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Probably getting laid off (Unemployment?)
Lankysean
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Recently my company sent out an email saying we've been bought out and explained how severance will work. Now, they went out of their way to explain that they want to try and keep as many people as they can but make no promises when it comes to how many and who they'll be keeping. So, anyway, I'm probably going to get laid off between now and August. First round of lay offs will start in May. I've always been employed since I turned 16 and have never needed to file for unemployment but the job market is slim pickings and I'm not super confident I'll be able to find a job between now and May, perhaps by August but even then I'm not confident. I have a few questions about unemployment; for one roughly half my annual salary is made up of commission so will that be factored into my unemployment pay or will I only get paid out based on actual hourly pay? Also, I've heard that unemployment can cover some type of schooling to get back into the work force, does anyone have any experience with that? What happens to my 401k? I assume I have to transfer it but... I've never had a 401k so I'm kind of at a loss with that.
A little more info about my current job; It's "part time" between 15-25 hours a week, I do get health/vision/dental benefits, and it's decently well paying considering I only half the week. Last year I made around $35,000 with commission.
Long story short: I'm getting fired, what's the deal with unemployment in New Jersey? Help!
A little more info about my current job; It's "part time" between 15-25 hours a week, I do get health/vision/dental benefits, and it's decently well paying considering I only half the week. Last year I made around $35,000 with commission.
Long story short: I'm getting fired, what's the deal with unemployment in New Jersey? Help!
Lankysean on
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You should get paid out on what you made, not on your hourly. I am not in New Jersey though, so...
Your best bet (short of finding someone in here that lives in NJ and has been on unemployment) is just to call their offices and talk to a specialist.
For schooling, the unemployment here in Oregon HATES if you're in school. Haaaaates it.
I'm going to try and call them up on Monday, since they aren't open today or tomorrow and I just found all this out last night. Also, I'm not currently in school but I am looking to go back to school because I'm really sick of my current career path. Now, what do you mean they hate it? Will they deny your claim or something?
Thanks for the advice!
If you're in school you'll generally be denied unemployment unless you tell them that you would be willing to drop any all classes if you were offered work somewhere. For instance, I just tried claiming unemployment two weeks out from the end of the term I was in. Because I wasn't willing to drop my classes if work came up that interfered with them, they told me "No". So unless you're cool with throwing away all the money you invested in school because a job comes up, they won't work together. It doesn't matter if you're only in class 3 hours a week, they consider that interfering with your job search and/or job acceptance.This is based on my experience in Oregon though, so YMMV.
Bottom line: If you know your position/company is unstable, start looking around ASAP. You might make the cut, but you might not, and if you don't you want to already be in the process of looking.
If you just mean "jumping ship to another career", I posit that it really doesn't matter what career you're looking into, look for whatever you want that you're qualified to do and can live off the salary. Just start doing it right now.
To apply for unemployment, you may be able to o it right from home, or need to go into an office. Pretty much like filling taxes, you'll need a couple of paystubs, your last W2 would be good, and have an idea or current paperwork for any checking, savings, etc.
401(k) may need to be moved, or you might have an option to keep it on your own depending on the company.
For education, usually you can't be in school and collecting. There are some federal programs that provide for job-specific training. There are very specific rules governing it though. I'll try to dig up the card I got and post it later.
Healthcare - you're screwed.
Research temp agencies in your area and inquire about any requirements for joining them. (Many will run tests of things like your typing speed, for example.) If it looks like you're about to get laid off, give them your resume and try to have everything sorted before your final day at work.
The temp agencies in my area were a real lifesaver for me while I was unemployed -- they'll get you quick little stopgap jobs that help you pay the bills, and they'll often give you free help with your resume if it'll help you get employed. Sometimes a temp position may even lead to a new fulltime gig, if you play your cards right.
The downsides are that you get no benefits and that temp work is usually lame, fill-in-for-the-sick-secretary type stuff. But hey, no one begrudges a temp for looking for seeking regular work (as long as he does his job satisfactorily, of course!), so it's a good way to keep money coming in while you work on beginning a new career.
Definitely not that way here in Oregon.
It depends. I wasn't on unemployment long enough (thankfully) for schooling to become an issue, but basically they said you qualify for unemployment as long as you're actively looking for work. One of the things that qualifies as "actively looking" is continuing education with the purposes of changing careers.
