July 1, 2009, - 3:11 pm
New Catch-22 of the Current Recession: Employers Who Are Hiring Prefer the Already Employed
By Debbie Schlussel
I feel for the unemployed in this bad economy. As we know, many who’ve lost their jobs have been laid off or terminated not because they were incompetent or bad employees, but because the economy is just rotten.
Well, now, they have another problem, something of a Catch-22–a double whammy. They can’t win for losing.
With unemployment at 9.4% and rising, it’s a buyer’s market for employers that are hiring. But many employers are bypassing the jobless to target those still working, reasoning that these survivors are the top performers.
“If they’re employed in today’s economy, they have to be first string,” says Ryan Ross, a partner with Kaye/Bassman International Corp., an executive recruiting firm in Dallas. Mr. Ross says more clients recently have indicated that they would prefer to fill positions with “passive candidates” who are working elsewhere and not actively seeking a job.
The bias extends from front-line workers to senior managers. Charlie Wilgus, managing partner of executive search for Lucas Group, based in Atlanta, says a manufacturing client looking for a division president recently refused to consider a former divisional president at Newell Rubbermaid Inc. whose department had been eliminated. The client doesn’t want candidates who have been laid off, Mr. Wilgus says.
Bobby Fitzgerald prefers to hire the already employed even though he gets two dozen or more unsolicited resumes each day at his White Chocolate Grill.
Employers’ preference for the employed adds another hurdle for those who have been laid off. Job seekers frequently are competing with dozens of other applicants for the few available positions.
Bobby Fitzgerald, a partner in five restaurants in three states. . . . He currently has 50 openings across his five restaurants and has told recruiters to bring in only people who are working. Mr. Fitzgerald’s preference for the employed can be time-consuming and expensive. . . .
“We are always looking for the very best of the industry, which happens to be people who are still employed,” he says. . . .
Many employers consider the employed more valuable and worth the extra effort.
So, what do you do to overcome this prejudice? Well, I think it’s only going to encourage job seekers to lie and fabricate phony current employers. Hungry, destitute people do what they have to, to get a job.
The Wall Street Journal gives this advice:
Calm an employer’s biggest worry about out-of-work applicants: that your termination was the result of poor performance.
Arming yourself with strong letters of recommendation from your previous employer, stating that you were laid off for economic reasons. . . . If you can’t obtain formal letters, get references from senior-level employees at your prior company. . . .
And if you lost your job when your department was eliminated, make sure to tell prospective employers; that will be considered more benign than selective layoffs
Yes, you wouldn’t want a serial terminee or otherwise undesirable person running your business or working there. Chances are that employee will end up in the same position with you. Just as you wouldn’t want a person who went to six different colleges in six years and barely graduated to be the country’s Vice President. It shows a pattern of incompetence and lack of commitment or direction.
But if someone is laid off in this economy, it’s not necessarily a sign they aren’t a hard worker. And, sadly, many employers take it that way. Frankly, many of the unemployed will work that much harder because they don’t want to be back in such a desperate position again.
And I’ll bet some of these employers who won’t hire an unemployed worker are the same people who voted for a President named Obama who didn’t stay very long in a single job of late. Yes, he was always “employed”–including as the nebulously described “community organizer.” But he didn’t stay anywhere very long. And that’s a better sign of trouble than whether someone is out of a job in a sour economy.
And yet, they didn’t have the same kind of qualms, despite the stark signs.
It’s a free country and business are free–and should remain free–to hire whomever they want to hire for whatever reasons. But they’re missing out on some of the best job candidates if they take this tack.
I’m not usually a fan of zero tolerance policies. Sometimes, people remain employed because of whom they’re sleeping with or related to, not because they were the most qualified candidates and thus avoided the chopping block.
And, if I were an employer, I’d rather have an experienced employee who might have been temporarily down on his luck than a hot chick who simply doesn’t know the biz but is pleasant to look at or a slacker guy who is a frat brother of the right guy at work.
Or, as is the case with some friends of mine, you get laid off because the economy is bad and there isn’t enough work for everyone. Then a few weeks later you find out, quietly, from your former foreman that the company has replaced all the laid off people with illegals at half the salary.
After seeing the massive influx of illegals in just my apartment complex over the last couple of months, I feel that this is a common tactic, at least in the construction industry here in Charlotte.
Maxwell Jump on July 1, 2009 at 5:50 pm