| Topic Name: |
How bad is this job market? |
| Message Name: |
On this, you are right |
| Date Posted: |
08/19/2004 |
| In Reply To: |
I agree with most of the other replies. I might like to add that now employers are:
1. Extremely inflexible about job requirements (i.e. advanced degrees, 10+ years of specialized experience, etc.) and candidate qualifications. I feel that this inflexibility exists because they feel they can wait for the "perfect" candidate to surface from a vast pool of unemployed and underemployed prospects. Orders are down, the economy is sluggish, so they feel they can bide their time. I can't tell you how many jobs I've seen go unfilled for over a year because the "perfect" candidate has not come along!
2. Offering lower wages because they want to take advantage of the unemployed, underemployed, and forgotten (unmployment benefits ran out) workers. It's all supply and demand.
3. Gutting their manufacturing infrastructure to cash in on the immediate gains of outsourcing to Asia. There are fewer and fewer manufacturing jobs each month. Even professional jobs in fields like engineering are going overseas.
4. Relying more and more on incompetent recruiters to find qualified candidates. I'd say that about 95% of the jobs I run across on the web are posted by recruiters. Most of these people know little about their client's companies and seldom understand how to relate the candidate's resume to the job requirements. As a result, they do a poor job of selling you to the decision makers at the company. I always have much bettter luck if I can deal directly with the company.
5. In total chaos. I can't tell you how many interviews I've been on where I discovered that the company is on the verge of bankruptcy. This is often due to poor, short sighted executive management or they have serious problems with their management infrastructure (infighting, silos, denial, stale thinking, etc.). The biggest problem seems to be that they are too afraid to invest in the future, so everyone has to make due with little or no resources. Staff size is limited, so everyone is stressed out to the max because they have too much responsibility and pressure.
I don't know where this is leading. I am a highly educated professional with a lot of experience and excellent abilities. I am beginning to think that the conventional job market is not the place for me. I am now making plans to get into consulting and stop spinning my wheels. |
| Message: |
I am firmly of the opinion that it is a crock to think that any security comes in having to rely on working for others, and that we are doing today's youth a disservice if we do not educate them to be ready for entrepreneurship.
Of course, not all of us are in a position to start a business right now, meaning we need those greedy and short-sighted employers.
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