2013年6月7日星期五

new ways of hunting a job in Danish


Steen Mengel was walking down a busy street a few weeks ago when he stumbled onto a sign reading 'an available academic is sitting here.' An arrow pointed to people sitting in the window of a storefront.
The 47-year-old real-estate developer didn't have a job to offer anybody, but he was intrigued. 'The idea, though, I like, ' he said, as he stood a few feet from the big picture windows framing the scene. 'It catches people's attention.'
Catching people's attention is exactly what more than a dozen job hopefuls in Denmark's capital are looking to do, even though they seem to be ripping a page from Amsterdam's famous red-light district to achieve their goal. After pounding the pavement for two years in some cases, highly trained professionals -- ranging from lawyers to former CEOs to tax experts -- are standing in line to get a seat in the 'exhibit.'


'I'm willing to try anything, ' said Hannibal Camel Holt, an unemployed political scientist, as he took his place in the window one afternoon. Armed with a laptop computer and wearing a dark blue button-down shirt, Mr. Holt has been 'kicking doors in and chasing leads, ' as he puts it, on and off for four years, striking out despite qualifications that include speaking six languages. For him, sitting-in represented a necessary, albeit awkward step.
'I feel like a monkey . . . in a cage as people walk by and just stare at me, ' the former tax ministry employee said as he sat behind a desk and occasionally glanced at passersby. After he had recently missed out on a job that had attracted 265 applicants, he realized that 'there comes a point when your CV is, like, dead.' A resume, in other words, doesn't necessarily do the trick.

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