$13 an Hour? 500 Sign Up, 1 Wins a Job

[DainBramaged]

C.R. England, a nationwide trucking company, needed an administrative assistant for its bustling driver training school here. Responsibilities included data entry, assembling paperwork and making copies.

It was a bona-fide opening at a decent wage, making it the rarest of commodities here in northwest Indiana, where steel industry layoffs have helped drive unemployment to about 10 percent.

When Stacey Ross, C. R. England’s head of corporate recruiting, arrived at her desk at the company’s Salt Lake City headquarters the next Monday, she found about 300 applications in the company’s e-mail inbox. And the fax machine had spit out an inch-and-a-half thick stack of résumés before running out of paper. By the time she pulled the posting off Careerbuilder.com later in the day, she guessed nearly 500 people had applied for the $13-an-hour job. “It was just shocking,” she said. “I had never seen anything so big.”

Ms. Ross had only a limited amount of time to sort through the résumés. While C. R. England has not been immune to the downturn, it has added significantly to its stable of drivers and continued to hire office staff members to support them. Ms. Ross was also trying to fill more than two dozen other positions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/us/22hire.html?_r=1&ref=us

[Adsos Letter]

1. I have noticed that C. R. England semi's always seem to have "Now hiring drivers" signs on 'em.

How are they as an employer?

[MineralMan]

2. Here's a truckers' forum where they discuss the company.

All is not sweetness and light, apparently.

http://www.thetruckersreport.com/truckingindustryforum/cr-england/

[Subdivisions]

4. Did you forget something? n/t

[MineralMan]

5. Oops. I edited the link into the post.

http://www.thetruckersreport.com/truckingindustryforum/cr-england/

Boy, do I feel silly...

[littlebit]

3. They are a CDL mill.

They are one of the worse companies in the industry. They love to hire desperate people then talk them into a lease purchase program. The people who fall for it usually end up working 90 hours a week and bringing home maybe $200 a week if they are lucky.

[Adsos Letter]

7. Well, that would explain the constant need for labor.

Thanks.

[Dreamer Tatum]

6. “It was just shocking,” she said. “I had never seen anything so big.”

Heh.

[FirstLight]

8. Yep, it is bad out there

300 people showed up in my little rural town for a Cashier position at Pizza Hut!


I've been out of work since January and have resigned myself to just freelancing and being on food stamps for probably another year.