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I saw an article about the 6 month thing on Yahoo news a couple of months ago. It's the only reason I include that crummy "document specialist" job on my current resume.
I think this 6+ months thing, and a lot of other ways in which employers discriminate, are really just them trying to cut down on the number of resumes they have to actually read. Right now, every employer is being swamped with resumes. If you advertise a job worth having, you could throw away every resume that comes in after 48 hours, and throw away half the resumes that come during the first 48 hours without even looking at them, and you'd still have way more resumes than you'd actually want to deal with. Job skills my left hind foot. It's nothing more than
employers trying to make the hiring process quicker and easier for
themselves.
(I know, seems strange to see me post something that seems at first glance as defending employers. But I see it more as trying to have an accurate view of the situation.)
--- On Wed, 10/27/10, Ken Poshedly <poshedly -at- bellsouth -dot- net> wrote:
From: Ken Poshedly <poshedly -at- bellsouth -dot- net>
Subject: dumping on job applicants (was Re: Rates)
To: "Techwr-l" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>, "Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>
Date: Wednesday, October 27, 2010, 4:02 PM
Just thought I'd jump in with news of a story which appeared a few weeks ago
here in the Atlanta Journal Constitution that companies are now specifically
stating in their want-ads that those out of work for at least 6 months need not
bother applying for job openings. They cite lack of new job skills and it's all
legal. Even the companies that don't openly state it do admit to doing this. So
rather than go for skills and experience, these conpanies go for the jugular.
In today's AJC is a story that many companies now screen potential new hires by
checking their credit. While it may seem appropriate if the job is highly
financial, many question why check the credit of a potential broom-pusher?
Companies claim it indicates the "character" of those applying.
So . . . those out of work for a year through absolutely no fault of their own
and are behind on their mortgage are blackballed so they can't recover and get
current on that mortgage so the cycle continues. And again, it's all legal.
For those of you who seem to have no or little problems finding work, are
already sitting pretty, and say "I wouldn't work for them anyway," this is big
news here where the state unemployment rate is 10.6 percent.
Yeah, there are tech writing jobs, and I'm lucky to have mine (though the
round-trip commute each day is 106 miles), but when you're faced with thse two
handicaps, it gets even tougher.
-- Kenpo
________________________________
From: Gene Kim-Eng <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Sent: Wed, October 27, 2010 3:25:57 PM
Subject: Re: Rates
All job listings are in theory structured to convince those who would not be
qualified to do the job or be satisfied in it to not apply. But if your
only issue with a job posting is its likely compensation, it doesn't cost
anything but time to see if your qualifications can impress sufficiently to
convince the client or employer to revise the budget. Look at the person
who started this thread, who was offered $22/hr and has just signed a
contract for $50/hr (more than I thought was likely).
Gene Kim-Eng
On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 11:59 AM, Pinkham, Jim <Jim -dot- Pinkham -at- voith -dot- com>wrote:
> True, but perhaps structuring a job in such a way that it's not worth
> applying for could be construed as an exclusionary practice.
>
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