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Job Offers In 10 Minutes at UPS, Skills Not Needed Anywhere

Want a Job? OK You’re Hired

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New data from labor-market analytics firm EMSI Burning Glass and the Conference Board, a private research group, suggest that 1.4 million jobs will open to people without college degrees in the next five years if employers continue to lower educational requirements at the current rate. In January 2019, 42% of employment ads for insurance sales agents called for a bachelor’s degree, the data show. In September 2021, 26% did.

Darden Restaurants Inc., the parent of Olive Garden, rolled out a new tool this year to allow people to apply for a job and schedule an interview at its restaurants within five minutes.

Waste Management Inc. this year retooled job applications for truck drivers and others that takes three minutes to fill out instead of as long as an hour. The goal is to prevent potential hires from walking away.

Southwest Airlines Co. is making some on-the-spot offers for ramp workers and other positions. Chief Executive Gary Kelly said on a call with analysts last month that the company had turned to new hiring techniques. Southwest aims to hire 5,300 people this fall and 8,000 next year.

A two-week hiring process for seasonal UPS workers now takes less than 30 minutes, in certain cases. For some jobs, such as driver helper, there is no interview at all. Applicants answer online questions and can get a conditional job offer in as little as 10 minutes.

UPS eliminated job-application questions and hiring steps unless they were required for payroll purposes and government audits, said Matt Lavery, the company’s global director of sourcing and recruiting.

In the market that we’re in, if you don’t make a job offer to someone somewhat quickly, someone else will,” Mr. Lavery said.

