Friday June 22, 2001
Summer Jobs Tight for Teens
The slowing economy is affecting all areas of the job market, forcing teens to compete with adults for limited summer employment opportunities. According to The Raleigh News Observer, “Some teens haven’t landed positions yet. ‘I’ve applied to like, 10 places, and they’ve all told me, ‘No,’ ” said Chad Melton, 17, of Raleigh, who attends Wakefield High School. “They’re like, ‘Maybe next time; nice try.‘ ”
Maybe you could help, with a job fair like this , or maybe the newspaper could offer some classified special or TV/radio station could give a little airtime to employers offering work. See the index the Memphis library system pulled together.
Good resources for teens:
juniorjobs.com-laws on teen hiring, tips for interviewing/resumes
Monster.com has close to a half million job listings and tons of help for resumes and interviewing.
summerjob.com listings searchable by state.
In April, the feds said: “The jobless rate for women increased from 3.6 percent to 3.8 percent and for whites from 3.7 percent to 4 percent. The black unemployment rate declined slightly to 8.2 percent while Hispanic unemployment rose to 6.5 percent. The teenage jobless figure went from 13.8 percent to 14.2 percent. Also, the number of college graduates age 25 and older without jobs increased for the second consecutive month, though it is still below those with less education.”
E-Mail is e-ssential
Retailers are finding that e-mails to customers create virtual communities and drive sales. These are more than the junk mails of a couple of years ago. These are highly customized and useful e-mails. The Newsobserver.com reports, “..customers enjoy the e-mails not because they like reading about which books are on sale. They like it because it signals a de facto community, he says; it involves many different people experiencing the same thing. And though they’re reading the messages at different times, the overall effect is that it binds them. “People are looking for communities, and not Citysearch or some kind of plastic facade,” he says.
The story is fascinating. It continues, “When Deborah Miller took over the e-mail list four years ago for A Southern Season gourmet food store in Chapel Hill, there were a few hundred subscribers. Today, there are more than 4,000 people on the message list, receiving information about the store, hints about cooking and wine, and stories about some of the people who make the food A Southern Season sells.”
Miller says she’s noticed a growing number of people who once were patrons of the store but have moved away. In fact, she gets more e-mail from out-of-towners than any other single group. “At least two to three times a week, I get e-mail from people who say, ‘I used to live there. I can’t find cheese straws anymore,'” Miller says. She makes time to answer every one.”
Could it be that the e-mail trend is now more critical than the “rush to get on-line” was a few years ago. It is not enough to be on-line you must be interactive and personal. This is a good story for you, seeing how businesses use e-mail for real commerce and customer attraction and retention.
Dumb Laws
WGCL-TV Atlanta has an interesting story: “Did you know you could receive a $25 fine for flirting on a public street in New York City? It’s true. A pair of Columbus, Georgia high school students found the law; it prompted them to create a web site about what they call our country’s “dumb laws.”
Here is the link to the site:http://www.dumblaws.com/
The site has an index that allow you to look for “dumb laws” by state and sometimes even city
Caution: I wonder how many of these laws are real. Some are annotated and some are not. Even the site says, “Remember, many of the laws on this site have been verified, but many have been copied from sources which do not include law citations. The laws have been taken from newsgroups, websites, city governments, and visitors to the site.” So while the story may be fun, before you cite any of the laws, check them to be sure they are legit.
