Niea Milwaukee 2009 Again

By JUSTIN LAHART

MAYS LANDING, N.J.—Training and education are said to be the best route to a better job, but Cynthia Motte is still waiting to see if that’s true.

Ms. Motte and millions of other jobless workers across the country are discovering that new skills can take you only so far when jobs are scarce.

In February last year the 47-year-old was laid off from her job selling time-shares at the Seaview Marriott in Galloway, N.J. In July, she enrolled in an office-technology program at nearby Atlantic Cape Community College hoping it would quickly land her a new position. She finished that program—and a four-week internship in December—but is still hunting for work.

Ms. Motte still thinks the training will help her get hired. “The fact that I have the computer skills will put me on par with someone who’s younger,” she says. She reckons that, along with 25 years of experience as a salesperson and manager, will make her an attractive prospect for any job that comes up.

Economists agree that retraining pays off, eventually.

“The labor market just isn’t doing a lot of hiring right now, but there are obviously long-run payoffs” to retraining, says Harvard economist Lawrence Katz. He says that’s especially true for skills that can be applied to a variety of jobs.

But while retraining may improve unemployed workers’ long-term prospects, in the shorter term many are struggling to find work. Job losses across the country have hurt blue- and white-collar workers alike and left few industries unscathed. That has created a deep pool of workers competing for the positions available.

Labor Department figures show there was one job opening for every 5.4 unemployed workers seeking work in January. That compares with about one opening for every two job seekers before the recession. As of February, 6.1 million Americans had been out of work for 27 weeks or more.

In southern New Jersey’s Cape May and Atlantic counties, which Atlantic Cape Community College serves, the problem is particularly acute. Casinos offered stable employment for years, but with gambling revenue down 20% over the past two years, that is no longer true. Resort areas along the coast are languishing and the housing sector has gone bust. Last year, the area’s average unemployment rate was 11.9%, compared with 9.3% nationally.

Atlantic Cape Community College seeks to identify what areas offer the best employment prospects, but because the downturn hit so many vital parts of the local economy, options are limited.

“The best we can do is stay in touch with the business community and what’s happening,” says economist Richard Perniciaro, director of the college’s Center for Regional and Business Research.

The college has emphasized courses such as computer-network administration, where more jobs are available.

Even so, placing students has become far more difficult than in the past. Before September 2008, when the recession gathered steam, 90% of the students who finished its career-training classes found work, usually within six months of graduation. Since then, the placement rate has fallen to 30% to 40%.

It’s the same story across the country: In Milpitas, Calif., Virginia Fermin, 58, is also looking for work and finding that new skills aren’t a silver bullet.

She spent 30 years at a semiconductor-chip factory until Hitachi Ltd. shut it down in February 2009. A nonprofit Silicon Valley retraining program steered her to BioHealth College, in San Jose, where she spent seven months training as a medical assistant, finishing with an internship in December.

“I changed my career because I think the medical field, it’s going to continue to be in demand no matter what,” she says.

But she doesn’t have a job yet. Indeed, even though health care has been one of the few industries where payrolls have been growing, that fact has made it a magnet for hordes of job seekers. In February, there were 1.2 million workers seeking employment in the broad education and health-services sector, according to the Labor Department, up from 521,000 in December 2007. In January, there were 0.6 openings per job seeker in the field, compared with 1.4 openings per job seeker in December 2007.

For many workers, training opens doors—but it doesn’t necessarily shorten the job search at a time of high unemployment.

Nancy Eade, 55, of Charlotte, N.C., was laid off as a marketing program manager at IBM Corp. in December 2008. She then took courses at management-consulting firm Right Management, and then studied to get project-management certification at the nonprofit Project Management Institute.

Early this year, Ms. Eade started taking classes in business analysis and quality control at Central Piedmont Community College. Finally, last month she landed a job as a project manager at Bank of America Corp. “I did everything right and it still took me 14 months,” she says.

Back in New Jersey, applications keep piling up on the desks of prospective employers. Before the downturn, AtlantiCare, which runs two hospital campuses in southeastern New Jersey, would get about 2,500 job applications a month. Now it gets 4,000 to 5,000.

“That’s one of the challenges people who go through retraining have—they’re in a numbers game,” says Richard Lovering, who leads human resources and organizational development at AtlantiCare.

But, he adds, the previous work experience of recent Atlantic Cape students doing internships at AtlantiCare has made them strong candidates. “Ultimately, it is going to turn; employment is going to come back and these folks are going to be much better situated,” he says.

Write to Justin Lahart at justin.lahart@wsj.com

By LAURA KUSISTO

In a New York real-estate fantasy come true, young foodies driven from the East Village by rising apartment rents are seeing some of their old restaurant favorites appear in their new neighborhood, Williamsburg.