Wow

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29 Comments
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Oldest Most Voted
Bungalow Bill
Bungalow Bill
4 years ago
An increase in packages falling off the truck at UPS… Headlines at 6!
Six000mileyear
Six000mileyear
4 years ago
My aunt was near the end of her semester of student teaching in the 1950’s, when one of the teachers caught her in the hall and asked, “Are you going to apply for a teaching position?” She filled out the application and submitted her resume. She got the job without being interviewed and never had to find another job the rest of her life.
Rbm
Rbm
4 years ago
Maybe this will address the issue of employers asking for a college degree for a job that doesnt need a college degree just because they can. 
Tony Bennett
Tony Bennett
4 years ago
In the market that we’re in, if you don’t make a job offer to someone somewhat quickly, someone else will,” Mr. Lavery said.
The coming recession will cure.
KidHorn
KidHorn
4 years ago
This reminds me of when I used to manage development teams in India. The company was trying to cut costs, even though officially they were being more flexible. We would hire people for 20% of US starting salaries and all they needed was a degree. I don’t know what you do to get a degree in India, but many of them didn’t come close to teaching basic software development skills.  When things weren’t working out as planned, the solution was to hire more people. Having 10 worthless employees is worse than having 5. I would spend my days fixing what the developers broke and then sending an email to their manager in India to point out what they did wrong and what they need to do to prevent future problems. I pleaded to get 1 or 2 good Americans instead of 5 or 10 in India. Eventually I convinced those at the top it’s far better for fewer good employees than many bad employees.
whirlaway
whirlaway
4 years ago
Reply to  KidHorn
Students in India are well-trained in rote learning.   They would have mastered solving a few hundred of the typical computer programming questions that are generally asked in the job interviews.   And with relentless practice, they would have honed their skills so they are fully ready for any typical problem that is thrown at them as part of the interview.     
But developing a *product* is very different from spitting out code on the fly on a computer keyboard.    If we go by that yardstick, the best Indian software engineers are generally found not in India but in the US.
Corvinus
Corvinus
4 years ago
Reply to  KidHorn
I hear you. In my previous job (which got bought by a big software acquisitions firm) they went heavily for supposedly cheap Indian software labor because of how good it looks on the balance sheet. The CEO even screamed on stage “We LOOOOVE INDIA” during the yearly meeting. Of course they could care less about software quality so it didn’t matter as wall street was happy with the numbers. In any case time after time software projects that were touched by Indian developers turned to crap that the US team had to fix.
In my experience many Indians lack common sense. They get into these jobs because that’s where the money is but they have no art for it. Same as Indians here that go on to be doctors or whatever to fulfill their family obligation and make money. They get through the coursework by brute force (coupled with group organized cheating in some cases) but they don’t have the knack or art of what they do. Of course this isn’t everyone but it’s far more than what people generally think because of the stereotype of the ‘smart Asian’
Irondoor
Irondoor
4 years ago
The best job in the world: “Consulting” to small businesses in areas where they don’t need or can’t afford a full-time employee. And if your experience and expertise is in something that keeps the government off the owner’s neck or saves him taxes, it’s even more salable. The benefits to the Consultant: No employees, No inventory, No receivables, Little overhead, Work from home or wherever you want, Work for whomever you like. And on recurring annual retainer. 
Been doing it for 35 years and have no need to quit. $200,000 gross every year is all I need. Pick an industry where you have specific knowledge and experience. Nothing fancy, just basic industries and stay away from those where technological innovation is highest. Attend trade shows, meet business owners. Find out what problems they have that you can solve.
Corvinus
Corvinus
4 years ago
Reply to  Irondoor
Interesting advice. Thanks! I’ll be giving this a try.
Blurtman
Blurtman
4 years ago
Job Offers In 10 Minutes at United Airlines, Skills Not Needed Anywhere
StukiMoi
StukiMoi
4 years ago
If the Fed robbed absolutely everyone else barren and desperate, in order to hand everything to me: I suppose hiring everyone to cheer for me, in exchange for scrip they then had to spend at my stores just to get by, could hold some appeal. At least if I was some mediocre guy who always wanted to be a rock star, but was in reality rather average.
anoop
anoop
4 years ago
i got a call from an executive recruiter looking to fill a president role and the only requirement was that i have a pulse.
Johnson1
Johnson1
4 years ago
Listening to a podcast today and they mentioned a lot of low income workers have not gone back to work and are trading full time.  Hard to lose money in a huge bull market. 
I no a guy who probably makes $30k a year as a landscaper grunt for a landscape company.  He told me he made $90k this year so for trading cryptos.    He is thinking about quitting his job as he basically made 3 years of his salary in 10 months. 
Tengen
Tengen
4 years ago
I briefly worked in the UPS warehouse for several weeks back in the 2000s while I was between jobs. It was horrible in every way, the pay was $8.50/hr and you HAD to work for 4.5 hours in the middle of the night, something like 10:30PM to 3AM.
Why only 4.5 hour shifts? Because the work was grueling and they assumed that’s all a normal person could handle. I unloaded trucks and I remember chugging water during our mandatory 10 minute break in the middle of the shift. I don’t remember any downtime whatsoever, there were always more trucks lined up.
That’s not all. We had MANDATORY union dues after maybe a month of employment, meaning that $8.50/hr just got worse. Altogether in a week’s work someone might take home about $120 after taxes. Oh, and there was no health insurance for a full year even though it was a dangerous job and people did get hurt.
I hope the people now at least get the $15/hr rate, even then it wouldn’t be worth it. I remember being overjoyed when I left for a middling IT tech support job, my take home pay more than quadrupled and the environment was vastly superior. I never thought I’d be so thrilled to answer phones all day.
Tanner 0
Tanner 0
4 years ago
Reply to  Tengen
It is good to hear from the workers perspective on this topic.  Most of this post is from the business owner and economy perspective. 
These jobs are easy to get hired, but they are burnout jobs.  They are hard work and not worth the money.  The companies are accustom to a revolving door of unskilled labor.  The fact that their online application proses was an hour when it could have been 5 minutes (mentioned in article above) helps illustrate their lack of respect for employee time.  These are not good jobs.  
thimk
thimk
4 years ago
This is positive for the economy.  I’m 68 years old and remember in my youth I had to take and pass a lie detector  test to get a job . 
   “The Times They Are A-Changin’” .
RonJ
RonJ
4 years ago
 “In January 2019, 42% of employment ads for insurance sales agents called
for a bachelor’s degree, the data show. In September 2021, 26% did.”
I didn’t know that Flo, at Progressive, had a bachelor’s degree. I just thought she had a name your price, tool.
Jojo
Jojo
4 years ago
Most jobs really don’t require a great deal of skill, even in corporate offices.  delivering/pushing packages around at UPS isn’t Einstein level work.  Similarly for Uber/Lyft drivers moving people form one place to another.
I’m happy to see hourly wages increase and the difficulties employers are having filling positions because these issues can only lead to accelerated automation/robotics replacement of people.  
whirlaway
whirlaway
4 years ago
Reply to  Jojo
The list of problems that have been “close to being solved” year after year is rather lengthy. Automated oversight of social media content by the loving care of AI (artificial intelligence)?   Well, yes, sure–but then what are those tens of thousands of humans scanning millions of posts and images doing for Facebook et al?   Getting paid low wages for a hellish job for no reason?   No, the AI (whatever that catch-phrase actually means) can’t solve the really difficult problems, despite claims to the contrary.
Self-driving cars are here!   Well, almost, kind of, with a few exceptions… Other than failing in novel situations where bad weather or other common occurrences manifest, it works great.   Well, sort of, but we’re close, very close… and so as long as the Internet never goes down, and the sensors never fail, and the creek doesn’t rise–it works great.”

