Tag: Unemployment

How It Happens: The Downward Spiral Part 2

~ gannebassett ~ 1 Comment

Your realtor tells you to talk to a lawyer who specializes in foreclosures, who can advise you properly. She has the name of someone who’s helped quite a few of her clients.

How will you ever pay for a lawyer?

You call and leave a message, then wait the nail-biting two days for a response.

The mortgage company is still jerking you around about the loan modification papers, asking for clarifications, letters and signatures to back the information that has already been certified.

And they continue to return your payments.

You talk to your roommate, guilty and sad that it is going to affect him, too. It doesn’t matter that he knew the situation going in, that you kept him abreast of the job search and the uncertainties you were facing. You still feel like you’re letting him down.

You start cleaning house. There are things you don’t want to risk losing. Mostly your mother’s things. You stopped being sentimental about your own things when you were forced to start selling them to make ends meet.

But her life mattered. Her memory matters.

Remembering how she loved you, believed in you brings more shame.

What a disappointment you are.

And yet even now you hear her voice. She would never be ashamed of you. Not even now. You know beyond any doubt, her love for you never wavered. She would cherish each shattered piece of you. It somehow brings comfort.

People tell you to be strong, go to church, stand on the Word. Some pray, some cross their fingers, some send good wishes. Mostly people feel afraid because they don’t know what to say, so they disappear. You’ve been there before; it’s not an unusual response. The friends who say “I don’t know what to say” then talk you to distraction are a relief. For a few moments, you can feel normal. For a few minutes you have a place.

The lawyer says to take a deep breath, it’s going to get worse before she can step in and hopefully make it better. There are no guarantees.

You’re barely treading water. That means you’re going under. The “deep breath” is good advice.

She has a plan, though. You have no choice but to trust her.

Trust is hard. Faith is harder. You remember when they use to be so much a part of your being it felt like they were part of your name. That was years ago. Before the disappointments. The miscarriage. The loss. That was before death had taken its toll and life had pummeled.

“If you need to talk…”

You don’t want to talk about it. You don’t want to think about it anymore. But it’s taken over your mind.

The light is getting dimmer every day. You’re not sleeping well and it’s hard to get out of bed. But you force yourself. You have to move. You have to keep trying, keep pushing. That’s what’s expected; that’s what you do. You may fail at life, but it won’t be because you slept through it.

More phone calls. More applications. More resumes. The only thing darker than the black hole of the job search is the black hell inside. That’s where demons reside. They have talons of humiliation and fangs of shame. They peck and bite and sneer. They mock you for believing you have something to offer, for thinking you still have value.

“Being hopeless won’t get you a job.”

“You need to think positive.”

“Every day is a new opportunity and you’ve got be be excited to embrace it.”

You feel the bitter shroud closing over you. The cliches are slaps when you need a soothing touch.

A friend from France calls. She sounds happy just to talk to you. You cling to the knowledge that it’s real. She’s too blunt to patronize. Besides, she happily gives you hours of her time. She doesn’t have to.

Another makes contact to tell you people only speak the best of you. She insists you are more than the circumstance.

You wish the voices across the ocean could mute the voices in your head. The ones that say “People are talking about you.” You can sense it, feel it in every interaction, see it in their pity-filled eyes, hear it in the judgmental counsel.

You find yourself raging on the inside, desperate to be free, to have the chains of bondage broken.

You think about the homeless you’ve seen under the bridges and along the sidewalks; their animated talks make sense now. A frightened soul can’t stay silent; a broken heart needs a voice to survive.

Your voice carries a pen. So you write.

This is how it happens.

Quickly, but in slow motion. Each step to the gallows accompanied by whispers.

I understand.

Today I gave John my granola bar. He’s a veteran, and homeless. For a little while, the voice he heard was mine. I hope he heard: “You matter.”

Click here for Part One: http://wp.me/p3HHLR-9g

What’s in a title?

~ gannebassett ~ Leave a comment

There comes a time when you have to start looking for jobs in areas that may not be your so-called area of expertise. I actually reached that point long, long ago, but today I had an interview that placed a spotlight on yet another level of insanity in the job search.

The interview was for a Customer Service Representative.

The job description explains the position would be in a call center environment, responding to new requests, complaints and service orders from established accounts. Systems furniture experience a plus.

I come from a Facilities Management background. For those of you who don’t know what that means, I have explained this further in a previous blog: http://wp.me/p3HHLR-7M. Relevant to this current job opportunity, I have been the person employees call when something environmental is preventing them from being functional and productive in their positions.

For the general “worker bee,” a colloquialism often used to describe the staff you find in support areas (such as the mail room, copy center or reception desk) and in the sea of standard cubicles, the requests would involve a wide range of issues. Fedex didn’t pick-up the packages, there’s no diet coke in the vending machine, there’s a foul odor coming from the drain in the restroom, the flourescent light is flickering, a power outlet doesn’t work, the cube isn’t set-up for a left-handed person, the copy machine is jammed, the keyboard tray is causing carpel tunnel syndrome, someone cooked fish in the microwave and the smell is causing mass nausea, the courier stole my honey bun…

Middle manager calls are geared a little differently. Their calls sound more like this:

* My team needs to be seated in the same cubicle cluster so they can effectively brainstorm
* We don’t have a departmental printer
* Our system needs UPS backup
* The A/V system in the conference room doesn’t work
* There aren’t enough filing cabinets
* It’s always cold
* It’s always hot
* Why don’t we have a bigger breakroom?

