LinkedIn poll about pressure points

The experience of being “between successes” brings distinct pressure points for each person.  As a jobseeker, what is the most daunting part of the employment transition for you?

I hope you’ll take a moment to register your vote in my LinkedIn poll!  Since this is a poll I created on LinkedIn, you’ll need to log in as an LI member in order to access it.

Website improvements

We’re working with a new developer to make some much-anticipated improvements to our Frank’s Employment website functionality, especially for the job listings published for our local candidates.

The best news of the week is that the “Apply” function is now working properly.  So you may apply for multiple advertised openings with one click and the site does now tell us which postings you had active at the time.  Big THANK YOU to Brett, our new developer whose modifications made possible this restored functionality.

We’re still working on some subtle changes behind the scenes to enhance the communication between our website and the search algorithms, especially for indeed.com and linkup.com (which powers the posting of some of our openings on our Frank’s Employment facebook page).

Thanks to Brett, as well as the professionals at MCC Technology who helped us find a developer equipped to handle these projects.

Skill atrophy and your job search

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal discusses the special challenges facing the long-term unemployed jobseeker.  “The probability that a laid-off worker will find a job grows smaller the longer people have been out of work,” Dougherty writes.  Yikes!  That’s a startling observation!

I’ve been thinking about the factors that impact this trend.

One factor adversely impacting the long-term jobseeker might be motivation, I’ve thought.  The longer one looks for new employment in such a turbulent market, the more vulnerable a person can become to discouragement and demoralization.  That’s why so many career coaches urge jobseekers to establish daily habits of self-care and networking as part of the re-employment process.

But I’ve met plenty of highly energetic and motivated individuals who’ve been involuntarily unemployed for more than six months.  So there has to be more to the story than this.

Another factor negatively affecting the long-term jobseeker might be stigma from employers, I’ve realized.  Some employers still have an untested suspicion that the best candidates aren’t unemployed – or aren’t unemployed for long – because they’re the ones companies keep on the payroll.  So, they reason, the long-term jobseeker must have something holding them back.

There may have been this kind of stigma associated with involuntary unemployment in other periods of our economic history, but I’m actually not seeing much of it this time.  Most employers are well aware that every company is at risk in this turbulence – and every employee is at risk in terms of job security.  Most employers are fully cognizant that few companies are hiring and candidate competition is fierce even among the best qualified.  So again, there must be another factor beyond jobseeker motivation and employer stigma.

Wondering about this, I re-read the WSJ article looking for clues about why employers may be reluctant to hire the longer-term unemployed jobseeker.  I found an “aha” in a two-word sentence.