
When the Jobless Become the Unemployable - rayvega
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/03/business/economy/03unemployed.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
======
lionhearted
I heard an anecdote about the last recession. It's just an anecdote, but
should be interesting. It's about an "unemployment counselor" - she had 18
unemployed executives who would come to weekly meetings and complain about how
tough it is to get jobs.

Deciding that it was unproductive, she suggested that everyone make at least 5
calls on jobs during the next week, and the main focus of next week's meeting
is talking about how well it went.

Only 2 out of 18 showed up. 16 of them didn't make the calls at all.

I'm not finding the statistic right now, but I also remember hearing that the
average number of job applications per week for long term unemployed people is
2.

This doesn't invalidate the article, but it's an important consideration. If
you're not looking very hard and flexibly for work that might be suitable to
you, does that really indicate that there's no opportunity available?

~~~
sudont
I was unemployed for a full year and a week (post college). During that time I
sent out over 300 résumés, and applied to around 100 online systems. This
ranged from front-end jobs (what I’m at currently) and design jobs, all the
way down to groundskeeper and Wal-Mart stocker.

I had exactly five phone interviews and three in-person interviews out of the
entire year. (One of which was a scam.) Not even Wal-Mart would give me the
time of day.

...Until I got a referral from a friend to a recruiter. She got me an
interview with a nice company, which landed me an offer in _14 hours._

I’m sorry, but your anecdote is a straw man.

~~~
lionhearted
> I’m sorry, but your anecdote is a straw man.

Your anecdote proves another anecdote is a strawman?

Kidding aside, I've been self employed most of my life and I've never written
a resume up, so I don't know. Just sharing one story I heard.

Your experience is interesting. What do you think it was that helped? Was the
recruiter good, or your friend a strong vouch? Would be curious to hear more
about your experience, it's pretty shocking that you get barely any response
with your credentials in 400 applications, but then a warm introduction lands
you a job in a day. Well, I believe in the power of warm introductions, but
you'd expect _some_ interest if your credentials/skills stacked up, no? Would
be curious to hear more.

~~~
jonhendry
"Your anecdote proves another anecdote is a strawman?"

A first-hand anecdote beats your vague, un-sourced, second-hand-at-best
anecdote. Especially since the first-hand anecdote matches many other peoples'
experience, mine included, and because you don't seem to have the personal
experience required to have a working bullshit detector on the issue.

" Well, I believe in the power of warm introductions, but you'd expect some
interest if your credentials/skills stacked up, no?"

After about 9 months, your credentials and skills don't really matter. It's
like you have "I molest goats" on your resume in 96-point type. If you
actually get a call you can hear the loss of interest once you explain that
"yes, my resume _is_ up to date".

~~~
lionhearted
> A first-hand anecdote beats your vague, un-sourced, second-hand-at-best
> anecdote. Especially since the first-hand anecdote matches many other
> peoples' experience, mine included,

My point was, both can be true in the same world. To layer more anecdotes onto
the subject, the people I know that massively hustle don't ever stay out of
work long, except by choice.

> and because you don't seem to have the personal experience required to have
> a working bullshit detector on the issue.

Eh, "Some people are complaining without getting off their asses" - not
everyone but some people - is a hypothesis that absolutely jives with my
bullshit detector. In fact, it matches tremendously a lot of experience.

> After about 9 months, your credentials and skills don't really matter. It's
> like you have "I molest goats" on your resume in 96-point type. If you
> actually get a call you can hear the loss of interest once you explain that
> "yes, my resume is up to date".

Ah, this is fascinating. See, that's just what I was looking for - great
insight there, thanks.

Extrapolating from that, would it make sense to take a class or do some
volunteer/charity work, or travel, or contribute to some open source project,
or something to fill the blank in your resume?

