R.I.P., the Help Wanted classifieds

The classified ad section of this morning's Washington Post looked fatter than it's been for many months. So much larger that I actually bothered to look inside.

"Oh boy," I said to myself as I scanned the pages. "Maybe the economy is starting to bounce back."

But no such luck. There were only two job ads, and neither looked promising for a 57-year-old ex-journalist with a bad back. In 19 years of reading the Post daily, I have never seen so few help wanted ads. Two ads, for a metropolitan area with millions of people.

One was a recruiting ad for the Armed Forces National Guard. The other was looking for college students and 2009 high school graduates to work as customer reps. It was probably telemarketing work.

What made the Post's classified section larger than usual for a weekday were the 15 1/2 pages of trustee's sale ads for foreclosed properties. Now there's a sign of the times -- two job ads and dozens upon dozens of home foreclosures. I wonder if the foreclosure industry is hiring.

Free ads in Craigslist have siphoned off a great deal of newspaper classified advertising. And many people now advertise or find work through sites like Monster or Dice. But the bitter truth is that there just aren't JOBS to advertise in the daily newspaper classifieds. The U.S. economy isn't going to get rolling again until employers start advertising job openings somewhere, whether in the papers or online.

I don't know if newspaper classifieds will ever make a comeback, unless papers drastically cut their ad rates or offer free ads. But I hope someone with some power in the Democratic Party reads this and starts doing something about creating jobs beyond those in the stimulus package.

A couple dozen construction jobs in my county aren't going to help me find employment. Maybe we need another Works Progress Administration, like the one created during the last Depression, to put average Americans back to work.

own job website and just skip the print page altogether. Employers have a lot more copy space to hype their company and be very specific about what they are looking for. There may be links to the company's own website and an online application form. Honestly, the printed employment ad is very, very outdated.

Right this moment there are 12,242 jobs posted on the Washington Post's website for in and around the DC area.

I hope this helps your search.:hi:

:+ :hi:

I didn't realize the Post had more job ads online. I just emailed out a resume, and I thank you VERY much.

You were speaking metaphorically about there being only two (kinds) of jobs in the WaPo print edition, weren't you?

Even the on-line classifieds have lost their utility for people like us. I get half a dozen of these services, and in the DC area it IS just defense contractors and jobs requiring a TS/SCI clearance, even for legal and administrative positions.

Craig's List is probably a better match. :hi:

or they think the online ads will just be a duplicate of what's in the paper. Why wouldn't someone think that?

I used to be in a human resources position, so that's why I knew. It's actually a lot cheaper for a company to just do the online only. I must add, that many employers prefer to get emailed resumes as opposed to faxed or mailed ones. They are easier to read, sort, forward, file, etc. In some ways,unless it is specifically requested, a mailed resume may actually work against you, because the recipient might think it shows someone isn't up on email, attachments, etc. Just a thought.

Best of luck to you. I'm sure there's a good job match out there for you. The DC area is very dynamic.

I am coming to the end of a three month job search. I am in a specific area of manufacturing management. I have seen and applied for well over 150 suitable positions throughout the country, been phone screened a couple dozen times, been interviewed about 8 times, (the ratio is unusual in my experience and mostly I believe a reflection of my caveat below) and looking at one near certain and one highly probable offer this week.

Both the time of the search and the number of opportunities is about normal for someone of my upper-middle management level based on my several such searches over the last twenty years in both bad times and good.

The difference to me is in the much greater difficulty than of yore in finding companies willing to both consider and especially actually hire out of town relocation candidates. Given that anywhere outside huge specialty manufacturing cities like Dallas or Chicago you have a very limited number of positions like mine available, relocation has long been the norm. I've lived in 7 states already and it will be 8 soon. Similar colleagues who have not stayed with one company (and even some who have in large firms) have done about the same kind of moving.

Now however there is a big enough pool of experienced and qualified candidates in most cities that you either have to be incredibly good or possess a very unusual exact set of abilities and experiences desired by the company to be moved. They have enough choices in their area to find an acceptable close-enough fit, so you have to be better than that to get the nod from afar. Oh and before anyone accuses me of arrogance I suspect both my possible opportunities owe much more to the latter possibility than the former.

Now this is the way I've always worked but I realize others are more static in both location and employer/specialty. If you can only live in Middletown Ohio and are not willing to move, and will only consider employment as a child psychologist in a secondary education setting, then sure it's much tougher. Without "blaming the victim" there is a certain amount of responsibility to be as willing as possible to move either your job or your location to take advantage of what jobs do open up.

But newspapers are definitely not the way to do it. I've seen the same thing. But again at least for me (and a reminder I'm in mfg - it's not like I am in a growth area!) when say the Star Tribune went from ten pages of jobs on Sunday to three a few years back, listings for Mpls area jobs on Monster went up. There is still churn in the job market. Companies are still hiring. OBVIOUSLY there is a reduction from the great years, but I'd say this job market - again for my level - is no worse than the early 90s. You just have to look in different places, and scour company websites and online job boards much more than the local fish-wrap.

Even back in the "olden days", the want ad jobs openings were mostly for jobs that pretty much anyone could do..and companies were willing to train on the job.

In my hometown, when I was young, there were always ads for the phone company, the water department, the school districts, and various family-owned department stores & restaurants.. People moved in and out of jobs, because none of those jobs were "big" jobs, and people routinely looked for a "better" job, but these were not career positions..


The big jobs were available, but like now, they were not usually advertised, because they were filled from within, based on referrals from people already there in the company..