Economy taking toll on dropouts, college grads alike
We welcome you to JobBank USA and hope your job hunting experience
is a pleasant one. We hope you find our resources useful.
March 1, 2009
When the recession cost Michael Hawk his job in the purchasing department of a publishing company, he wasn’t too surprised. After all, he didn’t even have a high school diploma.
Then the downturn took the job of Walter Wilson, a skilled forklift driver. He, too, was philosophical about the loss, figuring that only college grads have job security at a time like this.
Except they don’t, either, as Christopher Wever can attest.
The three Schenectady County residents are worlds apart in age, experience and education. But they’re all in the same boat now: searching for jobs in a market that seems to be getting smaller every day. The only thing they have going for them is that they’re all single, without families to support or mortgages to pay.
“Initially, it was pretty good. If I applied for six jobs, I probably got four or five interviews out of it,” said Wever, a 38-year-old warranty claims specialist who lives in Rotterdam. “Now, I can put out 10 applications and I don’t get any responses.”
Hiring managers report an unprecedented surge in applications, receiving hundreds for positions that used to garner little interest. Adults are even applying for the low-paid summer recreation jobs that municipalities once struggled to fill with teenagers.
With such competition, applicants like Hawk — a city resident without a high school diploma — are unlikely to be chosen.
Making matters worse, Hawk is 51, old enough to make some employers hesitate before investing in a man nearing retirement age. Hawk is blasé about this problem, telling employers not to worry: He can’t afford to retire.
“I don’t see it happening, realistically,” he said. “But I don’t look 51. Maybe it matters if you’re 65, people don’t want to vest in you.”
Lifelong struggle
He has a ready argument for those who ask about his education. He left school to work at his father’s photography store in New York City.
“I learned more working in the store than I would have going to college,” he said. “I learned all about business.”
He later ran the store himself, under his father’s partner. Then he moved on to retail, thinking he could reach management, but he found that without a diploma, he could reach the top only through decades of dedicated work as an underling.
Hawk found success instead as the office manager for a large law firm. Then, the 1980s recession hit.
“They outsourced the mail room, the copying. Within six months, all the office workers were laid off. I was unnecessary,” he said.
He handled that layoff by turning to alcohol, he said. It took years to climb back to sobriety.
When this recession hit, he lost his latest job, along with everyone else in the building. Grey House, an Albany publisher of school resource books, closed its doors just before Christmas. They laid off everyone. Hawk stayed away from the booze this time, living on unemployment as he searches for a new paycheck.
Alcoholics Anonymous has helped with more than just his addiction.
“One thing I’ve learned in recovery is you can’t let things get you down,” he said.
So he maintained his composure when he couldn’t even get a job as a cashier at Aldi, a discount grocery chain.
“A job is a job,” he said, sighing. “I just keep going. It’s not easy.”
Before each interview, using his AA lessons, he sets aside the disappointment, frustration and creeping anxiety that eat away at him.
“I put on my happy face and put my best foot forward,” he said. “There’s not much you can do. But I believe if you just keep doing what you’re doing, things work out for the best.”
He reminds himself that at least he has no wife or children. Financially, he said, that’s got to help.
“At least I don’t have that stress,” he said.
Under pressure
That stress can be debilitating. Wilson’s father died in November after a long fight with cancer, leaving Wilson, 45, so deeply depressed that he stayed home from work for six weeks. When the city resident tried to return to his job as a Price Chopper cook, it wasn’t there anymore. He had been suspended for eating a handful of French fries without paying; during his absence, he was fired.
With his forklift driving experience, Wilson thought he could easily pick up another job. He was shocked to find that even warehouses were cutting back on their stock workers.
“Right now they’re slow,” Wilson said. “Everywhere is slow.”
One place was hiring — Railex. For a moment, he had hope. He applied at once. But Railex managers told him they would only hire forklift drivers who had a current certificate. He’s passed the certification test — but he doesn’t have the certificate to prove it. He left it with his former employer.
“Some companies give you the test right there and they keep it in your folder,” Wilson said.
So that hope was dashed.
After weeks of searching, he went to the county’s One Stop employment center and stood shoulder to shoulder with dozens of residents looking for food stamps, unemployment benefits, job training and any help they could find.
One Stop on your side
He waited for more than an hour in the crowded room for a chance to meet with a job counselor. He wanted help rewriting his résumé.
He got much more than that. Counselors enrolled him in free GED classes — he never earned his high school diploma — and the One Stop center might pay for his driver’s license, which is needed for some jobs he is considering. One Stop counselors also plan to call Price Chopper to see if the issue of the French fries — which Wilson did later pay for — can be resolved.
“This is the kind of stuff we will try to help with,” said DSS Commissioner Dennis Packard.
The One Stop center specializes in workers like Wilson who have skills but face what seem like insurmountable barriers: no diploma, no driver’s license, no job references.
“We’ll spend our resources on the person in minimum wage,” Packard said. “The person with a degree, not to minimize the hardships he faces [by being laid off], he has more tools in the toolbox to reconnect.”
In the meantime, to earn his welfare check, Wilson is working for the county on a volunteer basis. Last week, he was delivering mail.
“It’s OK, I guess,” he said, disappointed that he could not immediately get a paying job. “It’s an easy job.”
But every day he scans the One Stop bulletin board in search of a job, hoping to find an employer who will hire him without the forklift operation certificate.
Any port in a storm
Wever, too, has taken a temporary job while he searches for a way to return to his career. He’s selling tires to make ends meet.
Wever was a warranty claims specialist for 12 years at Metro Ford before being laid off. He saw the ax coming and enrolled in business management classes at Schenectady County Community College, reasoning that an associate degree would help him not only get a new job but also obtain a better job.
He graduated in May. So far, his theory has not panned out. His closest brush with good employment was an interview last June for a warranty claims specialist job at General Electric.
“They liked me because I had the experience, they liked that I had the technical background, but I didn’t have the four-year degree,” he said.
He sighed: “I thought I was a shoo-in.”
Since then, the economy has gotten worse. Now he doesn’t even hear back from employers when they decide to hire someone else.
“After having the interview go well, I don’t hear back for a while and I get the sinking feeling in my gut,” he said. “I call them and they said, ‘Oh, we meant to call you back ...’ ”
He is now enrolling in classes at Empire State College to earn his bachelor’s degree.
“I’ve found places won’t even talk to you without a four-year degree,” he said. “I don’t really think it’s fair. Anybody can go out and get a four-year degree and not necessarily be smart in life. It broadens your horizons and makes you think differently, but I think someone with experience would be a better hire.”
He’s tried that argument on hiring managers, none of whom have agreed with him. That’s why he took the tire sales job.
“It’s not the field I want to be in. I’m not a salesman,” he said, adding, “I like working with people, which is why I don’t really mind doing the sales thing.”
But it’s definitely a temporary situation. By the time the recession ends, he expects to have his bachelor’s degree and be well-known by every potential employer in the area.
“I’m just riding the tide out,” he said. “It’s going to get better. When it does, hopefully I’ve got enough seed planted through LinkedIn or I’ve bugged someone enough times they’ll remember my name.”
Email This Page!