Hi Nick- Here’s another bait and switch situation: what do you recommend if you have been hired for one job and less than a year into it, you are assigned to a more junior role that has no upward potential- no change in salary but also no learning opportunities. The employer is not sending any message like resign before we fire you, it’s simply a matter of what work is there and needs to get done, priorities and available talent for reassignment. The employee doesn’t have any leverage do they? Do they have to live with it and collect a pay check or move on to a new company- even if they liked what they had been doing before they were reassigned.

In real estate they call it a “buyer’s market”. For jobseekers it’s called an “employer’s market”. Because of that, employers can get away with almost anything when it comes to hiring and firing. If an employer wants to fire an employee it’s an easy way out to call it “down-sizing” which means “Yay! We can avoid a lawsuit by blaming it on the economy!!”

I have little doubt that if the thug company were called on the table for the change in salary, they would say they really can’t offer you more because (insert bulls**t here –>________<— Unfortunately, they can say pretty much anything.

Employment law is being violated under the guise of economic challenges – not in all cases, but certainly in a lot – and the jobseekers are the ones who suffer for it.

Okay, off of my soapbox….. maybe.

I worked in Silicon Valley a long time. Long enough to experience multiple economic cycles. Engineers would get Beemers as signing bonuses, then buy expensive homes. The next year, they’d be living out of their cars, when their companies would callously dismiss entire departments. The following year, the companies would be yelling at us headhunters, demanding that we help them staff back up quickly because projects were waiting… When all along, had they managed their staff levels properly and bitten the bullet, they would not have been begging the engineers they screwed last year to come back to work this year…

Anyone who thinks it’s an employer’s market should mark a little time, because then it will be a job hunter’s market again. Those who “behaved” during one will do well during the other. Everyone else winds up looking like a bad dog.

@Laurie I have to agree where you stated, “For jobseekers it’s called an “employer’s market”. Because of that, employers can get away with almost anything when it comes to hiring and firing.” However, I would say employers wrong “think” they can get away with anything. Don’t lose sight of the fact that there are state and Federal employment laws in effect regarding hiring and firing practices. I think the worst thing they try to get away with is buying people’s time on the cheap via what amounts to nothing less than fraud.

I meant to write, (and Nic this thing needs an edit function) …”I would say employer’s wrongly “think” … Sorry for original mistyping.

@Nic No worries. I knew what you meant.

I had this article sent to me this morning. It’s an interesting breakdown of who not to work for and in the spirit of this blog, here is the link.

http://thestaffingadvisor.wordpress.com/2010/08/24/needlessly-offensive-hiring-practices/

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If you have right credentials and in a highly sought after field its a job seekers market… Son only a junior in college and already has 2 job offers andn one very lucrative research offer from The NSF , both 6 figure when he gets out of school and being paid for the research he is dong 1,000 per month for maybe 10 hours work, He interned for both companies.. Can thy be rescinded/. yes, but still its a nice feeling to be wanted by 2 top global companies.. I fully expect that he will be working in Southeast Asia and thats a good thing, for this country is turning into a wasteland for people straight out of the university system. His background, software engineering for mobile computing devices at the operating system level….We all know that mobile computing is a hot market and will remain so probably for decades to come. If you cant find a job that doesn’t treat you with the dignity you deserve get retrained. Simple as that.. Liberal arts degrees IMO will be worthless