a factory.
 
Get a CDL, there are driving jobs aplenty.
 
To add my story to this:

I recently graduated University and have been looking for work for over a year. Having a liberal arts degree and no real experience gives me no leverage to secure interviews and the only jobs I can find are too far away to make them profitable. I had to decline on a "decent" offer (still very low pay on a temporary contract), when I did the math and found I'd lose nearly half my gross pay check to transportation. It seems there's not many entry-level positions available in Northern New Jersey or New York City for anyone without "Minimum 1 to 2 years experience".

The only place within a reasonable driving distance that would even give me some employment was a chemical testing firm, where I'm currently employed as a "Sensory Panelist" (Read: Test Subject). Since my job is located near a college and the position is neither fulfilling nor well-paying, I too am looking to augment my degree with something more practical just to get out of this rut/ to get onto my own feet. Next week I am planning on stopping by the admissions office to see what is available for a recent graduate coming back and if there are any grants available for which to apply.

The one bit of luck that recently happened is my company has been having such high turnover because the job is so "torturous", "boring", "demeaning", "low-paying", "disgusting", etc. that they decided to increase our pay just to keep us from quitting. It's still considerably less than $100/day after taxes, but it's better than nothing.
 
Okay, looks like I need to drop off some tips in here while I write up something longer. I'm not in Human Resources/HR, but I've worked with them and can hum the tune even if I can't play the song. I've also sat on the other side of the interviewing table and passed judgement on job seekers just like most others in HR, just as a technical evaluator. Keep in mind this is for the US and applies to US job seekers only.

Some of you will find this horribly offensive. Too bad. Welcome to the real working world, this isn't academia and you are not a special little snowflake here. You are an interchangeable part that I can get a replacement for tomorrow in this employers' market. Get used to that.

For starters, everyone who's posted above me is in an area that is either known to be in job loss mode or has been a single state disaster that's hemorrhaging money, jobs and people for years (Michigan); I won't go into why this is so in this post, but basically you are screwed and leading economic indicators (despite what the idiots in Washington keep claiming and the unemployment numbers keep proving they're lying about) say that's not going to change any time soon. In your area, you have lots of people chasing few or non-existent positions; you will be lucky to get even entry level positions saying, "Would you like fries with that?" due to how the trickle down effect demonstrably works.

What this means is that, statistically, you are going to have to move if you want a job. You need to relocate to an area where there are few people chasing many jobs. According to Forbes, here are the top 25 metropolitan areas in which to find a non-farm job:

Killeen-Temple-Fort Hood, TX
Bismarck, ND
El Paso, TX
College Station-Bryan, TX
Midland, TX
Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX
New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner, LA
Dubuque, IA
Manhattan, KS
Pascagoula, MS
Odessa, TX
Corpus Christi, TX
Logan, UT-ID
Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX
Fairbanks, AK
Elizabethtown, KY
San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX
Dallas-Plano-Irving, TX Metropolitan Division
Jacksonville, NC
Lawton, OK
Lebanon, PA
Anchorage, AK
Longview, TX
Joplin, MO
Kennewick-Pasco-Richland, WA
Gulfport-Biloxi, MS
McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, TX
Brownsville-Harlingen, TX
Columbia, MO
Auburn-Opelika, AL

Now, I could make this into a rah-rah-Texas post, but I'm not. I will point out that the job creation engine is still running here, and it's dead in many other places, which people have posted about above. Why this is so is really a subject for the political section and not here, so I'll leave that out for the moment. However, if you don't like Texas, you need not come here for work; you'll note that there are other options on the list. North Dakota, for example, has far too many jobs in all fields chasing almost no available workers. (In fact, CrazyJeeper is going to be heading up to North Dakota upon graduation to take up a very well-paying position at an employer that has already hired him. This isn't gloating, it is pointing out that he's going where the money is.)

You must use the mobility that the country affords you to get a job somewhere where people actually are hiring. Fortunately, you do have FinalGear (use ALL your resources to network!) and you can probably find someone in a job-rich area to give you a hand or at least a couch to crash on until you get set up wherever.

In short - You don't have to go home, but you can't stay there. Not if you want a job.

