Posted on 10/04/2009 5:04:23 PM PDT by BenLurkin
In a brutal job market, here's a task that might sound easy: Fill jobs in nursing, engineering and energy research that pay $55,000 to $60,000, plus benefits.
Yet even with 15 million people hunting for work, even with the unemployment rate nearing 10 percent, some employers can't find enough qualified people for good-paying career jobs.
Ask Steve Jones, a hospital recruiter in Indianapolis who's struggling to find qualified nurses, pharmacists and MRI technicians. Or Ed Baker, who's looking to hire at a U.S. Energy Department research lab in Richland, Wash., for $60,000 each.
Economists say the main problem is a mismatch between available work and people qualified to do it. Millions of jobs with attractive pay and benefits that once drew legions of workers to the auto industry, construction, Wall Street and other sectors are gone, probably for good. And those who lost those jobs generally lack the right experience for new positions popping up in health care, energy and engineering.
Many of these specialized jobs were hard to fill even before the recession. But during downturns, recruiters tend to become even choosier, less willing to take financial risks on untested workers.
The mismatch between job opening and job seeker is likely to persist even as the economy strengthens and begins to add jobs. It also will make it harder for the unemployment rate, now at 9.8 percent, to drop down to a healthier level.
It's become especially hard to find accountants, health care workers, software sales representatives, actuaries, data analysts, physical therapists and electrical engineers, labor analysts say. And employers that demand highly specialized training -- like biotech firms that need plant scientists or energy companies that need geotechnical engineers to build offshore platforms -- struggle even more to fill jobs.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
I was thinking after I posted it must be an immediate need. Well good luck to you. You posted on monster.com? I used to always look for jobs there.
I have a trickle of customers coming through that I fix their PCs and laptops for but they come back, a couple of professional people and their children's stuff. I also run the Craigslist ads too and try to stand out from the glut of "techs" out there. I know there are plenty of good ones out there and a lot of bad ones that advertise there too.
The Break/Fix department is supposed to start someday in my building and it is my intended job but every couple of weeks it is either coming soon or we're not sure when and it is getting frustrating being the only technical one there. I am at the point of looking a lot elsewhere. I am glad I can do more than just fix PCs.
I thought there were more of these guys than there are lawyers. I suspect they mean finding GOOD ones, which isn't that easy.
As an engineer, my income has increased nearly 25% since the beginning of the recession. Now if Obama wasn’t so obsessed with taking it all, I might be more thrilled.
Please check out the thread where laid off FReepers are searching. Mention in general what you are looking for! Good luck.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2354853/posts
Monster, Craigslist, Computerjobs, and Careerbuilder are the main ones for me.
I met a guy once taught me that those are the criteria for a good start-up business to get you going as a businessman:
Service oriented (no inventory)
Uses stuff you already have (no investment)
Cash business (no hassles)
I'll be back in school for a masters soon so I can go from not qualified enough for lack of experience to overqualified in terms of education. Ain't life grand?
Electrical engineers ???? Guess again ... As a 30 year experienced EE whos claims to fame include the iPod and the iPhone I've had 3 face to face interviews in one year. I used to get one a week. I finally landed a job in Dallas which I start next week. After 3 days of GRUELING interviews I beat out no less that 2 dozen other engineers for this position.
For the most part that pretty much describes me. The side stuff has a weak pulse but a steady one. My other sideline in virtual tour photography has experienced a really sudden spike in activity. I have to juggle a lot to fit the various apartment complexes in. For the better part of this year, that was dead. I am in the middle of 12 jobs now. My 50D is finally getting put to work. I wore out my 20D.
OK, thanks. I don’t meed employment, but know others who do.
I am a data analyst, have been for 25 years. I cant find a job to save my life.
I was going to type it all out but found a site that describes training and certification for MRI techs:
http://education-portal.com/become_a_mri_technician.html
My guess is that an MRI tech would be responsible for scheduled maintenance (or at least coordinating it) the software packages installed, scheduling, post-scan paperwork and training.
Speaking of HR, I notice there are a lot of HR jobs out there.
Back in the good old days, companies would hire massive amounts of people for entry level jobs and a few gems would work their way up the ladder. That kind of thing doesn't happen anymore.
What I find amusing is when they want five years of experience in a technology that hasn't been around that long.
80% of them are females and or minorities.
In my workplace, the only white male HR associate is a flaming homosexual.
Totally, totally true. I have had exactly that experience.
I've been looking lately for my last job before retiring, having spent several chunks of years in self-employment, when if you don't work, you don't eat or feed your family, and the buck stops with you. In the age of globalization and hyperregulation, self-employment has become increasingly impossible in my field; so I have been looking for an inside slot.
I have rarely met such "interviewers" in my life. There is a huge corporate footprint all over every interaction. They glance at a resumé for a well-experienced person and an earning history that is not just solid, but above average, and then ask a list of canned questions like, "How many times have you been late to work in the past year?" or "Have you ever been asked to do something you didn't want to do at work, and how did you handle it?" My mouth dropped open when I heard that -- I had to rapidly compose myself. (I didn't say this, but doing things you might not want to do is why they call it "work" and not "vacation.")
Another great one: an interviewer asked me to describe a situation I had handled proactively. I summed up an emergency situation, how my plan and team came together and the positive results: 100% compliance and happy customers. She replied, "And then did everyone hate you?" Folks, this was at one of the largest communications providers in the U.S.
I'm fairly certain that the real issues were age (although I'm physically fit) and race (I'm not a minority).
Where I am they just hire dumb temps to try to low level tech work and maybe one or two are capable of it. The rest just screw up and cause problems.
Where I am they just hire dumb temps to try to low level tech work and maybe one or two are capable of it. The rest just screw up and cause problems.
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