Help Still Wanted

(2 of 2)

The seniors signed up by Cisco last fall have a new appreciation of Internet time: they were recruited, hired and fired in the space of six months without ever doing a day's work. They even collected three months' severance plus the run of Cisco's outplacement services. Some jilted seniors were happy to bid adieu to this loser. "In the fall Cisco was healthy and growing," a student says. "Now it's slowing down, and I don't want to work for a company with problems."

Ironically, the slumping job market could help rekindle employee loyalty, which had seemed as old-fashioned as a time clock when workers could bounce around with impunity. Accounting major Katherine Stiveson plans to start a $41,000-a-year job with Deloitte & Touche this summer after she graduates from California State University at Northridge. And Stiveson vows to work extra hard. "I'm going to make sure I'm doing my job well and stay an aggressive employee," she says. "I don't want to be laid off."

Sears recruiter Tiefenthaler spots a similar trend. "There used to be a job-hopping environment, but now I think the pendulum is swinging back, and people may want to stay with one company longer," she says. That shift has Sears "feeling pretty good." At the outset of the decade, it would be ironic indeed if one of the first legacies of the New Economy '90s turned out to be a docile class of '01.