Pa. Jobs Web Site Gets Purged After Drawing Spotlight in Corbett-Wolf Debate
By Pat Loeb
HARRISBURG, Pa. (CBS) -- Pennsylvania labor officials had to scramble to scrub some questionable jobs off a state employment web site that Gov. Corbett promoted during his debate yesterday with Tom Wolf.
The "Job Gateway" site pulls in listings from all over, including Craigslist, so ads for escorts and exotic dancers were among the 200,000 jobs the governor boasted of during the debate.
When the Wolf campaign made an issue of it, those jobs were removed, but some of the jobs that remain include unpaid internships and dubious prospects such as movie and reality TV roles.
"Then there's stuff where people come back and say, 'They want me to pay to get on their list,' and that's very egregious," notes Tim Styer, a job developer for the Philadelphia Unemployment Project.
He calls applying solely through the site "a fool's errand."
"None of our people have had success with it at all," he told KYW Newsradio today.
Pennsylvania labor secretary Julia Hearthway defends the site. She says she expanded its offerings to give job seekers more choice.
"These are, by and large, very legitimate, good jobs that people may want to look at," she said today. "The whole point of pulling in all the available jobs was to let the individual decide, 'Is this an opportunity that might advance my career or help me get the type of job I want?' "
Hearthway says the site also has tools to help job seekers improve their résumés and practice their interview skills.
"If people could use it as another tool, just like all the other tools they get bombarded with, they could find it helpful," she says.