Bosses more willing to hire jobless applicants
Once upon a time, there was a stigma attached to being unemployed, but because of the jobless recovery now apparently underway, that stigma may be fading.
That's one conclusion made by Veritude, a Boston company that provides staffing services, which conducted an online survey of 195 executives nationwide to determine their attitudes about hiring. Of the executives participating in the survey, 72 were from New England.
The recession, which triggered waves of layoffs, has apparently convinced some bosses that a job applicant's current unemployment status is not by itself an indication that a prospective job candidate would be a bad hire.
"When making hiring decisions, 44 percent of executives have no preference for a candidate's employment status," Veritude said in a press release. And "when it came to examining the acceptable length of time for a candidate to be unemployed, 36 percent of responding executives said they did not believe it mattered how long a candidate was unemployed given the recessionary conditions, with 36 percent indicating that six months or less was their ideal length of unemployment."
Veritude's release added, "Although in the minority, 19 percent of those surveyed do prefer candidates who are currently employed as regular, full-time employees. Candidates who are either employed full-time or currently employed as temporary or contract workers are preferred by 22 percent."
The Massachusetts unemployment rate fell to 8.9 percent in October, after hitting a 33-year high of 9.3 percent in September. The national rate reached 10.2 percent in October, the highest since 1983, a story in yesterday's Globe noted.
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