Is Suing Your College Justified If You Graduate Unemployed?

I would like to add; in regard to It costs money to do everything these days; training new employees is an investment. My own training in an engineering position never amounted to more than a day or two at the most training. I usually can hit he floor running. I have had to fit into new positions that were outside my expertise, but I was able to pick it up very quickly. Maybe some cannot pick up new jobs quickly. Either I'm very smart, or the others are very dumb. At any rate, the cost to train me was very minimal. Most training I got was starting/quiting time, lunch, where's the john, where's the coffee pot. I was told to write a technical manual for the U.S.Marine Corps, something I had no training in and had never done before. Basically, I had to use my own learning skills to learn how to write a tech manual. The job lasted 18 months resulting in a verbal commendation from the U.S.M.C. Commandant. He stated it was the finest tech manual he had ever seen among the manuals that he had seen from other professional tech writers. I was responsible for almost 100% of all the 10 manuals I produced including photography, research and printing the final manuals.

I take personal pride in my tech manual writing days. BTW, this was before word processors. Everything was done using an IBM Selectric and a Varitype machine. I did have the services of a typist and machine operator, but all the original work was 100% mine.

For those who don't know, an IBM Selectric was an electric typewriter that had a "ball" type head. A Varitype machine was a typewriter that typed out text that was right and left hand justified. You then had to cut out strips of text and "paste" it up on bond paper. This resulted in a "camera ready" original that could then be sent to the printer.

Sorry if I got carried away by my magnificence.

Most fun thing to read you've written in a good while ronseto.

For some jobs it was like that for me, and for other jobs people taught me and I was given more and more responsibility.

Now I'm no good really for jobs involving a lot of below the neck work.

Now got little low paying job. "Intern" comes in to look for props. - Art Direction, Set Dressing, Props person, are jobs. Production Assistant is a job.

I tell youths, yuts, never ever do a job for free, unless it is in the position you want to be.

I've done some free work around CR4, specifically because at its best it is a think tank, and I have applied for work in that area. Around here on CR4 I am most proud of some of my thread starts. The one about work sayings would make a nice little book.

Possibly the difference between a Medical Intern, and Internships as they are at their worst is that someone who wants to be the Director, works for free as Production Assistant, whereas the Medical Intern works as a doctor, and not as an orderly, or nurse.

Well orderlies and nurses are nationally unionize labor, and doctors during internship work on average 100 hour a week at a far lower pay (without overtime) than a nurse. So why would any hospital want to classify them as a nurse? They would have to pay them overtime, at a higher pay scale, and have union limits on the time they could work them a day and week.

Regardless of the incentives it is stupid to work too much. Commercial airline pilots, the engineers of trains, truck drivers, and others are limited to sensible work periods for good reasons. Sleepy people make bad judgements.

I have known at least one real workaholic, and have seen them in states as bad or worse than those an alcoholic will exhibit.

It is ironic in the case of medicine that those who ought to know out of the knowledge of their own profession continue to violate simple physiological facts.

One of my first printers was a hacked Selectric tied to a serial board in an Apple ][.

Wow, those were fun days.

Hooker

PS - One of my favorite jobs was running a 3 man tech manual writing and training company in the automotive industry with 2 friends of mine. I also had no formal writing training other than a cursory technical writing course I got when I worked for NASA.

I used to date a woman who worked in HR of the company that I worked for, and she let it slip one day that if she knew he was looking for another job, then they would have fired his a$%!

I never forgot that statement, and after nine years of working therre I saw many employees and foremen who were looking for and even those who had given notice were fired on the spot! Translation;THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A CORPORATION'S LOYALTY TO IT'S EMPLOYEES!! So it's just business.

I learned then that you try to leave on good terms, but the company owes you NOTHING but "earned wages and benefits"!

For the lady who can not find a job, use her skills freelance as a temp, then enhance her skills with certifications in her field, then she still may need to find a job in the self employment field.

