The recovery puzzle: New factory in Ohio struggles to match jobs to job-seekers | Hacker News Reader

The recovery puzzle: New factory in Ohio struggles to match jobs to job-seekers

washingtonpost.com

35 pointswhbk42 comments

An article about having trouble filling jobs; but there is no indication that the hiring manager made any effort to determine why he is having trouble getting people to show for interviews.

Makes me wonder if he knows why and just isn't saying. Small town? Too far from major cities? Wages that are an insufficient draw for the type/location/work schedule?

Being from this region, I'm guessing it's the location, Fort Recovery. The nearest cities are Fort Wayne and Dayton, which are both small cities, and they're about 1.25 hours away. Fort Recovery isn't near any interstate highway. The job ads probably show up for everyone in Cincinnati, Columbus, and Indianapolis, and once they GPS it, they probably realize how far it is (2.25 hours from those cities).

The salary and benefits are competitive though ($65-70K/yr is what a mid-level software engineer makes), which is probably why a lot of people fire off an email.

In order to entice petroleum engineers to work above the Arctic circle or on an oil rig, energy companies compensate them accordingly. The wages offered in the story just aren't sufficient for this location.

Good point.

You are comparing rural Ohio to the Arctic circle, which, if you are from Ohio makes for a funny side note.

Not to mention the two body problem. Dude wants to hire an experienced supervisor; that sounds to me like someone 10+ years into his or her career. That person most likely has a spouse, and maybe kids. The plant is in the middle of nowhere, so there's poor job prospects for the spouse. And a teeny little town often doesn't have the best school districts either.

The ad [1] also doesn't mention relocation support, so it's presumably up to the worker to self-finance a $10k or more move. And before anybody complains about the price, have you recently priced a move with a grownup life, including real furniture -- beds, couches, dressers, a lease to be broken or a house to be sold, job search expenses for the spouse, etc.

http://www.careerbuilder.com/JobSeeker/Jobs/JobDetails.aspx?...

Not to mention rejecting candidates on the basis of their age.

I read the story and didn't notice anything about rejecting candidates due to their age. He mentioned the ages of a couple, but it didn't seem like anyone was ruled out because of it.

He mentioned the age of David, the guy who got out of the army in 1985. He is brought up in the fifth paragraph. I was pretty surprised age was brought. But David hadn't had a full time job in awhile either.

It's not stated or implied that such candidates were considered unfit to hire, merely less-than-ideal - I took it as an indication that in this place, pretty much all applications are from less-than-ideal candidates, some of which turn out to be very promising (Gloria), while others are impolite and entitled, or don't even show up.

The age reference is noted by calling them "Dads Resumes".

It is an obvious remark to older male, unemployed, married or divorced, and hungry for work.

As I read the story, "Dads Resume" was a specific candidate, so named because that was evidently the filename of the email attachment.

That said, there was at least one explicit age reference fairly early on. It put me on edge. But not a lot more was made of it in the article, and I had some sense that a fair number of the candidates invited for interviews were at least middle-aged.

While there was an age reference for the "Dad’s Resume" guy, that applicant was not rejected on age, instead he was asked in for an interview.

"Dad" was reject because: "The last guy was 15 minutes late, full of himself, and he wants the moon. I’m not asking him back."

'Dads Resume' is called like that because apparently he can't even type up a resume on a computer, a skill that is right down there under 'assumed to know, not even listed on the job requirements' along with 'tying own shoes' and 'not forgetting to breath'.

I tend to tie my shoes once and then just leave them tied until the shoe falls apart and needs to be replaced. I wouldn't consider "tying own shoes" a major requirement for anything outside of maybe an acting career. ;p

I don't see the struggle.

tl;dr: A factory, way out in the sticks, offering low-moderate wage jobs requiring minimal skills but sometimes high responsibility, attracts numerous candidates. Some don't show, some are awful, a couple are good, and one seems fit for management. This takes a day.

Why so many no-shows for the interviews?

Is it a sign that the economy is doing well and applicants (for these types of jobs in this area, at least) have multiple good offers on the table?

Or that the applicants are so worn down that they don't bother to turn up because they think they have no chance of getting the jobs they're apply for?

It would seem odd for the latter - why even bother applying, in that case?

To keep their unemployment benefits alive maybe? I believe you have to show you're out looking for work.

Not showing up for interviews will also get your benefits stopped.

> Bernie likes to think of his job as if he’s building a baseball team. (...) Can the guy who applied for first base play right field instead? What about the pitcher?

Please don't do this. This makes this part of the article incomprehensible for a non-American person. First base? Right field? I have no idea what this means and will never learn (even if one told me today what it means, I would have completely forgotten tomorrow).

Who cares about non-Americans on 'washingtonpost.com' ?

(besides that anyone with 4th grade reading comprehension skills can understand what the point of the analogy is)

I bet you're a smarter individual than you're letting on. You might know what those mean right off the bat - but I'm sure you can infer the reference via some pretty good critical thinking skills.

I pay no attention to soccer, hockey or cricket, but if a fan uses a position term as part of a broader analogy, I could infer the overall context of his point.

Besides all that, baseball is hardly just an American sport, it might not be as widely popular in Europe, but it's quite popular in Central / South America as well as Japan / Taiwan.

Right off the bat?

1) It's an American newspaper, you might as well complain that it's incomprehensible to people who can't read English.

2) I know nothing about baseball but I didn't have a problem with this. There are different positions in lots of professional team sports (football, cricket, rugby, etc).

