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I would check the obits of everyone within working age.
When someone with 25 years experience dies..........one person within the company may be promoted into that job, leaving their former job available, then another person may be promoted to THAT job, leaving another, lower job openeing available.
So, you never do know, do you? Can't hurt to send in a resume.
Really? What job did that woman have at huntwood industries? It says she had an interior design degree but that doesn't mean she worked there as a designer. For all you know she worked as a secretary or accountant or factory floor worker or security guard. And she was there 25 years. Do you have the experience that makes you even remotely qualified for her job? And how do you know that the reason the job isn't advertised is that they've already filled the position?? And how do you know there aren't other people applying for this hypothetical job?
It also said she worked there and that does not mean she was working there at the time of her death. Many obits list where a person worked - Joe worked for the Whatever City Newspaper - as an example of my boyfriend's father -what it didn't say is he had retired 20 years earlier. My grandfather's obit mentioned he was a mailman - he did it for years, but retired many years before he died. Another friend of mine died and her obit said she worked somewhere - but hadn't worked there for 2 years since she had gotten sick and died of a long battle with cancer.
Obviously none of you have never done a sales job where you never know what's going to happen until you pick up that phone and dial, or hit send on the e-mail. You don't know until you try and I have had enough success to warrant continue doing it. Now, I may or may not have the qualifications to do someone's job that has done it for 25 years. What if they're a supervisor? As an officer in the Army I have plenty of experience managing operations and projects that I'm not very experienced in. I guarantee you I'm much better at making more efficient use out of my experienced people than someone who has even say, a 100 years experience. You're also not hearing what I'm saying either. Right now, employers can be picky, but Boomers die at the rate of 2500 per day. Pretty soon employers are going to have to start hiring the unexperienced and training them. They aren't going to have a choice.
Maybe I could get an entry level position that would be vacated at the very least reading the obits. Ideally, I would find employment or underemployment by whatever means, and a Boomer at the same company would die, retire, or be hit with severe medical issues while I was employed there. That would give me an inside opportunity as I would already be a known quantity to the employer.
I moved to the southeastern part of the United States because I believe this is ground zero for the Boomer die off. In Spokane the population was much more healthy and active. Here in the south you have a larger percentage of the population overweight. Given that Kentucky used to be a top tobacco producer, a lot of the people here smoke, which leads to little medical issues like cancer. I'm also from here so I have a network in place. I left my somewhat secure (as secure as sales can be) job in Spokane, because I believe so strongly that this is the place where employers are going to start feeling the effects of the loss of the older workforce.
If you forcibly retired all Boomers today age 60 and up, you could easily create the 347,000 jobs per month needed to lower unemployment. Like it or not, the Boomer die off/retire off will cure a job market that all the government spending and deliberating could not.
Those are some good additional places to look. I'll check those as well. I tend to look for people that died from their 40s to 60s. There are a lot that die before 65 though. Our country is 50 percent obese and we have a lot of smokers. I just have to wonder if they took leave before dying instead of it being sudden and unexpected.
And people get into car accidents, have heart attacks (my mom had a lady at her place of work who died in the parking lot-- not obese, not a smoke-- just had some massive stroke that appears to have an aneurysm while trying to unlock her car). They get cancer, ataxia, get murdered, fall down their stairs, etc, etc, etc.
If they died becauase of a health condition-- more than likely they were on a leave of absence if they were actively working. I have seen people go out on a long term disability and die within 1 year - 24 months. Their job was never "open" because they were no longer an active employee.
Obviously none of you have never done a sales job where you never know what's going to happen until you pick up that phone and dial, or hit send on the e-mail. You don't know until you try and I have had enough success to warrant continue doing it. Now, I may or may not have the qualifications to do someone's job that has done it for 25 years. What if they're a supervisor? As an officer in the Army I have plenty of experience managing operations and projects that I'm not very experienced in. I guarantee you I'm much better at making more efficient use out of my experienced people than someone who has even say, a 100 years experience. You're also not hearing what I'm saying either. Right now, employers can be picky, but Boomers die at the rate of 2500 per day. Pretty soon employers are going to have to start hiring the unexperienced and training them. They aren't going to have a choice.
Maybe I could get an entry level position that would be vacated at the very least reading the obits. Ideally, I would find employment or underemployment by whatever means, and a Boomer at the same company would die, retire, or be hit with severe medical issues while I was employed there. That would give me an inside opportunity as I would already be a known quantity to the employer.
