A Resume Experiment. In which career blog JibberJobber responds to a request for resume help by assembling a team of hiring managers and professional resume writers to review the document: Part 1 : Introduction | Part 2: First Impressions/Reactions | Part 3: Formatting the Resume | Part 4: Content is King | Part 5: Wrap Up
posted on Feb 25, 2008 - View this thread

Much of the “jobs of the future” rhetoric surrounding the eagerness to end shop class and get every warm body into college, thence into a cubicle, implicitly assumes that we are heading to a “post-industrial” economy in which everyone will deal only in abstractions. Yet trafficking in abstractions is not the same as thinking...
posted on Sep 7, 2006 - View this thread

Bush's "pepperoni" defence of outsourcing. "India's middle class is buying air-conditioners, kitchen appliances and washing machines, and a lot of them from American companies like GE and Whirlpool and Westinghouse. And that means their job base is growing here in the United States. Younger Indians are acquiring a taste for pizzas from Domino's, Pizza Hut..."
posted on Feb 23, 2006 - View this thread

Ugh... As if working in an office isn't enough. This is one toy I will NOT be buying for my kid. I get the irony, but man, how depressing would it be to see this under the xmas tree?
posted on Dec 16, 2004 - View this thread

Outsource Your Own Job! -- "Says a programmer on Slashdot.org who outsourced his job: "About a year ago I hired a developer in India to do my job. I pay him $12,000 out of the $67,000 I get. He's happy to have the work. I'm happy that I have to work only 90 minutes a day just supervising the code. My employer thinks I'm telecommuting. Now I'm considering getting a second job and doing the same thing." " via BBspot.
posted on Aug 23, 2004 - View this thread

Tax Man Bush says tax cuts stimulate the economy. Unfortunately, he's fallen more than 2.2 million jobs short of the projection made by his own economists.
posted on Jul 28, 2004 - View this thread

Canadian Tax Dollars at Work I am sure there are some hard drinking working Metafilterites out there that could be Canada's official wine co-ordinator. You would have to give wine away to senior politicians and hard stuff like that.
posted on Jul 20, 2004 - View this thread

The Outsourcing Bogeyman by economics professor Daniel Drezner describes the myths, facts and economics behind offshore outsourcing. There is also a critique and rebuttal on Drezner's blog. (via kuro5hin).
posted on Mar 24, 2004 - View this thread

Say goodbye to more jobs? This is an interesting research report from the Gartner Group on the future of banking, money and economic transition. One of the participants at a conference that Gartner cites is Bernard Leitaer, who is interviewed here. Leitaer is the author of the book The Future of Money. He argues " the malaise Japan has suffered since the early 1990s reflects an economic challenge the whole developed world has begun to face. Today, European and U.S. factories, too, suffer from overcapacity. The vaunted productivity growth spurred by the digital revolution has raised the economy’s stall speed. If the natural growth rate of the U.S. economy has risen to 4% annually, anything less than that rate will cause firms to trim capacity. A firm’s revenue growth often must come at the expense of competitors as well as its own profits because companies have trouble raising prices. In response, companies cut costs any way they can, usually by laying off employees and squeezing suppliers, which causes further layoffs. For developed countries, the safety valves that limited damage during contractions in manufacturing may not work. In past recessions, laid-off factory workers in the Great Lakes states, for example, could migrate to the growing Sun Belt to find new jobs. In the present transition, areas with job growth may lie overseas." The long heralded rise of the information economy, the death of distance and the rise of the global knowledge workers is paradigm shift that our goverment leader's seem ill equiped to handle.
posted on Mar 16, 2004 - View this thread

Interviewing with an Intelligence Agency (or, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Fort Meade) is a really fascinating read of one fellows experience while attempting to pass a security clearance for employment with the National Security Agency. Ironically enough I have to wonder if perhaps you need to be just a little bit crazy to do it. But of course crazy in a NSA/DOD friendly way, as opposed to standing on a table clucking like a chicken...
posted on Mar 15, 2004 - View this thread

