Get a Job: 'The economy is starting to turn around a little bit'

By Arrianee LeBeau KVAL News with KVAL.com staff Published: Mar 1, 2011 at 4:32 PM PDT
Get a Job: 'The economy is starting to turn around a little bit' »Play Video
Jobs brochures are seen on display at a state unemployment office in Sunnyvale, Calif.

This is Part 1 of a 3-Part Series on getting a job. The series continues Tuesday and Wednesday at 6 p.m. on KVAL 13 TV News.

EUGENE, Ore. - Every day, nearly 400 people visit the Employment Department in Eugene looking for work.

Een with nearly 19,000 people unemployed in Lane County, Jim Pfarrer with WorkSource Lane said the silver lining is that some businesses are hiring.

WorkSource Lane helps area employers create job listings that are posted on the Employment Department's website.

"The economy is starting to turn around a little bit," Pfarrer said. "There are some jobs that are coming back. There isn't any real big influx of a certain occupation right now."

According to the Employment Department's website Monday afternoon, there were 625 job openings in Lane County.

The top three industries with the most jobs listed were:

  1. Private education/health services.
  2. Retail trade (general merchandise and food & beverage stores).
  3. Professional and business services (administrative support, lawyers, accountants)

While these industries listed the most jobs, the database changes every two hours.

For confidentiality reasons, the employement department could not tell us how many jobs each industry listed.

There aren't enough jobs, however, that competition for them has eased.
    
"It's very competitive out there right now because there are people that are looking for work more than there were three or four years ago," Pfarrer said.

To increase your chances of landing a job, Pfarrer recommends:

  1. Brush up on your interview skills.
  2. Get your resume updated with a professional look.
  3. Research the position by knowing as much as you can about the company before you go to the interivew.

"Sometimes you can go in and maybe just do an informational interview with somebody just to kind of get a feel of what that job entails and what the company's like and so you have a better feel when you go into the interview," Pfarrer said.