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The fact that hiring is up these days might seem like bad news to the area's outplacement firms, which make money helping the "right-sized" land on their feet.
Not so. Outplacement firms say they're as glad as anyone to see the duration of job searches starting to shrink and the percentage of clients who find jobs that pay better than the ones they lost starting to grow.
Outplacement firms say they can afford to remain optimistic because the "re-engineering" trend seems here to stay, meaning there will be a permanent background level of innocent job-loss victims --and that many people will need outplacement service more than once in their working lives.
"It's a growing business," said John Borbeau, managing principal of the Southfield regional office of Philadelphia-based outplacement consultants Right Associates Inc. "What drives it is that change is happening so fast and there's 1,000 things driving change."
Also, many of the firms are branching out into new, but related, services.
Most firms, for example, are now offering a version of outplacement to spouses who must pull up stakes and find a new job when a mate is transferred.
Up to now, many of those spouses have been women, whose careers might not be as lucrative as their husband's. But that's changing too. One trend spotted by Joan Hanpeter, managing director of the Michigan offices...