McManufacturing Jobs
posted on Feb 20, 2004 - View this thread

Another Letter I Should Have Written
posted on Nov 26, 2003 - View this thread

Looking for a job? Well, one of the hot temp agencies in the nation is FPI, Inc. Recruting from an active base of some 80,000 people across the nation, and enjoying exemption from competitive bidding (although reform is on the way), FPI produces garments and textile goods. In fact, it's the largest supplier of clothing and textiles for the U.S. government. Net sales for fiscal year 2001 were $583.5 million and, despite an economic shortfall, they rose to $678.7 million in 2002. What accounts for such an unlikely success? Well, the secret can be found in FPI's labor base. FPI only employs prisoners, paying them between $.23 and $1.15 an hour. Of course, with so many resumes to choose from, factory expansion and rising sales figures and profitability (PDF), who knows just how high PDI's lustre will soar?
posted on Nov 20, 2003 - View this thread

McDonalds CEO Puts McJob in Mainstream. By taking Merriam-Webster to task for including McJob ("low paying and dead-end work") in its latest Collegiate Dictionary, McDonald's CEO Jim Cantalupo has ensured that yet another disparaging fast-food web-fed meme joins the venerable "You want fries with that?" If this had been Fox, I would have said it was intentional.
posted on Nov 8, 2003 - View this thread

The worst jobs in Science. Brought to you by Popular Science. Everything from Flatus Odor Judge to Metric System Advocate.
posted on Sep 25, 2003 - View this thread

Wanted. Worlds best programmer. Location - Superyacht. Salary - Outrageous. (Found in this weeks London Times)
posted on Aug 1, 2003 - View this thread

This Guy in Minnesota just got laid-off and he's spending his time following around Bush's economic team on their tour of the upper midwest as they share their "upbeat outlook" on our nation's economy. He's following their tourmobile with his own tourmobile and has been chasing them around in parkinglots and at fast food places. He finally cornered the Treasury Secretary whose advice to the job-seeker was to "just wait." What's your economic reality? Is it closer to the sunny optimism of the big shiny tourbus, or the laid-off reality of the homemade minivan? (Check out the particularly funny bit about how he stumbled on the entire press corps only when he was looking for a dumpster.)
posted on Jul 30, 2003 - View this thread

Verbal Attack: Dave Suthibut ignores the crappy job market and applies for positions like it's 1999. He uses his blog to keep track of e-mail exchanges between himself and H/R personnel. (via handcoding)
posted on Jul 3, 2003 - View this thread

She works, he doesn't Last week's Newsweek had a story about women who work and their husbands don't-either laid off or for other reasons. Personally, I know of at least 10 couples where the woman has been the "alpha earner" as well as where the men have been out of work for long periods of time. They may not go out and golf the whole time and they surf the internet "looking for jobs", but the bottom line is they don't go out and get a job, any job, to pay the bills, and appear to be okay letting their wives (who aren't happy about it) earn the money. Why is this happening? It wasn't "ok" just a few years ago. Is it a passive-aggressive thing? A reaction to years of expecting to be the sole bread winner? Why do all my women friends in this situation agree that if they were laid off, they would get ANY job immediately, but their men seem to think it's okay to coast for months to years. And why the double standards? Why does being the sole earner make women angry and resentful, even though they may embrace the feminist agenda wholeheartedly?
posted on May 15, 2003 - View this thread

Are Teachers Overpaid? Tamim Ansary poses and attempts to answer this question in a thoughtful column, full of interesting links to delve deeper into the issue. Bottom line, teachers are overpaid...that is, if you want lower taxes, school funding will be cut and teacher salaries will go down. How does that bumper sticker go again, "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" ?
posted on Feb 4, 2003 - View this thread

"This is getting ridiculous!" complained one veteran programmer on USENET a bit over two years ago... after being out of the workforce for a while, he was having trouble getting back in the door. While there's no way to put yourself in his prospective employers shoes and make a real judgement, it looks like he had the chops. Wonder how he's doing today...general conditions don't seem good, and I know several people with the same problem. The longer a period of unemployment goes, the worse your resume looks, and the harder it is to get a job. How do you break the cycle (from either a policy or a jobseeker standpoint)?
posted on Jan 4, 2003 - View this thread

