Quote:

Original post by tstrimp Since you had the skills, would you really be unemployed for 6 months?

Given that I was on said course the answer was; yes.

In fact, as I recall, I was unemployed for around 8 months before I managed, by luck, to land myself a job.

At this point I was sans a bit of paper which said I could do what I could do (I crashed out of Uni as I was burnt out on that kind of education and was having a hard time of things in my head), as such while I had the skills I had no way to prove it.

And by 'skills' I mean 'use word to write a CV', 'use the internet to look at a web page' etc, things which given my 3 year attendance at Uni I could do while asleep. Basically all it served to do was waste my time and their money; during this two week period I was so under-stimulated for most of the day that when I got out of the course (which was a full 9am to 5:30pm thing) my brain had given up for the day and I went home, watched some TV and went to bed. I seem to recall that two week period lost me around 3 weeks 'coding time' as it took me a further week to get back into the swing of things.

Quote:

Original post by Antheus There is still too much emphasis on immediate employability for almost exclusively minimum wage jobs for sole purpose of remaining competitive with off-shore labor with no true career path.

Again you're overstating the prevalence of minimum wage jobs. Very, very few people make minimum wage, and the majority (70%) of those are in the service industry where they make tips. Roughly half are between the ages of 16 and 24 indicating they are high school students, just out of high school or are in college. I don't think there is much of a problem with this sort of person making minimum wage, especially when it can be as misleading as what waiters report to the IRS.

Quote:

Original post by tstrimp Quote: Original post by Khaiy And what about the fact that time people spend engaged in volunteer work/vocational training is time that they can't spend looking for work? You honestly think the people who have spent a year or more on unemployment are spending a considerable amount of time and effort in finding a job? Quote: You could almost certainly have purchased insurance on your own (expensive though it would be), chosen more suitable insurance from your employer, or used your vaunted free-market labor elasticity to move to another job that offered better pay and/or benefits. I did change jobs during the pregnancy, and got insurance. However a 3rd trimester pregnancy is definitely a pre-existing condition.

For the first part, absolutely there are people who legitimately are out of work for that long despite looking for employment. The job market is terrible right now, with something like one job for every five unemployed workers on average (where I live, at least. There's a lot of regional variation). There are definitely layabouts who don't look for a job and cash their unemployment checks every week.

For the second part, the fact that you wanted insurance after an expensive condition became apparent puts you in the same boat as a lot of people. You could have bought insurance that would cover pregnancy before your wife needed it-- that's the basis of the entire insurance market. You and I classify it as a reasonable situation, and the safety net was there to help you when you needed it. But your lack of prior insurance (which you could have had) ultimately placed a financial burden on other taxpayers, which some object to paying for. Similar situations, where bad luck or poor timing or a lack of foresight affect a lot of people. It's always going to be difficult to determine when the burden for a lack of preparedness or effort should be reflexive and when society ought to pick up the tab, and the fact that societal intervention may not be the only option that could remedy a situation is a pretty draconian measure to use.

Quote:

Original post by Antheus The reason these people don't get the jobs is because HR and recruitment agencies filter on buzzwords, not qualifications.

Maybe those candidates should improve their resume then.

Quote:

Current HR rules also forbid employing unemployed people. If you are unemployed or self employed, your resume will be filtered out. Precisely for this reason - if you were competent, you would not be unemployed. In other words - once you lose your job (company is sold and you fired after consolidation) you are unemployable. Not because it makes sense, but because that is a policy. Violating it means the HR person would get fired.

I agree with the sentiment. Out of the six (4 developers, 1 sys admin and 1 tester) people I have hired in the last six month, two were unemployed. One was laid off from a game studio, and one had relocated from Jordan and had not found employment here yet.

Quote:

Original post by phantom At this point I was sans a bit of paper which said I could do what I could do (I crashed out of Uni as I was burnt out on that kind of education and was having a hard time of things in my head), as such while I had the skills I had no way to prove it.

I completely relate to this experience. The difference is, I didn't sit around waiting for the perfect job. I got a job at a call center handling phone calls for people having trouble with their phone service. From there I went to work at a PC LAN center where I started as a cashier, and ended up maintaining their computers. After that I was finally able to get the interview at the ISP.

Quote:

Original post by tstrimp Maybe those candidates should improve their resume then.

How? Resume counts paid experience, which means they need a job. But they can't get hired since they don't have experience.

The only way is to lie on resume, not get experience.

And again, this doesn't improve on the big picture. Bowing to the buzzword game means you take skill and aptitude out of the equation. The jobs that hire based on buzzwords are minimum-wage equivalent - they are just not yet outsourced to minimum bidder. If a job can be performed by someone who can be described in a set of buzzwords, the same job can be performed by lowest bidder on same number of buzzwords.

