Job Seekers

Thousands flocked to the 5th Regiment Armory in Baltimore for a job fair Monday that featured government and private employers but few real job offers. Here are a few participants' views: Emory Proctor, 24, a graduate of Hampton University with a degree in business administration, has a job but is open to a new opportunity: "It's easier to find a job when you have a job. ... Right now, [in] my current position, I do pretty well. As I said, I'm with the financial services division, so, I mean, the people that are trying to invest, I do OK, but it's so rocky and up and down that you never know."

U.S. Labor Secretary Alexis Herman brought an international delegation of five labor ministers to Baltimore yesterday to extol the concept behind the Eastside Career Center, a "one-stop" employment center that could be replicated in other countries, she said.The career center at 3001 E. Madison St. in East Baltimore provides access to job databases, as well as opportunities to learn interviewing and resume-writing skills. General Educational Development (GED) courses and unemployment insurance services are also available.

It is a tenet of the job search, passed down to college graduates for decades: Keep your resume short, ideally no more than one page. A single sheet is more likely to hold an employer's attention and make an applicant look organized, not arrogant.Now, however, the Internet is doing to one-page resumes what it has done to personal letters and travel agents. It is making them less relevant and perhaps even endangering their survival.White space, brevity and verbs are out. Nouns and comprehensive descriptions including obscure proper nouns, like the names of computer programs, are in. If the resume continues page after page, or screen after screen, so be it. Even Headhunter.

Some of Howard County's biggest and newest retailers are going shopping today.Nordstrom and Victoria's Secret join 26 other shops in the search for qualified people to fill hundreds of positions in the retail sector. The Howard County Employment and Training Center's Retail Job Fair aims to put employers and job seekers face-to-face.The job fair begins at 4 p.m. at the Maryland Job Service office, 7060 Oakland Mills Road in Columbia.Skilled laborers and workers in highly specialized trades, such as e-mail administrators, are accustomed to gathering in meeting halls to schmooze with potential employers at information booths.

Almost 5,000 people crowded booths set up by 71 employers at Oriole Park at Camden Yards yesterday, as The Baltimore Sun Co. and the state held another of their twice-a-year career fairs.The joint venture was started in 1995 by The Sun and the state Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation. In addition to matching job seekers and Sun advertisers, the fair on the club level of Oriole Park generates revenue for the newspaper.Job seekers yesterday gave resumes to employers including T. Rowe Price, Comcast Cablevision and Caldor Corp.

In its continued effort to smooth the transition from welfare to work, Baltimore County is matching local employers with job seekers trying to get off public assistance.The latest step comes today in Randallstown, with the first of what could be a series of employer seminars intended "to help smooth out the job search process," said Nicholas J. D'Alesandro, community liaison for the county's Department of Social Services.Fourteen employers have signed up for the session at Liberty Family Resource Center, including Greater Baltimore Medical Center in Towson and Martin's Caterers.

Do the homework: Many job seekers apparently don't bother to learn much about the companies or industries they're applying to. Sixty percent of executives surveyed by Accountemps, an employment company, reported that applicants rarely indicate in their cover letters that they know anything about the company or industry. And 38 percent of the executives reported that even at the interview stage, job candidates rarely display such knowledge. Max Messmer, the chairman of Accountemps, suggests job seekers do some homework before they start applying for a job.Pub Date: 10/12/97

WHEN ONLY THREE of 25 job seekers actually find work in two months, you might say it's a discouraging employment market. But the encouraging aspect is that these people were welfare applicants, pushed to find work under Carroll County's new Up Front Job Search program.Applicants have been told since March 1: Make five contacts each week to find a job, or lose full welfare benefits. That's been enough to motivate most eligible applicants -- 80 percent were exempt because they have children under 3 years old -- to at least make the required effort.

WASHINGTON -- Stepping up its assault on illegal immigration, the Clinton administration announced yesterday a nationwide expansion of a pilot program in California that requires participating employers to verify the legal status of job seekers.Specifically, the Immigration and Naturalization Service reached agreement with the nation's four largest meat-packing companies, representing 80 percent of the industry's 70,000 employees, to use a computerized data system at 41 plants in 12 Western and Midwestern states to determine if job applicants are legal workers.

About 7,000 people crowded into the club level of Oriole Park at Camden Yards yesterday for the Baltimore Sun Career Fair, an event that brought 71 employers and an array of job-hunting services from the state Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation into one place.The event, a joint venture between the newspaper and the state, started last year and is now held twice a year, said Karen Stabley, director of new business development for The Sun. The fair is designed as a public service, to give advertisers new ways to reach job seekers and as a way to capture revenue for The Sun.Labor Department spokesman Marco K. Merrick said the organizers had to turn away employers who wanted to set up a booth at the fair, for which they paid $1,200 or more.