Like I said though, I never got to the point of checking if that was education for any career field, or just specific ones.
Yeah, you qualify for it, but you have to be willing to immediately drop out of school if the job you might find called for you to work at the same hours you were in school.
Start whoring for a new job now. I dont mean "spend a few mins looking at jobsites and make maybe an application the day after tomorrow". I mean really buff your CV (resume) and start right now. Your miminum target is 10 job apps a day. Weekends you should be looking to triple that.
Send in speculative letters to every company within range that you think you might want to work for.
Save up all your holiday days for short notice interviews.
You need to start on this full on and straight way. Getting a new job is now your sole, obsessive purpose in life.
On top of my hatred for my current career I have no skills and no education, outside of currently being employed I'm an epic loser. I flunked out of collage 3 times and am going to be 30 in a few months... long story short, I hate my life and I need a change. I think I'm going to save up all my pennies and enroll in a 2 year technical school in an attempt to improve my life. I don't really spend much money in a month, and if I can manage to collect unemployment for at least a little while I might be able to scrimp my way through school.
Specifically, this page deals with attending and collecting unemployment. Collecting Unemployment as a Student
Hopefully this can help point you in the right direction of where you can ask around about going to school & getting unemployment.
"but"?
I'm not seeing a reason to not look for a job twice as hard
But, I hate everything I'm qualified for and the entire cell phone industry. Without going back to school the best I could hope for is minimum wage at bestbuy or radioshack.
Tough beans mate. Times are hard, so you have to suck it up and take the best job you can get. Unless you have someone willing to bankroll your rent and food, of course.
Put it this way: the sooner and harder you search for a new job, the better your choices are likely to be. OK, you hate your current job. Do you hate it more than being broke and homeless? Even if you do, then any job you get is likely to be better than the one you have now, so it's still a win.
And really what's the worst possible outcome? It's not like you have to stop looking or improving your alternatives the minute you find one job you know.
My husband worked in network security for a pharmaceutical company. He got laid off, and now does general IT work for a company that writes software. Despite having worked at that pharmaceutical company for 8 years doing a certain thing, his current job doesn't have much to do with any of that.
What do you do now, and what is it you're looking to switch to?
I sell cell phones, that's all I do. I stand in a store, people come in I hand them a phone and a bill. Honestly, it's just a glorified cashier position so I don't have any skills that go along with this job because any idiot can do it. The only real "skills" I suppose I could pull from this job is customer service and familiarity with various cell phone systems (GSM/CDMA and iOS/Android/BlackberryOS/WinMo7 etc). I suppose you need to be moderately technological to know the differences between the phones, but no more so then an 11 year old girl who's proficient at the Facebook.
Back in the day I used to work in data entry, which I enjoyed for a few different reasons; it was pretty easy and low pressure, afforded me lot of time to listen to audio books, and was decently well paying... plus I never had the embarrassment of telling a new friend "I work part time at t-mobile to make a living". I was considering going to school to get certified in medical billing because it's pretty much data entry and customer service at the same time, plus it's decently well paying and seems to have a steady future as there will always be doctors and bills to go with them. Here's the thing, I'm not very smart, talented or good at anything. I have no passion for anything outside of playing video games and spending time with my fiancé. All I want is a respectable job where I make a living wage.
Ps. was the forum down yesterday? I tried replying but I got a white page with a bunch of code on there.
Do you hate sales? Because it sounds like you could go on to sell bigger and better things with your experience. Believe it or not, selling things is not easy to do, and NOT everyone is cut out for it. You do not need to use your experience to sell cell phones; you can sell cars, or guitars, or just about anything you're passionate about. I guarantee that lots of things out there need people who know how to sell them.
For one thing, your forum posts are perfectly clear and well- written. There is a whole world of people out there that don't know how/don't care enough to learn how to write a good damn paragraph that won't make any fully literate person's soul bleed. You are not one of those people.
Your arguments for learning medical billing are perfectly sound and seem completely doable. You don't need a childhood fiery passion to pursue a career. It's totally fine to say "I am decent at this and I think I could be perfectly happy doing for the next decade or so."
