Career Trends

This article takes a very positive stance on Canada's current offshoring climate. Currently 50% of Canadian companies surveyed are outsourcing at least 10% of their work, creating an industry worth between $2.5 and $3 billion in Canada. But, according to the article, Canadian companies are offshoring not only because of cost efficiency and good productivity, but out of necessity. Apparently there are just not enough Canadians willing or able to fill all of the jobs that IT companies are offering. I have a hard time believing what this article says is true, since it is coming from the vice President of i-Gate Canada himself (one of the most successful outsourcing companies in Canada). I would like to see more research to support his words.

These sites (and also the below link) offer a great deal of advice for staying on top of social media. http://readwrite.com/

I found this to be a really informative site. On this page, we can find helpful guides to using popular social media tools like Linkedin, Pininterest, facebook, twitter and blogging all from a career counsellor perspective.

OpenSource.com focuses on how open sources (flattener #4) are applied to different areas in life including business, education, government, health, law, and more. They focus on real experiences and ways to solve problems in the open source way. Explore the webist via the tabs at the top of the page.

SEO stands for "search engine optimization." It is the process of getting traffic from the "free," "organic," "editorial" or "natural" search results on search engines. All major search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo have primary search results, where web pages and other content such as videos or local listings are shown and ranked based on what the search engine considers most relevant to users.

I choose this website on search engine optimization to relate to Friedman's ninth flattener: In-forming. This resource explains how making your website popular through optimization influences the success of the web page.

This article is interesting because we are used to major companies outsourcing their positions across the world, but here a service paid for by Canadian taxes is being outsourced elsewhere, taking jobs away from Canadian taxpayers. This introduces an interesting ethical issue, as many believe it is wrong for a company paid for exclusively by Calgarians is outsourcing jobs to other areas of the world.

Here is a website where people can join an on-line "coffee" chat room to discuss and share insights and spark ideas that will "plant the seeds of the future opportunities" We're connecting students, recent grads, and young professionals with leaders and established professionals over a cup of coffee. This site demonstrates the ability to connect with professionals both locally AND globally. What a great idea!

EARLY NEXT MONTH local dignitaries will gather for a ribbon-cutting ceremony at a facility in Whitsett, North Carolina. A new production line will start to roll and the seemingly impossible will happen: America will start making personal computers again. This article discusses the reasons why offshoring activity is declining and the trend towards "onshoring".

This article highlights insourcing and GE's initiative to bring back some of its production to the U.S.

This program is program developed specifically for gymnastics clubs. It manages classes, fees, and even can keep track of inventory and sales at your front desk. Parents can access this from home and fill in registration information, sign up online for available classes and even make monthly payments without ever needing to come into the gym.

This web-tool was originally a special module of the web tools offered by Tools for Organizations since 2000. However, in 2010 it was released a stand-alone software for scheduling and managing volunteers for events and projects. The system allows volunteers to sign up for hours, once the event is completed the staff member then confirms these hours, and these hours are logged and tracked.

Constant contact is an online marketing tool. It allows users to create professional looking emails with easy to use templates. It also provides many other tools to incorporate into your emails such as surveys, RSVP's for events, coupons, Facebook promotions and much more.

This article explores how, although outsourcing has not reduced the number of jobs available in Canada as much as people once feared, it does however impact the wages available in Canada as companies now have stronger bargaining power.

This article explores the anger many Canadians felt over outsourcing. However, the author believes that Canada must learn to deal with this, as it is something that has happened before to us (with manufacturing) and is not happening to other countries as well (manufacturing is moving from China to Vietnam)

This article has a distinctly different view of the fall of the Berlin Wall than Friedman does. While Friedman saw the fall of the walk to be a great equalizer, Jean-Pierre Lehman states that other walls went up in its place.

Article from the Global Policy Journal, helping to visually conceptualize the location of the "centre" of the earth's economic activity over various time periods, giving reasoning for its predictions up to 2050. It also provides policy implications for this shift. Excellent article--I highly recommend the read.

This is part of The Globe's Wealth Paradox series , a two-week examination into how the income divide is shaping Canada. Income levels for most Canadians haven't changed much in recent years, but for one group: The wealthy are pulling away from the pack.

Last Tuesday, Tata Motor's Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) opened its first plant in Changshu, China. The luxury car-maker's $1.78-billion Make-in-China push has come a little over a month after Tata Group chairman Cyrus Mistry confessed to be greatly encouraged under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's leadership to join the "Make In India" programme that, he said, brings together industry and government for crafting a new future.

This short article focuses on the advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing. It also shares the most commonly outsourced businesses.