The Pharr Press (Pharr, Tex.), Vol. 63, No. 3, Ed. 1 Thursday, January 17, 1985 Page: 3 of 10
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The Pharr Press,January 17,1985 Page 3
Financial Section
Computers May Be The Best Friend Of
Americans Looking For Work In 1985
By LOUIS RUKEYSER
NEW YORK-Computers may
be the best friend of Americans
looking for work in the slower-
growth economy of 1985.
Hundreds of corporations that
used to rely on more traditional
methods of recruitment will be
counting on electronic tools this
year to help them find the
special people they need.
For years, academic
economists and employment ex-
perts have argued that part of
the ongoing U.S. jobs problem
was that we failed to match
available openings with
available workers on any kind of
systematic, nationwide basis.
In 1985, more than ever
before, their theory may be put
to the test. As Roy Casper, co-
founder of Computer Assisted
Recruitment International
(CARI), one of the largest com-
panies in the field, expressed it
to me, “We ofen wonder what
percentage of today’s unem-
ployment rate will be eliminated
when use of computerized
recruitment becomes universal.”
Whatever the validity of such
speculation, the appeal of the
computers for some workers and
.firms is obvious. Job seekers can
(register with a computerized
recruitment service at low or not
cost, possibly eliminating the
necessity to send out hundreds
of resumes. Employers, in turn,
can cut recruitment expenses by
up to 75 percent-saving as much
as $10,000 in locating, screening
and hiring each applicant, when
the system works.
Hence it’s no surprise that the
business version of computer
matchmaking is booming. CARI,
a joint venture with General
Electric Information Services
based in Schaumberg, 111., ex-
pects to have at least a million
job applicants in computerized
recruiting data banks by the end
of the year. Other major com-
puterized resume banks include
Career Placement Registry,
Alexandria, Va; Career Systems,
Inc., West Palm Beach, Fla.; Job
Net, Bedford, Mass., and the
Registry, Cincinnati, Ohio-plus a
host of regional operations.
The process is simple. Data
on candidates are entered
within days of receipt and can
be accessed by employers
through a half-hour search of the
files. Registrants are required to
confirm their job-seeking status
on a regular basis. Their
current employer is
automatically blocked from
seeing that their resume is up for
grabs. Employers, in turn, don’t
have to divulge their recruiting
plans to competitors.
Despite wild claims from some
in the business, computerized
resumes are not likely to replace
such traditional job-seeking
techniques as classified ads,
pounding the pavement and em-
ployment agencies. But even a
minor slice of the industry could
be substantial; it’s estimated
that American corporations
spend $11.5 billion annually in
their recruiting efforts, and the
Employment Management
Association reports an average
cost per hire of $4,992.
Companies looking to fill posts
in the $20,000 to $70,000 range-
the natural targets for com-
puterized resumes-are typically
deluged with unsolicited can-
didates. Some firms receive as
many as 250,000 resumes a
year. But one study showed that
on average, only one interview is
scheduled for every 245 resumes
received.
. Similarly, while an average
classified ad is a proven respon-
se-getter-generating anywhere
from 20 to 1,000 resumes-some
employers find that they then
have to screen out 95 to 98 per-
cent of these because those
submitting them lack the
necessary job skills. High-priced
executive head-hunters, on the
other hand, generally do not ac-
cept unsolicited job applicants.
So a number of leading U.S.
corporations (including
American Express, Bank of
America, Burroughs, Pratt &
Whitney, Prudential, Wang and
Xerox) are known to be testing
the waters by adding the com-
puterized resume services to
their conventional employment
methods.
Casper, of CARI, maintains
that the services can save money
for any employer hiring more
than five professionals a year.
Meanwhile, a qualified job ap-
plicant may have little to lose in
contacting one of the computer
mating services (especially
those, like CARI, that have no
registration fee), filling out the
company’s profile forms and
waiting for a response from
some employer looking for
precisely those qualifications.
Just as the computerized
dating services are not likely to
replace random romance in
America, so the computerized
resume services are not likely
entirely to supplant the historic
ways of finding a job. But for
those who want a modern twist
to an old pursuit, the computers
are muscling in at the office just
as they are after-hours. Spon-
taneous it’s not, but Yentl the
Matchmaker is now available
through the nearest modem.
And so, perhaps, is Jerry the Job-
Finder.
Pan Am To Offer Real Estate Class
EDINBURG-Pan American
University’s School of Business
Administration is offering a
course in real estate marketing
beginning Tuesday, Jan. 22.
The class will meet each
Tuesday and Thursday from
5:30 to 9:30 p.m., concluding
Feb. 14.
