I was seriously disheartened to find yet another article – this time on MSN.com – that named Raleigh, NC as one of the best cities in the U.S. to find a job:
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/Forbes/10-best-places-for-business-and-careers.aspx
I understand that they might have metrics or cool statistics that indicate which cities would be great for someone to maybe “start over.” People who have lost everything and are down on their luck and want a fresh start. But they’re wrong about Raleigh. We’ve been hit really hard by the recession. And if you go to Career Builder or Monster, or even some of the local online newspapers, it looks like Raleigh has so many job openings that anybody could move here and get a job. But it’s not true. For every one of those job postings, there are easily 500 people who already live here who are qualified for the job. And that’s being conservative. It could be in the thousands. Employers here are being extremely picky about who they hire. You may read a posting and say “I know I could do that,” even if you don’t have the exact experience listed in the posting. But guess what? The employer who posted that open position will only accept the very best candidate, and that candidate must have all of the requirements listed. If they say the person must have medical billing experience and also have experience in human resources, they will not stop until they have found the person with medical billing and human resources experience. I’m not saying there aren’t exceptions. Of course there are exceptions. But the odds of you moving here and being the exception are truly horrible. I know – you think you’re great and you have a lot to offer and you’ve never had problems getting jobs in the past and you are a fantastic interviewee and you will move here and get a job because you’re better than the people currently unemployed in Raleigh. YOU ARE WRONG.
I really wish people would stop putting Raleigh on these top 10 or 20 lists.
Here’s another list. It’s from 2008 but it might still be pretty accurate:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/worklife/11/24/cb.best.cities.find.jobs/index.html
Notice that North Carolina isn’t mentioned at all. But, West Virginia (my beloved home state) is mentioned twice!! Including Morgantown, the wonderful city where I got my college degree and had some of the best years of my life.
I spoke to a recruiter recently who told me that if people would stop moving to Raleigh, there would be plenty of jobs for all of the unemployed people who currently live here. I’m shocked at how many people still blindly move here without researching the area.
I’m as guilty of blindly moving here as anybody else. For years, when I was in high school and college in West Virginia (1990′s, primarily) I would hear about people moving to Raleigh or Charlotte and getting jobs. It seemed like everybody I knew had a relative who lived in or near one of the larger North Carolina cities. I always assumed that if I wanted to leave WV I should move to NC, because it was the land of milk and honey. I heard stories of classified ads an inch thick in newspapers. In 2003 I made a long distance online connection with someone who lived in NC. He offered to move me here and I accepted. I didn’t have any savings. All I had was my last paycheck. I put in my two week notice, informed my land lady that I needed to get out of my lease, loaded up my car and moved. The guy I met online was the only person I knew. I really thought that with my education and experience I would easily be able to get a job. I looked at the job postings online and they all sounded so easily obtainable.
I really didn’t know how bad the job market was until I experienced it for myself. I went to many different temp agencies, including the ones that specialize in my field, accounting. I had public accounting experience and was eligible to sit for the CPA exam. But I wasn’t unique. The only thing that made me stand out was that I was willing to settle for a lot less pay than my competition. And that’s only because I came from WV, where $30,000 is a whole lot of money. When I told the people at the temp agencies my desired salary they were blown away by how low it was. Most of the recruiters sounded hopeful but finally I met one who told me the truth. She flat out told me I wasn’t going to find a job. She said that there were easily 200 people applying for every open accounting job, and that I should probably open myself up to some other kind of work, like maid service at a hotel. I appreciated her honesty. But I wasn’t willing to give up.
I got a temporary job after living here for about a month. But the company was notorious for keeping temps on as long as they could and not hiring them. I was also working for less money than most people would accept. After about two months of temp work I found a temp-to-hire job that paid even less than my temp job. But I had to take it because it had a chance of being permanent.
Eventually the job market picked up between 2006 and 2007. I started getting job offers left and right. It was mostly because I had a public resume on Monster.com. I would get calls about new job offers several times a week. But slowly the calls tapered off. By the middle of 2008 they had stopped altogether. But that didn’t matter to me. I still thought that if I lost my job I would be in demand. In 2007 I had three job offers at once and I picked the best one. I thought I was so great that I would always be able to find a job.
I was laid off in January 2009, one day after my husband was put on “attached unemployment” by his employer because they could not afford to pay him anymore. I got a few weeks of severance and was happy. I filed for unemployment. I started interviewing, probably about twice/month. Friends would congratulate me on even getting interviews, because most people they knew weren’t even getting that. But, as one of my recruiters put it, I was always the bridesmaid and never the bride. People loved me in interviews but they ended up going with another candidate for one reason or another. Usually, another candidate just had slightly more experience than I did. And I actually was offered two different jobs but the salaries they offered were pathetic for the amount of work they wanted to be done.
I started working as a temp in July 2009 and I am still working as a temp.
In the seven years that I’ve lived in Raleigh, I’ve met countless people who tell me they sold their house and moved here because they believed they could find a job in Raleigh. And, like me, they didn’t do their research. They just assumed there would be a job here waiting for them. And, if they were here in 2006 and 2007, they just might have found a job. And in 2008, 2009, or 2010, they may have lost that job. I currently work with another woman who just moved here thinking she could find a job. She’s a CPA with fantastic experience. But she didn’t know that all of the CPA firms in Raleigh have been laying people off for at least the past year. She just assumed she would find a job if she moved here. She’s a temp, like me.
People, do your research. Raleigh isn’t someplace where you want to blindly plant yourself, at least not these days. I don’t even want to live here anymore. In fact, we’ll probably move if one of us gets a job somewhere else. Right now I don’t even care where we move. I just want a job. Besides that, I am starting to notice a big dividing line between the people here in Raleigh who have jobs, and the people who used to have jobs. Most of my friends who haven’t lost their job don’t understand. One of my friends asked if I was looking aggressively for work. I told her yes, of course I am. If she only knew! When I was on unemployment I spent hours a day looking for jobs online. Only to eventually find a temp job that I’ve had for the past year. I’ve gone on countless interviews and the main reason they haven’t produced a job for me is that they company either 1. thinks I’m overqualified and will leave as soon as a better job comes along, 2. does not want to pay more than entry level salary, in which case I’m better off just working as a temp, 3. they are interviewing 20 or more people and they keep accepting new resumes, or 4. after they interview 20 people they decide they don’t need to staff the position after all.