Lower East Side and East Village favorites, including Vanessa’s Dumpling House, Mama’s Food Shop, Momofuku and Caracas Arepa Bar, have all opened new locations in Williamsburg recently. For foodies it’s like living the dream: taking their favorite restaurants and transplanting them to a cheaper neighborhood.

“Walking down Bedford is really similar to walking down the Lower East Side any given night,” said Brian Whitton, a 27-year-old who runs a marketing agency. “It is actually a better time than the Lower East Side because the river keeps out the Meatpacking crowd,” he said.

Mr. Whitton lived on the Lower East Side for a couple of years before moving recently to Greenpoint, where he often journeys to nearby Williamsburg for cuisine.

He concedes the move has required culinary sacrifices, but the loss of some of his favorite restaurants was partially offset when one of his Lower East Side mainstays, the Meatball Shop, opened a location on Bedford Avenue in July.

In fact he says he likes the new spot better. On the Lower East Side, “it is a madhouse and you can never get a table. This one is 2½ times the size and I’ve got a table a couple of times,” Mr. Whitton said.

Michael Chernow, a Meatball Shop co-owner, said the decision to expand into Williamsburg was simple. “We live out there [and] we love the neighborhood,” he said.

The trend was highlighted this week when Max, an East Village favorite for hearty pasta and other Italian dishes, rented space at Driggs Avenue and South Second Street.

Luigi Iasilli, an owner, wrote in an email that he plans to close the East Village location as the neighborhood is getting “slow.”

“I finally found what I believe I was looking for,” he said of his Williamsburg site. “For me, [it is] going back to the roots, small space, $3,000 rent, a small yard, a mixed ethnic neighborhood with only a bodega across the street.”

Peter Levitan, a broker with Lee & Associates NYC, said retail rents are significantly lower, ranging from $30 to $80 a square foot, compared with $100 to $150 a square foot.

For other longtime Manhattan restaurateurs, the cheaper rents allow them to experiment with new concepts with less risk involved. Owners who made their mark in the East Village have opened places in Williamsburg, such as Betto and Isa.

Alla Lapushchik, who helped open village night-life favorite Death & Co., struck out on her own with Post Office on Havemeyer Street, which serves 100 kinds of whiskey.

“The rent is a little more forgiving,” said Ms. Lapushchik. “When you’re not super stressed because your rent is $10,000 a month, you can focus on the parts that you like.”

As Williamsburg’s warehouses have made way for luxury condos, some locals have decried the neighborhood’s transformation into a more mainstream, family-friendly place.

An influx of Manhattan restaurants could be taken as more evidence of the loss of Williamsburg’s unique flavor.

But Mr. Whitton, the recent Lower East Side transplant, welcomes the addition of familiar spots.

“If I knew a place I recognized, I would probably go there because I knew it and I trusted it and I’ve been there before,” he said.

$1.525 million

A one-bedroom condo in a loft space with industrial detail

Property Plus:  The apartment has oversized industrial windows and 12-foot ceilings.

Property Minus: In a part of Williamsburg that has yet to shed its gritty, industrial past

Listing Agents: Evan F Church, Kate Church and Chris Cavorti of Corcoran Group, 718-422-2506

$1,795,000

A three-bedroom condo with a loft-like living room and Manhattan views

Property Plus: The condo’s price was reduced by $130,000 about nine weeks ago.

Property Minus: The price is still at high end for the neighborhood.

Listing Agents: Stefanie Barlow, Deborah Rieders and Sarah Shuken of Corcoran Group, 718-422-2514

$649,000

This two-bedroom condo is situated in a complex of four connected brick townhouses

Property Plus: Elevator stops in apartment foyer

Property Minus: The building is about eight blocks from the nearest subway stop.

Listing Agents: Sonya Spitznas and Jessica Pfeiffer of aptsandlofts.com, 718-384-5304

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A22

Prism vase

The Prism Vase is like an engagement ring for your coffee table. Marrying brass and clear acrylic, the design is a reissue of a 1950 cigarette holder by William “Billy” Haines, the blackballed-actor-turned-decorator who counted Gloria Swanson, Joan Crawford and Carole Lombard as clients. Fill the 6¼-inch-tall vase with candy, flowers (a brass liner was added to the 2012 version) or, if you must, Camels. Mr. Haines’s original version is currently in the exhibit “California Design, 1930-1965,” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art through June 3. $2,000, profilesny.com

By MELISSA KORN

This admissions season, business school alumni are the ones facing rejection.

Graduate schools including University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School are bypassing alumni in admissions interviews to meet directly with M.B.A. candidates in person or via Skype videoconferencing, despite the potential higher costs, in an attempt to ensure interviews are being conducted in a uniform manner—and in English.

