More bad news this time from GM

GM shuts down 1100 dealerships. So using our previous math of 50 people per dealership that's at least 55,000, I hope this ends soon. This was just 100,000 people loosing their lively hood in just 2 days - a conservative estimate.

D Day for Chrysler

It will be a rough day for almost 800 dealerships nationwide as Chrysler has send overnight letter informing the dealership of their status. The impact of this is to all the people that the dealership employees you figure at least 50 people for each dealership that's aprox 40,000 people impacted by this one action. This is without counting land lords who own the properties that the dealerships are on.This one is going to hurt folks.
More on Money.com

Hired on Facebook

This is an excellent idea - to use a social networking site such as Face Book to spread the positive news of how people got jobs in this tough market. I feel surrounding ones self with good news is important - it gives you a positive outlook that is very important.

Check out the site: Hired on Facebook

Someone got a great job!

Remember the contest that the Australian Tourism Authority held for the Best Job in the World? Well for those of you who do not: they advertised for someone to live on an island and to blog for 6 months for over $100,000. Well Mr Ben Southall from the UK is the lucky man to score this job.

Story from the United Press International.

More people think there is a recovery

Its amazing how mob like the press is - are there any contrarians in the press I wonder?

The Seattle times has an article on the recovery.

The official labor department statistics on employment come out this Friday - here's hoping for some good news!

Best places to find a job

PayScale.com has done some research that Money.com is reporting on that lists the best places to find employment.

Colorado - High tech & Bio tech
Madison, Wisconsin - Government, Bio tech & Education
Washington D.C. - Government, Defense & Nonprofits
Salt lake City - Education, Tourism & Transportation
(Tourism in Salt lake City - can someone enlighten me on this? Skiing?)
Lafayette, Louisiana - Oil & gas
Huntsville, Alabama - Defense, Telecom & Aerospace

There are some generalizations we can take away from this list, there is a lot of money being spent by the government, we are fighting two wars so there is a lot of spend in defence and energy will only get more expensive so the spend in this space will go up as well. Where there is spend there is money for people and jobs for people.

Recovery!!!

There is a certain buzz about - people are cautiously optimistic - some are even saying the R word - Recovery! Looks like the data backs it up joblesses have slowed the market keeps creeping up.... ok folks this is the time to catch your second wind and to try that much harder to find your next gig.

Story in the NY Times.

Microsoft to lay off 5000

Why does a company with so much cash and easy +ve cashflow have to layoff 5000 people? It beats me! I think we have reached the stage in the game where big companies are taking the oppertunity to get rid of people with the all encompasing excuse of the "bad economy".

MS to layoff 5000 from CNNMoney

15 Companies hiring from Women Co.

WomenCo has an article that says the following companies are hiring.

Wallmart, Brown-Forman Corporation, Kraft, Philip-Morris, Abbot Labs, Mc Donalds, HomeAway.com, Costco, Proctor & Gamble, Johnson and Johnson, Novartis, Silicon Valley Bank, Hartford Financial Services, Avon, lululemon and Urban Outfitters

Most of these companies are in the types of businesses that are not severly impacted by a recession, for example everyone can find a couple of bucks to go to Mc Donalds and more people are inclined to go to Mc Donalds with their dinning out bugets shrinking. I think this is a good list and worth some investigation.

It would not hurt to go onto the websites for these companies and if they have a resume submission option to submit your resume. Even if they do not have a perfect fit for you today, maybe they will tomorrow. The fact that these companies are hiring is encouraging.

Finance jobs in London in jeopardy

Bloomberg reports that financial firms in London will be reducing their payrolls by 29,000 jobs this year. The article also goes onto report that the job market in City of London will recover in 2010.

GM Job losses begin - 1600 in the next few days

Looks like the layoff's at GM are starting with a trickle. 1600 white colar workers will loose their jobs in the next couple of days before May 1st - this can only be the begining.

28 Comapanies that are Hiring!

Finally some good news. Money.com has an article on 28 comapanies that are hiring.
It is worth your time and energy to go onto the websites for these companies and apply to a couple of jobs, post a resume on each of the company websites.

Wallmart - staff for stores
HP - vague - doubt if they are really hiring
BofA - Really! this company will be laying off 1000's of people soon
State Farm - insurance agents
Well Point - healthcare workers
Boeing - seems to be real jobs here worth a look!
Microsoft - vague
Metlife - vague
UPS - box movers
Medco - this company has a very selective hiring process worth a look!
Lowes - seasonal employees
Time Warner - people to uncap broadband :) (little joke)
Sears - vague
Supervalu - retail jobs - hmmmm
Johnson Controls - energy efficiency experts
GMAC - mortgage workers
Comcast - customer service / call center
etc... etc....