I have seen that frequently amongst the non-professional and paraprofessionals. When a company feels it can readily replace someone and that they won't pose some financial risk to the companies profits elsewhere, they have no problem terminating them. There is some risk for those people who play those games. I have however, seen some administrative assistants who knew the right people and knew how to name drop, let it slip a few times that they had other offers coming in, and they would receive raises soon afterwards. So it is in how you present the information to create the appearance of worth to your companies competitors that really seems to be the trick. Letting HR know you are looking for another job is one perspective, subtly letting HR know that one of your companies major competitors has been making overtures towards you with increased pay and benefits is another. It is like telling your girfriend that you are looking for another girlfriend versus telling her that you have been getting hit on by these women she believes are more attractive than she is and they have been making very detailed, explicit lude offers to you. One she feels you are a A-hole and dumps you, the other she may believe you are somehow more attractive then she realized and do some of those explicit offers to you with great passion in an attempt to prove she is worth staying with.

Jaxy is absolutely correct on that one. In fact, corporate employers (the bigger the more so) know and expect that their employees (the better the more so) will be seeking and entertaining outside offers .... And there's more to it than mere human greed/need—or the job security needs of "human resources" resources!

With companies, experience teaches that their better employees will be in greatest demand, hence ... more likely to be lured away; conversely, employees less in demand (whether by reason of ability or of ... demographic factors) will tend to view job security as paramount, and "hang on" accordingly.

Now, as companies ponder how they will manage present and future human capital, it becomes obvious as a matter of self perpetuation, that without ongoing bidding for recruits (aka stealing away ...), a company will become over light on competitive ability and over heavy with "good" employees for whom, increasingly, loyalty is their foremost accomplishment. While such—and such comprising typically in majority—are necessary in any company, a company that overvalues, or deludes itself regarding, the ethic of employee allegiance would eventually find itself stripped of its innovative (i.e., its "new business") capacity, and in competitive stagnation or decline.

That is an excellent way of putting it, except the companies only realize their perceived demand for that employee, which marketing astute employees tend to manipulate the perception of demand more so than have the actual demand. Thus this perceived demand increases their valuation in the company. Seeking other jobs, generates telephone calls to HR, which means there is some eprception through HR that others are making offers and since they generally do not know the offers, but only how many reference calls they receive regarding a particular person, they base their perceptions on the quantities and their own beliefs and valuations of the companies that are calling. Since it is perceived as one of management's main roles to minimize wage growth, overhead and other costs against profits, sometimes they don't see the value of labor against the $ until they see a potential for losing that labor. If employees do not keep looking for other opportunities, then they will not have much perceived value and their careers can stagnate as well as the company as a whole if this becomes prevalent across a large number of employees. If the employees can not be lost, then why be concerned with advancing their career growth, wages or benefits? all of which equate to overhead costs against profits.

Far as ethics, if you do not have a contract with the employer, and they have the power to terminate you whenever they want, then you of course have the right ethically to quit whenever, for whatever reason you deem fit.

Far as whether or not to sit on your a** after you graduate and wait for the perfect job, I've seen that work out well for people who could afford it.

Some realities over which we have no control intrude on our lives. It is known that graduates entering the workforce in times of recession, may never ever reach their goals. They become mired in the compromises forced upon them for a paycheck.

Companies may well turn around and hire the most recent crop of graduates, over those who have been working at whatever they could get for awhile.

My only suggestion for those who have recently graduated into a contracted period of opportunities is that they work "Freelance" in their field.

If these mentions of ethics represents good understanding of ethics, we ought to leave the word out of it.

The blithe claim (based essentially on a conundrum) that one has an ethical right . . . for whatever reason, seems the very antithesis of anything that could be called an ethic—not for the reason that seems most apparent but, rather, owing to a missing principle (missing elsewhere in this forum as well) which lies at the very heart of what any ethic truly is.

That missing principal is typified in the very notion, implied here by Transcendian, that ethics is a matter of personal rights and considerations, to be weighed against personal rights (the personal ethics?!) of others; as if ethics is a kind of matter of justice, which seeks to balance competing rights.

In fact, ethics is not a thing based on competing, individual concerns at all but, rather, is a set of guiding principles by which, as suggested by the very word, all members of a social group may interact to the optimal benefit and wellbeing of all; of the group.

