The Day Job Blues - Are you Working?

Please excuse the 'rant-style' exhibited in the following paragraphs. I am a bit frustrated by the current employment picture in America, so cut me some slack if I am too honest or frank in my assessment of the current mess we are all in.

The graphic above serves to illustrate the current employment picture in America today. Prepare to join the masses of good, hard working Americans in this process and expect to see 85,000+ more per month being added to the unemployed per month.

Seeking an alternative to the day job

In seeking an alternative to the day job, I have given my best attempt at starting a successful on-line marketing empire. Guess what? It is not as easy as the e-book perveyor's would have you believe.

I started nine 'monetized' blogs, as I do not have the thousands of dollars to invest in a 'Pay-Per-Click' business model. I have read every get rich quick scheme out there, and the only ones getting rich quick are selling those e-books!

I have attended conferences, on-line classes, webinars and read all of the blogs until my eyes are red from the effort. I have spent 16-hour days for five months applying the techniques, 'secrets' and examples of the successful on-line marketers, My profit to date $20.00!

Oh, and I won't see the $20.00 in my bank account, until I make at least $100.00~ $400.00 in the on-line balance. Good Luck!

It takes time, planning, intelligence, fortitude, patience and a dogged desire to put in 16-hour days to succeed at this business. Most of the 'thought-leaders' kept their day job until their on-line business started exceeding their salaries.

My Employment Challenge

I am a fifty-six year old engineer, married with two kids, a mortgage and two car payments, and other costs associated with living in the very expensive SF Bay Area of California, with a background in tv broadcast systems design engineering and integration, and recently performed the role of senior technical project manager for Google's video infrastructure upgrades to their live stage and post-production suites in Mountain View CA.

I spent ten years in Hollywood as a consulting and maintenance engineer to the producer / director /actor with creative input included in their contracts.

None of the projects I have worked on in the past twenty years have had less than a one million dollar budget, and most have been in the $6-mil to $175-mil. dollar range. These projects have evaporated.

Previous to this I worked as a team-engineer / on-site project manager on Verizon's $175-mil. FTTP fiber-to-the-premises' project nationwide.

Prior to that I worked in a post production house in Burbank for ten years as a senior maintenance engineer, and participated in the completion of well over 10,000 tv shows and commercials, and at least 1,000 feature films for theatrical release.

With all of these professional engagements, you would think that companies would be competing to hire such a successful, effective engineer and project manager?

Not the case at all. Now the skills applied to completing those tasks listed above have become unmarketable.

Even hiring some of the best recruiters in the business, all of a sudden I'm on the national 'do not call, do not email' list!

What do you suppose might have happened to change the available opportunites for me in employment?

Strikes

With the pending 'Actor's Strike', production and post houses have frozen hiring any new staff. The recent Writer's Strike nearly cost my cousin his job in Burbank, at a company where he has been employed since 1983.

Now the skills applied to completing those tasks listed above have become unmarketable.

The HR or 'Human Resources' Dilemma

Company cultures, especially in the Web 2.0 space, are geared towards the inexpensive, 24-year old recent college graduate, software developer, and companies do not answer their telephones any longer, but subject you to mindless voice menu's and hope you go away before connecting to an actual human being!

Customer service is an 'inside-joke' around most companies these days. "Just throw it away and buy another" they say if you want anything repaired good luck.

The mind-numbing interview cycle

My recent experience has been that when I walk in the door, the 'let's hire grandpa' syndrome sets in, and no matter how I try to 're-package' my old skills for new, the hiring staff does not believe in the ethic of hard work anymore.

They are asking for technical skills no one individual could possibly possess, and the application processes are designed to wear you out, by taking many hours to complete detailed forms and questionaires on the company you worked for ten years ago!

How out of touch they are......

Obtaining Employment in the recent past

How very different from the recent past, where your word was your bond, and hiring managers had sufficient training to understand their own job descriptions!

I have sat in interviews with people hired to interview candidates, without a shred of understanding of any of the technologies the company was hiring for. No training in technical potential is included in the assesment of a candidate, just do they have expertise in 20 programming languages, and are they willing to work for wages less than my father made when he was working?

Outrageous! What good is a screening process, if it screens out everyone?

Or, if the particular position is not a fit, why does the interviewer not suggest other opportunities that might be explorable within the company?

They do not have the time to do this? Instead of wasting my time, why don't they do a bit of preparation of their own, thus insuring the best candidates do not escape to the competition?

It is amazing that a huge pool of talented hard working people, has to resort to bankruptcy in this modern age, rather than become contributors to business and society by spending money in a down economy?

Without the knowledge and experience of America's pioneers, how can any young business expect to compete on the world stage?

If you liked this article, please leave me a comment below, I will respond to the conversation. Respectfully, Nicholas Chase