Group items tagged

Daniel Schwartz could have attended an Ivy League school if he wanted to. He just doesn't see the value.

"Last fall, Carter W. Schimpff made personal visits to more than a dozen local businesses in Fort Worth, Texas, in hopes of recruiting them as clients for his start-up, Garraty Group Marketing. But the effort didn't produce any leads."

At least twice a month throughout the recession, headhunters have dangled job opportunities in front of Ryan McAllister, an actuary for Fireman's Fund Insurance Co. in Novato, Calif. "If I were ever unhappy with my employer, I could pick up the phone and find something else very quickly," says the 28-year-old Mr. McAllister. He joined the high-net-worth property and casualty insurer after graduating in 2005 from the University of California at Davis, with a bachelor's degree in applied mathematics.

The U.S. has shed 7.2 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007. How long will it take for the economy to replace them? And where will the jobs come from? The questions haunt people from the unemployed in San Francisco to officials in Washington. Glenn Atias lost his job as a $100,000-a-year statistician at a market-research firm in the Bay Area last summer when the work was outsourced to India. At 46 years old, he pores over job ads and online postings daily. "I'm stuck watching hundreds of thousands of people in my position grow in ranks each and every month," said Mr. Atias, who lives in Salton City, Calif., in a house worth less than the mortgage. When unemployment benefits run out, he said, "I literally don't know how I'll pay my mortgage, how I'll pay my health care."

"How far would you move for a job? Moving is complex and expensive, but sometimes job survival means workers don't have much of a choice, especially if you're unlucky enough to live in an area plagued by unemployment."

"In a career workshop I recently conducted there were an inordinate number of attendees who stated they were on LinkedIn but did not know how to get the most out of it. So here are some LinkedIn tips worth repeating.