With that clarification, it can be seen that quitting a job for "whatever reason" (that is to say, based on any and every rationalization) that one sees as fitting, can never be an ethical act, even if benign. Why? Because such an act violates a central ethic of all human group interactions: the ethic of good faith. To say that an employer might have a right (might have legally justifiable grounds . . .) is not tantamount to saying that it has exercised such a right or, if it does, that the right was exercised in bad faith. The notion of "employment at will" is not a tenet devoid of any mutuality of understanding: that acts to dismiss as well as acts to depart should, to every reasonable degree possible, be acts of good faith.

If you want to know if (not the act but) the reason given for an act of departure is "disingenuous" you need only to ask if the act itself was done in bad faith—the degree to which it is not in good faith is the degree to which the self justification can be judged to be dishonest or, perhaps, disingenuous. (Jaxy are you paying attention? )

Actually this kind of sounds more like a description of morals, which are more consistent with the social construct. However, outside of philosophy the distinction is fairly ambiguous. Ethics actually are a philosophical construct that guides personal behaviors, morals are the societal construct for living in a social group.

Actually this kind of sounds more like a description of morals, which are more consistent with the social construct. However, outside of philosophy the distinction is fairly ambiguous. Ethics actually are a philosophical construct that guides personal behaviors, morals are the societal construct for living in a social group.

Just another way of saying, that here in california, land of mangled metaphors, everything is topsy-turvy.

Ok here is another way of defining it:

What is ethics? The word itself is sometimes used to refer to the set of rules, principles, or ways of thinking that guide, or claim authority to guide, the actions of a particular group; and sometimes it stands for the systematic study of reasoning about how we ought to act. In the first of these senses, we may ask about the sexual ethics of the people of the Trobriand Islands, or speak about the way in which medical ethics in The Netherlands has come to accept voluntary euthanasia. In the second sense, 'ethics' is the name of a field of study, and often of a subject taught in university departments of philosophy...

Some writers use the term 'morality' for the first, descriptive, sense in which I am using 'ethics'. They would talk of the morality of the Trobriand islanders when they want to describe what the islanders take to be right or wrong. They would reserve 'ethics' (or sometimes 'moral philosophy') for the field of study or the subject taught in departments of philosophy. I have not adopted this usage. Both 'ethics' and 'morality' have their roots in a word for 'customs', the former being a derivative of the Greek term from which we get 'ethos', and the latter from the Latin root that gives us 'mores', a word still used sometimes to describe the customs of a people. 'Morality' brings with it a particular, and sometimes inappropriate, resonance today. It suggests a stern set of duties that require us to subordinate our natural desires -- and our sexual desires get particular emphasis here -- in order to obey the moral law. A failure to fulfil our duty brings with it a heavy sense of guilt. Very often, morality is assumed to have a religious basis. These connotations of 'morality' are features of a particular conception of ethics, one linked to the Jewish and Christian traditions, rather than an inherent feature of any ethical system.

Ethics has no necessary connection with any particular religion, nor with religion in general."

-- Peter Singer (ed), Ethics, 1994

Philosophically ethics are the rational argument, or proof, for a moral behavior or application of morality. The arguments are developed for individuals to justify a moral belief system that they support. Thus ethics is a individual perspective on the moral behviors or application thereof that they should follow. Morals or a set of rules a societal group (or sub-group) hold in common to guide their behaviors and interactions within that group.

Ethically it might not be right but it is easier to get a job when you already have a job!

Another astute point ....

Indeed, it is accepted practice in the corporate world that an unemployed person is (virtually by definition) an "un-employable" person. (That is one of the further inducements to "taking anything" that pays in the meanwhile. Said another way: if unemployed status prevents the rest of a resume from being looked at, what good is it presenting a resume?)

This veiled policy among companies has recently come moreso to light in the form of federal government inducements (read: bonuses), championed by the present administration, to be paid to companies willing to hire unemployed applicants.

CA

I think companies also like to see that even though someone is currently "unemployed" that they are still using their time to do constructive things. Instead of telling them that you are unemployed and are just searching for jobs, tell them that you recently started volunteering at ____ in your spare time. It sounds much more attractive.