I really don't know, this is all new stuff to me. I've looked at a few hundred
resumes and proposals in my life for hires and outsourcers, but I haven't
submitted one since I did an internship when I was 18 (did I even submit one
there? not sure). I'm trying to think back to my own experiences choosing
people, but back then I interviewed everyone with half-decent credentials
because I didn't trust my resume-reading skills, and figured it couldn't hurt.
Then I hired people who I jived with personally who seemed to have the skills
and motivation. For outsourcers, it was all about portfolio and speed of their
replies to my further questions, always. (This is a fascinating insight to me
writing this, actually, I never realized that before - speed and portfolio
were really the only two determining factors... written language less
important, I contracted some people in India with spelling/grammar errors who
obviously had the technical chops and speed one time, and then did a lot of
work with them)

Okay, good discussion here Jon. Interesting stuff.

------
tjmc
"In particularly dynamic industries, like software engineering, unemployed
workers might also miss out on new developments and fail to develop the skills
required."

Can't buy that argument for software engineering. If you're unemployed you've
got plenty of time to learn new technologies whilst looking for work.

~~~
ryan-allen
I'd also argue that certain type of software skills don't become obsolete, and
that a sufficiently experienced developer shouldn't have too much trouble
picking up the 'latest and greatest' technologies. It's not like it actually
changes fundamentally every few years!

~~~
jteo
Unfortunately, most HR departments don't understand that. To many HR
recruiters, IT recruitment is a task of ticking off the checkboxes for
knowledge, as opposed to screening for skills, character traits and
personality.

------
rianjs
The article doesn't talk about it, but I wonder about companies that do credit
checks as a pre-req for employment. Being unemployed can lead to problems
paying bills, especially over the long term. (For younger individuals, this
might be problems paying back student loans, which aren't dischargeable in
bankruptcy.)

Bad credit means not getting a job which means further problems paying
bills... well, you get the idea.

------
jaysonelliot
Given the young age demographic of HN, I'm looking forward to hearing people's
perspectives on the prospects facing people in their fifties who are trying to
get back to work.

If you had two programmers competing for a job, equally qualified, but one who
was 25 and the other 55, how would you choose?

~~~
brudgers
A 55 year old who can't clearly bring more to the table than someone half
their age is a concern. If the 25 year old was actually equally qualified, it
would make sense to hire that person because they are young enough to move up
the management track and into the succession track.

So if I'm looking at succession, I'm probably going young. If I'm looking for
someone with enough sense to avoid re-inventing the wheel, I'm probably going
mature.

[all of which is somewhat irrelevant to the effects of unemployment].

~~~
ryanwaggoner
You know this is illegal[1], right?

1\. In the US...

~~~
brudgers
IANAL -

But AFAIK, hiring the older worker on the basis of age would never be illegal.
Discriminating against an older candidate is illegal in certain circumstances,
but not always.

<http://www.eeoc.gov/facts/age.html>

In practice, such discrimination appears to be commonplace and virtually
unpunished given the burden on the candidate to prove that discrimination
actually occurred.

Considering that there were 22,000 Federal age discrimination claims in 2009
[<http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/statistics/enforcement/charges.cfm>] and that 61%
of all claims were considered to have no reasonable cause and 17% were closed
administratively [<http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/statistics/enforcement/all.cfm>]
one could napkin estimate that about 5000 people had some success in claiming
age discrimination. I'd be willing to bet that most of those successes were
against an employer and not related to the hiring process.

Not that any of that makes it right.

------
dabent
If my current employer were to suddenly let everyone go, I honestly wonder if
half of them wouldn't fall into the "unemployable" category.

~~~
brc
I did some contract work with a team in a large company. Within about a week I
realised this team was a dumping ground for poor performers from other parts
of the IT dept. They looked after all sorts of little odds and ends systems,
and didn't really write any new stuff (that's what I was there for - they
didn't trust them to create new software).

I have heard from contacts within the company that successive downsizing
rounds has removed all of them, and as far as I am aware, none are working in
the IT industry in any capacity anymore. They were nice guys but were just
contended to sit back and collect paychecks and not learn anything new.

If you get into a age+skills death spiral it can be very hard to get out.