I moved to the southeastern part of the United States because I believe this is ground zero for the Boomer die off. In Spokane the population was much more healthy and active. Here in the south you have a larger percentage of the population overweight. Given that Kentucky used to be a top tobacco producer, a lot of the people here smoke, which leads to little medical issues like cancer. I'm also from here so I have a network in place. I left my somewhat secure (as secure as sales can be) job in Spokane, because I believe so strongly that this is the place where employers are going to start feeling the effects of the loss of the older workforce.
If you forcibly retired all Boomers today age 60 and up, you could easily create the 347,000 jobs per month needed to lower unemployment. Like it or not, the Boomer die off/retire off will cure a job market that all the government spending and deliberating could not.
Spokane-- I think it is great that you are definitely aggressive and creative in your job search.
But-- and here is something that maybe you should reconcile a little bit-- is that the military is NOT the private world.
Leadership in the military is one thing-- and I have seen people (I worked in a company that did a lot of hiring of JMOs) who think because they did such and such in the military and had this type of leadership, etc that they can stroll in and lead civilian workers-- it is not the same. Some are able to naturally become strong leaders and managers in the non-military world. Others are little dictators who no one likes, no one will even do a remote good job working for them, etc. Unlike the military world, you don't have the repercussions and culture that will make people instantly bow to your command, etc. People have to respect you not because of rank or anything else. You can choose to believe me or not, but I have seen some who came in with loads of leadership experience based on their ranks, etc and end up fizzling out like a balloon losing its air in the private sector. I have seen others-- who balance the experiences and become phenomenal leaders (but like in the civilian world-- those are the exception).
I view your using the obits as possible leads and ideas of where to look next for a job. Any results from it are as I said earlier-- coincidental and more than likely you would have received the same response regardless if the employee had died or not. Because as others have said-- if people are dying because of illnesses, etc-- more than likely they have not been at their job for a very long time. And if they are in their 40s-50s and you are not even 30 and have spent most of your time in the military, more than likely you have not enough experience to even be considered for those types of jobs. You should look for even younger people-- close enough in your age. And depending on what you even did in the military-- you still may not have any relevant experience and you may be behind your peer group who have been working in the civilian work force for a number of years.
Spokane-- I think it is great that you are definitely aggressive and creative in your job search.
But-- and here is something that maybe you should reconcile a little bit-- is that the military is NOT the private world.
Leadership in the military is one thing-- and I have seen people (I worked in a company that did a lot of hiring of JMOs) who think because they did such and such in the military and had this type of leadership, etc that they can stroll in and lead civilian workers-- it is not the same. Some are able to naturally become strong leaders and managers in the non-military world. Others are little dictators who no one likes, no one will even do a remote good job working for them, etc. Unlike the military world, you don't have the repercussions and culture that will make people instantly bow to your command, etc. People have to respect you not because of rank or anything else. You can choose to believe me or not, but I have seen some who came in with loads of leadership experience based on their ranks, etc and end up fizzling out like a balloon losing its air in the private sector. I have seen others-- who balance the experiences and become phenomenal leaders (but like in the civilian world-- those are the exception).
I view your using the obits as possible leads and ideas of where to look next for a job. Any results from it are as I said earlier-- coincidental and more than likely you would have received the same response regardless if the employee had died or not. Because as others have said-- if people are dying because of illnesses, etc-- more than likely they have not been at their job for a very long time. And if they are in their 40s-50s and you are not even 30 and have spent most of your time in the military, more than likely you have not enough experience to even be considered for those types of jobs. You should look for even younger people-- close enough in your age. And depending on what you even did in the military-- you still may not have any relevant experience and you may be behind your peer group who have been working in the civilian work force for a number of years.
I think this rant from a fellow officer pretty much well sums it up. I also hope he does not find out I posted this because I wouldn't want to swell his ego up more than it already is. While this isn't about obituaries, I hope it quickly silences the argument that military doesn't transition well to civilian.
