Where are the employees?

77GreenMachine

77GreenMachine

Phillip Talton
Joined
Mar 30, 2010
Location
Trinity, NC
What’s the answer? My work could hire 15 people tomorrow in just one location and not be fully staffed. Every place I know of is hiring. But the gooberment checks ran out right? So how are this many people not working??

My partial theory is that many people took the opportunity to get better paying jobs. Can’t blame them. But it’s like no one has filled those positions. I don’t understand.
 
No shortage at Stuyck. Albeit COVID crushed us this week. We just brought in two new guys recently. Experienced welders. Ones a pipe welder and the other is out of school but eager to learn and both very good at what they do. It's rare we pick up two at a time. We are FULL.
 
XJsavage said:
No shortage at Stuyck. Albeit COVID crushed us this week. We just brought in two new guys recently. Experienced welders. Ones a pipe welder and the other is out of school but eager to learn and both very good at what they do. It's rare we pick up two at a time. We are FULL.
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That’s great. Most skilled labor needs seem to be doing ok. But entry level jobs seem to be wide open and vacant everywhere.
 
obullfish said:
My work is losing people left and right and can’t even get people to apply. Maybe need to figure out what everyone is doing for $$$$ and do the same.
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It’s crazy man. We schedule interviews and people don’t even show up.
 
tons of remote jobs out there paying decent now.

if you are willing to pay enough, you can find people, at least in the tech world.

Who's going to work some of these jobs when I can make 15 bucks with benefits working at hobby lobby though, you have to have a passion to want to do some of the jobs with what they are willing to pay. A lot of people I think also realized in like hospitality, I can make this much money doing other stuff and not dealing with shit people.
 
We have had 2 trucks sitting for most of the year. We get a lead on a driver and then they ghost us. The trucking side of the business is struggling. Our brokerage side is doing well. Trucks say we need this customer says how about this and we are making money there.
 
77GreenMachine said:
It’s crazy man. We schedule interviews and people don’t even show up.
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Karma. I look at this as the backlash for all those years of submitting applications with companies and never getting a response. I cannot tell you how many jobs that employers ghosted me on my application when I was clearly qualified for the job. I get it that the internet basically made it possible for anyone to apply for a job anywhere, anytime, but yet companies did not keep up on the HR end to ensure that the considered every applicant equally (and gave them the courtesy of a "No, thanks.")

Obviously not pointing a finger at your company but in general that is how I see it.
 
I don't get it either. Have been unemployed since November and have applied for a metric sh!t ton of jobs that are in my field within a reasonable distance from home and have only had a few interviews out of them. I think some of it is the fact that when you read my resume and figure out that I graduated college in 1993, it makes me 50 ish years old. But that only makes sense for the ones hiring only young and underexperienced. I still have 15 +/- years of work left before I want to retire and in the Marketing field that is a good couple runs. One company I am interviewing with I have already had three interviews and it's a 100% remote position. Seems like the process is taking FOREVER. I did turn down a job that was a significant drive, for a $8000 pay cut a year over where I was and on top of that they wanted to hire full time, but not offer any insurance at all. I'm not for sure how they were able to do that, but I didn't want any part of it.
 
ManglerYJ said:
I don't get it either. Have been unemployed since November and have applied for a metric sh!t ton of jobs that are in my field within a reasonable distance from home and have only had a few interviews out of them. I think some of it is the fact that when you read my resume and figure out that I graduated college in 1993, it makes me 50 ish years old. But that only makes sense for the ones hiring only young and underexperienced. I still have 15 +/- years of work left before I want to retire and in the Marketing field that is a good couple runs. One company I am interviewing with I have already had three interviews and it's a 100% remote position. Seems like the process is taking FOREVER. I did turn down a job that was a significant drive, for a $8000 pay cut a year over where I was and on top of that they wanted to hire full time, but not offer any insurance at all. I'm not for sure how they were able to do that, but I didn't want any part of it.
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1) Don't put your 30 years of experience on the resume, put what is recent that is relative to the job. Nobody really cares about what you did 20 years ago. No need to put your dates on your education either. They may see that much experience and think they can't afford you also. Keep your resume to 2 pages.
2) Most companies now have automated filters on their applications, it is looking for keyword matches based on the job description and your resume. Take the time and customize your resume for every job you are applying for.
3) Try to ensure your resume highlights tangible business outcomes that you have driven. Increased ad clicks by 30%, increase sales lead pipeline by 10%, streamlined processes, introduced new functionality, etc.
4) Network as much as you can on linkedin. Find old colleagues, friends, etc. Find who they are connected to when you are applying for a job, referrals mean a ton.

Most companies now for remote job have an interview with the HR person, then pass on to the manager, then interview with either a panel of 3-4 people or 3-4 people separately.

I was an IT recruiter for about 3 years, if you need more tips let me know.

braxton357 said:
Literally was wondering this last night, left job late, trailer with excavator wont fit under drive throughs and not a single dining room open at 8pm. Where the fuck all these people disappear to?
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Do you want to work fast food at 15 bucks at hour, when you can go make 15 bucks an hour somewhere else? I think when a lot of these places cut their staff 50% due to covid, they all realized they can go elsewhere.
 
I think a lot of the people who used to work in those jobs are now driving Amazon vans. Those things are EVERYWHERE, including at my house almost daily.
 
drkelly said:
I think a lot of the people who used to work in those jobs are now driving Amazon vans. Those things are EVERYWHERE, including at my house almost daily.
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Not here Only amazon packages we get are from the USPS and fedex and ups.
 
