{"id":4488,"date":"2012-02-03T10:25:41","date_gmt":"2012-02-03T17:25:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/?p=4488"},"modified":"2012-02-05T12:11:12","modified_gmt":"2012-02-05T19:11:12","slug":"one-job-consultant-says-keep-looking-for-the-right-job-even-in-this-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/2012\/02\/03\/one-job-consultant-says-keep-looking-for-the-right-job-even-in-this-economy\/","title":{"rendered":"One Job Consultant Says: Keep Looking for the Right Job, Even in This Economy"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Molly Messick \/ StateImpact Idaho<\/p>

<\/p><\/div>\n

Like the national unemployment rate, which now stands at 8.3 percent<\/a>, Idaho’s jobless rate has ticked down in recent months.\u00a0 In December, the state’s rate stood at 8.4 percent.\u00a0 Put in other terms, Idaho’s economy has added 8,000 jobs since September of last year.\u00a0 What’s harder to know is what kinds of jobs people are finding, and what kinds of compromises — lower wages, odd hours? — they’re having to make.\u00a0 For an anecdotal response to those questions, StateImpact sat down with Larry Willis, a workforce consultant in the Idaho Department of Labor’s Meridian office.<\/em><\/p>\n

Q: <\/span>This office assists people in lots of ways.\u00a0 They can file for unemployment insurance benefits, or use computers here to search for jobs or work on resumes.\u00a0 How many people pass through most days?<\/p>\n

A: <\/span>That’s a tough question, but particularly on Mondays — that’s generally our busy day — you’re probably going to see couple of hundred people come through here.\u00a0 There’s probably, at any given time, 20 or 30 people in our lobby, and it just rotates throughout the day.<\/p>\n

Q: <\/span>You coordinate a professional networking group.\u00a0 What have you observed about individuals\u2019 experiences as they try to get jobs at this particular moment?<\/p>\n

A: <\/span>You know, it\u2019s really a mix.\u00a0 I wish we could be a little more positive than we may be.\u00a0 It\u2019s still difficult to find jobs in this environment.\u00a0 The number of people losing their jobs obviously in the last year to two years has significantly dropped, but people are still losing their jobs for various reasons, and the job creation has not increased at the rate we hope it would have by now.<\/p>\n

For people coming into the office, the professional people especially, we\u2019re running into a couple of challenges.\u00a0 One, if they\u2019ve been out of work for a year or more, it becomes even more difficult to find a job. Because employers are looking for current skills.\u00a0 The second one that’s really difficult is the perception of being overqualified.\u00a0 That\u2019s a difficult challenge to overcome.<\/p>\n

The real challenge is for the candidates, when they go for an interview, to really be prepared to bring that up themselves, to really sell themselves.\u00a0 They want to work for that company, and they want to do that job they\u2019re hiring for.\u00a0 That\u2019s really the key thing to convey.<\/p>\n

Q: <\/span>When you talk to people who maybe had the same job for 10 years, or worked their way up in a company, or didn’t previously have trouble getting a job, what do you hear from them? You must hear a lot of personal stories — people’s frustrations and sorrows.<\/p>\n

A: <\/span>A lot of people, particularly those who come into our professional networking group, they get frustrated very early, because it\u2019s difficult to find a job today, and in the past they have had no problem finding jobs.\u00a0 One of the things we stress a lot is networking.\u00a0 There are statistics that 80 percent of the jobs that are filled in the U.S. today are never advertised.\u00a0 You have to build contacts, make new acquaintances, and find those open doors.<\/p>\n

When we have our meetings with our professionals and our job club, we don\u2019t call them support groups, but it\u2019s amazing how many people comment on the fact that, \u201cI received encouragement while I was there to continue my job search.\u201d\u00a0 Most of us that in the past have found it easy to find jobs, it can get very discouraging very quickly when you find out difficult it is today. They have the skills, they are the people companies would want to hire, but they have to be able to convey that in an interview.<\/p>\n

Q: <\/span>What have you witnessed people go through emotionally?<\/p>\n

A: <\/span>A whole range.\u00a0 People who have been angry. People who, when they start telling their background, their stories, they\u2019ve actually broken down in tears.\u00a0 It\u2019s a feeling of abandonment, a lot of times.\u00a0 “I\u2019ve put all these years in, I\u2019ve worked really hard, and now somebody tells me they don’t need me.”\u00a0 It\u2019s hard for them to grab the concept that it isn\u2019t anything they did wrong necessarily.\u00a0 It’s just the trend of the economy.\u00a0 A lot of people have lost jobs that never thought they would have lost jobs.\u00a0 We have people coming through that have been presidents of companies, airline pilots, banking people, engineers, project managers, sales people regionally and nationally.\u00a0 That have all had high-level jobs.\u00a0 Never thought they would have to be in this situation.<\/p>\n

Q: <\/span>How much have those people had to compromise?\u00a0 How much have they had to say, “Well, this is what I can get now.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

A: <\/span>There is a mix.\u00a0 We find people who are able to go back, and at the same level as before.\u00a0 I would say that\u2019s not the norm.\u00a0 Most are having to go do some kind of a job that’s somewhat less than before or quite a bit less than before.\u00a0 Really, it comes down to a person\u2019s individual need — their finances and stage of life. Going back to the frustration, the anger.\u00a0 That comes from knowing there’s not a lot out there in the same industry or field or level of expertise and income that they had before.\u00a0 There are some, though!\u00a0 I’ve got a folder of emails from people who have gone back to work in the same industries, same jobs, same income.\u00a0 It can happen.\u00a0 It’s just more challenging than it has been.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m never going to tell someone not to take a job that\u2019s lower level if that\u2019s something they need to do.\u00a0 But if they don\u2019t have to, I encourage them to hang on and wait and try a little bit harder, because there are jobs out there.<\/p>\n

Q: <\/span>So you really are encouraging people to hold out.\u00a0 That\u2019s interesting, in this economy, that you still say, in some cases, \u201cWait a year, if you have to.\u201d<\/p>\n

A: <\/span>I do, because the risk you run if you go to a lower-level job is that your skills aren\u2019t going to be current, and the more difficult it\u2019s going to be to go back up to the higher level job again.\u00a0 I always encourage people to wait as long as they can.\u00a0 Keep looking for the things you\u2019re interested in, the things you like to do, the things you\u2019re going to be happy doing, because that\u2019s the best thing for you if you can do it.<\/p>\n

Q: <\/span>That’s interesting.\u00a0 I wouldn’t have thought the Department of Labor would take that position.<\/p>\n

A: <\/span>Well, I’m only one representative, and I’m giving you my viewpoint.\u00a0 It comes from the experience of being through situations like this personally, and from talking to lots of people over the last few years.<\/p>\n

I went back and looked at our records that we keep for our professional networking group.\u00a0 We\u2019ve had 384 individuals come through in the last three years.\u00a0 Out of that, 65 percent have gone back to work, and I would say the vast majority have gone back to similar work — income-wise, at least — that they had before.\u00a0 So that’s pretty significant!\u00a0 Some of those have taken a year or more, but they have found jobs that were similar to what they were doing before.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This interview has been edited and shortened.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like the national unemployment rate, which now stands at 8.3 percent, Idaho’s jobless rate has ticked down in recent months.\u00a0 In December, the state’s rate stood at 8.4 percent.\u00a0 Put in other terms, Idaho’s economy has added 8,000 jobs since September of last year.\u00a0 What’s harder to know is what kinds of jobs people are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":4503,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[46,74,133],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4488"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4488"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4592,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4488\/revisions\/4592"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}