Give Ol' Gil A Break

I haven't been able to find any internal candidates to fill one of the positions in my group so yesterday the HR gal and I sat down and posted the job on monster.com. As of 11:30am this morning we already had eight e-mail replies with resumes.

Great right?

No, its fuggin pathetic.

Nearly every one I've perused so far is a man, with years of experience, laid off his last job and now desperately trying for a position well beneath him. That is so frickin' sad. One of these guys has a masters degree for Chrissakes. Another was a supply officer in the Air Force for ten years. And now they're groveling at my feet for a job that is just a notch or two above entry level. Half of these guys have at one time or another held a position that is roughly equivalent to what my boss does today.

You know that I'm usually mister hard-a** bidness guy but go over these resumes and letters is depressing. Doing this for a living would suck the life right outta ya.

The lesson from it is that if you're a late forty/early fitty white guy you can't be in a middle manager role in corporate America. You've got a target on your back and at the first sign of a slump in the stock price you're gone.

"Well we better not touch Donna. Could be a lawsuit waiting to happen. What about Johnson? He's a dependable kind of guy. Been around for a while and makes decent dough. Not likely to cause trouble either. He's the one."

Yeah I exaggerate I bit but don't think that being a white, middle aged, man of European descent doesn't make the decision a whole lot easier. Then what to do you do? Try to find a another job just like the one you lost? Good luck pal. Usually you've reached that position by promotion from within the ranks and that's how it works at other companies too. Plus if you're laid off it means that there are thousands of other schmoes in the same water as you fighting for those few lifeboat jobs floating around.

So you lower your standards. Then lower them again. The wife is breaking your balls because you're barely able to pay the bills and your kids are in college sucking up whatever spare funds you had. You start to think about tapping into some of your retirement accounts and realize just how screwed you are. So you apply for a job that you could have had when you were twenty years younger. And pray to God that you get contacted for an interview.

But you won't. Because the companies don't want an old retread like you even if you are willing to work for significantly less than your last job (One of the guys graduated from the U in 1976 and has worked for twenty five years at a company in Hibbing until getting laid off last April. He would be willing to relocate to Minneapolis and his salary requirements are $40,000. Forty thou? How can he live on that?). How do I know this? Because as much as I might empathize with these guys I have no intention of hiring or even talking to any of them.