In a country of 4 million, we’ll soon have 70,000 graduates on the dole. It’s said by our prime minister that 400,000 people will be unemployed by 2010. 1 in 4 of Irish unemployed are immigrants according to yesterday’s radio news. 19% of current unemployed were college graduates in mid 2008. That’s going to have increased greatly. Up to then it was construction that was hit the worst. Now it’s office workers.
Back when I graduated in 1996, I got my job offer during my finals. I wasn’t alone. Most of my class had a job before we walked outof our last exam. Things have changed 180 degrees. Since 2000, I’ve been telling young people not to do IT in college because (a) the high salaries were a myth and (b) the work really wasn’t there, despite the claims. Now, I’d tell them to take a year or two off and travel the world. Delay the career path because it isn’t there and go do something that most of us wish they had.
I found out yesterday that recruitment pages are a 100% joke. The majority of the ads on them are for non-existing jobs. Hence these open job surveys were hear about are nonsense. I’d long suspected that adverts were either used to harvest CV’s or were out of date. A few weeks ago a recruiter admitted to me that fake jobs were posted to harvest CV’s, e.g. one recruiter is trying to convince people that there are government agencies hiring senior IT staff at the moment 🙂 Despite how qualified you may be, they don’t respond to applications. Yesterday I was told that filled jobs continue to be advertised because "the sites continue to refresh the job automatically". Hmm, I guess they must not have a delete button?
Times are tough. It’s no better in Britain. The USA is stuffed (and impossible to get into legally) and Australia only wants builders … and stories are coming in that the situation really is no better there.