The consolidation of companies in every sector, combined with outsourcing, has meant the loss of numerous jobs. In addition to that, the virtually non-existent safety net means that people are increasingly desperate and that's exactly what the PtB want: a populace so desperate that they'll work for pennies and to whom the employers owe nothing at all. That's why minimum wage has expanded from being for teenagers to being for virtually everyone in the service industry, that's why welfare was gutted and why social security will be gutted.

It's not all of the problem though. You can also blame the plethora of mergers and buyouts that have consolidated business so there's only a few corporations running each sector.

interesting essay called 'Bullshit Jobs'. In it, Graeber noted the phenomeonon that those professions that do the most for people, like nursing, teaching and childcare, receive the lowest compensation, while professions and jobs that do very little for the human race, like finance, receive the highest compensation. I hope you get a chance to read Graeber's essay.

I had better benefits as a high school cafeteria worker than I currently do after years of college, medical credentials and licensure in 3 states.

It's not just your feeling, but a reality of how de-valued the work force is, regardless if it's technical, service or medical in my book. Even the physicians I work closely with feel much of what we as health care professionals have been going through in the last decades.

Mistreated… yes.

De-valued… with good reason, as supply and demand can be controlled at the corporate level. What else to call this but neo-futilism?

and any question must be answered 100% perfect.

For example -

"Any trouble finding the place?" Your answer, "no not at all, your directions were perfect" - even though the map they sent was from the building they moved out of 4 years ago. Leave early enough to find the place, wait in the parking lot until it is time. Don't get there early, don't get there late.

"How was traffic" Your answer, "Awesome, I don't mind driving, I get to plan my day, organize my thoughts. I'm up early anyway so I never hit traffic." Even tho you are looking at 1.5 hours one way and will have to find a nanny for the kids.

"Do you have any questions?" Your answer, "None at all, you were very clear. Thank you for giving me such an excellent opportunity. I doubt I'll have any questions, but if something comes up I'll be sure to get in touch." Of course, they didn't tell you shit. Probably because they don't know shit and the CEO is about to layoff the entire team and send the work to India at $7 / hour.

Say you enjoy travel and are comfortable working with teams in India and/or China.

Find out if they have VPN, if so, hint that "you like to check in after hours to respond quickly in case something urgent comes up." The company will expect you to be on call 24/7. And holidays.

You get the idea.

On edit: be prepared to pee in a cup. I remember once waiting behind this poor Vietnamese woman who was so nervous, she came out from bathroom and had peed all over herself. The cup was sloshing around filled at the rim, spilling as she handed it over. The bathroom was a mess, pee everywhere.

Poor girl thought she should drink lots and lots of water. I don't think she was trying to mask anything, she barely spoke English. Probably a recent H1B applying for local assembly job. There is some running folklore about Asian foods causing drug test failures. I hear this all the time. I'm pretty sure it's not true.

Meanwhile, our elected representatives don't have to put up with any of this shit.

a good while back and the guy kept asking me "Do you have any questions?" When I asked a question he'd say, "You'll have to ask my ____ about that." What an a**. Interviews are so much BS. Something I always suspected as an interviewee but really had driven home when I was part of the hiring team.

you better not start asking about leadership style, unwritten rules, why there is so much turn over, etc.

Not only that, discussing "unwritten rules" is asking for trouble with compliance issues and make you look sleazy.

You'll never get the job at a majority of companies.

My advice assumes you have the skills. Lots of people have the skills now. Differentiation is being assessed at bullshit levels that test you for "team player" and compliance. EXACTLY like our school systems.

And here's the irony, when you get the job, after hours of testing and grueling interviews, presentations, etc, you will probably find out that place if filled with highly compliant "team players", and not one of them worth a damn when it comes to innovation, or solid problem solving.

When you get the offer in hand, then you can start asking about "unwritten rules", turnover, etc. Even then, I would advise tread lightly.

Do I think this is the way to build a good workforce? Of course not. But that's the "new" reality for the 99%. Just like the fact that benefits like insurance, matching 401k, real raises, and vacation are going away a little at a time, year over year.

That's true, at least, at any company I'd work for. Answers like that would get a "Well, thanks for coming in. We'll let you know." from me if I were doing the interviewing.

1. "Oh, sorry I was late, I got lost coming in"

2. "Um, you weren't very clear, and I don't really understand what you want me to do."

3. "The drive was horrible, took me an hour, is traffic always this bad?"

4. "Um, you really expect me to be available after hours?"

5. "I don't want to work with people in India and China, and hate to travel"

NEXT!

When my kids were little, I applied for a part time job at a local bank. I passed the interview and the background check and was given a job offer. Fantastic! that was when I found out that the wage they were offering was less than I had earned more than 20 years earlier! The game has changed, my friend. But why don't you do what old Mitt suggested and borrow 20 thousand bucks from your parents and start your own business?

when things are tight.

In this case, as computer processing power doubles every 18 months, so does the ability for more jobs to be automated. In the meantime, population and the demand for jobs increases.
Soon we'll see automated big rigs on the road, airplanes that fly themselves, robot surgeons and burger flippers.

Somewhere, something has to give, and wages are the first thing to go.

It's not pretty, and economic depression will be the norm, as it was for most of history. A ticking internal time bomb that can't be shut off will lead to social disorder.

Sorry to rain on your already rained on parade...

