Outplacement no big woo for some

Time was, when you lost a big exec job, they provided outplacement services to cushion the blow.

Now, according to Phred Dvorak and Joann S. Lublin, WSJ, Aug 20, 2009), companies are skimping on such services, limiting the time they can be used.

Resume services can be impersonal and rote, or even wrong, from these services.

Many times employees (40%) don’t show up for outplacement or prefer cash. Two-thirds of companies that had layoffs offered the service.

Employees are angry, the cos say—and that anger gets transferred to them.

One feature is an office to use to look for work. Companies don’t track how many people get jobs, though, although some are gearing up to do this.

Sometimes, anecdotally, the advice is weird—one client was told not to drink diet Coke, it makes you look immature.

One woman did not like the resume a company did for her—too many dates on it, pinpointing her age. They sent it anyway—with a cover letter with a typo in it.

To make it worse, the same typo letter and weird resume approach from another client went with hers to the same potential employers.

Both went to File 13.

For you young people, that’s the trash.