If it was just this one ignorant writer, this article wouldn’t be worth responding to, but I have heard time and time again since leaving the military from multitudes of people who have never served and never tried to understand those that have that military people aren’t flexible or adaptable and that we rely on a strict hierarchy and providing orders. I’ve had this conversation in several interviews with well-meaning people all across corporate America. To be brutally honest, when I look at their life experiences and juxtapose them against mine and those of the people I have served with, I feel like what I imagine Peyton Manning would if a fifty-two year old ex-high school backup quarterback was giving him a critique of his passing motion or Michael Moore would feel if Mother Teresa was giving him tips on how to be a bigger douchenozzle. I had just turned 23 when I took my first platoon into Kosovo. I had 39 guys under my command, four Bradley Fighting Vehicles, worth a kajillion dollars, and eight up-armored HMMWVs. We lived in an embalming station next to a Serb church that was a high value target for the Albanians. When it rained, rat and bird feces rained down on top of us. My Platoon Sergeant actually got tuberculosis from it. I saw my company commander no more than once a week and had complete autonomy over multiple towns in my sector. At the beginning of our time there, there was significant violence between the Albanians and Serbs, including a grenade attack on a kindergarten. There were riots, we were shot at, and generally had a terrible rapport with all parties involved. It was almost as challenging as having a really big PowerPoint presentation due for the VP of It-Doesn’t-Matter-I’m-Not-Going-to-Do-Anything-That-Will-Place-Any-Risk-On-My-Career-Even-If-It-is-a-Brilliant-Idea-So-I-Will-Sharpshoot-Anything-That-Comes-Before-Me and you just didn’t know how you could possible finish it in time. Well…maybe it wasn’t quite that serious, but close… So given that we were inflexible military guys we simply stood around festering in our feces shower and awaited orders so we could follow them…or not. Our mission was to quell violence and restore peace to this province and the two ways to do that were: 1) Kill everyone here or 2) Start figuring out what the major problems were and work to find a solution. We opted for column B. We determined getting to know people was critical, so we cut down on our mounted patrols and started doing a whole lot of walking. My guys figured out pretty quickly that the kids liked us the most, so we’d get a lot of information from them. We identified who the town leaders were, and more importantly, who was reasonable and who was respected. We immediately started building relationships with those people. When they asked for something on behalf of the town, we made it happen. When the radicals on either side asked…well…maybe we missed it. This gave the leaders that didn’t want everyone on the other side dead a whole lot of power. Hell, we even let these guys use our generators and provided security for their weddings. I made it a point to have coffee with each one of them a few times a week. They started solving many of our problems and helped us spot the troublemakers in the population, as well as become more vocal about their real concerns. One of the big gripes that everyone had was the lack of jobs. You know what military-aged men do when they aren’t working? They drink. You know what drunk, angry, military-aged guys do? They get brave enough to act impulsively. Impulsive behavior often involved guns. We liked to be the only guys running around with guns, so we, along with our sister platoons in the area, requested the resources to fix up some of the old factories and businesses in the area so people could get back to work…and there was much rejoicing. Even with the increase in jobs, there was still a lot of tension between some of the Serb leaders and my guys. I spoke to the new mayor (a moderate – go figure?) and asked for his recommendation. He thought a weekly soccer game between the soldiers and the locals would be a good idea. This was Kosovo, not Iraq or Afghanistan, so this was entirely reasonable. Another unit would come in and pull security and every week we’d play (and generally get our asses kicked) by the locals. Soccer, after all, is a silly game. Nevertheless, now we had something to talk about with all of them throughout the week, and we became more human to them. Again, things got better for all parties and violence in our area truly went to zero. In our spare time, we taught ourselves how to do roof work and refurbished and re-shingled our little embalming station. None of these decisions or actions came from anyone’s orders. They came from my guys and me working together, bringing up ideas, and focusing on solving problems in order to successfully complete the challenging mission we had been assigned. Not bad for automaton droids. Perhaps, much like R2, we malfunctioned. I’m very proud of what we did on that deployment, but my challenges and the challenges of my platoon then pale in comparison to what a 23 year old has to accomplish in Iraq or Afghanistan now. Imagine yourself assaulting through Baghdad, “winning the war”, and then realizing you had to completely change tactics from an army-on-army desert mounted war to a door-to-door fight against a local insurgency, then a few years later, completely change tactics again and move out further from the FOBs and get to know the people even more and start to work with the locals, and then change tactics again and have to rely increasingly on the locals for a great measure of your own security. Not only that, but you have to learn the culture and customs for as many as four vastly different groups, act as warriors, police, diplomats, builders, all while trying to balance a constantly changing set of directives from higher up and increasingly restrictive rules of engagement. Sound fun? I have friends with over ten deployments, and they’ll tell you each one was markedly different with even more diverse challenges. So yeah, while I fully admit that one has to be a regular Reed Richards to maintain the flexibility necessary to graduate college, get an entry level job in a large corporation, and move up the ladder at a virtually predetermined rate in jobs that are often pretty-much spoon fed to you, I still kinda think that those of us who spent a day or two in the military may know a smidgeon about adaptability, but hey I don’t write for CBS, so I may be wrong. As for the giving orders bit, I guess I have no real response to that one. After all, as I recall that in my military days most of my leaders spent every day giving orders and micro-managing, as opposed to providing a mission and a loose commander’s intent and then allowing their subordinates to devise their own plan and execute it. Conversely, if my time working in corporate America taught me anything, it’s that every single manager that I encountered was a great leader who always presented good reasons for his or her orders…errr…I mean requests…yeah, orders sound friendlier when they’re called requests, right? Each one of them really cared about their people and always tried to see our perspective and help us succeed and would selflessly take one on the chin to protect us. They were never small-minded people who clung to the tiny bit of pathetic power they had and used it to belittle their employees to make themselves feel superior. Honestly, I wish more military leaders modeled themselves after corporate managers. I think we’d really get somewhere. Well played, Tobak. You’ve cut to the core of me. I can see why CBS has you on the payroll.
