AT&T, Lockheed Martin, Procter & Gamble and Xerox have signed on to President Obama’s request to hire the long-term unemployed. They may have done so for political reasons. After all, it never hurts to have a sitting president on your side. But you should consider it too. Among other reasons, it may just help your business.
Yep. This is isn’t a request for altruism. Instead, I’d just like to point out that your company can benefit from the skills of the long-term unemployed in a number of ways:
To keep reading click here: You Should Take Obama’s Pledge to Hire the Long Term Unemployed
All great ideas – and it is a sentence in that last paragraph that counts: “Don’t reject candidates because they have an employment gap.”
For the last several years I have been doing contract work so there are gaps between assignments. I just had a phone screening last week where it seemed that the interviewer wanted to do nothing but talk about those gaps between assignments.
Every time I tried to explain what I brought to the table for each assignment and how it fit with what I thought she needed, she would go right back to the gaps and ask why I didn’t find my next assignment sooner.
I would tell her that one of the reasons is that when I’m on an assignment that assignment has me 100 percent. I’m busy aiming for the deadline and don’t have much time to look for my next assignment. Wouldn’t that be a good thing? I’m trying to help your company meet its goals instead of dropping the ball and looking for work since I’ll be off your payroll in a month. And you’re holding that against me?
It was frustrating to no end! I tried my best to be polite; but, honestly, I just wanted to scream at her – what difference does it make? I have close to 30 years experience in my field and she wants to talk about a month here and there as if the gaps make all the difference in whether I’m a good candidate or not.