Then there are the executive calls. Mission critical resources need to have generator back-up, what are the disaster recovery plans, our competitor has Kate Spade chins, raised flooring is required, the caterer needs a serving area, the flower arrangement in the lobby is hideous, I’d rather have a cheery wood desk, someone is stinking up the executive restroom…

Yes, clearly the Facilities Manager job involves a great deal of customer service. Since it also involves space planning and the build-out of cubicle spaces using systems furniture, I’d be a great fit for this position. Right?

“I don’t see your Customer Service positions on your resume.”

There’s a reason the “experts” tell you to go with a functional resume when applying for jobs involving transferable skills rather than title matching for the position. It’s so you can see the actual “customer service” that has been performed. You can see the skill at work.

I point out the Customer Service section outlining this specific experience and my career successes.

“But you haven’t actually been a Customer Service specialist.”

I discuss how Facilities Management is by definition a customer service specialist, regaling him with a few stories of customer service scenarios and the aligning procedures. We talk about difficult situations and positive outcomes. We discuss systems furniture, the job specific requests and how I would approach the customer. He is clearly impressed.

Or is he?

“We’re looking for someone who’s been an actual Customer Service Specialist.”

Ummm…Forty minutes into this interview and it’s become clear experience isn’t as important as title.

Note to self: Next time don’t waste time on that “functional resume.” Just be creative with the job titles; it involves less editing since the experience remains the same. And if they call to check references, don’t worry about the lie. You can always say they did a re-org and the position titles changed. After all, what’s in a title? A title by any name is still the same.

And to the college kid who had Customer Service Specialist experience from his fast food service days and therefore got the job, but now has no idea how to handle the customer who just went ballistic because her ped drawer locked on its own and she can’t get to her cell phone: Congratulations.

The Long-term Unemployment Crisis

~ gannebassett ~ Leave a comment

A recent article in the Atlantic reported on a study that examined the callback rates to interviews for a set of fake resumes where the only major difference was the duration the candidate had been unemployed.  The results weren’t surprising, and yet they do reflect a prejudice that may be setting up a snowball effect for future economic challenges, or at the very least a slower economic recovery.  It seems the biggest predictor of employment success for the job seeker is the length of time since your last job.  The invisible line of demarcation? Six months.

It’s not as if this concept hasn’t been around for years.  Explaining and underplaying these “gaps” is taught in almost every unemployment class and by recruiters and other advisors everywhere.  But in a time when economic crisis has pushed so many people beyond that six-month line is this a realistic demand for a hiring manager? Has this ideology become a prejudice that doesn’t only hurt job seekers, but the overall economic employment structure?

There are currently an estimated 4.6 million long-term unemployed in the United States, and 66% of those have been unemployed for over a year.  Did you process that?

To be counted as one of the long-term unemployed, an individual needs to have been out of the workforce for 6 months or more, be immediately available to start a job, and be actively pursuing employment.  Actively pursuing employment means sending out resumes, manually completing applications, interviewing or engaging in some activity that has the potential of actually gaining employment; simply searching job boards does not qualify as actively pursuing. There are 4.6 million people who meet the criteria, and according to many analysts that number is grossly underestimated.  Sixty-six percent, over 3 million of the “long-term unemployed,” have more than doubled the industry accepted amount of time to still be a viable candidate for employment.  Do you see the problem here?

These numbers increase monthly.  As new jobs open up, those people newly unemployed get the interviews, which logically results in the long-term unemployed continuing to be, well, unemployed and increasingly less viable.  Just to put numbers to this mayhem: 7.6% of the working-age population is unemployed and 40% of those have already reached the long-term unemployed status.  Every month those numbers increase as the number of new jobs reported are taken by the newly unemployed and the 3% of the working age population who are currently unemployed face a well-documented prejudice that will prevent them from obtaining employment.

Many analysts have started estimating the number of people dropping out of the workplace as a result of the long-term unemployed dilemma, and it is significant.  These numbers include the people who have chosen to stay-at home and adapt to becoming a one-income family, the people (usually those in their early 20s) who chose to go back to school for additional degrees, and those baby boomers who took an earlier retirement, electing to live beneath the level they originally worked to achieve, as well as those who have just given up and those who continue to look but are now requiring welfare assistance. The result of this exodus: the number of people in the workplace currently equates with the number of people in the workplace in 1980. That means the population increased, industry expanded with a burgeoning of hiring opportunities, and the number of college graduates increased exponentially and yet the workforce is smaller.  It also means there is a strain being placed on the system that weighs heavily against any job growth activity or economic initiatives.

It would seem some people are starting to think of the snowball effect beginning with continued foreclosures, reduced spending, and ending with an inadequate workforce as the jobs are created, but it doesn’t seem to be changing the attitudes in the workplace.  Hiring managers are stuck in the mindset they had during a good economy, not only regarding the 6-month demarcation, but also the notion that those long-term unemployed have not done their due diligence in remaining relevant to their industry.  The number of people seeking new certifications, joining networking groups, attending conferences, new trends/regulation downloads, etc. has remained the same even though the workforce has reduced.  How do you account for that if not for the unemployed staying firm in their goals and agendas?

There needs to be a paradigm shift, a real change in the ideologies and approaches to hiring.  The government initiatives for job growth are primarily geared toward the blue collar sector.  The stalemate is with the middle-management jobs and the white collar long-term unemployed who don’t have enough opportunities and aren’t considered for the few out there.  Even if they choose to “go where the jobs are” they need to first get trained in the blue collar sector.  They need training and certifications to work in the manufacturing and/or technical arenas that are opened.  That requires months and sometimes up to two years of training.  In the meantime, what do they do?  There’s not much they can do at this point.  They are caught in this Bermuda Triangle of a Long-term unemployment.  I wonder how long they will be lost in a system that has not adapted to the current crisis before change happens.