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How we used to get jobs: A newspaper classifieds story

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Re: How we used to get jobs: A newspaper classifieds story

#111

Post by jambalaya8 »

warkdarrior wrote: post #64
beepbopboopp wrote: post #62

Unpopular take: This was significantly better for employers and employees. It worked as both an effort and presentation filter which both reduced the overload of candidates, allowing for more attention, higher variation of skills that didnt often show like traditional resume bonafides and mad companies more likely to invest more in employees as it was a pain to go do again. For employees it was great too. Much like t…

Second unpopular take: This was better for all involved, but it constrained the job market to geographical boundaries. People did not apply to jobs in other states/countries/continents because they did not see the job postings for other states/countries/continents.

thus people were treated better and got work faster instead of fighting against thousands of people who mass spooge resumes with email now.

Re: How we used to get jobs: A newspaper classifieds story

#112

Post by dyauspitr »

DrewADesign wrote: post #71
spicyusername wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simplicity and convenience are often inversely correlated. Life was for sure simpler in times gone by, but that doesn't necessarily mean it was better. Definitely different. I'm sure future posters will look back on these years with fondness for this or that as well.

I don’t think most people under 40 can wrap their head around what it was like to need to be home or at work for someone to reach you, which required a phone call. And you couldn’t make a phone call unless you were at home or work, or stopped at a pay phone. And what if you called someone that wasn’t home? Or were on the can and couldn’t pick up in a few rings? Sure you could leave a message but they probably had no…

Yeah, but none of that really mattered, did it? The expectation everywhere was you couldn’t really reach people that easily so you didn’t and you didn’t miss it. Also going to places involved mapping out your path on a map ahead of time and then struggling a little bit in complicated places where you would ask local people for directions. There was no GPS. We didn’t know what we were missing. It didn’t feel like a real problem at all.

Re: How we used to get jobs: A newspaper classifieds story

#113

Post by eloisant »

klntsky wrote: post #107
slopinthebag wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The older I get the more I think the internet is a massive net negative due to effects like this. Another example is used car sales. Before the internet it was local and required work to find cars for sale. Now thanks to the internet we have "hustlers" who scour FB marketplace and craigslist and buy up all the deals to flip for profit.

Someone who flips cars serves the seller by closing the deal faster

No because they only buy the best deals that would have sold fast anyway

Re: How we used to get jobs: A newspaper classifieds story

#114

Post by eloisant »

SL61 wrote: post #102
warkdarrior wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Second unpopular take: This was better for all involved, but it constrained the job market to geographical boundaries. People did not apply to jobs in other states/countries/continents because they did not see the job postings for other states/countries/continents.

Interestingly, and maybe surprisingly, moving long-distance is less common than it was in the past. The total number of movers has decreased [1] while the percentage of those moves that are inter-state has stayed constant [2]. Another analysis from 2018 [3] looked specifically at people who move for jobs and found a huge drop since the 1980s. In the really old days you would move somewhere (often because you heard th…

I wonder how it relates with housing. Today you couldn't move without a job at your destination, because buying a house is expensive and renting requires a stable job.

Re: How we used to get jobs: A newspaper classifieds story

#115

Post by eloisant »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #25

You still had to do a coding test -- but it was pointing to the bug in the C++ linked-list implementation on a single sheet of line printer paper. Because nobody was going to carry a Sun workstation down to the meeting room just for your interview.

Or coding on a white board. God I hated it.

Re: How we used to get jobs: A newspaper classifieds story

#116

Post by eloisant »

Den_VR wrote: post #32
yonran wrote: post #26

The newspaper does still have job listings e.g. for Amazon, NVIDIA, DoorDash, Tesla, Chewy. I haven’t been having much luck applying to them though...

Ah yes, the h1b box checker ads.

To be fair that h1b requirement is stupid.

Re: How we used to get jobs: A newspaper classifieds story

#117

Post by CTDOCodebases »

slopinthebag wrote: post #97
beepbopboopp wrote: post #62

Unpopular take: This was significantly better for employers and employees. It worked as both an effort and presentation filter which both reduced the overload of candidates, allowing for more attention, higher variation of skills that didnt often show like traditional resume bonafides and mad companies more likely to invest more in employees as it was a pain to go do again. For employees it was great too. Much like t…

The older I get the more I think the internet is a massive net negative due to effects like this. Another example is used car sales. Before the internet it was local and required work to find cars for sale. Now thanks to the internet we have "hustlers" who scour FB marketplace and craigslist and buy up all the deals to flip for profit.