Next item: college degrees. I know many of you just graduated and you're very proud of the little piece of paper that you spent so much time and effort on. I have some bad news for you; unless it's in a technical specialty like engineering or a few of the hard sciences (and you're not pre-med) it's not worth the pseudovellum it's printed on in terms of getting you a job. Employers like college degrees, but they're not going to get you hired if you have no work experience. Eventually your degree will be worth something. Today is not that day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either - but it will be once you start up the ladder. So despite your degree, you have to start at the bottom in entry level jobs to get experience. Do not expect to get hired at anything but the lowest level unless you have job experience. You have no idea how many fresh college graduates apply for managerial positions assuming their degree will get them a job without experience. It won't; adjust your expectations accordingly.

Final item for the day, and I cannot emphasize this enough: EVERYTHING IS A TEST IN THE APPLICATION PROCESS. You are being tested on, among other things:
Your ability to communicate clearly, effectively and efficiently.
Your mental flexibility.
Your punctuality.
Your ability to commit and follow up.
Your ability to work with others.
Your emotional stability, i.e., how desperate are you. (Visibly desperate people do not get good jobs.)
All of this happens before you get an invitation to an interview. If you think the testing starts after the invite, you are sorely behind the curve.

I'll touch on just a few of the above now, since I intend to go into this in more detail in a later post.

When you submit an application or resume, do not call and harass the HR department about your submission every day starting with the day you sent it in. This will result in your papers being roundfiled instantly. Do follow up on your submission on the third business day (but not before!) after it should have arrived; this indicates to the hiring authority that you follow through on your work. If you need to follow up on it again after receiving a non-committal response, do so just once three days later. See below for reasoning for delay; if you don't follow up, chances are good that you won't be getting a call if many people are applying for the job - this is the first sieve to weed out applicants. Those serious and motivated will call and follow up, the resume spammers and people just casually applying will sit waiting for calls that won't come and therefore won't be a problem for HR to deal with later.

When following up, do not call first thing in the morning, as this indicates that you are either desperate or have nothing better to do. Do call in the early to mid afternoon, as if you were working your way down a list of calls that you needed to return after lunch. This indicates that you are productively occupying your time and are not desperate - but you are earnest as well as detail-oriented.

If the party you wish to reach is out of the office and voice mail is not offered, such as in a situation where the person said they wished to speak to you, do not call back 15 minutes later to enquire again if no guidance was given as to when the person would be available. This makes you sound like a stalker with nothing better to do. Instead, do wait at least 45 and preferably 90 minutes and call again. Again - it indicates that you are a steady worker who is occupied but interested and earnest.

Do keep logs of who you spoke to, where they were and what they said. Reference this material as needed. You probably will be tested on this more than once in passing, and it will enable you to schedule your followups and such accurately and in a timely fashion. This is part of the punctuality and detail-orientation test as well as mental flexibility.

Do not abuse anyone on the phone. Do adopt a calm and professional demeanor on the phone. One HR rep I worked with made a point of attempting to get an applicant riled up by feigning abject stupidity, asking for the same answer multiple times, asking for the applicant to repeat an answer because he didn't get it the first time, making them verify and re-verify addresses, prior employment, et cetera. The object of this exercise was not to actually check anything. The object was to find out how emotionally stable the subject was and how well they would work with annoying co-workers or worse, annoying clients. Those who could not be upset or who were upset the least (out of a particular pool of applicants) got the job or at least an interview.

Free advice like this is, of course, worth what you paid for it - but check with MWF as to the effectiveness of my advice; he requested my thoughts on recent events with his job situation.

I'm done with this for today, so you can consider this post finished. :D
 
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^ Wow. Possibly the most rational post you've made in ages.

I'm waiting to hear back on one or two jobs, but I have a steady stream of income at the moment, and am blessed with very supportive parents. Still looking forward to independence and a chance to contribute back...to society, to my parents, whatever. I have to pay them back somehow, even if it's merely in the pride of formal employment.
 
And Spectre falls asleep editing........... :p
 
And Spectre falls asleep editing........... :p

Not exactly.

For those that don't know, I specialize in remote support and consulting - right now, helping a client with something.

Another lesson: Paying clients take precedence over posting to forums. :p
 
What this means is that, statistically, you are going to have to move if you want a job. You need to relocate to an area where there are few people chasing many jobs. According to Forbes, here are the top 25 metropolitan areas in which to find a non-farm job:

Killeen-Temple-Fort Hood, TX
Bismarck, ND
El Paso, TX
College Station-Bryan, TX
Midland, TX
Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX
New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner, LA
Dubuque, IA
Manhattan, KS
Pascagoula, MS
Odessa, TX
Corpus Christi, TX
Logan, UT-ID
Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX
Fairbanks, AK
Elizabethtown, KY
San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX
Dallas-Plano-Irving, TX Metropolitan Division
Jacksonville, NC
Lawton, OK
Lebanon, PA
Anchorage, AK
Longview, TX
Joplin, MO
Kennewick-Pasco-Richland, WA
Gulfport-Biloxi, MS
McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, TX
Brownsville-Harlingen, TX
Columbia, MO
Auburn-Opelika, AL

Damn - nothing in New Hampshire or Maine. But on the plus side, nothing in California either.

