Excluded from consideration for being unemployed?

When I read "Looking for work? Unemployed need not apply" an article from http://money.cnn.com/ by Chris Isidore (June 16, 2010 4:25 AM ET) I was not so much shocked as disappointed. Certainly screening out those candidates that are unemployed from applying for a job isn't illegal, but what does it say about the value we place on a person's temporary employment status rather than what a person can contribute to the success of an organization.

A recruiter friend of mine said to me recently "there are no bad employers and there are no bad employees, just bad matches." I think there's truth in this. Except for companies that are engaged in unethical business practices or employees that steal from their employers, it’s all a matter of gradations.

Having been involved locally with Milwaukee JobCamp http://www.milwaukeejobcamp.org/, a collection of recruiting and HR professionals that created a sort of boot camp for job seekers, (creators are all voluntary and seekers pay nothing to attend all day resume writing, networking, online social media and expert speaker sessions) I can report that there is a sense of compassion and commitment to help those that need this kind of support. JobCamp4 took place a couple weeks ago and the attendance, while down from the JobCamp3 event in July (1700) to 1100, was still a much needed day of hope for many still searching for work.

In the http://money.cnn.com/ by Chris Isidore (June 16, 2010 4:25 AM ET) article I read about employers nationally that would not consider candidates for jobs that were not currently employed. In the article, senior level HR and recruiting executives reported that this practice is "more prevalent than it used to be." The explanation given is that there are so many candidates for each opening; this is one way to trim down the list to a manageable number. Mostly this was seen as a bad idea and that employers were in fact missing two important things in applying this practice. 1.) Potentially good candidates that they would never even take the time to interview. 2.) An employer tax break recently passed exempting them from having to pay the "6.2% of a new hires wages in Social Security taxes" for the rest of 2010.

If this practice is common even in some limited way it speaks to a few things that I think are important as we examine the identity of what it means to be unemployed. First there is this idea of insiders and outsiders or haves and have not’s at play. There are groups of individuals; in this case employers that are deciding for those that are now outsiders (non-employees) that they aren't welcome. Second, other insiders, namely other employed individuals are welcome and given access. So those without (often through no action of their own) are kept “out” while those already “in” maintain access to the inside or in this case employment. Like the Scarlet "A", it seems that the unemployed have a Scarlet "U" for unwanted or undesirable, as their badge of shame.

Having at one time been an unemployed person for over a year, there is plenty of guilt and shame that comes built in to the status of unemployed without the help of others. Losing a job is like any other loss and the process that goes with it is the same. We experience shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance. There are practical aspects that contribute to feelings of guilt and shame like not being able to pay ones way, take care of obligations or family members, etc. The stigma of being unemployed is a bit self-inflicted, but being further excluded contributes to a sense of unworthiness too. It was quite challenging to get up every day and face the rejection and harsh reality of a job search. I'm glad I didn't know about this exclusionary tactic then.

The phrase "pursuit of happiness" keeps coming to mind here. How is my finding a job (personal freedom) coming into conflict with someone else's personal or public success? What is it about an unemployed person that, by nature of that fact alone, makes them unworthy of consideration? I think that it gets down to one thing. As a society we are suspicious of what we don't understand. If we haven’t experienced unemployment, we make fast judgment that it's due to performance or some fault of the person who finds themselves unemployed.

I would ask us all to take a look at the situation more closely. Unemployment is still at 9.5% according to the BLShttp://www.bls.gov/. According to many experts (Manpower Employment Outlook Survey - Press Release http://bit.ly/aIE3m8) while there seems to be reason for cautious optimistic, the full economic recovery in terms of job loss is still a ways away. According to USA Today (10/13/2010) there is “a record 30% out of work at least a year."

Unemployment can happen to anyone. If you haven't been unemployed, someone you know, maybe even someone you love has. This is reason enough for insiders to consider the unemployed as part of the larger insider group. The currently unemployed but the future employed.

People want to help you, but you have to tell them how! Like the Yellow Brick Road, job search is scary, uncertain and long, but there are people along the way who can help!

You can do this!

Loyalty - What can you expect as an employer and employee?

There was a time when loyalty, both on the part of employer and employee, was held as a valuable attribute in the employment game. Companies would tout that you could work your way up in an organization, invest time in learning how to be a good employee, own stock in the company (by way of a 401k or other stock option purchase) and even consider retiring from a company. The same held true for employees. I recall being encouraged by my parents to stay in a job I didn't love for the stability of employment and all that entailed.

By the time I entered the "gown-up workforce" in 1985, those promises had changed a bit, but there was still an expectation that employment would last for a period of time, until the company and the employee felt the return-on-investment (ROI) was fair. Generation X employees, as we refer to them now, didn't seem to have the compulsion to stay in jobs for more than a couple of years. In fact they often were labeled as "job hoppers", a term that still exists in recruiting and hiring today.

So from both an employer and employee perspective, taking into consideration the current economic climate and overall unemployment rate at 9.5% according to the BLShttp://www.bls.gov/, what can employers and employee expect from each other?

Right now from an employer standpoint, it's not possible to say that loyalty is as highly ranked an attribute as say, flexibility, adaptability and dealing with ambiguity. As employees rally back from unemployment and underemployment, many people I know, including yours truly, have re-engineered their lives to accommodate for expected future times of un or underemployment. Many, like me, took a different path altogether and when faced with a longer than anticipated period of joblessness, went back to school, took part-time jobs, stated our own business, etc. The loyalty for "employees" shifted to a self-loyalty model.

Event those that lasted in their job over this painful time of joblessness, have heard and seen the message loud and clear. Their friends and colleagues were victims of circumstance, so they in turn have taken notice. There is this idea that once the market really started to recover in some significant ways, there will be a mass-exodus by those left behind in the joblessness story, those that stayed, took on more work, took pay cuts, stayed in jobs they didn't love, but stayed to keep from being one of the many who didn't have a choice.

Companies want to keep good talent. Talented people want to do good work, be compensated fairly and know that the relationship of employer and employee is mutually beneficial. If that means that loyalty turns into something we have yet to define, that may be one of the byproducts of our employment circumstances today.

I think that employers overall can expect that employees will want to have a way to protect themselves and to keep marketable skills sharp. Employee, in general, can expect that employers will, not more than before, expect employees to "want" to stay, but accept it when that's not in the cards.

If you are still un or underemployed, this is a good thinking exercise to go through. What are the attributes you look for in an employer and how do you know they really exist beyond a mission statement. Know what you want and know what is being offered and from "the trenches" keep you network healthy and have a Plan B.

People want to help you, but you have to tell them how! Like the Yellow Brick Road, job search is scary, uncertain and long, but there are people along the way who can help!

You can do this!