High-tech service leverages internet to give competitive advantages
to senior personnel
BOCA RATON, FLORIDA, January 31, 2005 - John
Mee had a dream management job in a Fortune 500 computer company
in Phoenix, Arizona, complete with a mahogany paneled office
and a marble floor. Here, he originated 20 new computer products
which garnered worldwide sales of $3 billion. Little did he
know he was about to become a Califorrnia Raisen.
Having achieved a dream job while still in
his thirties, Mr. Mee felt invincible. He thought if he ever
needed to get another job, he could waltz into companies anywhere
and get hired in an instant.
One merger and five years later, Mee was
pushing a broom on a factory floor in Carlsbad, California
for $5.50 an hour. “This was a real wake up call,”
he remembers. “I never thought it could happen to me.”
But the day that changed his life forever came a few months
later, when he became a Raisin. Mee and another temp donned
large brown raisin outfits and entertained 335 Kentucky Fried
Chicken franchise holders in a convention in San Diego as
"The Dancing California Raisins" for $8.00 an hour.
“The other Raisin was 24,” Mee
recalls. “If you’re 24 and you’re a Raisin,
there’s still time to redeem yourself. But if you’re
44 and you’re a Raisin, something has gone terribly
wrong indeed." In Mee’s case, he had applied for
over a thousand jobs and received zero offers. What was wrong?
“I had crossed the 40 year line,” he muses.
Mee recalls: “When I was in my twenties, I was hired again
and again for jobs I was underqualified for. In my forties, I was
passed over again and again for jobs I was overqualified for.”
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