The course carries 30 of the
180 hours of credit required by
the Texas Real Estate Com-
TSTI To Hold Fair
Harlingen, Tx.-Texas State
Technical Institute will hold its
1985 Winter Career Fair
January 23-25.
The two and one-half days of
employment activities for
students, staff and employers
will be held on the Harlingen
campus and at the Sheraton Inn.
M.L. Gold, manager of Dallas
Employment for Texas In-
struments, will give a presen-
tation at the Wednesday evening
general session.
This year’s career fair theme
is “Great TSTI Sweepstakes:
Recruit and Win.” The schedule
will consist of company orien-
tations for students and staff
members, interviews with
graduation condidates, in-
dividually tailored tours of TSTI
programs of study, and other
employment related activities.
According to Ruby Casteel,
placement officer, “The
schedule is designed whereas
both employers and would be
employees will be winners at the
first 1985 career fair.”
Over 400 TSTI students will
be completing studies in 21
career fields on February 22.
Graduating programs include
food service, business skills,
medical, farm and ranch, draf-
ting, and electronic related sub-
jects.
If a Valley company is in need
of technically skilled employees,
they are invited to participate in
this year’s TSTI career fair.
Employers desiring more infor-
mation may contact the TSTI-
Harlingen Placement Office at
512/425-4922, ext. 362.
mission as a prerequisite for
filing an application for
salesman licensure. It is open to
the public with no prior ex-
perience or training required.
Topics will include real estate
professionalism and ethics, the
characteristics of successful
sales persons, the management
of time, behavior of consumers
and the psychology of marketing,
listing procedures, advertising,
negotiation, closing sales, and
financing sales. A special unit
will be given on the Deceptive
Trade Practices-Consumer
Protection Act.
The class will be taught by
James M. Wilson and Susan Jar-
vis of Pan American’s School of
Business. Wilson holds a Ph.D in
Real Estate Taxes Item
For Congress
management from the University
of Arkansas. Jarvis earned her
bachelor’s degree from Sam
Houston State University and
her law degree from Tulane
University.
Fee for the course is $165, not
including the textbook.
Registration may be made by
mailing checks to the Paying and
Collections Office, Ad-
ministration Building, Pan
American University, Edinburg,
Tx. 78539.
Persons may also register at
the Paying and Collections Of-
fice, Room 137, Administration
Building, Pan American Univer-'
sity. For more information, call
381-3559 or 381-3311.
3y KENNETH R. HA
WASHINGTON-The 99th
Congress is barely a week old,
but battle lines are forming over
major real-estate tax changes
that could vitally affect
American home owners, renters,
investors and developers in 1985
and beyond.
One of the hottest, unresolved
real-estate issues of 1984-the so-
called “imputed-interest-rate”
controversy-popped up on the
new year’s agenda within hours
of Congress’ return. House
Ways and Means Committee
member Bill Archer (R-Texas)
readied legislation that would
gut all the statutory provisions
on imputed interest contained in
the 1984 tax law.
Archer’s bill would “wipe the
slate clean again” for home
owners and investors, in the
words of an aide. It would force
the Internal Revenue Service
(IRS) to return to its traditional
tax treatment of seller-financing
of primary homes, vacation- and
second-home property, farms,
small businesses and commer-
cial real estate, no matter how
small or large the sale transac-
tion.
When a seller assists a pur-
chaser with below-market “take-
back” mortgage financing, in
other words, the IRS wouldn’t
bat an eyelash under the Archer
plan, unless the rate on the note
was below 9 percent. In that
case, the IRS would define the
true economic rate on the tran-
saction as 10 percent.
Archer’s clean-the-slate
repeal bill would throw out not
only the original 1984 tax-reform
changes on imputed interest,
signed into law by President
Reagan last July, but the eleven-
th-hour modifications made to
the law as Congress rushed to
adjournment in October.
The original, complex law
would have forced seller-
financers of homes of $250,000
or less to charge their pur-
chasers at least 90 percent of
applicable Treasury borrowing
rates (currently 13.4 to 13.5 per-
cent) or face a higher imputed
rate for federal-tax purposes.
Sellers of commercial property,
second homes, businesses and
residences over $250,000 faced
even steeper minimum federally
set rates, ranging well above 15
percent in some cases.
The eleventh-hour com-
promise put these controversial
changes on ice until July 1, 1985,
for real-property transactions
involving no more than $2 million
and where sellers’ notes carried
at least 9 percent rate. After
July 1, under the compromise,
the 1984 tax-law provisions will
Up With People
Tuesday Jan. 22,1985 7:30 p.m.
&
Wednesday Jan. 23,1985 7:30 p.m.
