<story><title>The Youth Unemployment Bomb</title><url>http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/07_52/b4064058743638.htm</url><text></text></story><parent_chain><item><author>pzxc</author><text>I&apos;ve never understood how being &quot;overqualified&quot; is a problem. No one says you have to list your degree or make mention of it. Just pretend you don&apos;t have one?  What am I missing here? Are people too egotistical to accept a job at McDonald&apos;s when they have a degree?  It has always been my opinion that any job is better than no job. If you need money, take what work you can. There&apos;s nothing that says you can&apos;t keep looking for a better job while you are working a holdover job.  And, just like omitting mention of the degree, when you do apply for jobs that you really want, now or later, you don&apos;t have to put on your resume that you worked at McDonald&apos;s for three months while you were looking for better work.</text></item><item><author>ylem</author><text>I have a sister who is unemployed in California (Pasadena), so I will make a few anecdotal observations.  She was an honors student in college and taught special ed for some years before moving on to manage some group homes for the mentally impaired.  She then went into home health care and became unemployed when a job offer fell through.&lt;p&gt;During this time (over 1 year), she has applied for many jobs (including an interview with a nursing home facility (sorry, don&apos;t know the details) on a reservation in New Mexico, where she would have to commute an hour each way to work--where she was a good fit and the daughter of one her teachers arranged for the interview).  Some have been at traditional companies (HR), others have been at Target, Macy&apos;s, and other temporary jobs.  Here&apos;s what she&apos;s found:&lt;p&gt;1)  If you have a college degree, it&apos;s hard to get hired even for jobs that are 9 months with no chance of permanent employment, because you are &quot;over qualified&quot;
2)  These unemployment centers are fairly useless for those with an education.  If you go in everyday and a job happens to come in that matches you, then good.  Otherwise, you&apos;re better off searching the internet yourself.  Also, most of the money that&apos;s provided for training is for pretty basic jobs, like &quot;medical coding&quot; which seem like good outsourcing targets.   Even though you go through the hoops for these, getting authorized to take these certificate programs can be  Kafka-esque.&lt;p&gt;For my sister, while she&apos;s still looking for a job, she&apos;s decided she wants to go the entrepreneurial route.  She got a chance to pitch her idea to an incubator in Ann Arbor, but she only had crude drawings and while they liked the idea, they really wanted a prototype.  She is not a coder, so she&apos;s enrolled for some courses at the local community college.&lt;p&gt;But, I will say that I&apos;ve seen some bias against hiring people who have been unemployed for some time.  For example, a friend works as a pharmaceutical researcher and was told by recruiters that they are only interested in people who currently are employed (she was)...I think there&apos;s a tendency to believe that the jobs are out &quot;there&quot; and people are just too lazy to find them.&lt;p&gt;However, I&apos;m increasingly believing that we&apos;ve moved to a two fluid model (to coin a physics phrase) where for people with specialized skills, or experience (for example, I&apos;ve talked to people in sales at IBM and other companies who have told me that they&apos;ve found it hard to hire people with the skills they want), the job market is actually not that bad and they are being actively recruited.  On the other hand, there are people with lower skills and for them the outlook is rather bleak.</text></item><item><author>_delirium</author><text>&lt;i&gt;(Relatedly: some days I wonder if the single most effective form of unemployment relief would be teaching people that sending out resumes is for suckers.)&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;The welfare-reform efforts of the past 15-20 years in most western countries have tended to do exactly the opposite, oddly enough. Out of a worry that people were just receiving benefits without really looking for work, you must now demonstrate that you&apos;re actively sending out resumes and filling out applications. Some jurisdictions even require you to show up every so often to a center where they help you search job listings and send out resumes.</text></item><item><author>patio11</author><text>I&apos;m most worried not for the numbers as for the corrosive effect long periods of unemployment have on employability.  You lose the simple habits which are required for lots of gainful employment, such as &quot;getting up before 9 AM consistently&quot; and &quot;working mostly non-stop for 8 hours a day&quot;.&lt;p&gt;I see this in a lot of these articles where folks will, e.g., claim they applied for 15 jobs in 3 weeks.  At some point the new normal for him has become that he works 15 minutes a day or less on his job search.  (Relatedly: some days I wonder if the single most effective form of unemployment relief would be teaching people that sending out resumes &lt;i&gt;is for suckers&lt;/i&gt;.)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>brk</author><text>For an employer there is a real cost associated with finding and hiring a new employee.  The worry is that someone who is over-qualified is going to continue to be looking for higher-paid/higher-skilled work that is a better fit for them.  That employee will also be generally less concerned about their future career path at the job they are over-qualified for, which can lead to reduced quality of work.  In a customer-facing role at a retailer this can come through as a bad or passe attitude, which won&apos;t win over your customers.