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The Journal News: Job openings receive record response

If you were one of the 37,100 people out of work in the Lower Hudson Valley in September, you had lots of competition for jobs as unemployment climbed by more than a percentage point from a year ago.

The jobless rate in Westchester rose from 3.8 percent a year ago to 5.3 percent in Westchester. Across the Hudson in Rockland, the rate rose from 4.1 percent to 5.3 percent. In Putnam, the rate was 4.8 percent, up from 3.4 percent. On Friday, the Labor Department announced the national unemployment rate for October was 6.5 percent, a 14-year high.

And if you listened to the economic reports of widespread layoffs, hiring freezes, banking meltdowns, a worldwide credit crunch and sinking stocks, you might think your chances for finding a job opening were slim.

But a scan of online job boards such as CareerBuilder, Monster and Craigslist shows there are plenty of jobs available locally.

Employers are hiring for such varied positions as computer programmer, plastic fabricator, health-care staffing recruiter, employee benefits account executive, eBay listings expert and assistant to a vintage photography dealer, among hundreds of others.

The wages for these jobs range from $10 an hour to $100,000 a year. Some are new positions while others are filling openings created when existing employees retire, quit for new jobs or leave the work force.

Employers who are hiring report reams of resumes from job seekers, including some from people willing to commute an hour and a half even for entry-level positions.

Sifting through these resumes can be time-consuming, employers report, since overeager job seekers are sometimes applying for work they don't have the skills to perform.

Arthur S. Lukach Jr., president of Micromold Products Inc. of Yonkers, said it's a challenge to find skilled workers to manufacture the company's engineered plastic tubes and valves.

Micromold, founded in 1950, makes plastics to handle fluids in pharmaceutical, semiconductor, dairy and other industries.

The company is looking to hire someone to fabricate the plastic and weld it into specialized shapes. The job candidate would ideally have some background in a machine shop.

"Ordinarily I'd like to start with someone who is a skilled machinist. It's not a common skill in the Westchester area, so I had the idea of hiring someone skilled in fabrication, carpentry or homebuilding, someone who knows how to use tools. We can teach them everything else," Lukach said.

Anytime Micromold advertises for a job, the company gets more than 200 responses. "You can weed out 150 of those just by looking at the resume. You're very lucky if you can find one good one," he said.

It can take between two and six months to hire someone, and Lukach just started advertising to fill the newly created position.

He's paying between $10 and $35 an hour, depending on the candidate's experience and expertise.

Lukach said he is able to create the new job to add to his 25-employee staff because the company is thriving despite the economic turmoil.

The company's niche products are increasingly finding new markets overseas thanks to Internet marketing and translations of the company Web site into Chinese, Japanese, French, German and Spanish.

"We're in a position which is unusual," he said. "We're small enough where we have growth opportunities by getting the message out. That's responsible for our continuing growth."

SQAD Inc. of Tarrytown is also looking to fill a newly created job as the media cost forecasting company sees expanding opportunities as advertising moves to the Web.

Neil Klar, president and chief executive officer of SQAD, said he is looking to hire a computer programmer to tap into demand for reliable data about how to price Web advertisements.

The job, which will pay about $100,000, requires experience in Java programming and related skills.

Business at SQAD, which has 24 employees, is solid enough to make Klar comfortable about adding staff.

"Our business is still doing OK. I don't want to be overly ebullient. I don't think that's appropriate. The future is full of unknowns. The ad industry is going through a huge amount of change, as is the economy," he said.

Helaine Rose, founder of the 4-year-old Pleasantville advertising firm Expert Media, said she's hiring several employees to keep up with a rise in business as a result of the downturn.

Her clients are feeling the need to increase their advertising to reach new customers since many of their old customers aren't spending as much as they used to on goods and services.

"Some of our clients are doing less than they have done in the past, but no one has jumped ship and we're more than making up for that with additional business," Rose said.

She's looking to hire an office manager, sales manager, personal assistant and copywriter to add to her nine-person staff.

Since she started advertising, the resumes have been plentiful.

"I notice even people are willing to travel much further distances than in the past. People are writing and applying for these positions from an hour and a half away," she said.

"I haven't been that happy with it because I am not going to have someone commuting three hours a day. It's just too much. The negative side of it is that people are looking for jobs who aren't qualified enough so there is a lot of paperwork to wade through."

Rose is looking for college graduates with good people skills who can communicate with clients and vendors and "do five things at once."

