Guerrilla job-hunting

It was a sweltering Friday afternoon in August. Most downtown workers were either holed up in air-conditioned offices or heading out for a cold, end-of-week drink.

Not David Burns.

Burns, 24, stood on the corner of Market Street and M.L. King Boulevard, dressed in khaki pants and a long-sleeved, button-down shirt. He was holding a sign that covered him from shoulders to knees.

“College Graduate Seeking Career,” it read. “Bachelor’s Degree in Management.” He signed off with a cell-phone number.

“I’ve taken every other approach to finding a job,” said Burns, who graduated from the University of Southern Indiana in 2009. He said he has applied for at least 100 jobs and has had three interviews. “Right now, I need stability in my life and my marriage,” he said.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the current national unemployment rate is 9.5 percent. The rate in the Chattanooga metropolitan area was 9 percent in June. The current unemployment rate for those over age 25 holding at least a bachelor’s degree is 4.5 percent, while 10.1 percent of high school graduates with no college experience are jobless.

Degree holders under the age of 25, however, have a 13.6 unemployment rate for men, 6.5 percent for women. Indeed, a couple of years can make a difference.

“If you don’t have work experience, and you’re out there competing with those who have the same education but just a little more work experience, they will have an edge,” said Steve Rondone, economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“Because there’s a higher unemployment rate, (young college graduates are) competing against those who have more experience and possibly more education. You’ve got to work a lot harder now than even five years ago. For the new college graduates, they’re having more trouble getting that first job.”

Burns and his wife, Leah, who met when both were briefly matriculated at Southern Adventist University, moved to Chattanooga after his graduation, optimistic about the future.

“Technically, I did have a job when I moved here, as an insurance salesman,” he said, adding that he got his insurance license “because I thought it would help.”

The job didn’t work out.

“I am not a salesman,” he said, “I’ve learned that. I guess it’s better to learn that now than later on in life.”

He’s looking for anything else.

Jean Dake, placement director at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, emphasized the importance of networking in the job hunt.

“Network with people you know, join organizations, get in there and meet people,” she said. “(The job hunt is) fairly impersonal now since most companies use websites. But if you know someone on the inside who can recommend you, that’s always a good tactic.”

But networking, while helpful, is no panacea.

Burns said a former boss had influence at a large company in the Midwest and gave him a name. After sending his resume directly to the contact, however, he was informed that paper applications were not acceptable. In other words, he’d wasted valuable time.

“I was like, ‘You guys went through all this trouble just to tell me (no),’ ” he fumed in frustration. “Come on, I knew a guy.”

Most of his job applying, he said, takes place online at night. During the day, he makes phone calls: following up on job applications and trying to reach contacts.

“That’s not turned out well at all,” he said. “Three out of four people I call about a job don’t answer their phone. If I leave a voice mail, they don’t respond. I don’t know what’s up with that.”

He’s registered at temporary agencies, he said. One man who approached him when he was holding his sign told him to be a bus driver. He’s thought about getting a commercial driver’s license but thinks he’d probably end up driving a truck. “Then I would be away from my wife all the time. I wouldn’t want that.”

David and Leah Burns married in June 2009, a month before he received his undergraduate degree. She works part-time. He is eager for her to go back to school to finish her as yet-to-be-determined degree.

“There’s a lot more pressure to be married and be in this situation,” he said. “We were engaged for a long time. We both thought that ‘I have a degree, I should be able to get a job, even doing something stupid.’ We were wrong.”

In hindsight, he thinks they rushed the marriage. “I would have waited until I knew I had a job. Then we would have started planning for our wedding.”

The couple are living apart as they cannot afford to pay rent on an apartment. He is staying with a friend while his wife resides with her brother, who was recently laid off. He’s trying anything he can to get work.

Thus, the sign.

Burns’ tactic is creative, certainly, but can somewhat off-the-wall tactics be effective?

“The trouble is, I’ve not heard a lot of people say that they’ve hired people like that,” Dake said. “That’s the problem right now. ”

Jessica Noonan, director of staffing at Unum, said when she was working for another company, a candidate once sent her a pizza as a thank you for an interview. He didn’t get the job.

“I think if candidates present themselves in a way that is genuine but not over-the-top, that is probably going to be the most appealing,” Noonan said. “While we value creativity, there needs to be a balance there. If someone is really going to extreme or unique measures to be noticed, that might actually be perceived as a red flag.”

Burns and his wife want to stay in Chattanooga, he said, but that might be not feasible. His family is putting out feelers for him back home in Evansville, Ind. If he gets an offer there, he said, he’ll follow the job.

“I wouldn’t like it,” he said, “and I’d still want to get back down here. But right now, I couldn’t say no. I mean, I just couldn’t do it.”