The first time that I experienced more than one interviewers was in 1999 for a $9 customer service job that I got. The second time was for a school secretary job that had at least five (this was in 2001, so my memory is foggy) that I did not get. The last really huge panel interview was probably about 10 or so people for an $8 an hour customer service job for the cable company. To this day I have no idea what the job titles of some of these people were. That place was top heavy with management. I got hired, but wasn't there long. Screw the free cable TV.

The last "real" interview I had was at my old college with one of my sorority sisters. I interviewed with 7 people that day (and it was a second interview). I did not get the job, despite that I was way more qualified than the person who actually got the job. She had the nerve to send me a message on Facebook to tell me that "I'm not marketing myself well enough". Bullshit. They took down the job description a week before my interview so I could not prepare. That was my ticket to not be going through the "job gauntlet." Another job I interviewed for had three separate interviews, and I'm pretty sure I did not get that one because I have crappy credit because I got fired from a job for caring about students (which was obviously against their policy). At this point, we are all set up to fail. Despite our education and job history. It does not matter one bit.

I was an employment specialist for Colorado Job Service for 24 years and interviewed thousands of unemployed workers and worked with employers. Unless you worked in the area I did what was happening to workers was NOT noticeable to the average worker. For one the media never reported on such matters and in fact hid the fact of what employers were up to. Experience and education inflation with declining wages was obvious in our job orders.

The trouble is that the labor market and its trends are ignored. Also the labor data is insufficient and even misleading. The over all quality of jobs has been ignored and what I said about Reagan and his allies creating an environment where $8 to $10 an hour would be the norm for 70% of the jobs is largely becoming true. And you hear all the time that even these wages are too much compared to the labor market. Now we understand some GOPPERS say end the federal minimum wage altogether.

Of course the whole landscape would change overnight if everyone voted Democratic then forced the Dems way left on labor. And it would help if workers started aggressively pushing for unions. Sadly in our polarized society such changes are not likely to happen. People are to blinded by bigotry, classicism, religion and other distractions.

The middle-class is dying, and it pisses me OFF everytime I say that, because it has been noted for YEARS.
What gives these fuckers the right to do this to the rest of the country???
<more profanity>!!!!

Never once felt mistreated or uncomfortable. They are looking for somebody with whom they will spend more waking hours than their spouse, and upon whom they will rely for shared success, often including bonuses and raises. If they DON'T ask me plenty of pertinent questions my estimation of them goes way down.

Interviews should be thorough and penetrating. A cavalier attitude to who gets into the work environment is never good.

Maybe because I am not a people person. I never had one that was a pleasant experience, even when I ended up getting the job.

I've been on both sides.

We do panel interviews here. Usually there are three people - one from the area where the potential employee will actually work, one from somewhere else in the organization and one external panel member.

I've heard the pleas. It sucks to hear them, because we generally only have one position come up every few years. I'd love to say "hire them all" but that would make me an unpopular panel member.

I think I'm still traumatized from a panel interview I had to do for a job I was seeking back in the late 90s. I think there were ten people in the panel, and someone had pulled out one line from my cover letter that matched their job description for a small part of the job. The rest of the interview was just freaking painful for everyone. I wouldn't have been a good fit for the company. I really should've ended it quicker and just walked away.

Another interview I had to do around the same time was a smaller panel interview at a large corporation that my dh worked at (and still does). I was in grad school and newly pregnant. Dh had worked there for a decade by then, so I knew the entire three person panel. What was awkward was all the people that would walk into the interview room DURING the interview and congratulate me on my pregnancy. Holy hell. Really?

The job I ended up taking had a three person panel interview and candidates had to solve a problem and present the solution to the panel. It's a technical job (engineer) so it's totally to be expected, but it still was torture.

As a small business owner I can say the hiring we have done in the last year looks nothing like what you have described. Neither do the practices of many of the small business owners I know. What you have stated though is a trend among many large businesses. A trend that seems to have holding power. As far as my business. I hire for the long term and pay middle wage income to what would be considered our only employee that wouldn't make that wage in the industry. Industry standards are around $10/hr for that person. I also treat every employee with great respect. They receive bonuses twice a year. Sick days and vacations are always paid. No employees are ever docked pay for mistakes they might make, it is a part of doing business. And so on.

I do see what you are talking about and it is real. There are a lot of us out there who won't join that system of business building.

A company posts a job, and they get 100's of applicants. Of those, probably 2/3 are not qualified, but still, how do you weed through 50 applicants? You can't do 50 interviews, that would take months to schedule and execute.

Experience requirements have gotten strict so companies can get applicant numbers down to a manageable level. That doesn't mean 45 other people can't do the job, it just means someone else's experience more closely aligned with what they're looking for.

I can't help but think of this great character (Eleanor Nacht, the Bridge):

when I was much younger.

So I am not sure what has changed.

I sort of have not had to interview for a long time. Except I did interview a couple of times in 2011 for the supervisor (or full time) job that I got and then recently stepped down from. Because I applied for two jobs at once, I ended up not getting the job I really wanted (which was the lower of the two jobs). But at the same time, it was NOT an interview where the choice was job or no job. Had I not gotten the promotion, I would still have the job I had then (which is the same as the job I have now).

Once I became the supervisor though, I got to spend some time on the other side - interviewing people. So I have to sympathize with employers. I think it would make more sense to hire through a temp service. No amount of interviewing is going to prove to you how somebody works. It basically is a guessing game. If, instead, you hired them as a temp and had them work there for a few months, that would give you a chance to SEE them in action.