Laid-Off Workers’ Call of Duty

Curious as to what the legions of laid off workers around the country are doing with all their free time? Playing video games, apparently.

A new study released this week by the Nielsen Company, shows that video game enthusiasts have spent more hours playing since the recession began than ever before. They’re trying to cut back on gaming expenses by renting titles or buying used rather than spending $60 or more for a new game.

So what does all this mean? Well for starters, it looks like the recession hasn’t lessened the amount of playing time gamers are spending in front of their consoles, as some gaming executives had previously worried. More than that, thought, it shows that people don’t mind spending on video games even when their budgets are tight—and may oftentimes be spending even more than they were previously—so long as they feel like they’re getting a good value for their money…

Joblessness Gets Juicy

As we all found out last week, the layoffs ain’t over. With the official unemployment rate now at 9.5 percent (and the actual unemployment rate coursing through the double-digits), real people are very much losing real jobs and real income. Not that anyone who plans economic policy or makes economic predictions would have cared (see Stimulus Plan, Obama Administration basis of; or take a look at the predictions in our The Recession Will End… series). Unemployment? Oh, that’s a lagging indicator. No one need pay attention to it now.

Before we all get back into the game of talking in macroeconomics about how jobs means income which means spending which means GDP which means company profits and back ’round again, we thought we’d just take a moment to consider the tangible experience of losing a job. BargainBabe.com posted an interview with a friend of hers who was among last month’s 476,000 laid-off workers…

Adventures in Babysitting

If you want to find a babysitter in New York, you can go to myJambi.com, enter your specific needs and get an instant list of qualified sitters who match your criteria. You can check out their profiles and read reviews and ratings by other parents. Or, if you want a plumber in Chicago, a landscaper in Portland, or a Web designer in Santa Fe, myJambi can help out with that, too.

But myJambi, a three year old New York-based company, has only its three founders to turn to when a job needs getting done these days.

Poised for serious growth only a matter of months ago, those plans are now on hold. The company’s five full-time employees were let go. Big plans to expand into numerous service categories are being honed to a handful, with a big emphasis on babysitting. And the number of cities it serves has also been greatly pared back. Meanwhile, the company’s three co-founders, who had graduated to managerial roles, are now back to the grunt work of coding, design work and trafficking ad orders…

Job Seekers: Look at Me!

Why did the jobseeker put a shoe in his application? To get a foot in the door. Bah-dum-dum.

It’s come to this: The lingering downturn is turning the job market — and the lengths people will go for an interview — into a bad joke. In a recent CareerBuilder survey, one desperate applicant admitted to the shoe gag. But it wasn’t the worst approach, at least on the sliding scale of coming through desperate times with your dignity intact. Another applicant washed cars in a prospective employer’s parking lot to get noticed. Yet another baked a “business card” cake for an HR manager. And then there’s the guy who paid a CEO’s barber to talk him up during a haircut.

The New Freedom Fifty-Five?

Downsizing just got a little easier.

Until last week, companies may have hesitated to lay off their older, likely more expensive workers, and not just because they’re the ones with more experience and perhaps better equipped to manage business through a downturn. They probably also considered the lawsuits that could come their way.

Under current civil-rights laws, which were amended in 1991, U.S. employers have increasingly been subject to anti-discrimination lawsuits based on age. Since the recession took hold last year, the number of age-bias claims has grown by 30 percent, nearly surpassing the number of race discrimination claims, according the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

But last week, in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court modified those laws, saying it’s up to fired or laid off workers to prove that age was a key factor in losing their jobs, rather than their employers…

Resume Fictions: Be More Than You Can Be

So you’ve never operated a forklift before. How hard can it be?

If you’re like most jobseekers in today’s shrinking and increasingly competitive labor market, you can’t afford to limit your qualifications to, well, your qualifications.

According to a recent workplace survey, the few employers out there looking for new hires are reporting a sharp increase in trumped up or outright fraudulent resumes. That’s hardly surprising, perhaps, given the dwindling job opportunities now available. This month unemployment hit a 30-year high, while sites like Monster say job postings are down 30 percent in the past year.

