Warning, unemployment rant....
I have been basically unemployed for the last year. I'm over qualified for many
jobs so prospective employers are reluctant to hire me. I am in the age that is
not desirable (58), and I have not claimed any unemployment because I am
classified as a contractor, so I do not add to the unemployment statistics.
I got caught with a startup company going down, where I was the key designer
and was retained to support the transfer of assets, which never happened. Did
two months of work for a German company that never paid me on a signed
contract. Not wealthy enough to pursue legal action against them. And new
employers seem to have a prejudice against hiring people who are unemployed.
I have found that telling a prospective company that I have a pending offer, or
am currently working, makes them more receptive. If I write a resume that does
not contain highly specific information on talents directly needed by potential
company, they drop it. If I do write a resume that did included all my skills,
it would be too many pages and no one would read it.
It seems to get a job, one has to know somebody who knows somebody.
Fortunately, I will be starting work again in January, and am grateful I don't
have to commute 2+ hours a day to get there, but it will be at a greatly
reduced salary. I would definitely rather work at lower pay with a company I
can really make a difference at than some others, like MIT Lincoln Labs...
I just don't understand the prejudice that exist for people who are currently
unemployed, often because the company they worked for went down to no fault of
their own. It is always the case, when a company is going down, they let the
least useful people go first, and those are the ones who end up with new jobs,
while the critical and most valuable people, held to the last moment, end up
getting screwed.
I realize that I need a reduced salary, just to compete with off-shore jobs to
China and India - which I lost one contract to. A lot of companies today are
sitting on a lot of cash, I know, but are very reluctant to commit that to
hiring people.
WayneS
At 12/21/2010 03:25 PM, Chris wrote:
>Unemployment is that high in the USA but the government won't admit it.
>People here are too sheep-like to riot anyway; the harder the government and
>big business fuck them, the more they beg for it. Some parts of the country
>are worse than others. Here in Indiana a couple of our cities, like Elkhart,
>have unemployment rates that the government admits are at the 30% level,
>which means its really a lot worse, and yet the fools in this state still
>keep electing ultra-rightwing politicians who openly admit that they believe
>the poor and unemployed are scum who do not deserve help.
>
>You're right about Spanish people helping family members, I saw it in New
>Mexico (a place whose people are largely Spanish by ancestry and culture)
>when I lived there. In Indiana, families are a lot less sympathetic to those
>of their relatives who struggle.
--
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