https://www.oftwominds.com/blogoct21/software-indigestion10-21.html

Jojo
Jojo
4 years ago
Reply to  whirlaway
Starting anything is always slow.  There ar ehuge advances being made in computer technology that will accelerate automation as costs to deploy come down while cost of human labor rises.  Here’s an example.
——-
This Restaurant Robot Fries Your Food to Perfection With No Human Help
Nov 05, 2021
Four and a half years ago, a robot named Flippy made its burger-cooking debut at a fast food restaurant called CaliBurger. The bot consisted of a cart on wheels with an extending arm, complete with a pneumatic pump that let the machine swap between tools: tongs, scrapers, and spatulas. Flippy’s main jobs were pulling raw patties from a stack and placing them on the grill, tracking each burger’s cook time and temperature, and transferring cooked burgers to a plate.
This initial iteration of the fast-food robot—or robotic kitchen assistant, as its creators called it—was so successful that a commercial version launched last year. Its maker Miso Robotics put Flippy on the market for $30,000, and the bot was no longer limited to just flipping burgers; the new and improved Flippy could cook 19 different foods, including chicken wings, onion rings, french fries, and the Impossible Burger. It got sleeker, too: rather than sitting on a wheeled cart, the new Flippy was a “robot on a rail,” with the rail located along the hood of restaurant stoves.
….
Siliconguy
Siliconguy
4 years ago
Reply to  Jojo
The kid finally got a job because Management decided to waive their requirement for two years of experience for their “entry level” position. The pay isn’t so great, but at least it’s a job. 
purple squish
purple squish
4 years ago
UPS has been that way for years. Back in 2006, I finished an internship and had something like $140 dollars to my name, so I ended up working at UPS. The major thing they had going for them was turnaround time on the application- I applied on a Tuesday, interviewed on a Thursday, and started on Saturday. So five days to go from rando off the street to paid employee. 
Incidentally it ended up being a great job for a while. Paid me just as much as my previous entry level work in chemistry. It felt like stealing to get paid for keeping a truck between the lines. 
TheCaptain
TheCaptain
4 years ago
I’ll bet that the morons who got tricked into getting that liberal arts degree for only 80k of unpayable student loan debt feels like a really gullible fool at this point since anyone can now drop out of high school and be hired in as their peer.  Liberals are so gullible.
Casual_Observer2020
Casual_Observer2020
4 years ago
Reply to  TheCaptain
What are you talking about ? Most of the people I know that got liberal arts degrees ended up working for one of the big 3 consulting firms and doing really well because they could talk and give presentations. 
Casual_Observer2020
Casual_Observer2020
4 years ago
When I was in grad school, I met a guy that worked at UPS as a manager. He said back then most of the hires at the lowest levels of the company were former felons that had served prison sentences and were hired by UPS from halfway houses. 
Yooper
Yooper
4 years ago
Companies need to roll back some of those requirements anyway. Treat mJ like alcohol, not a class 1 drug, and what you can accept as a felony. Like this poor dude looking at 3-7 years for a 3-strikes felony. The DA running for office let him go after spending a week in jail. The other convictions were for not paying for a tank of gas a decade ago, and stealing a $40 pair of shoes.

Joseph Sobolewski was arrested last week after he underpaid for a
bottle of Mountain Dew at a convenience store in Perry County,
Pennsylvania.

A sign advertised two 20-ounce bottles for $3. Mr. Sobolewski put $2 on the counter and left the store, PennLive https://www.pennlive.com/news/2021/09/man-charged-with-felony-jailed-on-50k-cash-bond-for-43-cent-theft.html. He didn’t realize that a single bottle cost $2.29 plus tax, which meant that he had underpaid by 43 cents.

The store called Pennsylvania State Police, who arrested Mr.
Sobolewski and charged him with a felony under the state’s “three
strikes” law for retail theft.

TheCaptain
TheCaptain
4 years ago
Reply to  Yooper
This is a failure of police who get rewarded for ruining people’s lives by pumping up their “felony” arrests.  That is corruption.
whirlaway
whirlaway
4 years ago
Reply to  Yooper
Well, if he was a Wall Street firm that had committed fraud and made $10 billion, he could have paid DOJ a “fine” of $500 million and got off – while not admitting to any wrongdoing.   
Christoball
Christoball
4 years ago
Reply to  Yooper
The guy could do math and let them keep the change. What kind of culture would allow this to be a crime and not just let it go.

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