It works in weird ways.

Physical space e.g. hikes,lookouts etc get absolutely ruined now and sometimes even closed due to the low barrier of entry required to discover them and the type of people this attracts but the flip side is something uniquely good like a coffee shop can be a success from open day.

I think the blog era was the best. If you were into something and applied some effort researching you could have many amazing experiences without having to rely on the luck of befriending knowledgeable people. However in today's world if you find something good it's only a matter of time that someone else discovers it uses social media to ruin it.

Re: How we used to get jobs: A newspaper classifieds story

#118

Post by kotaKat »

My last job was vaguely classifieds-related: the company posted a local press release into the newspaper bragging about how they'd come to the area to serve a couple local clients and I ended up snooping their careers page to find out that they had an open spot (and the dude that spun the site up was leaving) -- right place, right time?

As a teen though (even in the late 2000s): I walked into various places asking for applications and somehow was one of the only teens to go all the way down to the Duty Free to ask if they were hiring (because it's past a tollbooth and inside a big fenced in Customs point of no return). The manager asked if I'd seen his ad in the paper and I hadn't, I said I just figured it was retail that might be hiring. Nailed it.

Re: How we used to get jobs: A newspaper classifieds story

#119

Post by CTDOCodebases »

eloisant wrote: post #113
klntsky wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone who flips cars serves the seller by closing the deal faster

No because they only buy the best deals that would have sold fast anyway

This happens with niche markets e.g. CRT TVs.

Because CRTs are no longer made they are becoming rare but at the same time the market for them is small so what ends up happening is that opportunists take advantage of this and hoard them to create artificial scarcity.

You could argue they are doing a service by saving them from ending up as e-waste but this isn't always the case. Sometimes sellers are just raising the floor price for their own benefit.

Re: How we used to get jobs: A newspaper classifieds story

#120

Post by footydude »

slopinthebag wrote: post #97
beepbopboopp wrote: post #62

Unpopular take: This was significantly better for employers and employees. It worked as both an effort and presentation filter which both reduced the overload of candidates, allowing for more attention, higher variation of skills that didnt often show like traditional resume bonafides and mad companies more likely to invest more in employees as it was a pain to go do again. For employees it was great too. Much like t…

The older I get the more I think the internet is a massive net negative due to effects like this. Another example is used car sales. Before the internet it was local and required work to find cars for sale. Now thanks to the internet we have "hustlers" who scour FB marketplace and craigslist and buy up all the deals to flip for profit.

> Another example is used car sales. Before the internet it was local and required work to find cars for sale.

Certainly in the UK there were plenty of established options pre 'internet' to make finding cars easier.

Physical weekly magazines like Autotrader existed prior to the internet which had a small photo of the car a brief description and key details and asking price. People also used magazines like Parkers Guide to estimate the valuation of their/prospective cars based on mileage/condition etc.(Kelly blue book I think is equivalent in the US?...based on sitcom knowledge)

There were local used car garages too of course, but many of those also had their cars listed for sale in autotrader listed as 'trade' sale rather than 'private'. Or they'd be in the local newspaper on a set day of the week (where I was - Wednesday had a special 10+ page pull out of 'house listings', can't remember what day cars were but same happened)>

I know people travelled very long distance to buy cars using autotrader because my dad made an amount of side-money in the 1980s and 1990s from it. typically he'd buy a used (often damaged, 'no MOT') car, repair it, run it for a few months, sell it for a profit and repeating the process. He went all over the country to buy cars and he sold his cars privately to people from all over.

Also larger used car retailers and approved-used car garages have long since moved stock around their locations to support sales and used to have similar in-house magazines/brochures that showed all their available stock.

You lament the 'hustlers' scouring FB but arguably that's a much less problem than the risks pre-internet whereby local car garages could rip off local consumers because those customers quite probably only a limited field of reference to understand the value / worth of a car and so could easily be sold something for way more than it's true worth due to lack of comparable data. One of the biggest benefits of the online world is you can quickly see what is a 'normal' price for an item and so it's a little harder for people to be completely ripped off (though of course it still happens, savviness as a consumer takes a bit of work/time and a willingness to shop-around/do research).

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