Echoing Ceres in that selling things and interacting with customers is indeed a valuable skill and you should play up that skill when you are looking for future employment.
You're thinking in very negative terms, my dear OP. Stop it. You won't be able to sell yourself as a good potential employee if you can't even convince yourself that you're worth hiring. And you are worth hiring.
Speaking of which, you can sell parts of Deutsche Tel. to AT&T. Some of the highest paying jobs in New York are based on doing just that, which is basically just selling a product or service.
I agree with Ceres and want to take it a step further. The only advice I can offer you is to have a little more faith in your accomplishments. Were I you, I could whip up a pretty solid resume about how you understand the various technologies and leveraged said knowledge to become an effective dealer in bespoke cellular telecommunications systems. All kidding aside, it reminds me of a guy who had on his resume "saved the firm 20,000 dollars per year by implementing some simple C++ scripts." Don't sell yourself short. Selling is part of what I do for a living and it terrifies me some days.
And trust me, I've been around people with way too much money riding on their knowledge of cell phones that couldn't even tell me what CDMA stands for.
You're making the mistake a lot of people early in careers/jobs make, thinking the skills aren't transferable. Ceres covered most of it; it's not the specific tasks that matter, it's how you do them and what you learn. Ringing up phones is the same as ringing up groceries or laptops, and you learn responsibility, money management, operations, and critical thinking like watching for scams/short-change etc. Sales is the same thing - the product doesn't matter.
For example, when writing a resume, you want to say things like, "Managed $10,000 in daily transactions," and "Closed approx. $1,000 in daily sales, above store average."
I would recommend locating some job hunting classes at your library or elsewhere (churches often host them as well) to help get your resume in line and give you an idea of how to market yourself.
I was fortunate to get a severance when I left, and even more fortunate to get another job in a couple of months time. I'm not sure what we would've done otherwise - even though I was getting the maximum allowable per week in VA, it was still pretty sad. A little over $300 a week I think.
Unemployment is a last-ditch option to keep you from having zero income. It's really not enough to live on, not the way you might be used to anyway.
As others have said, if you're good at sales then you can likely find work. It doesn't have to be cell phones, but it should be something you can put some energy into. I had a job selling computers years ago when Gateway still had retail stores. When they closed them down a local car dealership stopped by and told us to come in for interviews there, as they could always use good salesmen. My numbers were pretty good at Gateway so I figured, why not?
Wrong wrong wrong!! I knew a lot about computers but I knew zero about cars and didn't really care enough about them to really put in the effort. Maybe if I was selling BMW's or something, sure. But Hyundai? *snore*
Anyway, the point is - I was absolute shit at selling cars because I clearly knew nothing about them. Could I have learned enough to BS my way through? Sure! Plenty of other guys did. I just didn't have the passion for it. I was fired within two months.
We had one guy that was all passion, all energy, all the time, and he was clearing $100k a year, easily. Selling Hyundais.
Anyway, I see the point that sales can have skills that are transferable to other careers and in fact other positions still selling stuff. Here's the thing, I'm actually pretty good at selling stuff, I'm generally at the front of the pack in our store. Problem is, I hate selling things. It's a very high pressure environment and I'm simply not a very competitive guy which I think might not be the best mix when it comes to car sales. Then again, I do enjoy cars and do know a fair bit about them so maybe it's something to look into... plus there are a lot of car dealerships near here. I'll look into it a little bit.
I have a few reasons why I want to stay away from sales though, Like I said before I'm not really the competitive type and I'm not an aggressive salesman so I'm not sure how well I'd do as a car salesmen... since if you don't sell a car you don't make any money. Which bring me around to another point, I don't really like the variable paycheck. I've always wanted a job where I always make a constant amount of money because it makes it easier to have a budget when you always know how much is coming in. I also hate my variable schedule, it's next to impossible to plan anything because I don't know know when I'm going to be working next week.
Now, I've heard some people say that unemployment isn't really a ton of money and should only be used as a last case option because it might leave you a little strapped for cash. Well, the good news for me is I don't need much money, my monthly expensive don't exceed $400 so living off of unemployment shouldn't be a problem... though I suppose if I enrolled in school my expenses will jump up quite a bit. Ugg, there are a lot of factors to consider here.