7:30 P.M.
At McAllen International
Civic Center McAllen, Tx.
ADVANCE TICKETS
*5.50 AT H-E-B
*6.50 AT THE CAIt
ADVANCE TICKETS AVAILABLE AT H-E-B
STORES IN __ . llf
McAllen, Pharr, Weslaco,
Mission, Edinburg,
Harlingen
H-E-B
FOODS ‘ DWJGS
take full legal effect, unless1
Congress steps in with a new
solution.
A key member of the tax-*
writing Senate Finance Commit-
tee, David Durenberger (R-
Minn.), believes he has such a
solution-one more politically
palatable to the Treasury, the
President and revenue-raising
Democrats than Archer’s repeal
plan.
Durenberger intends to in-
troduce legislation that will
exempt all residential and com-
mercial transactions under
either $1.5 million or $2 million
from 1984 tax-reform-act
coverage. Property transactions
above that level will need to
carry a rate of just 80 percent of
the applicable Treasury
borrowing rate, 10.7 percent
currently, to escape special IRS
scrutiny.
Although it is still too early to
predict with certainty, Capitol
Hill tax specialists say Duren-
berger’s bill or something akin to
it offers the best bet for real-
estate owners and investors this
session. Absolute repeal of the
1984 imputed-interest
legislation, they argue, would be
difficult to get past the House
Ways and Means Committee’s
tough chairman, Dan
Rostenkowski (D-I1L), as well as
Senate Majority Leader Bob
Dole (R-Kan.), the two principal
architects of last year’s tax-law
changes.
Repealing everything up to the
$1.5 million or $2 million levels,
on the other hand, according to a
tax committee staff member,
“would give just about
everybody what they want.”
Small-scale home sellers,
buyers, farmers, businessmen
and real-estate investors “could
forget that 1984 even hap-
pened,” he said. Larger-scale
investors and sellers would also
get a lower minimum interest-
rate standard than under
currently effective tax law, and
could easily adjust to the new
system.
Whatever the ultimate
solution to the imputed-rate con-
troversy, it’s likely to get tied up
this spring with other tax and
revenue issues on the
congressional deficit-reduction
docket. Ways and Means Com-
mittee member Bill Gradison (R-
Ohio), for example, wants
Congress to raise federal taxes
on real estate dollar-for-dollar td
cover any federal-revenue losses
caused by loosening the 1984
standards on imputed rates.
Fellow committee member
Fortney (Pete) Stark (D-Calif.)
has some provocative places to
start. He is completing a bill that
would tax all real-estate limited
partnerships with more than 35
investors as corporations. HiS
bill would kill the multi-billion-
dollar real-estate tax-shelter inf
dustry in one fell swoop.
Stark is also considering a far
more controversial concept: 1
replacement of current capital-
gains tax treatment on real-
estate sales and exchanges with
an automatic national transfer
tax, possibly as low as 4 percent!
All changes in ownership of
houses, commercial buildings,
apartments or land would be it
with the levy. Although the
revenue estimates aren’t com-
plete, Stark’s tax-legislation ad-
visers believe that even a 4 per-
cent transfer tax would raise
more federal dollars than the
current, deduction-laden system;
GRANDMA’S HOU!
HANDMADE TREASURES
FOR LITTLE KIDS
WillGive Away a handmade outfit for your
cabbage patch doll each Saturday at 4:00
‘ p.m. All you have to do is register. Last
weeks winner of a dress & panties was
i RD. & alameda ST Virginia Mathias of Weslaco. This week we
san juan, Tx have a shirt, jeans, fringed “leather” vest &
781-6938 boots
• Wal-Mart Sells for Less •
WAL-MART
#1' i \
A limited time offer on the §
portrait deal of a lifetime. ?
2-8 x 1 Os, 3-5 x 7s, 15 wallets
20 portraits for just
*5 OFF
IICOUPONI ■■■■■■■■
Present this coupon to our pho-
tographer with 950 deposit on
your portrait collection. One
coupon per family. Not valid
with any other offer. $1 sitting fee for each additional subject in
same portrait. Satisfaction always or your money refunded. Offer
valid only on dates and at locations listed.
Wednesday, January 23
Thru
Saturday, January 26
Daily: 10 a.m. - 8 p.m.
U.S. 83 Business East, Pharr
WAL-MART
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Mata, Arnoldo. The Pharr Press (Pharr, Tex.), Vol. 63, No. 3, Ed. 1 Thursday, January 17, 1985, newspaper, January 17, 1985; Pharr, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth867019/m1/3/: accessed July 9, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Pharr Memorial Library.