Wilmington Job Market (Elsmere: high school, university, live in)

[Prince Albert]

Hi all. I am from Michigan, and the job market here is DEAD. I graduated last summer from Wayne State (the university here in Detroit) with a Bachelors of Science in Information Systems. I worked contract at Ford for 5 years as a CAD Designer. I got laid off from there a few years ago. That led me to get my Bachelors Degree. The automotive industry is dead; I don’t want any part of it anymore.

I’m thinking of moving to Delaware. I have family and friends in Philadelphia, which is close. What is the job market like there? I’m looking to get into something in the IT field or Logistics, because I did work at UPS before I was at Ford. I don’t have any real IT experience except for classroom experience. What are the chances for a person with my degree to find something there? I would appreciate your input. Thanks.

[mikandmari]

I live in Wilmington, and I was hoping for some good responses to your question. I guess it's a mystery these days.

I can tell you that we are the banking capital of planet earth... and right now that is not such a good thing. Financial institutions are paring down. The bank I work for has been eliminating positions for years now.... and my department hasn't hired anyone for about 6 years. It's terrible. We are down to just a few IT people.

Good luck!

[Joy Robinson]

I arrived in the state of Delaware in 2009 eager to work and confident that I would land a position in no time. What I found astonished me. Delaware is seeping with nepotism. It truly is not what you know it is who you know here. The town of Elsmere has 26 immediate family members on it’s payroll. This pattern is prevalent throughout the state. Anyone coming into the state of Delaware expecting to be treated with fairness in the hiring process well have a rude awakening. This cancer can be found in every ethnic and economic group in the state. By law they have to list the position, but they have already decided who they were going to hire anyway. This is beyond frustrating to the unaware applicant, because they are trying so hard to get a job that has already been filled. I have personally been to interviews and knew the interviewer was just getting through the process. This practice has gotten even more intense due to the scarcity of positions available. Nepotism is not necessarily illegal if practiced in the private sector, however it is in the public sector. This hiring climate can not be picked-up on until you are smack dab in the middle of it all. My suggestion is to seek elsewhere for work, because you are dealing with a long standing system that is not going away anytime soon. I would try Florida or North Carolina.

[doctorjef]

I'm not defending nepotism, but the fact is that DE has a small population and just about any native here you happen to talk to will likely be at least the friend of a friend (or acquaintance of an acquaintance) of someone you know. Sometimes it seems that everyone here grew up together, knew one another in Kindergarten, or dated at some point in high school. What might technically be defined as nepotism, then, is hardly surprising when you have big extended families and people related to one another in varying degrees who stay put in this little state. It rather comes with the territory, I think.

[daFrogMan]

Thread started back in '08. Wonder what ever happened to 'Mr. Albert'?