The jobs come with good wages and benefits that include health insurance. The office manager, for instance, can expect to earn $38,000 to $50,000 a year depending on experience.

Rose sees her ability to hire as an "optimistic" sign about the local economy. "It shows some businesses still have some money to promote themselves and try to do better than they are doing," she said.

Rory P. O'Brien, president of RPO Group Inc. in White Plains, said the downturn is actually expanding his business since more companies are looking to evaluate their employee benefits packages.

Demand for RPO Group's advice on which health insurance or 401(k) plans to offer workers is rising, O'Brien said, leading him to look to hire employee benefits account executives.

"We're hiring a bunch of people," he said. "I'm going to hire as many high-quality people as I can. This is a great time to hire. I know that this is a time when a lot of companies are having hiring freezes and layoffs, so I know it's a little unusual. But we look at it as an opportunity to talk to some high-quality people who normally wouldn't be looking to the insurance field as a career."

RPO Group is receiving resumes from people who worked in the bond and securities industries, mortgage brokers and others recently laid off.

O'Brien said he's looking for people with skills in finance and consulting. The job can pay up to six figures, he said, including commission.

O'Brien said that while he's received more than 200 resumes, he's surprised that job seekers even in these tough times don't take the extra step of writing a tailored cover letter.

"I get a huge volume of resumes. If it doesn't have a cover letter, I delete it," he said. "If they are looking for shortcuts, they'll be looking for shortcuts with my clients."

Mahir Desai, vice president of business development at Lititz Healthcare Staffing Solutions in Mount Vernon, said a lot of high-quality candidates applied for his firm's position of recruiter staffer.

The 75-employee firm placed an ad seeking someone to help its clients find health-care staffers, including radiology technicians and nurses.

"There's hiring freezes at a few places for permanent hires. We're per diem, so temporary people are the solution for a lot of people, so that creates an opportunity," he said.

The response to the ad was much bigger than when he placed similar ads six months and a year ago.

The job, which requires people skills and a background in recruiting, pays in the $40,000 range.

"When we put the ad on Craigslist, in 10 minutes we started getting resumes, and over two days, we got 40 resumes. So obviously, there are a lot of people on the market," Desai said.

Employees are drawn not only to jobs at bigger firms, but in home-based businesses.

Larry Gottheim, a former university professor and filmmaker who runs a business auctioning vintage photographs called Be-Hold Inc., just hired two part-time assistants to work in his Yonkers home.

He said he was "stunned" by the 40 applications he received, including 10 he characterized as exceptional.

One of the assistants deals with scanning the photographs and related tasks and the other is helping with advertising. Both have a background in photography. The jobs pay $15 an hour.

He said he feels lucky to find the assistants since it hasn't been easy to fill the jobs in the past 10 years since he moved to Yonkers.

"I've had a lot of problems finding people either who were around here with appropriate interests and aptitudes or people with good transportation," he said.

Ann Marie Damashek of Harrison said she received applications from Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx and Manhattan for her opening for an assistant to help with her eBay business.

In business for five years, Damashek has three employees.

She received about 50 responses to her ad for an assistant who could help write effective and accurate descriptions of items for sale and also take digital photos.

The job pays $8 to $10 an hour depending on experience.

AM-PM Auctions helps clients sort through their belongings and auction them on eBay. Damashek said a big part of her business is senior citizens emptying their nests.

"I'm busy. I don't know if it's just one of those things that's just recession-proof or not. I have plenty of work and it doesn't seem to be slowing down," she said.

Renee Fotouhi, principal of Renee Fotouhi Fine Art Ltd. in New Rochelle, said she can't tell yet if the economy will hurt her business helping corporations and individuals choose artwork, but she is looking to hire to add to her two-employee staff.

"I have a lot of jobs in the queue. I don't know if those jobs will be pulled because of the economy, but I don't think so. If you have a first-class hotel on the water in Miami and it's looking seedy, it needs to be renovated. Those kinds of projects don't fade away," she said.

Fotouhi has been trying to fill an assistant project manager job for three months, but hasn't been happy with the resumes she's received.

She doesn't want to hire someone outside Westchester because she's found that people who live in Manhattan hate the commute.

The job requires a background in the graphic arts. Fotouhi said she would pay a full-time staffer $30,000 a year, but is now considering turning the position into an internship at $10 an hour to expand her pool of candidates.

Fotouhi would ideally like to find someone right out of college who can learn the ropes.

"Kind of a younger me, hardworking, diligent, takes pride in their work, has talent," she said. "It's hard to find that person."

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