[Vision2020] Become A Locksmith or Other Craftsperson

Art Deco art.deco.studios at gmail.com
Wed Feb 20 10:42:17 PST 2013


 [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>

------------------------------
February 19, 2013
It Takes a B.A. to Find a Job as a File Clerk By CATHERINE
RAMPELL<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/catherine_rampell/index.html>

ATLANTA —The college degree is becoming the new high school diploma: the
new minimum requirement, albeit an expensive one, for getting even the
lowest-level job.

Consider the 45-person law firm of Busch, Slipakoff & Schuh here in
Atlanta, a place that has seen tremendous growth in the college-educated
population. Like other employers across the country, the firm hires only
people with a bachelor’s degree, even for jobs that do not require
college-level skills.

This prerequisite applies to everyone, including the receptionist,
paralegals, administrative assistants and file clerks. Even the office
“runner” — the in-house courier who, for $10 an hour, ferries documents
back and forth between the courthouse and the office — went to a four-year
school.

“College graduates are just more career-oriented,” said Adam Slipakoff, the
firm’s managing partner. “Going to college means they are making a real
commitment to their futures. They’re not just looking for a paycheck.”

Economists have referred to this phenomenon as “degree inflation,” and it
has been steadily infiltrating America’s job market. Across industries and
geographic areas, many other jobs that didn’t used to require a diploma —
positions like dental hygienists, cargo agents, clerks and claims adjusters
— are increasingly requiring one, according to Burning
Glass<http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/04/degree-inflation-jobs-that-newly-require-b-a-s/>,
a company that analyzes job ads from more than 20,000 online sources,
including major job boards and small- to midsize-employer sites.

This up-credentialing is pushing the less educated even further down the
food chain, and it helps explain why the unemployment rate for workers with
no more than a high school diploma is more than twice that for workers with
a bachelor’s degree: 8.1
percent<http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t04.htm>versus 3.7
percent.

Some jobs, like those in supply chain management and logistics, have become
more technical, and so require more advanced skills today than they did in
the past. But more broadly, because so many people are going to college
now, those who do not graduate are often assumed to be unambitious or less
capable.

Plus, it’s a buyer’s market for employers.

“When you get 800 résumés for every job ad, you need to weed them out
somehow,” said Suzanne Manzagol, executive recruiter at Cardinal Recruiting
Group, which does headhunting for administrative positions at Busch,
Slipakoff & Schuh and other firms in the Atlanta area.

Of all the metropolitan areas in the United States, Atlanta has had one of
the largest inflows of college graduates in the last five years, according
to an analysis of census data by William Frey, a demographer at the
Brookings Institution. In 2012, 39 percent of job postings for secretaries
and administrative assistants in the Atlanta metro area requested a
bachelor’s degree, up from 28 percent in 2007, according to Burning Glass.

“When I started recruiting in ’06, you didn’t need a college degree, but
there weren’t that many candidates,” Ms. Manzagol said.

Even if they are not exactly applying the knowledge they gained in their
political science, finance and fashion marketing classes, the young
graduates employed by Busch, Slipakoff & Schuh say they are grateful for
even the rotest of rote office work they have been given.

“It sure beats washing cars,” said Landon Crider, 24, the firm’s
soft-spoken runner.

He would know: he spent several years, while at Georgia State and in the
months after graduation, scrubbing sedans at Enterprise Rent-a-Car. Before
joining the law firm, he was turned down for a promotion to rental agent at
Enterprise — a position that also required a bachelor’s degree — because
the company said he didn’t have enough sales experience.

His college-educated colleagues had similarly limited opportunities,
working at Ruby Tuesday or behind a retail counter while waiting for a
better job to open up.

“I am over $100,000 in student
loan<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/student_loans/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>debt
right now,” said Megan Parker, who earns $37,000 as the firm’s
receptionist. She graduated from the Art Institute of Atlanta in 2011 with
a degree in fashion and retail management, and spent months waiting on
“bridezillas” at a couture boutique, among other stores, while churning out
office-job applications.

“I will probably never see the end of that bill, but I’m not really
thinking about it right now,” she said. “You know, this is a really great
place to work.”

The risk with hiring college graduates for jobs they are supremely
overqualified for is, of course, that they will leave as soon as they find
something better, particularly as the economy improves.

Mr. Slipakoff said his firm had little turnover, though, largely because of
its rapid expansion. The company has grown to more than 30 lawyers from
five in 2008, plus a support staff of about 15, and promotions have
abounded.

“They expect you to grow, and they want you to grow,” said Ashley Atkinson,
who graduated from Georgia Southern University in 2009 with a general
studies degree. “You’re not stuck here under some glass ceiling.”

Within a year of being hired as a file clerk, around Halloween 2011, Ms.
Atkinson was promoted twice to positions in marketing and office
management. Mr. Crider, the runner, was given additional work last month,
helping with copying and billing claims. He said he was taking the
opportunity to learn more about the legal industry, since he plans to apply
to law school next year.

The firm’s greatest success story is Laura Burnett, who in less than a year
went from being a file clerk to being the firm’s paralegal for the
litigation group. The partners were so impressed with her filing wizardry
that they figured she could handle it.

“They gave me a raise, too,” said Ms. Burnett, a 2011 graduate of the
University of West Georgia.

The typical paralegal position, which has traditionally offered a path to a
well-paying job for less educated workers, requires no more than an
associate degree, according to the Labor Department’s occupational
handbook<http://www.bls.gov/ooh/Legal/Paralegals-and-legal-assistants.htm>,
but the job is still a step up from filing. Of the three daughters in her
family, Ms. Burnett reckons that she has the best job. One sister, a fellow
West Georgia graduate, is processing insurance claims; another, who dropped
out of college, is one of the many degree-less young people who still
cannot find work.

Besides the promotional pipelines it creates, setting a floor of college
attainment also creates more office camaraderie, said Mr. Slipakoff, who
handles most of the firm’s hiring and is especially partial to his fellow
University of Florida graduates. There is a lot of trash-talking of each
other’s college football teams, for example. And this year the office’s
Christmas tree ornaments were a colorful menagerie of college mascots —
Gators <http://www.gatorzone.com/>, Blue Devils
<http://www.goduke.com/>, Yellow
Jackets <http://www.ramblinwreck.com/index-main.html>,
Wolves<http://www.uwgsports.com/index.aspx>,
Eagles <http://gseagles.com/>, Tigers <http://www.auburntigers.com/>,
Panthers <http://www.georgiastatesports.com/> — in which just about every
staffer’s school was represented.

“You know, if we had someone here with just a G.E.D. or something, I can
see how they might feel slighted by the social atmosphere here,” he says.
“There really is something sort of cohesive or binding about the fact that
all of us went to college.”


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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