The employment situation

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’m a government worker in the Pacific Northwest.

We’ve been having interviews at work for a part-time, 3 or 4 month limited-duration position in my group, a file clerk at $14-16/hour. We have 25 applicants, most of them bank presidents, Supreme Court justices, and members of the College of Cardinals. Only slightly kidding. The one we hired was a bank branch manager who best suppressed the natural feeling of “this is so pathetic” during the interview. It was so ridiculous, interviewing all these candidates, most of whom could run circles around the jobs of anyone present, and then after they left, we’d sit around the table and say “Well, I didn’t really like her answer to ‘What are your weaknesses?’” and generally slag on them.

The most impressive candidate in my view was the ex-regional-manager of Tower Records Retail Stores, Western States Division, who was just a consummate CEO, a total bitch-goddess of business. She was rejected because she couldn’t think of any credible weaknesses, I shit you not. And also because she was too alpha, wouldn’t really fit in with our passive-aggressive bureaucrat culture. She would run roughshod all over us. (Now, I would have hired her myself, because I was so impressed by her, but others were repelled by her greatness. They said she’d cause trouble.) We hired the bank manager, who was a meek little thing, a mother, a feel-good sort of person. I defer to my co-workers, and probably she’s the best cultural fit among the candidates …

… but I’m APPALLED at the amazing qualifications of all of them. We had business majors, MBAs, one with a degree in chemistry, an HR professional … it was embarrassing. File clerk, temporary, part-time, $14 hour. Many of our candidates had been laid off from $100K jobs a year or more ago, all of them volunteering ever since, keeping active like mad. Only one of them made our selection for file clerk. This is how desperate the unemployed have become.

And I don’t think the boss even gets how embarrassing and awful this is. After the 2nd candidate interviewed, I said to my boss, “I liked him a lot but I think he might be overqualified.” And my boss got really mad, and said “NOBODY is overqualified. I want the best. Why WOULDN’T you want to hire the best possible person for ANY position?”

So, only the bank managers can get a job as a part-time file clerk, let alone the CEOs. I pity the actual file clerks who are currently out of work (like me, in a slightly sadder universe, one random pink-slip away). Where’s their down-curve?

2

I am vastly overqualified for all the temp jobs I had in the last three years.

But what can you do. My last temp job was cashiering at a computer store. I worked in a factory making generic drugs, I worked a lot of crummy temp jobs. I was grateful for them and I am grateful for any of them.

The “real jobs” I go after are getting filled by people who are even MORE overqualified than I am.

The really sad part is I’m sure I get passed over for jobs because I’m overqualified but you could get me for minimum wage if you wanted. For instance, my last “real” job was an asst controller for a hotel. Before that I was the IT manager at another downtown Chicago hotel.

You could get my skills and experience, for minimum wage, so why not?

I will say not everyone has enough brains to just keep their mouth shut and do their job. If I’m hired to be a clerk, I clerk. I don’t butt in an offer opinoins and pretend I know better even if I do.

A lot of people are afraid if they hire someone overqualified that person could wind up in their job.

3

Wow. That is really depressing. Thank you for helping me feel very grateful to have a job. (I even like my job, but I work a lot of hours and this makes it easier, in all seriousness.)

4

As shitty as that is, it makes me feel better about my inability to find work. It’s hard not to take all that rejection personal after awhile, but I guess it’s not just me.

5

What is a good answer? You’re asking them to give you a reason not to hire them. Of course you’ll get a lot of, “my weakness is that I work too hard.” or such other B.S. I think the question should be eliminated from interviews.

As for the state of getting jobs here in Pacific Northwest (I live in Oregon), hell, I can’t even find a volunteer job with the state or my city government. On Jan 6 I have an interview for a state job, but I’m not holding my breath. A few days ago I interviewed for a call-center position. I might get that, but I was told to expect a phone call and haven’t received one yet. But then again, they may just be waiting until after the new year.

6

Well, I was a bit higher than file clerk… administrative assistant. Laid off November 2007. I’ve gotten jobs with

  1. A general contractor, cleaning job sites, painting stuff, and occasionally wielding a hammer

  2. The Census (buh-bye until 2020)

  3. Candy store retail clerk (laid off after three months - apparently no one has money to buy candy, go figger)

I’ve gotten all of maybe 5 job interviews for ANY job in the past three years, despite spending 20-30 hours a week looking for work (except when able to get 30-40 actually working) and submitting apps everywhere.

I’ve gone hat in hand to public aid, been on food stamps (back on again as of November this year), been helped to pay the rent by my family (and I am not the worst off - one of my sisters was homeless for three months, things were so bad for her), collected cans alongside the road for money to keep my vehicle running, visited a food pantry, buy my clothes at Goodwill when I can afford it which isn’t always, and had turned into a Power Garndener to keep us fed. I’ve sold personal property to make ends meet when I could, and often they still didn’t meet anyway. I have a website with my writing where I ask that if people enjoy reading the stuff they make a donation to keeping my family afloat.

Right now, if you have a job keep it because it’s nasty out there in the looking for job world.

Since apparently I can’t get hired (well, the general contractor would be HAPPY to employ me 40+ hours a week, has even talked about me supervising a crew, but he can’t find that much work for himself, much less anyone else) my spouse and I are trying to come up with an idea for a small business that will bootstrap us up to at least just plain poverty, meaning we can at least pay our own bills, rather than our current dire poverty where, if it weren’t for my dad, we’d be sleeping on the sidewalk.

Yes, you could get me for minimum wage. I don’t care if I’m overqualified, but all too often that is a means of elimination. I only got the candy store job because I didn’t claim any education past high school - yes, in that case having a degree was a liability, which is just… ridiculous to the point of tears. Minimum wage 30-40 hours a week would be an IMPROVEMENT in my situation.