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Youth Unemployment Bomb</title><url>http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/07_52/b4064058743638.htm</url><text></text></story><parent_chain><item><author>pzxc</author><text>I&apos;ve never understood how being &quot;overqualified&quot; is a problem. No one says you have to list your degree or make mention of it. Just pretend you don&apos;t have one?  What am I missing here? Are people too egotistical to accept a job at McDonald&apos;s when they have a degree?  It has always been my opinion that any job is better than no job. If you need money, take what work you can. There&apos;s nothing that says you can&apos;t keep looking for a better job while you are working a holdover job.  And, just like omitting mention of the degree, when you do apply for jobs that you really want, now or later, you don&apos;t have to put on your resume that you worked at McDonald&apos;s for three months while you were looking for better work.</text></item><item><author>ylem</author><text>I have a sister who is unemployed in California (Pasadena), so I will make a few anecdotal observations.  She was an honors student in college and taught special ed for some years before moving on to manage some group homes for the mentally impaired.  She then went into home health care and became unemployed when a job offer fell through.&lt;p&gt;During this time (over 1 year), she has applied for many jobs (including an interview with a nursing home facility (sorry, don&apos;t know the details) on a reservation in New Mexico, where she would have to commute an hour each way to work--where she was a good fit and the daughter of one her teachers arranged for the interview).  Some have been at traditional companies (HR), others have been at Target, Macy&apos;s, and other temporary jobs.  Here&apos;s what she&apos;s found:&lt;p&gt;1)  If you have a college degree, it&apos;s hard to get hired even for jobs that are 9 months with no chance of permanent employment, because you are &quot;over qualified&quot;
2)  These unemployment centers are fairly useless for those with an education.  If you go in everyday and a job happens to come in that matches you, then good.  Otherwise, you&apos;re better off searching the internet yourself.  Also, most of the money that&apos;s provided for training is for pretty basic jobs, like &quot;medical coding&quot; which seem like good outsourcing targets.   Even though you go through the hoops for these, getting authorized to take these certificate programs can be  Kafka-esque.&lt;p&gt;For my sister, while she&apos;s still looking for a job, she&apos;s decided she wants to go the entrepreneurial route.  She got a chance to pitch her idea to an incubator in Ann Arbor, but she only had crude drawings and while they liked the idea, they really wanted a prototype.  She is not a coder, so she&apos;s enrolled for some courses at the local community college.&lt;p&gt;But, I will say that I&apos;ve seen some bias against hiring people who have been unemployed for some time.  For example, a friend works as a pharmaceutical researcher and was told by recruiters that they are only interested in people who currently are employed (she was)...I think there&apos;s a tendency to believe that the jobs are out &quot;there&quot; and people are just too lazy to find them.&lt;p&gt;However, I&apos;m increasingly believing that we&apos;ve moved to a two fluid model (to coin a physics phrase) where for people with specialized skills, or experience (for example, I&apos;ve talked to people in sales at IBM and other companies who have told me that they&apos;ve found it hard to hire people with the skills they want), the job market is actually not that bad and they are being actively recruited.  On the other hand, there are people with lower skills and for them the outlook is rather bleak.</text></item><item><author>_delirium</author><text>&lt;i&gt;(Relatedly: some days I wonder if the single most effective form of unemployment relief would be teaching people that sending out resumes is for suckers.)&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;The welfare-reform efforts of the past 15-20 years in most western countries have tended to do exactly the opposite, oddly enough. Out of a worry that people were just receiving benefits without really looking for work, you must now demonstrate that you&apos;re actively sending out resumes and filling out applications. Some jurisdictions even require you to show up every so often to a center where they help you search job listings and send out resumes.</text></item><item><author>patio11</author><text>I&apos;m most worried not for the numbers as for the corrosive effect long periods of unemployment have on employability.  You lose the simple habits which are required for lots of gainful employment, such as &quot;getting up before 9 AM consistently&quot; and &quot;working mostly non-stop for 8 hours a day&quot;.&lt;p&gt;I see this in a lot of these articles where folks will, e.g., claim they applied for 15 jobs in 3 weeks.  At some point the new normal for him has become that he works 15 minutes a day or less on his job search.  (Relatedly: some days I wonder if the single most effective form of unemployment relief would be teaching people that sending out resumes &lt;i&gt;is for suckers&lt;/i&gt;.)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>swernli</author><text>That&apos;s exactly the problem. From what I&apos;ve seen, the reason people don&apos;t want to hire overqualified applicants is because they know those people would be doing exactly what you are advising: coasting in the job for 3 months while waiting for something better to come along. There&apos;s nothing wrong with that from the point of view of the person, but what about the company? They spend time and money training someone, only to have the bail at the first sign of greener pastures? Where&apos;s the return on investment there? Employers tend to prefer to hire someone who at least seems like they might stick around long enough for them to get their money&apos;s worth.</text></comment>