Leadership

Sign of the Times: Applicants Forego Turkey for Job-Hunting

By Jessica Stillman

Updated on: December 2, 2008 / 6:34 AM EST / MoneyWatch

The Find: The National Bureau of Economic Research may have officially declared the recession on yesterday, but HR Capitalist has unearthed another unscientific but sobering sign of the tough economic times: the number of Americans job hunting on Thanksgiving.
The Source: A post on the blog HR Capitalist written by Kris Dunn, a VP of HR for software company SourceMedical.

The Takeaway: A recession is officially defined as two successive quarters of negative economic growth, but a more visceral indication of the state of the economy is on offer from HR Capitalist. How bad are things? Compared to the previous three years, more people were fretting about finding a job instead of enjoying their turkey and cranberry sauce on Thanksgiving day, according to Dunn's very unscientific survey.

Dunn took a look at the job application activity on SourceMedical's Applicant Tracking System (ATS) on Thanksgiving Day and came away with this depressing statistic:

The number of job applications from unique candidates to SourceMedical on Thanksgiving Day was up 1000% over 2005, 2006 and 2007 levels. Our job count and quality of positions available are roughly the same across all those years, and I don't see anything, other than the economy, that would explain the difference.

Adding a bit of the spirit of the season, Dunn concludes the post by urging those readers who are happily employed HR professionals to pay it forward and help those in their network looking for jobs. At least the gesture is a little something to smile about.

The Question: Any other wholly unscientific but telling signs of the times you've observed?

(Image of very depressing sign by matthewnstoller, CC 2.0)