I think most people that are unemployed just sit around (probably more commonplace with recent college grads, but not necessarily) or focus all of their efforts in finding "a job." Many don't focus on trying to occupy their time with stuff that could beef up their resume.

Although I do agree that "unemployed" sometimes gets translated to "unemployable".

Thanks, Jaxy.

Re "... that "unemployed" sometimes gets translated to "unemployable."

I did not intend my assertion regarding widely-held (USA) corporate and human resources policy as a "sometime" thing. Your statement above might better be stated:

... that employers sometimes take a calculated risk and hire an unemployed person; but a search for such an employer is apt to be greatly protracted; or end in "failure" (failure being the biting of the bullet and taking of the undesired job).

Cruel as it seems, the un-employability definition ubiquitous among corporate enterprises, is underpinned by rational calculation (and the vicissitudes of the office workaday world).

It is reasoned that a person who is of an innate bent (read: potential instability) of mind to "hold out" when nothing is coming in, and nothing is in the offing (that is to say, when nothing has been offered), will be apt to become a liability if hired. After all, a company wants, at least, to extract a return on hiring investment—anything in excess (typically after six months to a year) is gravy. For the new hire, though, returning to unemployment is far less problematic that returning to a "jilted" former employer; a fact that does more to ensure the ROI when hiring presently employed applicants.

Moreover, an application screener has only a past record by which to predict a hiring decision outcome. If an applicant's present "past" is of failure to retain employment, isn't it to be expected that the screener will prefer not to pass that resume on to the hiring department? It's the screening that is the insidious part of the whole process.

Given sufficient choice, screeners will take the path of least resistance and resort to simply applying the "hiring manual" standard to eliminate applications. The safest thing to do. Beyond that, the screener is only marginally qualified, and has little time, to make further judgments....

Occasionally, though, a situation can arise when filling a position is urgent and qualifying applications are few (remind anyone of real estate?). It is then when a screener is forced (usually in tandem with the job requisitioning department) to consider applications which otherwise would have been passed over unseen. An astute job seeker will sometimes be able to detect and exploit such circumstances...but being on a payroll already typically portends the least painful path to "full" employment.

CA

... re-posted showing post replied to...

Andy K said:

Ethically it might not be right but it is easier to get a job when you already have a job!

CA replied:

Another astute point ....

Indeed, it is accepted practice in the corporate world that an unemployed person is (virtually by definition) an "un-employable" person. (That is one of the further inducements to "taking anything" that pays in the meanwhile. Said another way: if unemployed status prevents the rest of a resume from being looked at, what good is it presenting a resume?)

This veiled policy among companies has recently come moreso to light in the form of federal government inducements (read: bonuses), championed by the present administration, to be paid to companies willing to hire unemployed applicants.

CA

PS: Another perspective ... for those who have noticed how the guy who already has a gal usually gets the gal. The fact that he who already has a job gets the job ... mightn't we ascribe both, simply, to the "sweet smell of success"?

Actually it is usually a green-eyed monster syndrome. They assume the guy employed is of more value to their competitor and therefore, would be more valuable to them to take away from that competitor. Same with women, they assumme a guy who is in a relationship is a good catch and therefore want him, versus the one who is not and therefore not a good catch. (Much like women who chase married men because they assume that if he cheats with them, he is willing to commit and eventually marry them, because he has already been willing to make that committment, even though it should be obvious he was unwilling to fulfill the commitment.) I have seen many corporations chasing the same inept marketing people, and seen them moving around every 4, 5, or even 10 years, playing the guys from the other companies agaisnt management in their company creating this false facade of high value with the competing organizations (in essence making it look like the other guy wants them for much more). Management much like women doesn't spend the time to analyze the actual value or assess the people accurately, they just want to keep pay scales low, profits high and not lose someone who could turn out to be a major competitor in the future and adversely impact their profits (A manager who loses talent and then starts losing work because of it is at risk).

RCE, stop! My head is spinning, and I'm only a bilateral. That starfish of yours is a most fitting alterpersona.

