The pandemic has taken a toll on the job market, but there is reason for optimism.
While a lot of the information about the unemployment rate is dismal the pain is not evenly spread. The most recent national unemployment rate stands at 6.7 percent, with 10.7 million people looking for work. This is significantly lower than earlier 2020 - highs. The numbers, however, are still twice the pre-pandemic levels of 3.5 percent unemployment and 5.7 million people seeking work.
Anyone who can work from home has been spared much of the pain of unemployment. Anyone whose job requires face-to-face contact with the public or customers working in service, travel, hospitality, entertainment, sports, or food service have been particularly hard hit by the current recession.
The most recent report from the US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics shows the states with the highest unemployment rates are California at 9%, Nevada at 9.2% and Hawaii at 9.3% - all states heavily dependent on tourism.
Attitude is everything in the job search process.
It is easy to give up when you think there are no jobs. Over the years - I have noticed that the people who stop looking for work don't find jobs. If you believe there are no jobs – you will, most likely, not find a job. The problem is that giving up means you are missing a lot of opportunity.
Early in my career, during a particularly bad recession, I remember one job seeker who came to my office for help. Right off the bat he told me that there were no jobs. So I said, “if you truly believed there are no jobs then our work is done.” He said, “nooooo”. So we developed a plan to find a job. He was a new construction management graduate from Chico State. I told him to put on his boots and jeans with a nice white collared shirt and to go to every commercial construction site in the area. I told him to find the superintendent at every job site. Once he found the superintendent I told him to hand the guy (always a guy in the 1980s) his resume. Within a week he had 6 offers and was back in my office with a whole new problem - which offer to take.
Though job hunting has changed a bit since the 1980s, most things never change. You still need to get yourself in front of the people who have the power to hire. The passive approach - applying for jobs on LinkedIn, Indeed, Google Jobs - is not enough. Everyone I have worked with during the past 12 months has gotten their job through someone they know or someone they contacted directly… someone they met through a friend or who they cold called… someone who had the power to hire. Going to the job site is not an option for every job seeker but getting in front of the right person is, if you are creative and persistent. What is important – is to figure out who you know who knows someone.
Getting a job is always about who you know.
I recently got a call from a technical marketing engineer at HPE, Don Wake, a former student of mine who graduated 2001. He found me on LinkedIn and emailed me to see if I could help him hire an applications engineer. He told me they are growing a whole lot in his division. I promised to share the information with my network...
HPE is primarily a hardware company and has created a new division called Ezmeral. Ezmeral is actually a software division in a hardware centric company and is a result of three recent software acquisitions (BlueData, MapR and Spire). Together these three companies form the new HPE Ezmeral Software Business Unit. The Ezmeral Software BU is hiring and in the team Don is a part of - the Ezmeral Go-To-Market (GTM) team. His group has two open positions.
“HPE actually has thousands of openings world-wide from interns to high level managers in a huge variety of areas.” Don Wake, HPE
For decades I have gotten calls from managers at HPE seeking talent. I never once had a person return to my office with a bad experience. Everyone loves working for HPE! The HPE culture is amazing, welcoming and dedicated to diversity and inclusion. Most positions are remote at this point and the expectation is that this will be an option for at least the time being and probably for years to come.
Don Wake’s job has changed from tons of global travel to virtual - the whole new trade show/marketing/sales model is virtual. A centralized model required people to all show up in a single location. Now all of a sudden people from all over the world are logging into Zoom to find out about the latest innovations. Sales are booming because the world is being moved to a remote paradigm in the new digital economy. Software makes it easier to deploy applications anywhere, anytime. Work is more productive and can be done everywhere. Work no longer requires your presence in an office.
Here are the links to just two of the many HPE Ezmeral jobs!
So put on your boots and put yourself out there!
Ezmeral Technical Marketing Engineer
For this role we are really looking for a passionate engineer, perhaps someone interested in pre-sales engineering but with a bent for marketing solutions rather than direct sales engagements. In short you will be the engineer behind the sales engineers. You are needed to help create the documents, demos and presentations the “tip of the spear” sales teams need. This role will help support senior Technical Marketing Engineers and we are looking for a hands-on person interested in building solutions using the Ezmeral software in real world environments. We do stuff, not just write about it! :-)
Senior Product Marketing Manager – HPE Ezmeralhttps://careers.hpe.com/job/HPE-Santa-Clara-US-CA/129732461
You will be a member of our growing Go-To-Market team helping to define and guide the product marketing strategies surrounding Ezmeral Software Products. We are a cutting edge software defined organization in HPE and this is a great opportunity to learn and grow with us as we enable the future of enterprise cloud computing.
Reach Don at:
donald.wake@hpe.com(916) 233-5870
https://www.linkedin.com/in/donaldwake/
A recent webinar to give you an idea of the stuff I work on every day. You could help us build the next Webinar! We need you!!!
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/donaldwake_hands-on-data-science-with-hpe-ezmeral-activity-6759925766915411968-VhHF