If you forcibly retired all Boomers today age 60 and up, you could easily create the 347,000 jobs per month needed to lower unemployment. Like it or not, the Boomer die off/retire off will cure a job market that all the government spending and deliberating could not.
Maybe yes, maybe no. Just one person's observation - and a blatant generalization. But most people under 30 couldn't find their butt with both hands and a road map. I want to see what would happen if all the people who know what they are doing retire and let the 20-somethings take over. Oh that would be a riot!
Yes, there are some very intelligent and brilliant young people out there. I am not discounting that, but many of them aren't.
Maybe yes, maybe no. Just one person's observation - and a blatant generalization. But most people under 30 couldn't find their butt with both hands and a road map. I want to see what would happen if all the people who know what they are doing retire and let the 20-somethings take over. Oh that would be a riot!
Yes, there are some very intelligent and brilliant young people out there. I am not discounting that, but many of them aren't.
20yrsinBranson
Countering a generalization with a generalization I see? I think GEN Y has more in common with the Greatest Generation than people want to give us credit for.
I think this rant from a fellow officer pretty much well sums it up. I also hope he does not find out I posted this because I wouldn't want to swell his ego up more than it already is. While this isn't about obituaries, I hope it quickly silences the argument that military doesn't transition well to civilian.
If it was just this one ignorant writer, this article wouldn’t be worth responding to, but I have heard time and time again since leaving the military from multitudes of people who have never served and never tried to understand those that have that military people aren’t flexible or adaptable and that we rely on a strict hierarchy and providing orders. I’ve had this conversation in several interviews with well-meaning people all across corporate America. To be brutally honest, when I look at their life experiences and juxtapose them against mine and those of the people I have served with, I feel like what I imagine Peyton Manning would if a fifty-two year old ex-high school backup quarterback was giving him a critique of his passing motion or Michael Moore would feel if Mother Teresa was giving him tips on how to be a bigger douchenozzle. I had just turned 23 when I took my first platoon into Kosovo. I had 39 guys under my command, four Bradley Fighting Vehicles, worth a kajillion dollars, and eight up-armored HMMWVs. We lived in an embalming station next to a Serb church that was a high value target for the Albanians. When it rained, rat and bird feces rained down on top of us. My Platoon Sergeant actually got tuberculosis from it. I saw my company commander no more than once a week and had complete autonomy over multiple towns in my sector. At the beginning of our time there, there was significant violence between the Albanians and Serbs, including a grenade attack on a kindergarten. There were riots, we were shot at, and generally had a terrible rapport with all parties involved. It was almost as challenging as having a really big PowerPoint presentation due for the VP of It-Doesn’t-Matter-I’m-Not-Going-to-Do-Anything-That-Will-Place-Any-Risk-On-My-Career-Even-If-It-is-a-Brilliant-Idea-So-I-Will-Sharpshoot-Anything-That-Comes-Before-Me and you just didn’t know how you could possible finish it in time. Well…maybe it wasn’t quite that serious, but close… So given that we were inflexible military guys we simply stood around festering in our feces shower and awaited orders so we could follow them…or not. Our mission was to quell violence and restore peace to this province and the two ways to do that were: 1) Kill everyone here or 2) Start figuring out what the major problems were and work to find a solution. We opted for column B. We determined getting to know people was critical, so we cut down on our mounted patrols and started doing a whole lot of walking. My guys figured out pretty quickly that the kids liked us the most, so we’d get a lot of information from them. We identified who the town leaders were, and more importantly, who was reasonable and who was respected. We immediately started building relationships with those people. When they asked for something on behalf of the town, we made it happen. When the radicals on either side asked…well…maybe we missed it. This gave the leaders that didn’t want everyone on the other side dead a whole lot of power. Hell, we even let these guys use our generators and provided security for their weddings. I made it a point to have coffee with each one of them a few times a week. They started solving many of our problems and helped us spot the troublemakers in the population, as well as become more vocal about their real concerns. One of the big gripes that everyone had was the