No pay leave - the new trend

I guess it is better to have everyone do without a little than have some do without a lot. Dupont has joined a growing cadre of companies that are requiring employees to take unpaid leave. This article says one week - but in reality all salaried employees are required to take two weeks of unpaid leave.

Job hunting lense on Squidoo

I was browsing through Squidoo and ran across this page it seems to have some interesting material specific to Nursing jobs as well as generic how to get a job type info.

Squidoo

Squidoo is a site that provides you with all the infrastructure for you to publish what they call lenses and what the rest of us call articles. The business model is based on Squidoo getting 40% of the profits and another 10% going to a charity and then the remaining 50% you can choose to do with as you see fit.

I have not yet made any real money I think I made 8cents! but I have pledged 10% of what ever I make to one of my favourite charities Kiva.

The first article/lens I poseted on Squidoo is Find a job now.

A lot of folks who I have given the instructions covered in this article over the years have found it useful, and I my self have put these instructions to use for my self successfully - so have a read and if you find it useful, leave a comment and pass the link along.

Initial jobless claims down

The headline on money.cnn.com reads "Weekly jobless claims plummet" lets just put that one down to hyperbole. I mean a decline of 53,000 on 600,000+ base does not a plummet make. Still there is hope in this news, this might be the worst, the darkest before the light. One can only hope.

My fear is that a lot of people who lost there jobs last year and who were lucky enough to get a severance package are now starting to run out of money and this is when the real impact of the layoff really comes home to these people and in turn impacts all those around them.

In the case of places like NYC where the financial industry has shed countless jobs, a lot of these dollars were spent to sustain an incredibly expensive life in the city. When the funds are no longer there will the city survive or will it go back to the Dinkins era? remember the rotten apple back then? Piss smell everywhere, gangsters, potholes, grime, graffiti and filth all over. This is a real possibility.

The Ladders Worth it or no?

So what is the point of paying for a job hunting firm when there are no jobs out there? If you are working with head hunters and looking on Monster.com and Careerbuilder.com etc why pay for Ladders?

They also do very sneaky advertising see link.

And yes they just laid off a bunch of employees as well.

I say Ladders - a waste of money.

UBS to lay off 9000 people

The blood letting it seems is still not done. UBS has announced the possibility of a 9000 person layoff. A company such as UBS would not announce a "possibility" they are announcing a certainty. This is going to happen. So now the rumors would have started about where these 9000 people are going to come from, some will say "Oh its back office only" and others "this time its trading" etc. Fact is it does not matter - these are 9000 people, people with families, wives, husbands, children, grandparents - lives. These individuals will be impacted.

CNN Money

In the begining

Well everything has a beginning and my 'new' life on the internet began with the recent implosion on wall street. Having worked on Wall Street for 15 years and knowing only that life - I found my self laid off and enjoying it. yes enjoying it. If that isn't a clear indication that you have been on the wrong path for a long time I do not know what is.

Well I found another job almost immediately. One I enjoyed but it lacked a certain something... well a tens of thousands of little somethings ... yeah the one thing I missed from Wall Street was the financial sector bonus! LOL. So how to keep the good life and still not give up the choices that money brings? Find an alternate source of income. Simple right?

The employee employer construct that a lot of us use to make our money is a time for money exchange irrespective of how much money you get for your money. Everything requires time - there is no way to make anything without some investment of your time. However it is the lack of flexibility in the corporate world that I found stifling. The dependency one has on the whims of a faceless corporate entity that holds your future income in their opaque decision making process does not endear the paradigm to me any more.

So what options? - A job that allows one to work from home. This is nice and it allows for a greater amount of flexibility in the use of ones time how ever you are still exposed to the corporate engine and its decision making process. One needs other streams of income. So I started to seek these out. This blog is my journey from the traditional wage earner model to a different one.

A lot of other people have done this, and some have been successful, only time will tell if I will be one of them or one of the many that fell along the way and went crawling back to corporate. Corporate is not a bad thing - it allows you to make some money when the going is good and it provides a steady stream of cashflow when all is well - so I will keep my corporate gig and I will begin to build my escape from within my corporate cage.