Here is a list of the ten most dangerous jobs. Of course, I suppose that depends on who you ask. But don't stop there! The Bureau of Labor Statistics site has lots more interesting (albeit overwhelming) information.
posted on Oct 16, 2002 - View this thread

IT workers get back to basics. (NYT Registration required) An unemployed IT worker who used to earn $125k opens his own crepe stall in NYC. And Jamie Zawinski (a founder of the Mozilla project) quit Netscape, and opened his own bar in LA! What about mainframe programmer with 30 years' experience who just became a chef? Even Dilbert has been having a bad time. Some people will stay in IT regardless, but with the valley's job market stagnant, call centers and programming jobs disappearing to India, and many unfulfilled dot com prophecies, hundreds of engineers are considering dropping IT for more hands-on pursuits. It's like the movie, Office Space. So, has the 'Great IT Depression' led you to reconsider your occupation? (Warning: Slashdot inspired post.)
posted on Aug 11, 2002 - View this thread

The Nametag Nation gets a voice online. Retail Workers along with our brethren in food service are the bulk of the nations clock-punchers now, and we've got a lot on our minds. Some sites, like the above linked, offer info on serious concerns. Other sites just let us vent. You may not agree with what we think, but we deserve to be heard from.
posted on Jul 16, 2002 - View this thread

In you like f**ckedcompany... ...here's another job site with a naughty word in the title. "Job hunting daily is bad enough without having to deal with employers who want you to speak Swahili for little or no pay."
posted on Jun 19, 2002 - View this thread

Cadence engineer fired for activism: So, an engineer for Cadence Design Systems, on his own time and dime went to Bethlehem to do humanitarian work with the International Solidarity Movement, a group of pro-Palestinian activists who believe in non-violent resistance to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. When he returned, he was immediately terminated due to "inappropriate politics in an area where Cadence does business (Israel)". Should corporations have the right to mandate the political views of their employees, contractors and subsidiary workers? Would there be more outrage if he was fired for supporting the Israeli occupation? When a Christian's beliefs run contrary to Jewish interests, is it automatically fair to fire the Christian?
posted on May 29, 2002 - View this thread

Can dropping out of school be a good career move? According to Fabula magazine some teenagers can thrive if they leave state education and endeavor to teach themselves at home. This is 'unschooling' and the writer seems to think it's becoming an increasingly popular way to go: "Unschoolers can read what they want, volunteer, do internships, or become an apprentice. The can also write a novel, tackle advanced math problems, go on hikes, or even audit classes in college (which are very different from high school classes). The point is to do whatever they’re excited about." Which sounds fine in theory, however how are they going to survive in the job market? I'm having enough issues and I've a degree and six years experience in a number of positions. Sooner or later surely things will come home to roost for them eventually. Won't they?
posted on May 23, 2002 - View this thread

THE CITY DOES NOT EMPLOY INDIVIDUALS WHO NOW USE OR HAVE USED TOBACCO PRODUCTS WITHIN THE LAST TWELVE MONTHS. - Is this legal? I myself do not smoke, but it seems dangerous that governments or corporations may be able to refuse to hire you based on something you may legally do on your free time. Is this common? More importantly, is this the start of a very slippery slope?
posted on May 7, 2002 - View this thread

What People Earn. Parade magazine went around shooting pictures of people and finding out what they make. $18k for making tombstones in Minneapolis sounds good. They also have a "Salary Showdown" game.
posted on Mar 4, 2002 - View this thread

90% of white males suffered downward income mobility over last 20 years Why hasn't this detailed, well-done study by reputable entities gotten any play from the major media? The study linked above proves that things have gone downhill for the vast majority of people here in the USA. Now what I would like to see are the results of a similar study done for northwestern Europeans.
posted on Feb 21, 2002 - View this thread

Job hunting? Ample positions open in the adult industry...
posted on Dec 19, 2001 - View this thread

