lansbury

They say there are no jobs and Oregon has an unemployment rate of 10.6%.

Today and tomorrow I am helping interview 21 people for 2 police officer positions. So far of the 21 scheduled to be interviewed 8 have pulled out. These are well paying jobs with full medical benefits plus pension and people can't make the effort to be interviewed!

Octang Frye

Can you wear glasses?

I might be interested.

In the UK, I don't think I could be a fireman fighter, or a cop. Or a soldier.
What a gyp. And what a waste. I'm hard as nails, I can carry shitloads in a bergen, I'm wily, good for morale, tenacious.

zargof

Surely there is a local militia that would more than happy to have your services (plus access to your large arsenal of weapons)

meauxna

Does the position come with, or without, a personal supply of steroids?
Coz I'm thinkin' that might be the reason for the cancellations.

AZ_Alba

I was always surprised at the dropout rate when they realized that there would be a polygraph and full background check.
Also interesting where people draw the line between experimented with drugs or recreational use.

Normal we used to expect an 80% failure rate from initial application to possible recruit.

Trixie_b

I was talking to the girl who recruited me out of over 400 applications for the job I now hold.

She'd specifically asked for certain words to be included in the email application subject line, this is where almost 1/4 failed!

She invited people for interview who just didn't show up.
She invited people for 2nd interviews who just didn't show up
She tried to engage with people via email who didn't respond or were rude.

She said she knew she was onto a winner with me, because I was timely, concise and accurate in all the dealings I had with her.

It's just amazing that these simple things (like turning up for an interview) are not happening!

lansbury

another bloody yank

I was talking to a guy just this morning who works here in the mainframe dept. He said they have 35 positions open for coball programmers and are having trouble filling them because there aren't any local applicants and they can't find anyone willing to move here.

robin1234

That is amazing - on a similar note (but ones and twos, not 35 positions) I was reading about rural public libraries where they simply cannot get applicants for professional positions because the towns are too remote for qualified people to relocate too.

I suppose even if the salary is competitive and comes with benefits, families need to consider relocation costs, schools maybe, and the chance of the spouse getting a halfway-decent job..

zargof

That doesn't surprise me because Cobol is an old language that no-one learns these days, so it's a pretty rare skill to have, and good Cobol programmers are always in demand.

robin1234

I don't know anything about computers but I do remember the guy in the room next door to me at university, he was a computer scientist, and he was always banging on about COBOL.. that was in 1968!!

Duncan Roberts

As said, COBOL is a rarely learned language now even though there are still a lot of business systems written with it. The programmers who know it that are worth hiring are likely going to be getting up there in age so moving is probably not appealing to them, unless there is some major compensation being offered!

cindyabs

It's no fun being a dinosaur.

discoviking

I agree. good Cobol programmers are few and far between. Although not quite as ancient yet, I have been seeing the same thing happening for a while now with iSeries/RPG coders, too. It's getting harder and harder to find someone qualified on that platform as well.

Octang Frye

Oh, Zargof...

Lansbury, can the applicants wear glasses?