An employment fair for seniors in Baltimore County on Thursday drew several hundred job seekers, many of them recently laid off after years with the same company. Most were in their 50s and early 60s, too young for Social Security benefits and still critically in need of work. "I absolutely am looking for a job," said Kathy Metcalf of Catonsville, a human resources worker who was laid off a year ago after 24 years on the job. "I may be an aging baby boomer, but I still have a son in college."

For workers who have seen cuts in pay and benefits during the past year, there is some good news on the horizon. More employers plan to reverse salary cuts and reinstate benefits within the next six months, according to a new survey by consultant Watson Wyatt. Based on responses from 175 large employers, 33 percent of them said they plan to unfreeze salaries, up from 17 percent two months ago. When it comes to rolling back pay cuts, 44 percent plan to do so, compared with 30 percent two months ago. And 24 percent of employers plan to restore 401(k)

Maryland's unemployment rate rose to 7.3 percent last month - the worst it's been in a generation - as the national recession continued to eat away at the state's job base. Employers cut 1,100 jobs last month, the Labor Department said Friday. The numbers, which are preliminary estimates, are adjusted to try to account for seasonal variations in hiring and layoffs. The jobless rate increased from 7.2 percent in May. It's better than the national picture, with 9.5 percent of the labor force out of work.

The federal government is hiring. But just try to navigate the maze that is the federal job search process. It can feel as bureaucratic and cumbersome as the government itself. I asked Kathryn Troutman, president of The Resume Place in Baltimore, for her top five strategies to be a successful candidate. Troutman, an author of several career books, including Ten Steps to a Federal Job, offers workshops for job seekers in writing federal resumes in the Baltimore region. * Say good-bye to your private sector resume.

Employment experts usually advise job seekers to dance around the question about their salary requirement. Giving a prospective employer a figure upfront could take you out of the running even before you land an interview. But some employers in competitive job markets are making it more difficult, if not impossible, for you to gracefully sidestep the salary question. They demand a figure by saying they won't consider you unless you include one in the cover letter. Now what do you do? "Put a smart number down," says Tim Besse, co-founder of Glassdoor.

Thousands flocked to the 5th Regiment Armory in Baltimore for a job fair Monday that featured government and private employers but few real job offers. Here are a few participants' views: Emory Proctor, 24, a graduate of Hampton University with a degree in business administration, has a job but is open to a new opportunity: "It's easier to find a job when you have a job. ... Right now, [in] my current position, I do pretty well. As I said, I'm with the financial services division, so, I mean, the people that are trying to invest, I do OK, but it's so rocky and up and down that you never know."

Jennifer Prosa stood patiently in a line of at least 300 people, with each person waiting just to get inside a job fair Wednesday at the Baltimore Convention Center. "I probably should have gotten here earlier," said the 27-year-old Severn resident as she surveyed the hundreds of hungry job-seekers ahead of her. If there is any telltale sign of growing unemployment woes in this deepening recession, look no further than recent job fairs across the country and in the Baltimore region. Many have drawn thousands of laid-off workers and others in search of limited job openings.

Finding a job during a recession has been trying for Christine Gales, who tried again yesterday by attending a job fair meant to evoke the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s anti-poverty message. "It's up and down," said Gales, 31, who has been out of work since October and living at Night of Peace Family Shelter outside Randallstown with her 12-year-old daughter. "I feel like I'm making an achievement by going out and putting out my applications, but I get discouraged when I don't hear anything back."

It's a tough time to look for a new job, whether you're unemployed or looking for a better opportunity. Employers are skittish about hiring, while the pool of job seekers is only getting larger. Unemployment is at a nearly five-year high at 6.1 percent. Last month, the economy lost 84,000 jobs, bringing the total to 605,000 jobs lost this year. Industries tied to financial services and housing have been hit hard. And more U.S. employers are scaling back hiring plans in the fourth quarter compared with the previous three months, according to a recent survey by Manpower Inc. Of the 14,000 employers surveyed, 22 percent expect to increase staffing in the October-December period, compared with 26 percent in the third quarter.

Ever since TaShana Maddox was a little girl, she has wanted to become a veterinarian and open her own animal hospital. At her job this summer, a kind of entrepreneurial boot camp, she has learned the basics of running a small business, from balancing a checkbook to managing employees. TaShana is one of more than 6,500 students participating in YouthWorks, Baltimore's effort to provide summer jobs for teenagers, and a sure measure of its success - she's better prepared now to pursue her dream.