This is a guest post by Kevin, who writes a get out of debt blog at No Debt Plan. He wants to help you get and stay out of debt. Today he is the first post in a series on unemployment and your finances.
I’m not a full-time blogger. I’d love to be, but for now I write at night and on the weekends.
I currently work a day job as a recruiter for a national staffing company. Some might call it a career. I spend my days on the phone talking to prospective and past consultants, looking at resumes, and getting lots and lots of e-mail.
It is from this unique position that I get to see a small section of the economy – who is hiring and firing in our area. I speak to both employed and unemployed individuals every day. Some people are looking for career change. Others are looking for a paycheck.
Unemployed? Take Any Job!
I’ve been recruiting for three years now and it never ceases to amaze me to hear the responses we get from some unemployed individuals that we call regarding open positions. When you call these people you can hear the TV on in the background. I imagine them sitting in their underwear eating Cheetos. “Nah, that’s not for me”, they say. I sigh and hang up the phone.
There are a multitude of reasons to not turn down a potential job opportunity.
Unemployment Will Run Out. For starters, you are unemployed. You shouldn’t turning down anything. Those unemployment benefit checks will not last forever.
Taking a Job Avoids a Huge Gap on Your Resume. For those in the professional workforce having a big gap on your resume doesn’t look good to prospective employers. In the past, having a six month gap would be a very bad sign. Times were good. Why couldn’t you get a job?
Employers are a little more understanding these days with the recession we are all living through. Nonetheless, the smaller the gap on your resume the better. Get back into the workforce as soon as possible and avoid a huge gap on your resume.
A Potential Job Isn’t Guaranteed to Work Out. Just because a recruiter or human resource representative is calling you doesn’t mean you’ve got the job. You still have to interview and compete with other candidates. Holding out for the “right job” doesn’t guarantee you will be selected to interview for that job.
Your Emergency Fund Won’t Last Forever. If you’ve been reading Cash Money Life for some time you’ve picked up on the idea that you need an emergency fund. If you lose your job you can rely on unemployment and your emergency fund. But your emergency fund will run out eventually.
If I lost my job I would be willing to take just about anything to help pay my monthly expenses and stretch out my emergency fund. If this meant working at a home improvement store for $10 per hour I would do it (and work 80 hours per week!). If it meant joining a landscaping crew and working out in the heat I would do it. You should have the same mentality.
You Can’t Recover Lost Income. This is the biggest reason of all you should never turn down a potential job. The income you are missing out on today by being unemployed can never be recovered. Ever.
Intrigued? Stick around, subscribe, and come back next week. I’ll run through the math on lost income through unemployment.
{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
I agree with this (almost) whole-heartedly! Plus, there is always the chance that whatever it is could turn out to be something you love, which a candidate would not know if they fail to give it the opportunity.
Stories like these always remind me of Christmas Vacation, and how “cousin Eddie” has been out of work for like 6 years and says he is “holding out for something in management”
Oh how I wish some people would realize that a job is better than no job. A family member was in a situation where she had been a stay at home mom for several years. Out of nowhere her husband left her – then decided he wasn’t going to pay her alimony and then lost his job and quit paying her child support. She has been so picky job hunting (for over a year) that she has turned down some potentially good jobs. She basically had to hit rock bottom and have her car repossessed before she was recently willing to take an admin. level job while she waits for something better to come along. Some money coming in every month is better than nothing!
If you lost your job, you wouldn’t try to make it as a full time blogger first?
I totally would…and then two months later you’ll see me at the Home Depot with ya!
But I get what your saying – Any job is certainly better than no job
Watch out, @J. Money! That’s what I do…blog almost full time for a living
Anyway, I agree. Making $7/hr is better than making $0/hr. I learned this the hard way when, with my shiny new college degree, I went and worked as a cashier. You’ve got to have money coming in. And you can keep looking even as you work a job you don’t necessarily like. Especially if you are working full-time.
I appreciate the article as someone who is currently unemployed and not on unemployment. But one, what about people like me who already have those big gaps of unemployment, who haven’t worked since highschool because of college, then dropped out of college. I am signed up with 2 recruiters and a temp agency and haven’t had an interview in months. I applied for all of the retail, food service, and labor jobs, but if you don’t have a car your options are seriously limited.
Also no home improvement store that I know of pays $10 dollars an hour, think more 7.15 an hour before tax. That’s ~$1100 dollars a month assuming you get a full 40 hours a week (unlikely).
I guess all I’m trying to say is sometimes there is no job.
Sorry, I’m jumping back in here in reply to Ian’s post. In the case of my relative, she’s making $8 an hour and bringing home roughly $1,000 a month. That’s $1,000 she didn’t have before. Isn’t that better than absolutely no money coming in, especially if you’re not getting unemployment? I appreciate that good paying jobs might not be possible, but there is a difference between not having ANY job available and not having a job that you want or pays well available.
Tough sell but it’s true. Having a job right now is better than no job, just tough to be at a job you hate, regardless of how the economy is doing.
If your finances need it then yes, any job is better than no job. But if you have proper emergency savings then unemployment may be enough for you to hold out for a bit. Just as a gap may not look good it also may not look good to take a job that is below the skill level of the job you previously had.
I don’t think there is a black and white answer to this. It really depends on the job you had and your current situation.
