When Companies Refuse to Interview the Unemployed
time.com
time.com
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=725852
At the time I thought it was due to her not being a US citizen and others in the thread thought that perhaps it was due to location (Toledo/Detroit area which is suffering).
We've since relocated to the SF Bay area and she is still not getting any calls despite having fantastic IT experience. At this point I can only attribute the lack of interest to the fact that she is unemployed and/or that she hasn't worked in 5 years due to marrying me, moving from Spain and the time it takes to get a visa/work permit.
EDIT: Technically she worked for one year in Toledo at a Kohl's dept. store unloading trucks and folding clothes. This is soul-crushing for someone who was at a Director level position in IT, but she is the kind of person who will do whatever is necessary.
Basically, the goal is to convince the correct people at a specific company that they want to hire her. This is rarely accomplished by resume carpet-bombing.
It's worked for me. I landed my first job when I was still in high school (which allowed me to drop out). I landed my second job by talking with their lead designer over IRC / AIM, showing him how enthusiastic I was, explaining the kinds of things I could do, etc, until he finally gave me a chance to prove it.
I should probably mention that both times, I never brought up money until they did.
Good luck!
I highly recommend she network/attend events/meet industry people outside of a job hunting context. What technical topics is she into? What business topics? She should be around topics/events she naturally finds interesting, and lots of opportunities will come up.
Though I have my own indie business and am not seeking employment, people inquire about jobs I may be interested in all the time. (My point? If you're concerned her current job status is influencing things, having people admiring of one's ideas, talent, etc... before they even know where you work... would solve that dynamic.)
I feel especially confident about this recommendation because like your wife, I have more of an IT background than dev (which is indisputably undergoing a talent shortage... but so is IT.)
If she's more into virtual networking/learning, I can't recommend Twitter enough. You have to put effort into following great folks, but I've learned so much stuff from Twitter buddies.
buena suerte :D
[aside: I am also English/Spanish bilingual and have just started to enjoy http://www.noticiashacker.com, which is a Spanish Hacker News. She may like that, too.]
The old adage about doing what you would do for free is very powerful. It also helps companies make the decision to let you in the door. Enthusiastic? Willing to work for free? Why wouldn't I try out this person?
If a job opens up you're well placed to get it. If you were wrong about the job and it sucks you can get out easily. If you're actually useful companies will often discover they have money to hire you. If, after a while, you don't get an internal offer, well you're still actively working in the field of your choice which eliminates the original problem of being perceived as 'unemployed' and you can look elsewhere!
Finally I would recommend even part time work for no pay rather than the soul crushing slog through craigslist and sitting at home all day.
Reply to this comment with an email address I can contact you at.
Or start a meetup of her own to attract exactly the sort of people she wants to meet. Find a place nearby and its actually cheaper to pay meetup its fee than spend an hour traveling to someone else's meetup.
Contracting might also be the way to go. If they can get rid of you easily, an employer can take more risk.
This is absolutely ridiculous for so many reasons. The first counter-argument that comes to mind is that people who have been "out of the workforce" may actually be more qualified than those in the workplace. Of course it varies between industries, but it's not uncommon for employees to become less inspired, less motivated, and less likely to pick up new skills over the years. People who are out of work would be wise to take the time to brush up on their trade and work on related projects between jobs, not only for personal gain, but to impress potential employers. I am amazed that companies legitimately believe that development and experience only happens in the workplace.
Another lingering question in my mind: why wouldn't these companies use unemployment to their advantage? They could surely offer lower salaries to out-of-work employees (who may be desperate for work) than currently-employed employees.
Sure, there are exceptions like you point out... but I'm guessing that applied to the groups, this is a non-ridiculous assertion.
Certainly the trend-setting giants (MS, Google, Facebook) are seriously trying to hire the best.
The first part of this sentence is probably correct, the second part is probably incorrect. There are millions (okay, I exaggerate: thousands) of programs out there which do not "lose in the market" despite being mediocre. One of the recipes is specialization: If the decision for a company is "no software or mediocre software" mediocre wins.
Laws making it illegal to discriminate on the basis of employment status would only help the organizations who are not already doing it.
That said, the stance of some of the companies in the article is silly.
Who's going to get a competitive advantage by hiring the 5 million people with a HS diploma or less?
Edge case whizzes are not effected by this. Anecdotally, yes, but in practice it's those without economically valuable skills. Two hands and a strong back ain't what they used to be.
Of course, what I actually say is, "I really enjoyed my time at BigCo, and I learned a lot there, but I'm looking to broaden and deepen my skills. Your job, because of <differences x, y, and z> seems like it'd be a good fit for that."
EDIT: I'm employed and get pinged on LinkedIn on a pretty regular basis.
Did they hire you?