For years, many graduate schools relied on their vast alumni networks to screen M.B.A. candidates. Now, some schools want tighter control over interviews to better judge whether an applicant who looks great on paper really stacks up in person. They’re also hoping that a smaller set of interviewers will allow for more consistent comparison among candidates.

Wharton, which has more than 88,000 alumni world-wide across all of its programs, is sending its six admissions officers to 12 “hub” cities, including San Francisco, São Paulo and Singapore, to interview applicants who hope to enroll this fall but can’t make it to the main campus in Philadelphia.

On-campus interviews are conducted by 45 trained second-year students. Ankur Kumar, director of M.B.A. admissions and financial aid at Wharton, says the smaller group of student interviewers, compared with “several hundred” alumni in the past, allows for some consistency. Combined, Wharton conducts as many as 3,500 interviews each year, admitting about 1,000 and enrolling 800 to 850.

Most school officials say the shift isn’t a matter of trust. But they do express concern over whether a foreign alum and candidate will conduct an interview in English. The candidate might be engaging and insightful in their native tongue, only to arrive on campus unable to read the orientation material, admissions officers say.

Some business schools are changing their approach to admissions interviews, pulling back from using alumni to screen applicants and opting instead for Skype or having staffers travel far and wide. Melissa Korn explains why on The News Hub. Photo: AP

“If you get two French people in a room and ask them to speak English together, it’s just not going to happen,” says Graham Richmond, CEO and co-founder of admissions consulting firm Clear Admit LLC.

Language is of particular concern in Asia, where Mr. Richmond says there have been incidents of applicants hiring proxies to take entrance exams or write essays. Even an interview by telephone isn’t enough to deter fraud. “How do you know it’s the real candidate on the other side,” he asks.

The Anderson School of Management, at the University of California, Los Angeles, is betting that videoconferencing may be a solution. That school’s admissions team started to interview more overseas M.B.A. candidates for the fall 2012 class by Skype in part to ensure that potential students are fluent in English.

The virtual face-to-face format will allow admissions officers to assess an applicant’s overall communication skills better than phone interviews would, says Rob Weiler, assistant dean and director of admissions and financial aid.

Mr. Weiler says evaluation of language competency has been “somewhat less consistent” overseas, but he adds that the school will still use “trained alumni,” who get updates on new questions or changes to the interview process, for many interviews.

For the latest school year, Anderson emphasized its requirement that interviews be conducted in English.

Larry Mahl, an Anderson alum based in Tokyo, says he has declined interview invitations for Anderson. “I just don’t meet enough recent candidates to compare their profiles or put their qualifications into meaningful perspective,” says Mr. Mahl, a Hollywood studio consultant.

Meanwhile, Wharton says it is making the change because its new “behavioral” interview questions, introduced during the 2010-2011 admissions cycle, require more consistent delivery.

The new interview style asks applicants about their experiences—applicants say questions include ‘Tell me about a time you participated in a negotiation,’ or ‘Tell me about a time you managed someone who was senior to you’—rather than an overview of their résumés.

Fadi Arbid, a 2003 Wharton graduate running a private-equity firm in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, says it is “a pity” that he can’t conduct interviews anymore. He allows that applicants have slipped into Arabic during interviews in his region, but says he steered them back to English.

Mr. Arbid, who worked in the admissions office while studying at Wharton, had interviewed four or five candidates a year since he graduated. He personally felt qualified to assess candidates, but says not everyone is up to the task.

“Not all the alumni are capable of judging just because they’ve downloaded the manual,” he says.

Wharton’s move comes a year after a training video, which instructed alumni interviewers how to evaluate responses to the new behavioral questions, was leaked to some admissions-consulting firms and applicants. (The video was available on a nonpassword-protected website, according to news reports at the time.)

While applicants frequently trade notes on interview questions, some in the admissions industry say the video leak was a serious blunder because it exposed details about the answers Wharton wanted to hear—not to mention what it said about the school’s faith in its alumni.

Ms. Kumar of Wharton says the school’s new approach isn’t a reaction to the video.

Taking things in-house doesn’t come cheaply. Wharton wouldn’t reveal budget figures for its traveling interviewers. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, which has conducted its interviews internally for a decade, with a half-dozen admissions officers traversing the globe to conduct 850 to 900 interviews annually, admissions director Rod Garcia says the endeavor has a five- or six-figure price tag.

Not all schools have taken the plunge.

“Either you trust your alumni or you don’t,” says Derrick Bolton, assistant dean and director of M.B.A. admissions at Stanford Graduate School of Business, where recent graduates conduct about 90% of M.B.A. interviews. He says alumni are particularly helpful with judging international candidates because they are familiar with applicants’ cultural or religious context.

But after the Wharton video incident—which Mr. Bolton said made him “cringe”—even Stanford is considering piloting some changes later this year.

