And in particular, what’s the consensus on the job market today vs. about three years ago?
It has been much more promising of late for Mr. brown. He has been at a good temp job for over a year now after basically scrambling for work starting in 2002. Other good things are happening, too. I’m up in the air as to whether to mention them, as I don’t want to tempt fate.
So what’s the scoop? How’s the job hunt coming?
Badly. I’m in the “Can’t get a job without experience, can’t get experience without a job” bind. Specifically, I can get all the work in the world as a paralegal or legal researcher, but never as a lawyer - they all want lawyers with at least 2 years PQE. Where the hell am I supposed to get this frigging PQE from, eh? :mad:
Wierd as all heck. I thought I was going to an interview to pick up a little contingent-type home PT, and I got an offer for more money then I am making now to jump ship. The benefits are better. This is almost one week after the “someone has to jump overboard” speech by management, when I stated “AUGHH I Like it here!” Yet when I last looked for a job 3.5 years ago it took 6 months to get a halfway acceptable offer.
I gave up looking for a job. I’ve hooked up with a video studio, and I’m a ‘partner’. (Not officially; that will happen when we incorporate.)
Incidentally, the (East) Indians who came into my old company causing half of us to be laid off are gone. They went back to the old way of doing things before the Indians came. I happen to know an excellent Easytrieve Plus programmer. Unfortunately for them, he’s busy becoming a partner in a video studio. Ha! 
My half-assed job search is over. I applied for a job for which I was in no way qualified, because I didn’t really want a job. The company called me in for an interview for a completely different position, for which I’m extremely qualified. I’ve been working there for two months now, and it’s fun. They don’t really care if I show up on time or at all, and I can work from home when I need to. Salaried, plus benefits.
I start tomorrow with a job I originally had no intentention of taking, but didn’t want to pass up the interview. The traffic’s going to be bad (40 miles from OC into LA), but the hours will be slightly off of rush hour so hopefully I’ll avoid most of it.
The pay’s good (about 1.5 times what I was getting for the same thing six months ago at a different company), and mucho overtime is expected. The job’s only until the end of Setpember, though, but experience is experience. When I save up enough, I’ll graduate to level 5; I get two extra melee attacks per round and 1d6 to hit points.
My daughter was interviewed for a job last December. As in SERIOUS interview, they flew her 1500 miles to their site, put her up for a couple of days, gave her car rental, etc. She’s got her choice of several openings, once this last security clearance comes through. She’s had several background checks and followup interviews since December. They’ve told her that she has the job, as long as they don’t find out that she was a bigtime drug dealer or something. Fortunately for HER, she’s led a rather boring, completely lawabiding life. I think that she was job hunting for about two years before she got this interview, and she’s been working at a used book shop since she graduated college.
I haven’t had a job in more than 10 years, and I don’t want one. In fact, the job I had I only lasted a year at, to the day. Other than that I’ve been gainfully unemployed my whole life.
I realize that most people can’t live the way I live tho, so I’ll send some Slack your way if you’re looking for a job.
Lynn, congrats to your daughter. I know we’ll be saying the same to the Dopers who have posted here soon enough.
Absolute shite. I have made 8 (eight) applications to the same place, where I really want to work, in little over a year, all for menial, entry-level jobs, and have never so much as been offered an interview. Do they think me that unemployable?
Complete fucking garbage. I’m going on nine months of unemployment after leaving my last job to move, and working in retail or even fast food is starting to look appealing. In that nine months, I’ve had one interview for a job that I was overqualified for that didn’t work out.
Luckily, my wife got a great job mere weeks after we moved, so we’ve been living off of that, but I’m getting closer and closer to just putting a bullet in my brain.
While it is against the law to refuse to hire because of a physical handicap, many employers are still somewhat skittish about hiring the deceased. IMO, you would reduce your chances at gainful employment with this strategy. I would please ask you to reconsider this course of action.
I have an appointment at the end of the month to take an employment exam at a neighboring agency. Better pay and a better working environment, but a long commute and crappy rotating shifts. Other than that, I got nothin’.
I’ve been sending out resumes this week. Some of the jobs I’ve been investigating have a lengthy screening and hiring process, so I have to apply for them now.
The local paper is sponsoring a “job fair” in a few weeks, so I think I’ll go to that, if only to see what else is open. I can pretty much forget about working in radio in my local market unless I go into something like admin or sales, or I’m lucky enough to find something full-time with bennies.
Robin
I rather like my new job. More pay and awsome benefits. I worked for a year as a contractor after a few months of unemployment after being laid off from a nice real job. The contrator position really upped my experience.
I updated my resume on monster, and got a call for this job. I had several phone interviews and boom, landed the job without meeting anyone in person. What I did not expect is how easy mass transit is. The commute is a dream. I have read several books on the train since I started and still spend less time commuting than I did for the contractor position.
Lockheed refused to hire me after high school because I’d damaged my knees skiing and in a car wreck. I went through their training as a fiberglass fabricator and was at the top of the class, but they said they wouldn’t hire me because of my knees.
Mine is going absolutely awful. Since November I have had one interview.
However, I have now been offered a master’s course at university, I just need to find some way of paying for it.
I am so wrong laughing about this response. I’m going to hell, I just know it.
Well, on the other side of the coin, my law firm can’t seem to recruit the people it’s looking for. We need:
An experienced real property lawyer or two; and
A legal secretary with litigation experience
and we have no luck finding either. I was discussing the secretary issue with someone here, and apparently finding people who can spell, read and write is becoming a challenge. I think the stigma attached to becoming a secretary during the last part of the 20th century thinned the ranks of people entering this field, and we are now feeling the shortage. All of the secretaries at this firm are at least middle-aged, like me. No youngsters are stepping up to replace us.
So, my point in this post: there’s a shortage of legal secretaries, folks, and they make good moola.
Sorry to hear about so many dopers struggling to find work. At least I can offer one slightly happier story. I went for an interview yesterday, and today I was offered a position. Now I’m just not sure if I want it.
It’s just so hard to know what it’s like to work at a company before you actually work there. I’ve been re-reading this thread, but it hasn’t been that much help. Although now that I have the job offer, I’m tempted to ask some more difficult questions that I didn’t have the guts to ask at the interview.
Oh well, good luck to everyone looking.