7

I like your boss. The whole thing is sickening.

8

Problem is, how many of these bank presidents and supreme court justices has ever actually filed anything? It is the rare executive I have met who I would hire to do general office work. I came from the bottom up to an exec position, but I have spent a huge amount of time over the years teaching other executives how to print a file, create a basic spreadsheet, develop a simple filing system, use spell-check or mail merge, etc. So many of them never had to learn basic office skills.

9

Makes me really glad I decided to return to school just before my final unemployment extension ran out.

Last summer, I took off from school (since my funding doesn’t cover summer term) and intended to do temp work (which I spent a few years doing very steadily, mostly positions I was WAY overqualified for but I enjoyed the flexibility and variety, before the economic downturn hit).

I’m also in the PNW, btw.

I went to two interviews, both for jobs I was both perfectly AND very over qualified for, and didn’t get either one. They had their pick of several applicants and who knows? Maybe I answered some question “wrong”; maybe my “weakness” or “strength” wasn’t what they were looking for. :rolleyes:

I’ve got another year and a half or so to go before I graduate. I find myself dreading it because it means re-entering the demeaning, frustrating job search.

I try to remain optimistic, to remind myself that I have NEVER before in my life had trouble finding work, that I KNOW it is not ME, and that the economy is bound to rebound more by then (or that I can always become a professional student and stay on and go for my doctorate if all else fails ;)) In the meantime, I am really enjoying school…and it beats the hell out of sitting home sending out resume after resume, going on the rare, pointless interview, and collecting (or NOT, since it long ago ran out!) unemployment.

sigh. It sucks. :frowning:

10

Tower Records regional manager?

There’s her weakness right there: She didn’t get out of the record business soon enough because she didn’t see the end was coming.

11

We just got over a hundred applicants for a part time library assistant/shelver job. Requires a high school diploma. We could have interviewed only rocket scientists and still met our hiring process requirements.

12

I got turned down for a job because I was overqualified recently. He said training took 2-3 weeks and my formal education meant I would be the very first one selected to transfer within the company. So he didn’t want to spent the time on training if I was just going to be whisked away by the higher ups after he got done.

13

I worked as a systems analyst at a major brokerage firm and got laid off 5 years ago. I was then approaching 60 years old. The economy as you may recall was not in bad shape then. People apparently loved my resume. Having a 59-year-old woman show up was apparently the killer, even though I did everything reasonably possible to appear younger. I know I was a perfect fit for some of the jobs.

Unemployment back then was only 6 months long. I finally took a job with a temp agency because hey, I can still type and answer phones. After one week on my first assignment the boss said, “So, what else can you do?” “Anything you can teach me as long as it doesn’t involve being on my feet a lot or lifting heavy objects.” He asked me to bring in a resume the following day, but I already had a copy with me (I never left home without it).

Then the “overqualified” bit kicked in. We finally made a deal that he would hire me if I promised to stay at least 6 months. I shudder to think how bad it would be for me to try to find work now.

14

Right?! I used to be a career counselor, and I had guys complaining to me that they couldn’t get jobs as custodians. Well, you’ve never actually done any custodial work in big buildings, so…

15

I haven’t heard of this happening much at my current workplace. Apparently I was an anomaly trying to be a customer service rep with a college degree.

16

Shit, I’m surprised you didn’t get 200 applicants. I live in a mid-sized city in the south where unemployment is still hovering at just above 10 percent, and around here a job listing like that would yield a HUGE response, depending on where all it was posted.

The problem is a lot of people look at a job like that and think, “Well, hard can it be? I mean, once I learn the filing system, this should be a piece of cake, right?” without considering that there’s a reason people go to four-year colleges to earn a degree in library science.

17

I put plates in front of people wearing a tuxedo. It pays way better than anything that was offered on any site, and those ads read like: must know 12 different programs, 5 web programming languages and have 12 years experience $15/hr. So you could apply, but then you’d be standing in line behind everyone else that knew all of those things… Baby gotta eat… Tuxedo it is*.

(*It’s actually a pretty fun job, my pride just hurts a little)

18

A few notes on why this question is asked:

  • It’s an absolute layup… you know you’re going to be asked it. The interviewer is just checking to make sure you know how to prepare for the obvious.

  • It’s an honesty test. The interviewer knows you aren’t going to deep-six yourself, but expects a certain level of honesty. Failure to be somewhat candid is a bad sign. Hence as you observed, “I work too hard” doesn’t cut it.

  • It gives you the chance to show initiative in improving yourself. (e.g. “I’m very analytical, sometimes too much. I think this position would force me to grow out of that comfort zone and become more of team member and leader rather a straight numbers guy/gal, and I look forward to that opportunity.”)

So it seems to be a reasonable question to ask given the it’s a simple question that establishes a individual’s ability to prepare, level of honesty, and initiative.

19

The UK employment situation seems similar. I can’t even get an interview for any of the umpteen million administrative assistant jobs I’ve been applying for since I got permission to work here. I don’t even get the courtesy of an outright rejection, just radio silence. I have an undergrad science degree and half of a Master’s (need to see about transferring and finishing that somehow), so I’m probably considered overqualified for some jobs – I was told by one place I applied for that I was a likelier candidate for their program coordinator position than the clerical one I was applying for, but as I don’t have a British driver’s license yet I couldn’t even try for that one. Guess that should be my first priority then, since a lot of things in my field require one, and applying for things outside my field just isn’t working.

20

No, no, it’s not a librarian job. Library clerk. Not the same thing.

I was wrong, by the way - we only got two rocket scientists. We’d have to fill the other slot with a doctorate in environmental chemistry.

ETA - and librarians have masters’ degrees, not just four year degrees. The shelvers, though, they just need to know the alphabet.