I agree most of the time being employed is the best choice. But I think you can go too far with that line of thought. When the economy is as bad as it is now I think it makes more sense to take a job. When the economy is better, if you have a reasonable financial position and good skills that are in demand you can look for a better job.
Also this is the kind of thing that is better to avoid. The time to think about employment is not just when you lose it. Choosing an employer that will provide a good long term job even in a recession can be very wise and help you avoid looking when the economy is bad.
I feel like the bigger dilema people struggle with is long term career influence. I’d like to hear others thoughts on employment gaps vs job hopping and who is the more desirable employee? As an employer would you hire someone that had an 8 month employment gap, or someone that had 5 different jobs in 8 months?
I went through this conflict with myself after a layoff and went from being mid-level staff to contemplating accepting an internship in a matter of 3 months. To take a professional position in my industry that was of lesser status than my previous job would have been a serious set-back in my long term career plans. Perspective employers would likely see my decline in status as professional failure. I felt it was a lot easier to explain waiting tables to make ends meet in rough times than to explain going back to working an entry level position just to have job. So while it may have been vain, I passed on at least 4 offers that I knew wouldn’t make me happy and in the end it worked out great! I know that isn’t the case for everyone though.
I’ve watched so many friends, during the recession, get laid off and start hopping. They accept a position that’s at a requires a lower skill level than they posses. A few weeks later they get an offer for a similar job but more money, they hop. Another job offer for a few grand more, a hopping they go again. The cycle always repeats itself until they find a position that is on their level (skill-set, not income based).
Job hopping is bad and something I would never put on a resume. If I were an employer I wouldn’t hold it against someone if I saw them working various part-time jobs, but really that doesn’t even belong on a resume. When they ask what you did for 8 months you can go into details (or just put a section up that describes you were working out of the industry for several months).
Job hopping within your profession is a major, major no-no. Burns too many bridges and employers wonder if they are next to be hopped away from.
I would do any job even though I would prefer to get back into Office work. But I would like to go back into work where people treat you like a person instead of being bullied and made to work twice as hard as anybody else. Like you do work at Farnells, which his now Farnells in One
I recently wrote an article called “I Will No Longer Sell Myself for $4.86″, and it is about the amount of time it took me to earn $30 on sendearnings.com. It is still $30, but it took 11 months, and for someone who is unemployed, this would probably not be a great idea (especially if they need short-term cash).
I tried Sendearning before, I got a whooping 6.00$ for 1 years clicking on emails. I have never tried the trial because I didn’t want to give out credit cards number. After a while, I decided this is not worth it at all. For example, Netflix give you 20$ if you sign up a new customers. Sendearnings, I think, give you 7 or 8$ for signing up while keeping 12-13$ to themselves. Then why don’t you start something of your own, refer the customers, and get 20$ for your effort. Those email clicking is not worth the effort at all. I tried Inbox Dollars too, they are just the same. I have to unclaw my hands from the mouse after all of that clicking.
I’m going to college full time while holding down 2 part-time jobs. I would love to make it into 1 almost full time job but no one allows me so that’s that. These are jobs that I took to support myself in college and help my parents out a bit. I don’t particularly overjoyed in them but they are means for me to get to my end goals. I need the money to apply to med school and all of those expenses that come with it, so I will take any part-time jobs available if time permits. I’m working in the customer service sector so sometimes it’s a bit burned out when you heard complaints for 8 hours straight. Nevertheless, the paycheck is good enough for me to bear it while I’m working toward the things that I really want. So I agree that any job is better than no job at all. If not any benefit, than having a job keep your working momentum alive so you can be fully prepared for your real job. Money is always helpful even if it’s a little bit.
One thing I can say about an emergency fund is that it makes you not as deperate. You have some cushion to hold out for a job you want. With an emergency fund, you can relax a little bit and not grab the first thing that comes along
Even if you do take a part-time job, continue to try to make your own sideline business. People wouldn’t be in this jam if they had more than one source of income, not just a job. When one goes down, the other can be used to help tide them over and buy them time to get a better job.
Solid post– I know many people sitting on their butts right now because certain jobs are “beneath” them!
This was a helpful article, but at the same time everyone’s situation still differs. If you have not been unemployed during this recent recession, it may be slightly impossible for some to understand. I do admit (from others I know that are unemployed) that some people unfortunately just sit around. I was in school full time even before I was laid off and will soon be finished. When I was first laid off, I didn’t really look for a job. I was taking a break, concentrating on school and taking care of my daughter alone. I had received a severance (which I am definitely appreciative of). After Spring semester, I started looking. I’ve had some interviews, but the job market is so saturated with all these people looking for jobs (with more experience than me) that I wasn’t getting any offers. Now…with several months of unemployment left…I’m still interviewing. After doing this day in and day out…it does get a little discouraging. I recently did receive a job offer and I know that some money is better than no money, but if there are other opportunities coming up it is okay. Right before I received the job offer, I received a call about a paid internship (actually in my field) and although I know that won’t last forever…it will get me training and actually challenge me. There is also a greater chance for me to get a more satisfying job. It’s about taking calculated risks based on your situation. One thing about the article that I don’t really think that I agree with…large gaps. It is not good to have a lot of them…but if you are a professional and your previous jobs have been professional positions…I really don’t think HR looks at working at McDonald’s as a great resume filler. If it’s what you have to do…that’s fine. I just know I wouldn’t even put it on my resume in finding the best job for me.