I'm not sure. I don't actively mail around my résumé, since I'm employed at the moment and not looking for work. Sometimes recruiters email me, but they have never mentioned the sabbatical. Probably people just ignore it. I haven't updated the details on my résumé since 2004, shame on me ;-)
Of course it all depends on the context, but nothing is so simple in this situation, I guess.
The problem is, you do not know who will do a better job. The parent post is implying that the past is a signal for the future.
I have a hard time believing that a 'project' would look anything like employment, and I think your ruse would fall apart under interview scrutiny.
Mind you, the best thing you can do when you're cut is to start a business. B.S. is better than a blank stare, but not by much.
I'm not saying that people shouldn't get involved in projects, just that they shouldn't attempt to make a project look like employment if it isn't.
What is the difference? I am having a little trouble drawing the distinction.
- If a self-funded project is not employment, does it become employment when someone else funds it?
- If you self fund a project and you are able to sell the result of your project, does that make the work leading up to the sale employment? What if you are never able to make a sale?
- Do you have to be just another cog in the wheel of a big business to be considered employed?
- Why is searching for a job not the same as searching for new customers (i.e. sales, a real profession)?
As far as I can tell, they are all exactly the same. Where does the line get drawn?
Employment means you are employed. If you start a company, you are an employee of said company ("self-employed" is a misnomer if you have a corporation). "A project," implies that there is not a company, otherwise you would say that you started a company. "A project," does not constitute employment.
You can talk about edge cases of pet projects making sales, but it doesn't change the fact that claiming a project as employment experience is unlikely to get you very far.
Again, I am not saying that people should not work on projects. Just don't confuse projects with employment.
It's not a semantic game, contractors are hired this way all the time. Programming skills like most crafts can be applied equally to paid and unpaid work. When you get hired for a programming job, presumably the main concern is whether you can program, which has nothing to do with whether or not you were previously employed to do it (that has more to do with your cashflow situation).
Then they are employed. Working on a project without an employer is not employment. Working on contract for an employer is generally referred to as "self-employment" although, technically, if you're operating under your own business, you're an employee of your own business. I really don't understand why HN is so upset by this distinction. Everyone here is perfectly happy to distinguish between "project" and "start-up" but not, apparently, "project" and "employment".
A project is exactly how I describe what I am working on, whether I am being paid by someone else or if I am paying myself – someone is always paying for your time, even if that someone is you. I'm sure even you would agree that my day job projects are employment.
I believe my question still remains. If not all projects are employment, when does working on a project become employment? What criteria need to be met?
I believe I answered that very clearly in my last response. One likely works on projects as part of employment. One may work on projects outside of employment. 'Project' does not imply 'employment' though typically 'employment' does imply 'project'.
If you start a business, you legally become employed by that business. If you work on a project without a business, you have not constituted employment. As for interviewing, even if you start a business and work on a project, with no completed product or sales to speak of, I think you'll still have a difficult time claiming legitimacy.
I guess my confusion in your original response comes from the notion in my belief that all work is employment. Although I do believe I have a little bit of a better understanding of where you are coming from now.
With that said, even when I'm hacking away for fun on purely personal projects, I still consider that an act under the umbrella of my business – which does happens to be a corporation in my case, but it need not be. If the project turns into something that is marketable, it will be sold under my business. That also adds to the confusion of where to draw the line.
Ultimately, I strongly believe the employer is going to be interested in what you have been doing no matter what the circumstances. If it is interesting and applicable to the job, it is not going to matter who commissioned the work or how much you were paid to do it and it is certainly going to look a lot better than a job at McDonalds.
Started off as just a random project by 8 people, turned into some consulting, open source software releases, published papers, citations, several talks at conferences, press coverage (NYT, MSNBC, Forbes, etc). Now we've reverted it back to a side project. Yet most of us keep it on our resumes and it seems (and I think is) fairly legit.
Yes, exactly. The software industry is great in that, even if you can't find a job right now, you can do actual real-world work. Contributions to significant open source projects is a huge plus for getting hired where I work, and I don't think it's just here.
In fact, you can sometimes build your skills faster doing open source stuff than when employed - since you can more easily pick what to learn and what to do.
But in other industries, it is really very sad - if you can't get a job, you often can't do anything at all.
There are big chunks of people who are unemployed with two strikes against them, they are under-educated and they are single parents.
This double whammy kills you because if you aren't working you can't pay for day care, if you can't pay for day care then a big chunk of your time is taken up in providing day care (depending on the age of your children).
So if you pick out the 'edge' case where you have:
two work capable parents
both with college degrees
fewer than four children (all over the age of 5)
There is an "easy" answer, upgrade your skills and/or education, get a job. I know a couple in Texas who did exactly that, the husband, went to community college, transferred to the state university system, and they are now 3 years unemployed and 1 year away from being a newly minted EE with a paid summer internship under their belt. They have recruiters talking to them at school but on my and others advice they are going to finish the degree before actually taking anyone up on those offers.
