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Even as layoffs persist, some good jobs go begging
AP ^ | Sunday October 4, 2009, 3:53 pm EDT | By Christopher Leonard,

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 ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy
KEYWORDS: engineering; helpwanted; jobs
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To: clamper1797
Not TI
No, I uhh was I was thinking more like 2200 E President George Bush Hwy ...
61 posted on 10/04/2009 7:41:47 PM PDT by _Jim
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To: Matchett-PI; Huck
We are looking for a well rounded embedded software programmer/engineer with networking experience in TCP/IP communications and control interfaces.

The candidate needs programming experience in the following:

Plus excellent written and oral communications skills.

Specific knowledge areas include using and programming:

Work location negotiable.

62 posted on 10/04/2009 7:43:19 PM PDT by DB
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To: _Jim

Not Cisco either ...


63 posted on 10/04/2009 7:44:54 PM PDT by clamper1797 (If Obama were a paid Soviet agent he could not do more damage ... Sen Thomas Jordan)
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To: thesharkboy; Yaelle; Aunt Polgara; bboop; NonValueAdded

Please see #62.


64 posted on 10/04/2009 7:49:54 PM PDT by DB
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To: _Jim

Doing mixed signal design ... SerDes and AD/DA DSP stuff


65 posted on 10/04/2009 7:51:28 PM PDT by clamper1797 (If Obama were a paid Soviet agent he could not do more damage ... Sen Thomas Jordan)
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To: _Jim

BTW I gotta chuckle about one of your posts the other day concerning Maxwell equations ... I didn’t chime in ... just chuckled


66 posted on 10/04/2009 7:54:09 PM PDT by clamper1797 (If Obama were a paid Soviet agent he could not do more damage ... Sen Thomas Jordan)
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To: DB
Work location negotiable.
Wow ... dream job ... love the firmware/hardware level stuff ... too bad I'm otherwise occupied these days ... darn ... don't see too many requirements for HDLC related protocol stuff either ...
67 posted on 10/04/2009 7:56:19 PM PDT by _Jim
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To: clamper1797
mixed signal design ... SerDes and AD/DA DSP stuff
Interesting ... we probably use some/designed in some of their supervisory products ... otherwise mostly TI DSPs and Xilinx for the fpga stuff

Re: maxwell; don't get me started!

68 posted on 10/04/2009 8:01:14 PM PDT by _Jim
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To: DB

Thanks, DB!


69 posted on 10/04/2009 8:01:31 PM PDT by Matchett-PI (A Socialist becomes a Fascist the minute he tries to enforce his "beliefs" on the rest of us.)
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To: _Jim
Re: maxwell; don't get me started!

Heh heh me either ... that's why I didn't chime in ... I'm trying to get ready for the move to Dallas ... I'm already spending to much time out here on FR tonight ... addiction I guess ... BTW did FPGAs for Lattice some time ago ... placed FPGA designs on ASIC platforms

70 posted on 10/04/2009 8:05:11 PM PDT by clamper1797 (If Obama were a paid Soviet agent he could not do more damage ... Sen Thomas Jordan)
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To: clamper1797
I'm already spending to much time out here on FR tonight ... addiction I guess

Same here; need to get ready for tomorrow and the week. Get packing!

71 posted on 10/04/2009 8:06:47 PM PDT by _Jim
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To: NVDave
Part of the problem is that recruiters and management want people with the *exact* skillset they specify.

I usually pass the "faster than a speeding bullet" and the "more powerful than a locomotive" requirements, but then I miss out on the "able to leap tall buildings in a single bound" one.

I don't know how many opportunities that has cost me!

72 posted on 10/04/2009 8:07:58 PM PDT by Erasmus (Barack Hussein Obama: America's toast!)
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To: ully2

One afternoon a few years back, I sat down with the recruiters at a contract/hire recruiting firm to help them understand the work flow (as best I understood it) in IC design, so they could better understand the requirements they were seeing come through, and improve the referrals to their clients.