A welder is a welder is a welder. Or they are not a welder. A .Net programmer is a .Net programmer. Or they are not a .Net programmer.

They are hired as needed and dismissed as fast. And make no mistake in titles: Lead Pre-sales Enterprise Vendor Specialist Consultant is same thing. If it can be put into buzzwords it's temporary.

Tell me: what buzzwords describe a CEO? What about CTO? Hedge fund manager?

Any job that requires set of written down skills offers no security - to succeed, people need to go beyond that.

Quote:

The difference is, I didn't sit around waiting for the perfect job. I got a job at a call center handling phone calls for people having trouble with their phone service. From there I went to work at a PC LAN center where I started as a cashier, and ended up maintaining their computers. After that I was finally able to get the interview at the ISP.

When was that? Out of curiosity, because the jobs you describe are hardly to be found around these days.

Quote:

Original post by Khaiy But your lack of prior insurance (which you could have had) ultimately placed a financial burden on other taxpayers, which some object to paying for.

Except it didn't. I had been paying into medicaid for six years prior to this and I have been paying for it for five years following it and will continue to pay into it even though I no longer qualify for it. To say the burden was simply on the back of the other tax payers in disingenuous.

Quote:

Original post by tstrimp Quote: Original post by Khaiy But your lack of prior insurance (which you could have had) ultimately placed a financial burden on other taxpayers, which some object to paying for. Except it didn't. I had been paying into medicaid for six years prior to this and I have been paying for it for five years following it and will continue to pay into it even though I no longer qualify for it. To say the burden was simply on the back of the other tax payers in disingenuous.

As someone who works with Medicaid every day, I guarantee you that your 11 years worth of taxes paid into Medicaid did not cover your wife's expenses during her pregnancy. Your insurance costs during that period would have been far higher than the portion of taxes you paid into Medicaid. You paid for some of it, sure, but not a large portion, and had you had your own insurance coverage for it then taxpayers would have paid $0. Suggesting that you paid for it yourself rather than getting taxpayer subsidized help is what is disingenuous.

By your same argumentation, everyone collecting unemployment is placing no burden on other taxpayers because they paid into unemployment insurance while they were working, and will pay into it again once they are again employed and no longer qualify.

Quote:

Original post by Antheus How? Resume counts paid experience, which means they need a job. But they can't get hired since they don't have experience.

There is nothing saying that a resume only covers paid experience. In fact one of the things I look for in a resume is non-paid experience. This shows that the people I'm hiring have a genuine interest in what they do.

Quote:

And again, this doesn't improve on the big picture. Bowing to the buzzword game means you take skill and aptitude out of the equation.

No it doesn't. Buzzwords get you the interview, and your performance at the interview should be testing skill and aptitude.

Quote:

A welder is a welder is a welder. Or they are not a welder. A .Net programmer is a .Net programmer. Or they are not a .Net programmer.

I disagree strongly with this. Programmers as NOT replaceable cogs. The difference between an average programmer and a great programmer is enormous. I don't know much about welding, but I would assume it has the same skill differences. There are people who know how to stick two pieces of metal together, and then there are very skilled individuals who know their craft inside and out.

Quote:

When was that? Out of curiosity, because the jobs you describe are hardly to be found around these days.

Craigslist has a whole slew of low / no skill jobs. If someone was really motivated to find a job, there are a lot of opportunities. Just a few that were posted today.

Quote:

Verizon Account Rep (MUST BE OUTGOING) * Entry level, no experience is necessary. We have astounding training and a great environment!

Quote:

Junior Marketing Associate (Riverside) No Experience Necessary Only Full-Time hours available Entry Level with opportunity for rapid advancement

Quote:

amateur porn need ladies (riverside/corona) [grin]

Quote:

Trainees wanted!! (Riverside, CA ) TRAINEES WANTED!!! Company expanding no experience needed, will train

If you add some basic computer skills in there as Phantom has, there are many, many more opportunities. The idea that there are no jobs available is simply false. There might not be any jobs that you want to do that are readily available, but there are definitely jobs available.

Quote:

Original post by tstrimp If you add some basic computer skills in there as Phantom has, there are many, many more opportunities. The idea that there are no jobs available is simply false. There might not be any jobs that you want to do that are readily available, but there are definitely jobs available.

There are jobs available, but not enough of them. There are far more unemployed people than there are open positions right now. Showing a few job listings doesn't disprove this in the slightest, nevermind that any particular job may not be enough to keep someone afloat, let alone upwardly mobile.