Job Searching

TMP Worldwide Inc., owner of the Monster.com job search Web site, said it plans to cut its staff to maintain profit as sales decline. TMP, which also places help-wanted advertising in newspapers and provides executive search services, will cut some jobs in its recruitment advertising division and in its temporary-staffing business in Europe. TMP stock fell 29 cents to $27.45 on Nasdaq.

With college graduation in sight, Erica Shinohara is looking for a position with a nonprofit agency that will give her some hands-on experience. But her plans may have to change as she scrambles to find a job in the current weak economy. College career counselors say that, with the nation's unemployment rate at 5.8%--near a seven-year high--and California's jobless rate at 6%, few graduating students are able to write their own ticket.

Pushing to bolster anti-terrorism forces, FBI officials throughout California are scrambling to help meet a nationwide goal of hiring more than 900 agents in the next eight months. One of the biggest problems facing the state's four major FBI offices--in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and Sacramento--is sorting through the thousands of applications received since Sept. 11. "It's busier than I've ever seen it," said Jan Caldwell, FBI spokeswoman in San Diego and an agent for 27 years.

A Los Angeles County economic development group has launched a Web site to link job seekers, educational programs and businesses in the metalwork, food preparation and apparel industries. The Los Angeles County Workforce Preparation and Economic Development Collaborative serves as a matchmaker, connecting the unemployed and low-wage workers with better training in industries that are hiring, and helping businesses in those industries to find a more skilled worker base. The Web site, maps.

I am one of the numerous who are unemployed and have been searching the classifieds in the newspaper on and the Internet, and am confounded as to what constitutes an administrative assistant/secretary these days. The majority of listings I have seen for administrative assistant/secretary positions require some, if not all, of these qualifications: Typing skills of no less than 80 words per minute; Shorthand skills of no less than 100 words per minute; Proficiency on Excel, PowerPoint, Lotus Notes, Outlook, Access, Visio, Photoshop, Quark and FilemakerPro, and other software; The ability to answer a multi-line telephone, screen all calls and route same to the appropriate individual(s)

"Firms Cut 21,000 Jobs in State" [Nov. 10] left me curious as to interviewee Deyanira Garcia's statements in describing her quandary. She is quoted as saying she needs at least $14 an hour, the rate of pay she received at her last job, to make ends meet. She now struggles along on $844 monthly unemployment benefits. She goes on to say that she would be unable to make it on what appears to be a rejected job offer paying her $10 an hour and continues drawing unemployment benefits while searching for that elusive $14-plus-an-hour job. With four small children to care for, she faces a daunting challenge to be sure.

Miguel Mata is jobless for the second time in a year. When the 33-year-old father of three lost his job as banquet server at a hotel near LAX, he suddenly couldn't pay the $575 rent or buy food. He lost his health insurance and managed to survive with the help of food stamps, union aid and the generosity of friends.

They don't pay particularly well and the work they offer ranges from the dull to the dangerous. But since Sept. 11, the nation's intelligence agencies have seen a wave of applications more earnest and enormous than recruiters once dared to imagine. The CIA has fielded 20,000 applications since the terrorist attacks and up to 600 more resumes arrive each day, five times the pre-attack volume.

There may be a reason one of your colleagues is dressed to the nines on a casual day and another almost sprints to her phone when she thinks it is ringing. More than half your co-workers are probably in the job market in one way or another, according to a new survey by Towers Perrin, a New York-based management and human resources consulting firm with 9,000 employees worldwide.

With the economy shedding more jobs than it added in recent months and unemployment rolls at a nine-year high, American workers have plenty to worry about this Labor Day. The people waiting in employment offices to search job data banks and talk to career counselors are signs of the increasing pain caused by the economic slowdown. Mounting corporate cutbacks helped to boost the number of Americans on unemployment to 3.