Recently, I held a focus group with 12 college students - juniors and seniors. The discussion was around their experiences with college career centers…and it was fascinating. I'm not kidding.

Generation Y, our generation, is a strong and ambitious one, and now that many of us have begun to launch our careers, we are constantly seeking advice, feedback and new ways to improve and advance ourselves.

Whether you know it or not, we Gen Yers have a competitive edge over older job seekers in the career search. We are less expensive to hire, we are more impressionable (not having already settled into one company culture or way of doing things), and we have grown up with ever-changing technology, having become fast learners as a result.

LinkedIn is the leading professional network on the web, so if you don't have an account already, get one today! If you have one already, you're off to a great start. LinkedIn is an invaluable asset to all you job seekers out there, providing you many unique features, including your own professional online resume, its own job board, a comprehensive company directory and more.

The role of narrative and constructivist thought in career development continues to be the subject of healthy debate and discussion. As career practitioners, what are the best tools to use? There is no right answer. Different tools can be effective for different clients. So, while traditional assessments continue to be useful, no career practice is complete without the use of narrative. Our challenge as practitioners is to integrate the power of narrative into our service delivery tool kit.

When I was training to be a professional counselor (1969-1971), the vast majority of my professors (and my colleagues) stressed that the "ideal" counselor would strive to view all clients with 'unconditional positive regard' and conduct their counseling sessions in a 'client centered' and 'client directed' approach taught by Carl Rogers, the most prominent and respected counselor educator of the era. While my natural personality is to be very extroverted, assertive, and directive, I learned and practiced the Rogerian techniques as I began to provide career counseling and train other counselors.

The Employment Projections Program develops information about the labor market for the Nation as a whole for 10 years in the future.

You're a what? Futurist: Job options for business/economic majors.

Career Planning the Second Time Around

Angel Román, a group member, was interviewed and quoted in this article. Kudos!

Starting any new job is hard, and coming back to work after a long layoff can be even harder. Here's how to make a successful re-entry.

How do you decide what jobs to apply for? Referral from a friend? New alert from Monster.com? There will always be temptations due to the nature of being in transition. Most of us while looking want to stop looking and find a job (I say most as some really love being out and free!). And anything that looks kind of close gets our heart palpitating.

I often write about things you should do on LinkedIn to maximize your effectiveness. Today we're going to look at the other side of the equation…the mistakes. The five mistakes listed here are related to your ability to eventually monetize LinkedIn.

The recession is driving home a bitter truth about the 21st-century job market: A tidy, linear path to a secure career is increasingly hard to find.

Those who are unemployed certainly undergo one of life's most traumatic experiences. It is a stressful, life-changing event that can lead to negative mental, physical, and emotional consequences, jeopardize financial security, erode the sense of identity, and cause family relationships to deteriorate.

When I was training to be a professional counselor (1969-1971), the vast majority of my professors (and my colleagues) stressed that the "ideal" counselor would strive to view all clients with 'unconditional positive regard' and conduct their counseling sessions in a 'client centered' and 'client directed' approach taught by Carl Rogers, the most prominent and respected counselor educator of the era. While my natural personality is to be very extroverted, assertive, and directive, I learned and practiced the Rogerian techniques as I began to provide career counseling and train other counselors.

For learning to occur, younger students in particular often need to experience learning in a way that is meaningful to them. Teaching about careers to these students can be challenging especially since the concept of a career represents an aspect of human development which is far off in the future and associated with something that is "adult-like." The idea of a vocation or career represents a certain level of abstractness that students may not be developmentally ready for. Teaching middle and high school students about careers through activities and games may serve as the perfect conduit as students naturally like to learn while being active and engaged.

A few months ago, Andrea Kornfeld was working on a computer program to shave milliseconds off of transactions at Merrill Lynch. Now, she's spending her severance pay on a mosquito net and malaria pills for her new job: as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching computer skills to high-school students in Cameroon.

Every year at about this time I find myself humming, "It's May; it's May," a song from the musical Camelot. This year I took a closer look at the lyrics. I had missed the second half of a couplet mid-song: "The month of great dismay." For the many people on the job market who are still in limbo, that line has probably become a too-familiar refrain. Now that you've reached May without a job, what are your options?

With the unemployment rate hitting a new 25-year high Friday, many workers and layoff victims in the worst-suffering industries are looking for safer sectors.

With the unemployment rate hitting a new 25-year high Friday, many workers and layoff victims in the worst-suffering industries are looking for safer sectors.