The idea of suing the college is rubbish. First, if there is 1000 job in the market and there are 1500 graduate. There will be 500 unlucky guys. How do the colleges know what happens in the next 4 years. Besides, if there is a demand of 1000 only, you need to make sure your are in the 1000. I have seen people being late to interviews, dress inproperly, thinking that they are king/queen (which is yet to prove), sending simple CV by SMS... You may think that these do not affect your performance. However, you are showing that you do not respect the interview. Bad luck, this is the real world. You are really pressing your luck for a position if you do things like that. Do not complaint about your college.

Besides, what can you do in a recession. Companies are getting rid of their people and there are no new jobs for graduates. It happens almost every 10 years. What can the college do?

Why must we set up employers, or institutions doing employers' bidding, as paragons of virtue, and frustrated or misused job seekers as deserving pawn? ...time was, not so long ago, that a mailed resume and cover letter would almost always elicit, at worst, a polite turn-down letter; this was SOP among companies of good repute which wanted to maintain image and keep up on the recruiting front. For job seekers even a turn down was not unwelcome: ... in the reassurance that the effort had not been wasted or totally in vain; in that positive "vibes" left open the possibility of future consideration of work offerings by that company.

Today such once needful-business courtesies have been cast aside as useless ... because no one is considered useful/worthy unless they are to be recruited, or are not unemployed.

Job seekers and employers crapping on each other has become the norm.

Well a rejection letter is useless unless it can provide some useful feedback. Feedback to job seekers is frowned upon in large corporations, because it can not be useful from HR (and they don't want to waste the professional staffs billable time), plus it comes with a great amount of liability particularly since interviewers and interviewees physical appearance, demeanor and personalities play a role in the interview process typically much greater than skills or talent.

To this point I once heard a statistic, i never evaluated the veracity, that people who hang around telling jokes at the water cooler in the office tend to earn on average 10% more than their more fastidious coworkers. Thus after some minimal level, skill and talent have less to do with employment value, at least in managements perspective, than personality traits, physical characteristics and general aesthetics. so in the end, it is not really the universities fault if you are highly educated, but the current management of the places you seek a job perhaps subconsciously evaluate traits other than the talent and skills they need.

Perhaps it's the California thing that inures one to being mindlessly disregarded during a job hunt.

My view is that a major thing that keeps a job search hopeful, and therefore energized, is continuity ... the perception that the search is making progress even in the face of misses; ... each "miss" able to be "set aside" and "go on to the next"; just as an employer does in the recruiting process.

Until this hard-skinned-fragility age came upon us along with the digitization of all things sociable, the polite turn down acknowledgment letters that were de rigeur among companies recruiting salaried employees were part of a process which not only generated good will by acknowledge applicant efforts & credentials, but also instilled the perception that one's search was continuing to progress. Applicants now, rather than setting aside a "miss" and moving on, are implicitly expected by a growing number of inept companies to juggle and keep afloat an ever increasing number of job prospects from which feedback might or might never arrive. So, in a sense, you have a magnifier (of ill will) effect that not only disregards a good faith applicant approach, but imposes additional burden as a "reward."

It is when diligent effort is put forth only to have silence and pointless effort imposed in return... that despair eventually begins to set in. That is not a matter of rational or business-like calculation, but an innate part of human nature. People are genetically endowed to interact (to acknowledge and be acknowledged), as anyone condemned to isolation in a prison (such isolation that drives a person "out of his own mind") would readily attest.

When efforts and expenses to communicate (with job-opening publishers especially) are met with hostile disregard by recipient employers it is the employer, not the employee, who demonstrates serious character flaw.

If (as might be offered as an excuse) "money is not here" to send a $0.75 form letter, or 2-cent eform letter (Jaxy, here is an example of "disengenuous"...meaning, there needs to be an apparency of deceit...such as was not present in the example you attempted to defend), then it is that company's management competency, or profitability, or fitness as a place of employment, or all of these, that deserves to be called into question.

If you work for a large corporation at a professional elvel where you get to see the project costs related to things like mailing documents, you would realize there are no $0.75 form letters. You have administrative assistants time to process the letters, HR time to do whatever uselss things they want to do regarding such letters, etc..

