It’s a tough job market and competition for what few jobs there are is fierce. According to the Los Angeles Times, the different amusement parks around Southern California have had record turnouts at their job fairs. This would include such iconic amusement destinations as the Disney parks, Six Flags, and Universal Studios.
Thousand of job applicants have shown up in search of employment. Usually these are students off for the summer or who have recently graduated and need a gig to tide them over. But now the list of job applicants includes white collar workers, IT people, construction guys. With unemployment in California reaching more than 16% people need work. And work is hard to come by in this rotten economy.
Since we are a nation where industry determines a job candidate’s qualities and eligibility for his position by judging his career track, one has to wonder what a job at, say, Disneyland would do. Not an executive position, but a kid’s job. How does that look on your background checks and preemployment screening report when the employment verification verifies that you spent a few months working as Minnie Mouse? At a time when you can’t account for a couple of months of downtime it would have to be disturbing for the recruiter to gaze upon an executive level resume and see that you were Dopey in the fireworks pageant.
It seems that we don’t make allowance for time off or time spent exploring other career opportunities, yet alone trying to survive when we are out of work. There are times when putting food on the table, supplementing savings so your money doesn’t run out is more important than having a consistent career track. Especially when that alleged career track has been abrogated by a nearly unprecedented economic downtown, and not only a shortage of job but a cycle when certain formerly high paying jobs are no longer relevant. Or the industry has either obsolete or the remaining jobs have been relegated to Timbuktu.