lack of jobs. You know what military-aged men do when they aren’t working? They drink. You know what drunk, angry, military-aged guys do? They get brave enough to act impulsively. Impulsive behavior often involved guns. We liked to be the only guys running around with guns, so we, along with our sister platoons in the area, requested the resources to fix up some of the old factories and businesses in the area so people could get back to work…and there was much rejoicing. Even with the increase in jobs, there was still a lot of tension between some of the Serb leaders and my guys. I spoke to the new mayor (a moderate – go figure?) and asked for his recommendation. He thought a weekly soccer game between the soldiers and the locals would be a good idea. This was Kosovo, not Iraq or Afghanistan, so this was entirely reasonable. Another unit would come in and pull security and every week we’d play (and generally get our asses kicked) by the locals. Soccer, after all, is a silly game. Nevertheless, now we had something to talk about with all of them throughout the week, and we became more human to them. Again, things got better for all parties and violence in our area truly went to zero. In our spare time, we taught ourselves how to do roof work and refurbished and re-shingled our little embalming station. None of these decisions or actions came from anyone’s orders. They came from my guys and me working together, bringing up ideas, and focusing on solving problems in order to successfully complete the challenging mission we had been assigned. Not bad for automaton droids. Perhaps, much like R2, we malfunctioned. I’m very proud of what we did on that deployment, but my challenges and the challenges of my platoon then pale in comparison to what a 23 year old has to accomplish in Iraq or Afghanistan now. Imagine yourself assaulting through Baghdad, “winning the war”, and then realizing you had to completely change tactics from an army-on-army desert mounted war to a door-to-door fight against a local insurgency, then a few years later, completely change tactics again and move out further from the FOBs and get to know the people even more and start to work with the locals, and then change tactics again and have to rely increasingly on the locals for a great measure of your own security. Not only that, but you have to learn the culture and customs for as many as four vastly different groups, act as warriors, police, diplomats, builders, all while trying to balance a constantly changing set of directives from higher up and increasingly restrictive rules of engagement. Sound fun? I have friends with over ten deployments, and they’ll tell you each one was markedly different with even more diverse challenges. So yeah, while I fully admit that one has to be a regular Reed Richards to maintain the flexibility necessary to graduate college, get an entry level job in a large corporation, and move up the ladder at a virtually predetermined rate in jobs that are often pretty-much spoon fed to you, I still kinda think that those of us who spent a day or two in the military may know a smidgeon about adaptability, but hey I don’t write for CBS, so I may be wrong. As for the giving orders bit, I guess I have no real response to that one. After all, as I recall that in my military days most of my leaders spent every day giving orders and micro-managing, as opposed to providing a mission and a loose commander’s intent and then allowing their subordinates to devise their own plan and execute it. Conversely, if my time working in corporate America taught me anything, it’s that every single manager that I encountered was a great leader who always presented good reasons for his or her orders…errr…I mean requests…yeah, orders sound friendlier when they’re called requests, right? Each one of them really cared about their people and always tried to see our perspective and help us succeed and would selflessly take one on the chin to protect us. They were never small-minded people who clung to the tiny bit of pathetic power they had and used it to belittle their employees to make themselves feel superior. Honestly, I wish more military leaders modeled themselves after corporate managers. I think we’d really get somewhere. Well played, Tobak. You’ve cut to the core of me. I can see why CBS has you on the payroll.
And you're missing mine apparently. I think my last post addressed your misconception about military leadership and management quite well.
Now the obituaries, yes they are a great supplemental tool to use in my job hunt. I got another bite yesterday from an e-mail I sent to a HR manager when I found out about the death of one of their older workers.
Now I haven't got any responses back yet from the advertised positions I applied for, but maybe I will? They have a much larger pile to sort through than the employer that just lost an employee and haven't started to advertise their position yet.
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