Group items tagged

"Have you ever received a call from a reporter looking for a career development professional? Such calls could be triggered by a number of different events. If you advertise your services or events such as career or job fairs, reporters may follow up. If the economy is in a downturn, with major employers eliminating jobs and millions of people re-thinking their career futures, reporters may come to you as an expert source of comment and analysis. If the economy is expanding and people are exploring new work options, reporters may seek observations about the resulting trends. If your organization issues a press release, you should be prepared to field any inquiries that result."

Think a bachelor's or master's degree is the only way to advance your career? Think again. There are many associate's degree careers that pay high salaries. In fact, going after the highest paying jobs with a 2-year degree is a great way to handle debt after college graduation and reduce job-search anxieties after college. Whether you're looking for a fresh start in a new, more lucrative field or enrolling in college for the first time, a 2-year associate's degree from a community college is one of the quickest routes to bringing home more bacon each week. This is especially good news for those high school graduates who are wondering what to do after high school and before college. "

"Working collaboratively with other teachers, school counselors can contribute to the development of an optimum learning environment while collecting information to assist with career counseling. Having been a former school counselor competing for classroom time, I found that working together with teachers on previously established assignments can create a new opportunity in the classroom for career counselors who are looking for strategy to help students without impinging on teachers' classroom time. Getting into the classrooms for counseling sessions need not be so challenging when using activities already in place that can serve dual purposes."

"No one is surprised to hear that seniors on the threshold of graduation visit the Career Resource Center (CRC) looking for job search assistance. Those who have procrastinated on career choice and finding employment see the finish line approaching and realize they need to find something that will keep them fulfilled and flush with cash once they're marched to the edge of campus and pushed out of the proverbial nest."

"For a lot of small-business owners, "cloud computing" is the latest IT buzzword to leave them scratching their heads. To demystify things, here's a primer for companies looking to wade into cloud services for the first time. What are cloud services?"

I am driven, hard working and smart, but I lack the self-discipline to look for a job. I have hired a career counselor, but I still can't muster the motivation I need and am always procrastinating. Do you have any advice for being a more effective job seeker?

Many workers who lost jobs in the hardest-hit sectors of the economy are now looking to change careers. But crafting a résumé that shows the benefits of hiring an industry outsider can be challenging.

"As talk of a thaw in hiring freezes rises above a whisper, many people are already planning to look for a new position when the job market picks up. "

"With prospects for new jobs or promotions still looking grim, many workers are struggling to take their careers to the next level. Some, though, have found ways to cope and make themselves more marketable for when companies start hiring again."

"Kelley McDonald has always loved exploring new terrain. In home videos as early as age 3, "I'm always off by myself, looking under rocks or catching and studying bees," she says. Today, at 18, the Apple Valley, Minn., college student is studying for a science career in the fast-growing field of nanotechnology-working with materials at the molecular or atomic level. That makes her one of the lucky ones-a young adult whose career passion is in sync with one of the hot jobs of the near future."

"Kent Niederhofer can't find enough mechanical engineers to work for him - in southeastern Michigan. You know, where Detroit is, with its 13.3% unemployment rate. Niederhofer is president of the American branch of Ricardo, an engineering consultancy that designs the power trains of some of the coolest stuff around: Bugatti sports cars, huge wind turbines and unmanned aerial vehicles. "We are doing rocket science every day," says Niederhofer. "It's just not on rockets." So Ricardo got a little desperate, renting a billboard to place a help-wanted ad that featured a picture of a sexy-looking sports car, the tagline "Why you became an engineer" and a Web address for job seekers. He calls it engineer porn."

"There are nearly 14 million people looking for a job, but few have the skills to fill the four computer engineering openings at Gowalla Inc."

"WASHINGTON-The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has begun a probe of whether employers and recruitment firms are unlawfully barring the unemployed from applying for certain jobs, the agency's chairman said. EEOC Chairman Jacqueline Berrien said at a hearing Wednesday that the agency began hearing anecdotal reports of the practice last summer, including from news reports and from worker-advocacy groups gathering examples of help-wanted advertisements that said only individuals who currently had jobs should apply. "We'll take a close look at what we heard and consider if there's anything we might need to do to clarify standards," she said."

Focused jobseeking: A measured approach to looking for work.

On one side, the Obama Administration, Capitol Hill Democrats, Wall Street whizzes and budget experts have been wearing out their thesauruses looking up new words for "catastrophe" as they try to explain to the public that failing to raise the $14.3 trillion federal debt limit by Aug. 2 would result in a radically different country on Aug. 3. Read more: http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2011/07/19/debt-ceiling-could-a-deal-cost-the-economy-a-million-jobs/#ixzz1SeaCmUlr

There are many reasons U.S. companies give for their lack of robust hiring -- from weak consumer spending to uncertainty over the direction of government policies on debt and spending. Some industries have significantly boosted employment over the past year while others continue to shed workers. But even those adding jobs are hiring far fewer than would be needed to put America's 14.1 million unemployed back to work. Here's what it looks like on the ground in some industries:

Could you pass a Facebook background search? The next time you apply for a job, don't be surprised if you have to agree to a social-media background check. Many U.S. companies and recruiters are now looking at your Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and other accounts and blogs -- even YouTube -- to paint a clearer picture of who you are. Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903461104576464823762727188.html#ixzz1Tnrdf6Qk

"The job market is tough for many. But people still need others to repair their cars, do their accounting, fix computers, write apps and even sell them things. And there's been more growth in opportunities for those occupations than others, according to online job postings."

"Forget privacy. Shared workspaces are the latest trend in office space. The offices, set up in a variety of ways but emphasizing open space and the ability to rent a single desk, are also known as co-working spaces. Such offices have long been popular with technology start-ups in the San Francisco Bay Area looking for cheap space, but as the latest tech wave rises, shared workspaces are popping up in cities around the country. Besides the cost advantages, entrepreneurs in technology and other fields say they like co-working spaces because their open floor plans boost collaboration, offer more flexibility on leases and can even help land investors."

The longer one has been out of work, the harder it is to find a new job. New unemployment figures out Friday from the Labor Department are likely to point to continued pain in August. At last count, nearly 4.5 million Americans had been unemployed for 52 weeks or longer and were still looking for work.