For their part, HR managers and other workplace gatekeepers say they can spot fantastical resumes a mile off …

Uncertainty is the New Black

My friend Elmira Baysali has a job. She earns a living. And she’s sometimes more nervous than I am about the economy. That’s because, as mentioned, she has a job.

Last year was a banner year for her employer, non-profit group Endeavor, which helps entrepreneurs in emerging markets. The Omidyar Network gave a $10 million matching grant, and the annual fund-raising gala produced $2.2 million. The organization planned for staff expansion and new programs. “But we weren’t able to because the reality of the economy set in,” says Elmira, who is vice president of policy and outreach. On the personal side, “I saw friends lose their jobs, travel budgets cut. I thought, what if they decided they didn’t need a communications and policy person?”

There were no layoffs at Endeavor, but cutbacks can make anyone queasy. Fund-raising has been drying up for many, many non-profits; and across industries, the economy has thrown many people’s livelihoods out the window.

“It incentivized me,” she says. “I said to myself that I had to do something so that if I lost my job, I could do something. I’d be okay.”

Lots of laid-off workers have embraced their predicaments and tried new ventures, put new projects together—we’ve profiled some of them in our Lemonade Makers series…

The Truth About Job Sites

I’ve done a lot of professional speaking on resume writing, and over the past eight years have talked to thousands of people. Every time, I ask the following question: “Has anyone gotten a job off of Monster.com?”

Eleven people have raised their hands.

There are hundreds—if not thousands—of job boards online, and they list millions of positions. Yet many of us have had this experience: You’re trolling job listings, clicking on openings in your target field, when you see The Dream Job. Your pulse starts racing. You look more closely. You are a perfect fit. You are such a perfect fit that it was like you had written the job description yourself. So you spend hours editing, proofing, tweaking and finessing your resume and cover letter. You hit “send” confident you’ll be contacted right away. You never hear a peep.

When it comes to job listing sites, there are a lot of things going on behind the scenes…

20 Ways to Come Through When Someone You Love (or Even Just Like) Loses a Job

Nice as it is to hear about indications that the economy turning around, the layoffs aren’t over yet. You’ve probably just heard that yet another colleague, friend, neighbor, congregant, teammate got the ax—or you will soon. If you’ve been there, you know how isolating and demoralizing it can be, even now that joblessness is more norm than humiliation, more zeitgeist than badge of shame. (And if you haven’t been there, you’d best watch your karma. Carefully.)

How well you’re acquainted with said laid-off person (and under what circumstances) will inform how you proceed, of course. (Read 6 Things You Shouldn’t Say to the Newly Laid-off.) But some things never change—like the power of a reachout, a simple favor, and a sympathetic ear.

1. Be there. Call. Write. Do not be MIA, do not put off getting in touch, do not submit to the ewww factor, however tempting it may be.
2. Ask what happened—in a way that doesn’t sound like you have a case of schadenfreude. Most people want to share the gory details, and they may need to find their narrative of What Just Happened.
3. Listen.
4. Be present. Stay sensitive to touchy-subject vibes, obviously, but for now it’s probably better to err on the side of active (though not necessarily moist) concern…

Recruiting Retooled

A publishing executive with 25 years’ experience would like to walk your dog. Although she’s still perfectly ensconced in her senior level position, she knows the industry’s still feeling shock waves from the Great Media Meltdown of 2008. Ad spending crashed 14 percent in the first part of the year, hitting record lows, and if advertisers don’t start widening their wallets soon, she may soon be counted among the growing ranks of unemployed expected to hit 10 percent of workers before the end of the year. So she may turn to dog walking.

“She’s exploring,” says her coach, Tonia Mattu at Mercury Group. “She would do anything from dog walking to opening a bed and breakfast.”

Mattu is the newest member of the Mercury Group team and part of the new direction the company was forced to take in the downturn. Earlier this year, founders Jeff Lundwall and JD Rehm saw their recruiting leads dry up…