73 posted on 10/04/2009 8:26:32 PM PDT by Erasmus (Barack Hussein Obama: America's toast!)
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To: _Jim

Gawd. Here I sit in a midwestern college town on a Sunday evening, and I have to catch a zero o’clock thirty plane back to Florida and try to get in an afternoon of work there.

I’m gonna get sum sleep, as soon as I set the cellphone alarm.

Freerepublic’s a sickness, I tellya!


74 posted on 10/04/2009 8:32:47 PM PDT by Erasmus (Barack Hussein Obama: America's toast!)
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To: Huck

Similar to nursing, the clinicals are pretty rough if you need to support yourself.


75 posted on 10/04/2009 8:35:18 PM PDT by ican'tbelieveit (Join FreeRepublic's Folding@Home team (Team# 36120), KW:Folding)
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To: MarkL
Of course I would refuse to do certain things, if I was asked to do something illegal or immoral. But in my line of work, "want" simply doesn't enter into the question. Either I'm capable and authorized to do something, and then it's a part of doing my job, or I'm not....

After I picked my jaw up off the floor, my response was to say, "I assume I would not be asked to do something illegal. Otherwise, work is work; it's all good."

As an earlier poster indicated, MBAs in Micromanagement Heaven must make up these idiotic questions and then sell them to stupid companies, with a bunch of computerized metrics to screen the responses.


Morons.

76 posted on 10/04/2009 8:36:45 PM PDT by Albion Wilde ("I apologize to hookers for having associated them with the House of Representatives.--Jim Traficant)
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To: _Jim
Satellite communications.

We really need an embedded processor guru that can start with one of the standard inexpensive ARM processors and build a Web server and graphical (LCD display and keypad) front panel user interface with minimal hardware resources in addition to the other network/Linux design skills. The Web interface needs to be able to display things like a semi real time constellation of the receive carrier and spectrum analysis display of adjacent channel interference, etc. There are also event logging requirements. Our satellite modems are highly programmable resulting in hundreds of configuration options.

In the past I've done all the modem user front panel, remote control interfaces and modem control functions in assembly language using a C167 type processor along with virtually all the hardware design myself... This maximizes performance while requiring minimal hardware. We use a PowerPC type processor for our Linux based bridge/router functions. I've been unable to keep up with the business opportunities in recent years so I need to be able to spread the tasks around in order to speed up development significantly. I need people that already know how to do the job without much supervision. My primary skills are in hardware design so software design and its maintenance needs to be pushed off onto someone else so we can be more productive overall.

77 posted on 10/04/2009 8:37:35 PM PDT by DB
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To: savage woman
“And then did everyone hate you?”
LOL - But I’m curious, how did you respond. I would have laughed so hard the tears would have come out. Perhaps it was some new way of seeing how you respond to something so bizarre....

It was all I could do not to roll my eyes. I did say too much, I was so taken off guard -- that the customers were happy, but that my immediate supervisor might have felt threatened; so I commented to him that his having approved the project was a success for him, and I was happy to have facilitated his good call in approving it.

It seemed like a no-win answer in hindsight, probably taken as a smarmy manipulative kiss-up, which I tried to disguise, but it was. The interviewer was the prospective boss and she did not seem very confident in herself.

78 posted on 10/04/2009 8:46:49 PM PDT by Albion Wilde ("I apologize to hookers for having associated them with the House of Representatives.--Jim Traficant)
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To: Ditter

The replacement nurses used back in PA were graduates of a nursing school in Puerto Rico. They had a problem passing nursing certification because of language difficulties.

I’m not sure if the political fix enabled them to communicate better on the floor but then, it (the fix) was designed to ease the staff shortage.

I trust your husband is mending nicely.


79 posted on 10/04/2009 9:32:54 PM PDT by MurrietaMadman (Luke 23:31)
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To: Graybeard58

That is what I have come to believe. Sad but true.


80 posted on 10/05/2009 3:21:43 AM PDT by wally_bert (It's sheer elegance in its simplicity! - The Middleman)
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