I've talked with people for whom 'job hunting' wasn't an issue, until it was, and they only realized a year later that their previous experience really wasn't all that applicable to anything really.
Nobody wanted to hire me, so I started a company.
Now (almost 4 years later) not only am I employable, but I get 2-5 contacts from people who want to talk about hiring me per month.
I'm really tired of hearing the "poor single mom" drum beaten. I did it, despite my child's special needs, despite a medical condition that limits my employment options, and plenty of other challenges other people can do it to. If it's hard to figure out, and I just haven't noticed that it is, tell me and I'll write a book.
Putting myself in an employer's shoes, I'd be leery of hiring anyone who's been long-term unemployed. What does one do with the time? When I couldn't find a job, I created one. While not everyone is predisposed to entrepreneurship, surely a few months in to not finding employment, any sufficiently determined person would at least try it.
I'm not saying they'll all succeed -- but I'm not sure you have to succeed. When you start your own venture, you go from being unemployed to being employed, and that solves the original problem -- you are no longer a member of the long-term unemployed.
I think its fair to say that someone who's had no break in their unemployment more than a year (assuming they aren't a full-time student, seriously ill, a stay-at-home parent, etc.) probably has something wrong with how they approach becoming employed, and a lot of those somethings would also negatively impact their performance as an employee. It's fine to be skeptical, and it's not a slight against the under-educated or single parents.
I suspect that captures the essence of why companies have this sort of policy. And, as you point out, its pretty straight forward to be "employed" if only self employed by creating your own business and running it.
School. School, school, school...
First I had to learn to program, but that wouldn't be enough. Companies want university degrees -- no one hires a relatively smart kid and trains them anymore -- and I lacked the money for university, so I would have to get into IT or a specialized field.
The web was getting big but the early 2000s bubble had burst by the time I had a solid understanding of the LAMP stack, so with no experience I was competing with people who had been doing professional web dev for years. That meant no work, so back to school.
Jobs were opening up in IT, so I studied network administration. Potential offers went sour because I didn't know Office, so I kept at school for that. Around that time HP laid off 2,000 engineers, many of whom were experienced IT people. After that, it was difficult to find any ads for IT work in the area.
I secured a 3-year unpaid internship where I worked with GIS, but every GIS job requires a university Geography degree or more prior experience than I have.
There were usually a few jobs open for Autocad users, so I took Autocad courses. By the time I had completed the courses, the job offers required prior work experience.
In all that time I managed to get one job that got me enough money to get a 4-year CS degree. I couldn't find any work in the next six months, so I went back to school to refresh my IT skills and finish up a 2-year math degree. With that done, the job market looks worse than it did last year, so I'll probably be going back to school in the fall.
I tend to prefer candidates that are currently unemployed, because I feel they have something to prove and will work hard to make a good impression. I'm dubious about folks who are already employed, I don't now if they're for real, or if they're just using me to get a raise at their current job.
It is ridiculous for companies to have that as an axiom. What about brilliant students? And what about people taking a break from working (I'd actually think they were more sane than a person who never takes a break from work given they both could afford it)?
You could always fight back by lying on your resume and getting a smooth-talking friend as a reference. It's questionably immoral, but corporations are immoral by design. Just pretend you're the corporation of <your birth name here>. I think there's a website service for that as well, I forget the URL.
Personally, I was unemployed for over a year and am very, very aware of how much easier it is to look for a job when I have a job. I and other people I know who have been in that situation don't look at unemployed candidates as damaged goods. We look at them as potential victims (bwahahahaha!) who, shall we say, will negotiate from a much weaker position and then come to work much more eager to please! No, seriously, we look at them the same way we look at people who are unemployed. There are lots of well-paid losers and plenty of people who are out of work because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Net effect on the unemployed: nil.
If a campaign against companies that refuse to hire the unemployed takes off, the most likely result is that they'll continue to do so quietly.
Net effect on the unemployed: more time wasted applying to jobs that they never had a chance of getting.
FWIW, I think hiring only job hoppers is idiotic.
People shouldn't vote with their dollars? People who vote with their dollars shouldn't bother the mighty giants with their lowly opinions? Only a CEO can affect change within a company? Opinions are worthless unless they garner the attention of the CEO?
Now, this might be a difference. If you're a current or previous customer, it might warrant a reply e-mail. If you're in charge of large purchasing decisions, you might get a personal phone call. If you're Paul Graham, you might actually get a CEO to respond to you.
You should absolutely vote with your wallet, you are entirely within your rights to e-mail them and complain, but I think that it's like spitting into a swimming pool - unless a lot of people do it*, change will not happen.
Or unless you're, say, King Kong. I assume you are not.
My message to them may or may not be heard, and may or may not play any part in changing their approach. Your message to me, on the other hand, had a definite negative effect, and for no purpose.