many employers are doing a number of unusual things to find employees.
Unfortunately, people with disabilities are still being overlooked even
when employers are using some of the unique approaches below.  We are our
own best educator and advocate with an employer on our ability.

kelly



The Financial Times

12 Apr 99
Employers across US labouring as job market tightens: Companies
are           looking at unusual ways to find employees. Gautam
Malkani reports.

   By GAUTAM MALKANI
Ann Barton of Bakersfield, California, today starts a permanent
job with a mobile phone company. The company is blessed. Were she
not a member of her local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day
Saints, it would probably never have found her.
"It was a Sunday last year that I talked to my bishop after I
lost my job," she says. "I went to say I may need some help with
the rent and food because I'm a mom with two kids." But instead,
the church faxed her resume to an employment agency and she had
the first in a succession of temporary placements before she
could even start her own job hunt.
With the US labour market wrenched about as tight as it will go,
Americans hardly need to pray for work. Instead, desperate for
more workers, employers are turning to religion and other less
conventional ways of finding names to put on wage slips.
Manpower, the Milwaukee- based employment agency, has added
hundreds to its ranks of temporary employees over the past year
through its church recruiting programme.
"We advertise in church bulletins and newsletters to get the word
out that Manpower has jobs available and when the church refers
its members to us we in turn make a donation," says Gretchen
Kreske of Manpower. "A lot of our workforce is mothers or
students or senior workers and all of these people are found in
religious organisations."
Manpower has also tapped Bosnian and Vietnamese refugees for its
database of job seekers by working with the Catholic Family
Services social service agency in Amarillo, Texas, for the past
month.
Corporate employers are taking desperate measures too. This week,
the first of a more seductive signing-on bonus -a BMW Z3 - will
be delivered to an employee of Mirronex Technologies, an internet
commerce company in Montgomery, New Jersey. "It's almost
impossible to find the right people," says Stephen Neish,
director of strat-egic business development. Stock options,
longer vacations, reimbursed tuition fees and other perks have
mostly proliferated in frantically tight sectors such as IT and
finance. But with the US unemployment rate at 4.2 per cent last
month - its lowest level in 29 years - few sectors have been
spared from the famine. The Federal Reserve discovered in its
1997 annual survey of regional economic conditions that a pizza
delivery service in Dallas was dangling a Dollars 200 (Pounds
125) signing-on bonus and "big discounts on pizza" for qualified
drivers and managers.
"I've lived through a lot of different job markets but over the
past three years, if I could clone people I would," says Patti
Homerick of Acsys, a Georgia-based employment agency. She recalls
"easier" times for hiring agencies. "In 1989-90 we had 200
applicants for every job. Now for every good candidate at a
certain level, there are probably 10-12 opportunities that we
could present to them as soon as they walk in the door." American
shopping malls house tempting Job Shop kiosks with interactive,
touch-sensitive screens flashing vacancies at shoppers who, like
most Americans, are probably not looking for a job.
Telesec Corestaff, an agency based in Washington, has stepped up
efforts to recruit people planning to retire from the military.
"Our target market has changed from someone who does not have a
job to someone who already has a job," adds Susan Gant, marketing
and placement manager.
"We have to suggest it's a good time for people to look for other
opportunities. If you are looking for a career change, if you are
looking to shorten your commute, now is that time to do that."
Keeping staff faithful in such an alluring job market requires
similar perks, so that quitting is like drinking too much: you
have to hand over the car keys.
Maury Hanigan is chief executive of Hanigan Consulting in New
York, which helps companies design retention schemes to minimise
staff turnover. "These are as good as days get for us," she says.
"Ten years ago companies were spending money trying to figure out
how to lay off employees."  Companies:  MANPOWER INC (7670).
 Countries:  US United States of America.
 Industry:   P9441 Administration of Social and Manpower
Programs.              P7361 Employment Agencies.
 Subject:    Labour. Market Data. Religion. Services & Service
Use.  Types:      Stories.
 MCC Type:   ECON  Employment & unemployment. MKTS  Market data.

The Financial Times
Page 5
Copyright (C) The Financial Times Ltd, 1997


VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
To join or leave the list, send a message to
[log in to unmask]  In the body of the message, simply type
"subscribe vicug-l" or "unsubscribe vicug-l" without the quotations.
 VICUG-L is archived on the World Wide Web at
http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/vicug-l.html