I'm an American with only the vaguest idea of what goes on in a baseball game. That has no effect at all on the language you're spuriously complaining about; it reads as "Can the guy who applied for [a position] play [a different position] instead? What about [a third position]?" No analogy is being drawn to the actual requirements of baseball positions -- those are just names. To understand the sentence as written, the only requirement is that you recognize that "pitcher" is a different word than "first base".

Perhaps you just like feeling indignant?

I'm not American and I haven't watched a baseball game in my life, but I still understand the analogy, even if I don't know what the positions referred to mean.

Reply to the replies:

1/ Of course one can understand the broad point of the analogy, which is (if I'm correct): to what extent can one switch positions when trying to man a factory? But the detail of the analogy is still lost to me; I don't know much more about soccer than I know about baseball, but I doubt anyone who isn't a goal can suddenly become one for example. So there are little differences between "first base" and "right field" that make them quite similar. Those distinctions are lost to me.

2/ What does this analogy add to the article anyway? In any context, be it sports or business, some positions can be exchanged and just because you interview someone for a specific position doesn't mean you can't consider them for another. This is completely obvious and the baseball analogy doesn't illuminate it in the least.

3/ "An American newspaper": an article on the web is meant to be read by people from any country; making very narrow geographic or cultural analogies just restricts or alienates audience members from other parts of the world, which I'm guessing isn't what the Post wants.

1) You can figure this out within a minute, though, just by looking at the wikipedia article about baseball. If it is actually a problem for you, in baseball, a batter stands on home base. Home base is the bottom corner of a diamond of bases, with the other bases numbered first, second, and third, from right to left. The area beyond those bases is the field. People tend to hit towards the left side of the field because people tend to be right handed. Important: the goal in the field or at the bases is to catch the ball that the batter hits, to tag a runner who is trying to run around the bases in order and then back home, or to tag a base that a runner would have been forced to occupy (because the capacity of a base is 1 runner.) 1st base = the first place every batter must run after batting. Right field = a lonely place, and a place closer to 1st base than left field, so not great for a batter to bat to.

2) Absolutely nothing. Sports analogies are usually pointless, but are peppered through "manly" writing. This article is about people who work with their hands, so to a Post journalist, that's infinitely manly.

3) You're lucky it wasn't a football analogy. We know that other people don't play gridiron football, but we love our hail mary passes.

Americans have loved awful sports metaphors (especially when talking about money or war) since the middle of the 20th century. You have to have a general grasp on them to be educated, just like competent atheist historians have to know the Bible.

"Bernie Coyle wants to hire people. In this hopeful moment in the recuperating American economy, he wants to give 40 new employees health insurance, dental insurance, good wages and a 401(k) plan with a company match.."

Why do employers think they are "giving" people a job? Would they say the employee is looking to "give" them labor? Its business after all, both parties are exchanging something. Nothing is being "given".

>Why do employers think they are "giving" people a job? Would they say the employee is looking to "give" them labor? Its business after all, both parties are exchanging something. Nothing is being "given".

While I want to side with you in principle, for many workers this is their reality. For whatever reason, their own fault or not, they have trouble finding a job, and it is very easy to fall into the mental trap of relying on the generosity of others rather than one's own competence.

Yes, but he is in fact interviewing for competence..

Its probably the phrasing of the writer not Bernie

Employees and employers maybe legally have equal power, as in, on paper it is a peer to peer type relationship. But in practice it is not. There could be many reasons, low level of training required, lots of desperate candidates waiting at the door, jobs shipped overseas (so say local factory from another type of industry) was closed create a surplus of labor, and so on.

Normally people will be lining out at the door to take the place of anyone fired and will also work extra and sacrifice their free time in order to not get let go.

Another reason for what he said is the propaganda narrative that has been pushed through the ages -- "companies are good, they create jobs" "you should not unionize", "labor rights are wrong", "companies are benefactors and if you behave yourself you'll get a job from them". So this kind of mentality (even regardless of economic condition currently) is entrenched.

Think about it, usually that kind of jobs would be filled quickly and it would be make for a news story. The fact that it wasn't, it kind of became an anomaly and is now in the news.

Now he could probably change location (move to a more poor part of the country), raise the salary (to make it worthwhile to drive 2 or 3 hours a day), or few other things.

Well if people are looking for a job, he's giving them an opportunity to fulfill that desire.

While a engineer in SV might have more leverage in a situation like this, in parts of the US that are still recovering and the unemployment is higher, finding these opportunities is definitely an area where an employer has leverage.

I don't get the downvotes. As someone from the midwest (and spent significant time in that area - Ft. Wayne), that's exactly the mentality that exists there.

It just bugs me when an employee has the mindset that they are doing the employee a favor. It's an exchange of value. if anything, the employer is often exploiting a desperate employee in order to put even more money in their own pocket.

If that's the case, you're better of educating that populace to change the position of leverage to be in their favor than you are complaining about the word choice that accurately reflects the current reality of the situation.

I know this thread is making me sound like a raving loon or communist and I'm not, honest!

It's the sense of entitlement that bugs me. As to your point, better educating the populace has not been a solution so far. The glut of college educated people has not improved the employer/employee relationship. The lack of jobs is a systemic thing that more education is not going to fix unfortunately. Few people will admit that though.

I meant educating the populace in how to get into a position of leverage - not simply just getting education to get education.

The only puzzle here is why the author of this story thinks these jobs are any good. Maybe because the journalism job market is so shitty that reporters actually think $50k/year is a great salary, and living in the midst of more chickens than people is enticing.

$50k/year is more than the median household income of the US, and out there with no culture or people the houses must be quite cheap!

In the middle of the chickens, $50k/yr is enough to buy a good sized house as a household income, let alone an individual one.

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