Without going into the debate about the definition of a covid death, you can't forget that plays into this as well. In addition to pay and working conditions and people wanting to change careers, etc that were mentioned above, there have been 896k covid deaths in the US. I'd guess a significant portion of those were working age. That's not an insignificant number of people gone from the workforce as well.

I think together with the push for better pay, better benefits, etc, people wanting out of their industries, or not wanting in certain industries, plus all the covid deaths, it's been a perfect storm to make hiring difficult everywhere.
 
When COVID first hit, the company I work for completely shut down production. Not selling any product meant NO money coming in. They immediately went into cost cutting mode, and offered early retirement packages to many individuals. I'm guessing many other companies did the same thing to survive. My wife told me that some of the older staff at her hospital decided to retire when COVID first hit so they wouldn't have to risk catching it. If you add up all off those people that retired early, it is probably a significant number of people that left the work force never to return.
 
Early retirement has been a huge hit to the labor force. It's even worse for trucking. Most truckers are over 45, probably over 50 honestly, and a bunch of 65+ ones retired when covid shutdowns hit.
 
DSM Turbos said:
1) Don't put your 30 years of experience on the resume, put what is recent that is relative to the job. Nobody really cares about what you did 20 years ago. No need to put your dates on your education either. They may see that much experience and think they can't afford you also. Keep your resume to 2 pages.
2) Most companies now have automated filters on their applications, it is looking for keyword matches based on the job description and your resume. Take the time and customize your resume for every job you are applying for.
3) Try to ensure your resume highlights tangible business outcomes that you have driven. Increased ad clicks by 30%, increase sales lead pipeline by 10%, streamlined processes, introduced new functionality, etc.
4) Network as much as you can on linkedin. Find old colleagues, friends, etc. Find who they are connected to when you are applying for a job, referrals mean a ton.

Most companies now for remote job have an interview with the HR person, then pass on to the manager, then interview with either a panel of 3-4 people or 3-4 people separately.

I was an IT recruiter for about 3 years, if you need more tips let me know.


Do you want to work fast food at 15 bucks at hour, when you can go make 15 bucks an hour somewhere else? I think when a lot of these places cut their staff 50% due to covid, they all realized they can go elsewhere.
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That seems to be exactly what is happening in this interview process. The first was with an HR person, then next was management level and the last one was two people that would be peers. Company sounds pretty good and the people that I would be working with are mostly former Hanes/Champion team members. I have researched each of the people I've interviewed with on social media (trying not to be a social-stalker) and I really felt like I hit it off well with the last round interview of two.

I will give a try to tailoring my resumes to the position. I also like the metrics approach with tangiable business outcomes. I don't think I have that enough in my resume. Thanks for the tips!
 
I think part of it is how employers are treating their employees too, with an abundance of others job to be had out there, people don’t have to be “stuck” any longer in a job they no longer desire. That is actually the reason I left mine just before Christmas this last year. I had been in the grocery business for 18 years and the meat market for 16 of those, and running the market for about 12 of those. Without going into great detail, I was tired of being treated the way that I was, I had recently came into a position where I no longer needed that job with that pay, so I left.
 
braxton357 said:
Literally was wondering this last night, left job late, trailer with excavator wont fit under drive throughs and not a single dining room open at 8pm. Where the fuck all these people disappear to?
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Gotta curl that arm under. Can't even remember how many times I went through the local Bojangles drive through with my excavator :D Had to swing wide around the clearance post at the order speaker though!


NickMaul said:
Isn’t that how you keep getting unemployment checks?
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I "think" NC requires you to prove you've applied for jobs and had some interviews, but didn't get hired for whatever reason....I'm not 100% sure though because I've never been unemployed. I know when they were paying 900 bucks a week a lot of people were purposely staying home and/or working side cash jobs and raking in the money. Those were also the same sort of people who would opt to NOT have taxes taken out of their unemployment checks and get all pissed off come tax time when they didn't get that fat return they were used to and the state said to fork over a few grand.
 
I didn't read all the responses...but I raised/normalized pay plant wide in October, everyone received a 33-50% increase, and new hires are coming in at 25-30% higher than they were. $15/hr has become the new $10/hr and no minimum wage mandate even had to be made. In my opinion, if folks are still looking at 'entry level' roles as having the same entry level pay as a year or two ago, you're behind the 8 ball. When I upped my starting pay, it made me competitive with the Chewy/Food Lion/Aldi/Amazon starting pay. I was about 60-70 heads short of being fully staffed. Within 6 weeks, I was fully staffed and had my standard 10% 'extra' plus an additional buffer of heads to account for the natural attrition. Overall, I'm where I need to be today (except for 2nd shift compounding, and warehousing has been considerably hard to find qualified talent), and I think the $15/hr talent is roughly the same skill set as the $10-12/hr talent of 2020. I've still found the retention rate to be roughly the same too, but it's easier to back fill because of the new pay scale. Salaried/office folks, I haven't noticed quite as large of a jump in pay, maybe 10-20%...but I have noticed everyone with more than a 20ish minute commute, wants to work from home at least 2 days per week.
 
ManglerYJ said:
I think some of it is the fact that when you read my resume and figure out that I graduated college in 1993, it makes me 50 ish years old.
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See...that's a HUUUGE selling point for me right now. I'm really turning the corner from mom and pop mentality/culture to legitimate micro cap business in the industry. However, a lot of folks I have on staff are self-taught, which is fine, but need more formal training/experience. I'm specifically looking for the managers with 30+ years experience to solidify departmental foundations, willing to train folks, put in a solid 5-10 years and have their succession plan in place. I have a purchasing manager starting on Monday, that took her first Regional Supply Chain Manager role the same year I was born. I'm tickled to death to have her, and she's stoked someone still finds value in what she has to say.
 
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