My Craigslist rant

Things that annoy me about Craigslist help wanted ads:

• The preponderance of MLM scams and phishing operations disguised as help wanted ads

If you've spent any time job hunting on Craigslist, you've come across several of these. You respond to a (usually vague) Craigslist ad and within 24 hours you get a response asking for credit card info, Social Security numbers, bank account info, etc. Then, within 2 days, you notice an influx of spam in your email account.

Or sometimes, you'll apply for an administrative job listing with a posted salary of $35,000, and the guy emails you back telling you about a Herbalife-type MLM deal.

For these reasons, I wish Craigslist would charge a nominal fee for posting help wanted ads. If the ads weren't free to run, it would eliminate 90% of this crap.

• Short, vague ads in general

I understand the need for brevity when running a newspaper ad, where you're getting charged by the line. But Craigslist is free, and your ad can be as long as you want it to be. This is an example of what I'm talking about:

Telemarketer wanted. Must have experience. Email resume and a contact phone number.

Before I spend 10 minutes crafting a cover letter, I'd like to know a few more things. What kind of a business is it? What exactly am I going to be setting appointments for? If my background is in say, selling technology in a B2B environment, and this is a job selling light bulbs to senior citizens, I'm probably not interested. What area is this and what's the pay scale like? If I live in Venice and this is an $8/hour job in Palmetto, I'm not interested.

I'm not saying the ad has to be uber-detailed, but something like:

Used tire lot in Bradenton looking for an experienced telemarketer to call on area used car lots. Pays between $8 - $10 an hour plus commission - you should be able to make $30,000 - $35,000 in salary + commission.

...would save the employer a lot of time from not having to weed-out resumes from people who would have never responded if they knew a little more about the position.

Also, many job seekers won't send resumes to ads that are extremely vague - they assume that it's just another scam attempting to harvest personal information.

• Ads that have numerous spelling/grammar errors

I understand that typos happen. But when I see ads like this:

Looking to hire a marketing and customer serviss person for my business. Youll be doing a lot of work with our customers and answring there questions, so you need to be profeshional appearance.

...I seriously wonder if you're capable of making payroll on a consistent basis.

Vote for cloture passes

The Senate's vote for cloture on the unemployment extension passed last night, 87 - 13.

That, of course, doesn't mean that the deal is "done," however. For a good analysis of what will transpire next, this is an excellent piece that explains the latest:

http://washingtonindependent.com/65488/reid-threatens-midnight-vote-on-unemployment-insurance-benefit

Net-net, it looks like the Senate version won't be passed until early next week, and then it goes back to the House for their approval.

FYI, both Florida U.S. Senators voted "yea" (i.e. in favor of) on the motion for cloture.

The 13 Senators who voted against cloture were:

Barrasso (R-WY) Bond (R-MO) Bunning (R-KY) Coburn (R-OK) Cornyn (R-TX)

DeMint (R-SC) Enzi (R-WY) Graham (R-SC) Hatch (R-UT) Inhofe (R-OK)

Johanns (R-NE) Sessions (R-AL) Vitter (R-LA)

Some temporary relief may be coming soon

According to several news sources, it appears that the U.S. Senate may actually get around on voting on an unemployment benefits extension by the end of this week.

As several of you likely already know, the U.S. House of Representatives acted on an unemployment extension bill over a month ago, but it has since been stalled in the U.S. Senate.

I do not want to turn this blog into a political soap box, but it appears that both parties (Democrats and Republicans) in the Senate share blame for the delay on this - both parties have tried to attach amendments that are completely unrelated to unemployment or the economy in general to the bill.

There was earlier speculation that a vote may have come as early as late last week, but that was de-railed. Anyway, the Democrats appear to be taking the lead on attempting to get the bill passed this week.

Full disclosure: my UI benefits were exhausted this week, so I have a vested interest in this thing passing ASAP, LOL.

Since Florida is one of the states that has an unemployment rate of over 8.5%, Florida residents would be entitled to an additional 20 weeks of UI benefits under this bill. All states who have UI rates of under 8.5% would only get an additional 14 weeks.

The good news is that, once the Senate passes their version of the bill, the House will expedite voting on it - if the Senate passes it this week, the House will have it on the president's desk by early next week.

If you're interested, here are the URL links to email Florida's two U.S. Senators:

Senator LeMieux:

http://lemieux.senate.gov/public/?p=EmailSenatorLeMieux

Senator Nelson:

http://billnelson.senate.gov/contact/email.cfm

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel did a more detailed write-up on this today, which can be found here:

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/sfl-jobless-benefits-senate-102609,0,6154837.story

Welcome to Unemployed in Sarasota

Having been unemployed for more than a year myself, I decided to start this blog because I found no other similar "unemployed in Sarasota" online communities.

I know for a fact that there are plenty of folks like me. Earlier this month, it was announced that 20,277 people in Sarasota County were currently drawing unemployment benefits, which is 12.3% of the workforce.

Manatee County has 18,132 unemployed people on the books - 12.7% of the county.

Those are just the people drawing UI benefits. When you have ~12.5% of Sarasota/Manatee Counties pulling UI, what it really means is that the actual unemployment rate (people drawing UI, plus people not eligible for UI, plus people whose UI benefits have run out, plus the underemployed - folks who are working two $8/hour jobs to pay their bills) is actually between 20% - 25% of the local working population.

Ergo, there are anywhere between 50,000 - 75,000 of us out there presently. I figured that was enough of an audience to start a blog.

The purpose of this blog? To share some information on what's going on, as well as share information on the various resources out there for us. If you have questions on how to navigate the maze that is Florida's unemployment benefits system, this is the place to ask. If you have questions on where to find potential job opportunities, this is a good place to start. If you see some employment scam being posted/run on Craigslist and want to warn others about it, this is the place to post it.

Besides being a place to network, it's also a place to vent. Let's face it - if you are hacked off about getting jerked around on a series of interviews for some employment "opportunity" that turned out to be a scam, venting to your spouse/family/friends isn't really an option - if your spouse/family/friends are currently employed, there's no way that they can truly empathize with what you're going through. For better or for worse, this will be a place where you'll interact with people who can actually empathize with what you're going through, because they're going through the same garbage that you are.

I'll try to update the blog as often as possible. I hope you find it both helpful and therapeutic, and if it helps a couple of people land jobs (or avoid nervous breakdowns, LOL), then it will have served its purpose.

Good luck!