Write to Melissa Korn at melissa.korn@wsj.com

By SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN

Job hunters’ stock may be rising on Wall Street.

Large and midsize financial-services institutions are hiring again, albeit modestly. Recruiters cite improving financial markets and increasing investor confidence as catalysts. They say some firms that laid off too many workers at the start of the recession now want to take advantage of the large amount of talent available. Most desired are proven performers skilled in areas such as credit, refinancing, wealth management and restructuring.

“People are starting to unlock the doors and talk to us about wanting to hire,” says Richard G. Lipstein, managing director at executive-search firm Boyden World Corp. in New York. His firm recently won an assignment for a high-level position at a private wealth-management firm that had delayed filling the opening for months. Mr. Lipstein points out that finance companies are picking up the pace of hiring as slowly and cautiously as they did during past economic downturns. “All the signs that proved to be the case back in 2002 and 1991 are starting to appear here. Having been through this before, you can smell the psychology,” he says.

The limited hiring is a bright spot amid continued job losses in financial-services sector. The Labor Department says financial-services firms shed 30,000 jobs in May and have lost nearly 600,000 jobs since December 2006. Hiring is “by no means at the level that it was at early last year,” says Adam Zoia, founder and chief executive of Glocap Search, a New York executive-search firm. “But it’s definitely up materially from the trough.”

Wells Fargo & Co., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and TIAA-CREF all are currently advertising on WallStJobs.com, a job site that specializes in the financial-services industry. Positions listed include private banker, credit manager, financial adviser and financial analyst.

In general, employers are hiring most actively in areas where demand for a particular investment strategy is growing, says Mr. Zoia. “It’s not for prospective business but existing business,” particularly in wealth management, he says.

Recruiting is somewhat robust in restructuring, says Tim Holt, a partner in the financial-services practice at executive-search firm Heidrick & Struggles International Inc. in New York. “More companies are in distress now, and the need for restructuring expertise has far outpaced other sectors,” he says.

Another relatively strong niche is credit, says Pete Deragon, director of the North America financial-services practice at executive-search firm Stanton Chase International. Credit specialists are in demand as banks work out problem loans and derivatives tied to those loans, he says.

While Bank of America Corp. of Charlotte, N.C., plans to eliminate up to 35,000 positions through 2011, to avoid redundancies following the Merrill Lynch acquisition, a recent increase in mortgage refinancing “has led to the addition of several thousand jobs,” says spokeswoman Sara Bloomquist. She says the bank has made “a significant number of strategic hires” in its Merrill Lynch unit, including financial advisers and investment bankers.

Over the past two quarters, J.P. Morgan hired roughly 950 loan counselors to help distressed borrowers, according to a spokeswoman. “We’re doing selective hiring,” she says, adding that the bank continues to eliminate some jobs and redeploy some workers. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. says it is “seeing a moderate uptick” in new hires, compared with six months ago.

Some midsize and large firms are hiring in part “to replace lost DNA,” says Peter K. Gonye, a co-leader of the investment-banking and private-equity practice groups at executive-search firm Spencer Stuart in New York. As firms shed thousands of jobs, they also lost some valuable, productive employees, he says. Top on employers’ most-wanted lists are proven performers or “revenue generators,” Mr. Gonye says. “Demand centers on those professionals who have a book of business with senior-level client contacts or those who have repeatedly demonstrated a track record as profitable traders.”

In March, 53-year-old James Solloway joined SEI Investments Co., a publicly traded asset-management firm in Oaks, Pa., as a portfolio strategist. He had been laid off 10 months earlier from a similar role at Morgan Stanley, where he had worked for 10 years. Mr. Solloway says his job search started slowly. But between January and March, he landed interviews for six jobs, including the position at SEI. He says his new job’s base salary is comparable to what he was earning in his previous position.

Some firms are trying to take advantage of the large number of experienced people who have been let go, says Deborah Markus, founder of Columbus Advisors LLC, a New York executive-search firm. “They’re beginning to open their eyes and think more strategically in terms of hiring,” she says, adding that she is hearing from twice as many companies compared with a year ago. “There’s much more of a positive mood.”

Josh Liebman, who was laid off from an executive-director position at J.P. Morgan in February, says he is more optimistic about the job market because he sees more financial-services listings. In recent weeks, Mr. Liebman, a 36-year-old certified public accountant in Livingston, N.J., says he landed interviews for two jobs, one at a large financial-news provider, the other at a large money manager. He was invited back by each for second interviews. Meanwhile, he is doing consulting work for a European bank.

Write to Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications

James Solloway had been laid off from Morgan Stanley prior to joining SEI Investments Co., a publicly traded asset-management firm in Oaks, Pa., as a portfolio strategist in March. A previous version of this article incorrectly said Mr. Solloway previously worked for J.P. Morgan Chase.

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page D1