Now multiply the cost times 25, if you are looking for a PE or upto sometimes 100 if an EIT, or some other paraprofessional position. Since the letter is a form letter it is of no real help to the applicants since they won't be able to interpret and address any pereived shortfalls. Actually, corporations won't want anything too specific in writing that has the potential to be held against them, nor will they want their billable professional staff using time for something like that. Besides, every professional interview I have attended the interviewees are notified by HR by telephone as to their application status, whether they have been accepted, are moving to another round of interviews, or were rejected. It is more personable and is not documented by the person being notified (so limits liability). form letters can also violate some companies attempts to implement grten policies agaisnt wasting paper, since everyone including the interviewees tend to think form letter notifications are useless (like a Dear John Letter, a kind of cowardly way to avoid a potential verbal confrontation). Once in a while, if you are of sufficient level and the skill sets limit the number of available applicant, you may expect notigfication from the companies president or an executive, those are actually useful as they will try to discuss shortfalls and strengths, and potentially keep note of you for future reference if a position opens again. Now that is the way to really notify people, and it is actually useful for networking and for feedback.

What exactly is your point RCE?

Way I read it is that good manners cost too much.

Well yes it cost too much, and it really isn't good manners, anymore than a templated standard Dear John Letter used repeatedly to notify many different men would be. So it cost money and accomplishes nothing since the applicant, or at least an applicant for a skilled labor position, would have already been notified by telephone and received more feedback from that conversation. Additionally, it wastes paper on a form letter, which violates many companies attempts to green their organization.

If the School guaranteed you they would get you a job and didn't follow through, then yes.

However, I'm sure the school did present her with job opportunities that she either didn't follow up on because she was a slacker or she thought she could hold out for something better. That's her fault.

I'm still receiving emails from my college announcing job fairs and I've been graduated for three years now. They are doing their part and I'm sure this woman's college is doing the same thing.

Her grades aren't going to attract any scouts to seek her out, she's going to have to hunt for a job and get one where all they care about is you having a degree and not look closely at the grades. She should have strived to do better in school. I worked 10 hour days including saturdays and attended to a kid and got my BSBA in three years and managed a 3.5 GPA. If I can do then she was able to do it, she just didn't value her educatoin enough to acheive better.

She's trying to get something for nothing and I won't support her cause.

Can't agree more. People need to start asking themselves why and instead of blaming other people. There are lots of quiet achievers getting good results, working hard without making much noise.

Hmm, something doesn't add up. A Bachelor of Science degree is at least about 185 quarter units, even in business admin (though i'd be surprised if some school required a BS in business). Schools are mandated (at least in technical programs) to assign at least 2 to 3 hours of outside work load for every hour of class. So that is 20.67 units a quarter. this equates to a work load of 20.67 hours a week with 41.33 hours of homework, reports, etc. 10 hours a day 6 days a week is another 60 hours. So total work load a week for 3 years was 122 hours. Plus schools are required to limit the number of units you can take during a quarter, anything above 16 requires special permission from Dean, and they can not exceed 20 (sometimes even 18). Additionally, in order for the Dean's to approve such high levels of coursework per quarter (above 16 units) they are required to verify you work loads outside of school and make sure you are not working full time or even close, or have other commitments. I would seriously question the quality of the school or the validity of the degree if someone claimed to have received a bachelor of science degree in 3 years and worked full time. Now a bachelor of arts degree is about 30 quarter units less, so then it might make sense. Was the school and the program certified and credentialed?

Alternately, I guess since it is a business degree, the Dean could have taken a different perspective and the course work may not have the standard requirements set for academic programs. I know some of the online programs advertising on tv tend to generate degrees with minimal work, as long as they aren't like engineering or physical sciences which are vetted by national organizations that set standards. Maybe you are demonstrating the clear lack of educational standards for business majors. This could be in part why so many business majors perceive a degree as just a fancy piece of paper that is unnecessary to their career (except acounting majors). This is why I would support a national organization, like ABET, ACS, etc., to credential business degree programs like technical programs are and kill some of these degree mills.

It's 129 units. I took classes with no summer breaks. I took 8 classes per year.