The Great Recession technically
ended sometime in 2009.
You have a better chance of being hired
if you're unemployed.
Employers are planning their
best quarter of hiring since 2008.
All statistics that probably make the average job seeker tilt their heads and say, "I'll believe it when I see it." What you read in the news doesn't always seem to match your experiences. If you were or knew a job seeker in mid-2009, the recession certainly didn't feel like history. It felt very present.
Today, many job seekers are still struggling. Unemployment continues to drag on for many people, and hiring levels aren't exactly at the dot-com level. However, compare today's job market to the one of two years ago and you can probably see the difference. We still have many job seekers looking for work, make no mistake.
Yet,
job growth is happening and employers are hiring. In addition to the Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly reports, we can look at CareerBuilder's own job listings. In five key categories, the amount of jobs posted has shown significant growth:
What can we deduce from this? First, hiring is on the rise, which is good news no matter how you look at it. Also, hospitality and leisure is an industry that relies mostly on discretionary spending. Aside from businesspeople taking a work trip, your average hotel guest is probably on vacation and spending money they set aside for fun items. For a luxury market like hospitality to boost its hiring, that means people are spending their money, and that's a win for everybody.
Who's hiring
For job seekers, an important tip to remember is that some specializations exist in different industries, and that's another discovery from these numbers. When CareerBuilder looked at what companies were hiring and contributing to this year-over-year growth, we found that some organizations weren't hiring the people you'd expect.
Walmart, for example, is known for its retail stores, but they're looking for hundreds of IT workers across all specializations. Therefore, remember to think about where your skills are needed and don't focus on looking at the obvious choices for your industry. Think about it: Your years of communication experience can be used at a law firm and hospital, not just in a PR firm.
To give you a head start in the job search process, here's a list of companies that are currently hiring large amounts (i.e., several hundreds) of workers in the above industries:
Walmart
Sample job titles: security, infrastructure, architecture, product management, program management, application development as well as business analysts and programmers
Dell
Sample job titles: various IT roles, sales, marketing, and consulting
AT&T
Sample job titles: technicians, CTOs, software engineers, database developers, sales
FIS
Sample job titles: applications programmers (.Net, JAVA, C, C#), conversion/implementation analysts, IT project managers, IT business analysts, IT architects
Gentiva
Sample job titles: home health and hospice nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists, RN and rehab management
Navistar
Sample job titles: project engineers, product engineers, embedded software electronic engineers
Edward Jones
Sample job titles: financial advisors, branch office administrators
Aflac
Sample job titles: sales/marketing and management opportunities
Hyatt
Sample job titles: accounting/finance, HR, operations, engineering/facility management, culinary, guest services, catering/event planning, sales, housekeeping, safety
Six Flags
Sample job titles: food service, customer service, seasonal management, loss prevention, retail, lifeguards, park services
To watch CareerBuilder’s CEO speak more on the topic,
check out his appearance on CNBC.
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