President Obama says he will look at resume of laid off Engineer

[tawadi]

He looked shocked that a high tech Engineer is looking for work. I will be interested to know the outcome of this follow up.

[rfranklin]

1. could the President really be unaware of how the H1-B visas are being used to lower pay scales?

I wonder.

[tawadi]

3. I am asking myself that very same question

[dmr]

8. He seemed genuine, &

I bet he sees this as another cog in his wheel of progress. Always something to sabotage his plans where they don't work well or work at all.

There's a lot of holdovers from the Bush* administration in all kinds of agencies & departments. Remember how Cheney changed appointments to permanent positions? This way the new president couldn't put in or appoint his own people because Cheney made those appointees into permanent employees. They basically embedded right wing people just before a left wing administration took over. I know DU discussed how that might end up sabotaging Obama.

Anyway, I hope the president will make the needed changes.

[pnwmom]

2. Maybe he also hasn't heard that many companies are refusing to hire

people who are unemployed, as opposed to students fresh out of school.

Someone should tell him.

[tawadi]

4. Agreed

Maybe he needs to listen to people in his town hall meetings. How can he not know these things?

[exboyfil]

5. I don't know but this sure looks like

when Bush the Elder was looking at a grocery scanner in shocked amazement.

She probably should have taken more of an opportunity to sell her husband. A semiconductor engineer (which I think she means a B.S. Electrical Engineer with a semiconductor background) should be highly retrainable into a variety of different engineering fields.

Kind of makes me wonder about my daughter who is looking at majoring in Electrical Engineer.

[tawadi]

6. Good luck to your daughter

One of the only fields I see hiring in this economy is nursing. And a nurse will be overworked and underpaid too. Also, it is as difficult to get into a nursing program today as pre-med 10 years ago!

[JDPriestly]

7. He seemed very sincere.

He would be shocked to know how many capable people in fields including high-tech engineering and biology and other scientists are not finding work.

Once you have lost a job and been unemployed for a while, it is just really hard to gain the confidence of the employers.

Normally it is a good idea to take part-time or temporary jobs when you are out of work. But nowadays having a long list of short-term jogs on your resume can disqualify you even if the list is long because you accepted jobs that did not pay well and then moved up the pay-scale with each job.

It's tough to find the right strategy when jobs are scarce. Usually, my strategy was dominated by hunger and fear of having to live on the streets.

That's true of most people who are not born into wealth.

[tawadi]

11. It's a tightrope, isn't it?

[JJW]

9. It's the pay difference

He would get about $ 80,000 for education and experience, whereas an H1B would be paid $30,000.

The is common knowledge and has been going on for over 20 yrs.

[tawadi]

10. I agree. Common knowledge.

That leaves me with a couple of questions. How did President Obama not know? Is he surrounded by advisers who are actually lobbyists? What else is President Obama unaware of?

[tawadi]

12. Update

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20120201/us-obama-husband-s-resume

Obama helps woman with husband's resume

ERICA WERNER | February 1, 2012 04:26 PM EST | AP

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama may help Jennifer Wedel's husband find a job. Whether he gets her vote is another question.

Two days after Obama talked with Wedel during an online town hall and offered to take a look at her unemployed husband's resume, Wedel said the president has followed through.

Wedel told The Associated Press in a phone interview Wednesday that she got a call from a White House deputy chief of staff, Alyssa Mastromonaco, who told her Obama had made a personal point of making sure the matter was taken care of. Mastromonaco said the resume was sent to contacts in the Dallas-Fort Worth area where the couple lives.

Now Wedel's husband Darin has been contacted by several recruiters, and Wedel said she's grateful.

[CarrieLynne]

13. I think ill send him mine too...in fact I think all the unemployed should!