Job Searching

Day laborers will be able to use a job center this fall, after residents complained about large groups of day laborers congregating at various places in the city. The City Council voted 5 to 1 to sign a $600 annual lease with the county to establish the job center at the old transfer station at 18131 Gothard St., near Talbert Avenue. Councilman Dave Sullivan voted against the project.

A job training program has received a $520,000 state grant to continue employment and training services to dislocated workers in the Carson, Lomita, Torrance and Harbor areas. The Carson/Lomita/Torrance Private Industry Council received the funds from the state Employment Development Department. The grant will support the Harbor IX Project, which provides employment services to workers recently laid off from local businesses.

Many of the once-highflying dot-com workers who've lost their jobs are discovering that they need new strategies--from low-paying temporary work to retraining--to cope with longer periods of unemployment than they ever imagined. "There were some very talented people working for these" high-tech companies, said Fred Hobbs, marketing director for JustTechJobs.com of Boulder, Colo., "and now they are having to apply to more staid companies who can afford to be more selective.

Despite a surge in patriotism immediately after Sept. 11, more than 75% of college juniors and seniors say they would not consider a career with Uncle Sam, according to a national poll released Tuesday. "The students view the federal government as an old-fashioned, bureaucratic and politicized work atmosphere that puts policies and procedures ahead of people," said Mark J. Penn, the pollster who directed a study of 1,000 students across the country.

Right now, Kevin Hill is between jobs. But the 27-year-old isn't too worried just yet. After all, he's young and marketable and the nation's unemployment rate hasn't been this low since World War II. "I'm looking with consulting firms," Hill said. "Maybe software implementation. I've also been looking at the staffing industry." When he finished college four years ago, Hill took a $29,000-a-year job as a research analyst for the Washington Consulting Group in Bethesda, Md.

USC basketball Coach Henry Bibby strongly denied a published report Friday that he had talked to Memphis University officials about that school's coaching position in November, when the teams were in Hawaii for the Maui Invitational. "My commitment is to USC. My allegiance is to USC," Bibby said. "I don't know why anybody would question that. I've not told anyone else anything different." The Los Angeles Daily News, citing unnamed sources, reported that Bibby and Memphis Athletic Director R.C.

Melissa Glasgow, 28, was waiting in the cavernous welfare office lobby here to see her caseworker when she noticed a poster above the door of a tiny side room. "Got a Minute? Get a Job!" it proclaimed. She strode in and asked whether the two women there really could help. They told her they could and inquired about her work history. "I used to be a pharmacy slave," Glasgow said of her previous minimum-wage job, which she lost Feb. 5.

As if the curse of a liberal arts degree weren't enough, just when a newly minted college graduate wants most to look capable, serious and adult, he or she surveys a closet full of sweats, overalls and jeans--and despairs. It seems silly that a mind that aced statistics would be flummoxed by the simple act of getting dressed, but the real world, where "I think I'll skip this class and sleep in" isn't an option, can be intimidating. The problem, however, is not insurmountable.

As Anthony Maffini faces graduation from college in just two months, he has yet to pin down the right first job, but he is heavily armed with the next best things: offers, interviews and options. Some of them came from that most traditional of venues, the career-placement center at Fordham University, where Maffini will earn a degree in computer science in May. Others fell into his lap from the Internet, which is fast becoming the employment office of the brave new world.