'Survival job' all that's left for many

Associated Press

Tom Calderini used to supervise three teams of software programmers spread across two states and an office overseas, but that job never tested his "people skills" quite like this.

"Sorry," an apron-clad Calderini says gently, addressing the mother of a girl in purple slippers whose head is barely level with his new workstation — the counter at the local Starbucks. "We're all out of blueberry."

Spoken like a true survivalist in a job market that calls for desperate measures.

Desperate, but increasingly familiar to scores of workers who, unable to find jobs equal to well-paid white-collar positions they lost in layoffs, are grasping at survival jobs offering considerably less.

Since early 2001, the economy has shed about 2.7 million jobs, stranding workers from the stricken information technology and telecommunications sectors and the broad ranks of middle management thinned by corporate cost-cutting.

In the 1990s, those jobs were the prizes of the New Economy, offering substantial paychecks, stock options, and generous benefits, along with the promise of hopscotching to something even better.

But that's all a memory, and many displaced white-collar workers driven by frustration and money worries are settling for work as food servers, security guards and retail clerks.

It's not a situation anyone wants to be in, but unemployed workers forced to look for a "survival job" can make the best of it by adopting certain strategies. Here are some tips from Sharee Wells, a job counselor with Bernard Haldane Associates.

• Look for a job that allows you to learn a new skill, particularly something marketable to another employer.
• Shoot for a position that may give you a foot in the door of a company or organization that could offer better opportunities down the line.
• Think about jobs that, however different, are in some way related to what you were doing before.
• In some circumstances, take any job while you continue to search. Earning a paycheck will bring some relief and make you appear less desperate, and that can improve your chances with other employers.
• If such a position does nothing to enhance your résumé, consider leaving it off altogether. "Your résumé is a brochure. It's not your autobiography," Wells says.