Confessions of a sex shop clerk - What makes me think this is the kind of job everyone else dreams of in secret? Anyways, as a sidenote, we'd definitely be better off making love instead of war right now, don't you think?
posted on Oct 21, 2001 - View this thread

Over-educated, over here and overwhelmed The teacher shortage in Britain is so acute, that talent from the four corners is being shipped in at double the cost. The irony is, that if our teachers were actually paid the salary this gentleman is getting, there would be more of them...
posted on Sep 6, 2001 - View this thread

I'm not really sure if I feel for these people or not. A lean job market is no picnic, but c'mon, there are other jobs out there. Maybe it is some sort of divine retribution for these shelter denizens after spending months cutting people off while yapping on the cell-phone behind the wheel of the leased Porsche. Yes, that was a run-on sentence.
posted on Jun 15, 2001 - View this thread

"Everyone who writes original content online needs to get a day job." John Scalzi argues that this is the most likely way that we're going to see quality online content survive as for-profit ventures like Suck continue to crash down around us. He points to cool stuff a lot of us are already familiar with (Lileks and glenn macdonald's The War Against Silence) and some sites I hadn't heard of until now (Rick McGinnis' The Diary Thing). Scalzi practices what he preaches: he doesn't post every day -- hey, he's a professional writer and keeping his family fed comes first -- but what he does post is choice. (Probable future URL for today's article is here).
posted on Jun 14, 2001 - View this thread

An exchange between James Fallows and Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

[L]et me explain that your book is the account of three month-long episodes of attempting to live entirely on earnings from $7- or $8-per-hour jobs. You show up in low-wage cities and try to get on your feet, like someone "graduating" from welfare to work. One of many intriguing aspects is the juggling of three challenges: landing a job (not that hard, in the "tight" economy of the late nineties); doing the job (sometimes quite hard, as you make vivid); and finding a place to live (nearly impossible, for reasons we will get to).

The material questions are 1) Do we care? 2) What should we do about it? The author makes a couple of suggestion a couple of links into the article. What do you think?

link via adam
posted on May 8, 2001 - View this thread

Wanted: Web Designer for 'egg': must like startlingly honest employers who don't beat about the bush.
posted on Feb 22, 2001 - View this thread

51,631 dot com layoffs as of Feb. 01, 2001. Is it that the web allows us to simultaneously view the usual failure of 99% of new businesses, a sign of the coming recession, or just a result of bad business plans and get rich quick schemes? Or was it simply too good to last? Whatever the reason, it's depressing.
posted on Feb 2, 2001 - View this thread

Imaxo pays you go on job interviews Fees for interviews range from $25 - $1000 Some people could You can only interview a maximum of 12 times a year, so you couldn't live off of doing this unless you had a lot of aliases
posted on Oct 19, 2000 - View this thread

Monster.com , careerpath, hotjobs.com etc, etc... While these sites offer tons of jobs, I wonder if I will actually be able to find work through them. Does anyone have experiences they'd like to share about finding internet jobs through the inernet? How about smaller, more focused sites, especially regional ones?
posted on Aug 2, 2000 - View this thread

The Digital Sweatshop Continues If this letter is for real (and corroboration would be nice), the CFO of Mylackey.com is berating his staff for having the gall to go home before 6:45pm. In fact, he wants to mandate office hours of 8am to 7pm with a 30 minute lunch.

That'll really boost morale. I don't think I've gotten to work at 8am ever.

Anyway, though I lovelovelove the idea of Mylackey.com, I don't think I'd invest in them anytime soon.

The letter, which states that they're "lagging behind revenue goals" seemingly contradicts the interview with the CEO, where he states "we're exceeding expectations" with revenue.
posted on Jun 13, 2000 - View this thread

Takes money to make money Does this creep anyone else out, as much as it does me. Sad to see how the web, where everyone used to be equal, is slowly conforming to the real-world model of money = worth.
posted on Jun 6, 2000 - View this thread

A great employment page if you happen to have long hair and a beard. The descriptions are great, I love the internet job that requires you to update a page once every two months. They had me going for a few seconds there.
posted on Sep 4, 1999 - View this thread