I will officially be a member of this thread starting September 24th, after I'm laid off from my job due to an office closure. I do have 10 years of collections/receivables experience - unfortunately it is for wireline telephone service. I feel like a farrier in 1910 Detroit watching the Model Ts rolling out the River Rouge plant, wondering what my next move will be. Still, I'm hoping I can parlay that experience into a new career, perhaps with a different utility.

It's funny - a few weeks ago I was watching a show on the History Channel called "How The States Got Their Shape" and they were talking about how good the job market was in North Dakota. They showed a state Job Center and unlike one in, say, California, it was deserted.
 
@P5138:

I'm in a similar situation as yours. I graduated in 2009 after completing a Digital Media Arts program and the job market for designers is pretty shitty in Toronto (the gov't calls it "fair"). More so if you're a new grad with limited experience and a small portfolio unless you want something completely crappy where you're pretty much setting yourself up to be taken advantage of by someone who wants you to do a million things but pays you the bare minimum wage which is 10.25 /hr here. No one wants to hire you unless you have the magical 1-2 years experience in a shop. Sometimes it's 5+yrs.

For a while I did contract work through a few job agencies, the longest one was ABM clerk. That was fine but I absolutely hated coming home around 1, sometimes 2 am , maybe later and I don't exactly live in the best neighbourhood. I ended up leaving that just before my contract was up last December. I've been getting by alright, doing small stuff here and there but I can't continue doing this shit for the long term. One of my mum's friends commented that I should go back doing shitty part-time contract work because I "live at home and don't need anything full-time" really pissed me off and that's been giving me more motivation to find something. Even if it's not in new media, as long as I get something that I'm happy with I don't care at this point.

And this ended up being some half-convoluted rant. I'm sorry guys :(
 
I don't really fall into the unemployed category anymore (8 months employed and still hardly working...I mean working hard..:p) but what I noticed before I got a job is that finding a job really is a full time job as everyone said to me. Also, its a vicious circle. Most people want experienced people to hire, but if you don't have experience, you can't get a job, but if you can't find a job how do you get experience? And your college degree often doesn't make a damn difference. The fact I decided not to go to college didn't hinder me in trying to find a job, my biggest problem was myself. If you're not motivated enough to basically spend 8 hours a day applying to jobs (and this doesn't just mean clicking on pages and applying online - you have to go into places, even if they're the "online application only" ones, putting a face to a name and showing you're interested enough to spend time and effort to go there is a definite plus) then you're probably not going to get a job unless by some stroke of luck something lands in your lazy lap.

/2 cents
 
Damn - nothing in New Hampshire or Maine. But on the plus side, nothing in California either.

I will officially be a member of this thread starting September 24th, after I'm laid off from my job due to an office closure. I do have 10 years of collections/receivables experience - unfortunately it is for wireline telephone service. I feel like a farrier in 1910 Detroit watching the Model Ts rolling out the River Rouge plant, wondering what my next move will be. Still, I'm hoping I can parlay that experience into a new career, perhaps with a different utility.

It's funny - a few weeks ago I was watching a show on the History Channel called "How The States Got Their Shape" and they were talking about how good the job market was in North Dakota. They showed a state Job Center and unlike one in, say, California, it was deserted.

Collections/receivables is a very transferable skill - however, you will have to move to a locale where people are hiring for that sort of thing. I would suggest looking at more corporate-oriented and less industrial-oriented cities - for example, in Texas I would suggest looking at Dallas, Houston and Austin more than San Antone, Longview or Brownsville. I'm not really up to date on many of the non Texas cities on the list but from what I do know, I'd suggest that Jacksonville and Anchorage would be places of interest for you - at least in terms of your career.

Spectre sleeps?

:evil:

xiced: Many places have caught on to the 'showing up' to 'online application only' outfits trick; HR publications now urge HR droids to roundfile the resume of people that do this as a general rule. The idea is 'if they can't follow the instructions now...'. In addition, many companies have security to prevent 'cold' visitors so that won't work out well. There IS a special case to this, but only after you've gotten an interview appointment, and I'll go into that later.
 
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