Career Development

With the holidays here, you may be inclined to put your job-search efforts on hold while you celebrate. But career advisers say laid-off professionals should keep at it-as "bah hum bug" as that may seem-because the season offers some unique opportunities to boost your odds of success.

If you're gearing up for a job search now as an undergraduate or returning student, there are several bright spots where new jobs and promising career paths are expected to emerge in the next few years.

Recent economic events have forced colleges and universities to streamline their academic offerings congruent with a more pragmatic cost-benefit approach, usually at the expense of their liberal-arts programs. When a foreign-language or philosophy department graduates only a few students per year, there is no financial argument to be made for keeping the department intact. Traditional reasoning about the enrichment of the "student as future citizen" can only go so far when parents who pay the tuition or students taking the courses can't see a bottom line in the form of a lucrative job after graduation.

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.

Winter 2009-2010 issue on Charting the Projections 2008-2018 is now available online.

"There's been no shortage of warnings about the career dangers of posting racy content on sites like Facebook and Twitter. Yet many job hunters still don't heed that advice, and others don't realize they're doing just as much damage by doing things like bending the truth or spamming their résumés. Recruiters say such faux-pas can result in immediate and lasting career damage."

"For years, higher education was touted as a safe path to professional and financial success. Easy money, in the form of student loans, flowed to help parents and students finance degrees, with the implication that in the long run, a bachelor's degree was a good bet. Graduates, it has long been argued, would be able to build solid careers that would earn them far more than their high-school educated counterparts."

"Five years ago, Augusto Giacoman was commanding about 30 soldiers and leading raids in Iraq. Now he spends his days in classrooms alongside former bankers, engineers and other civilians earning a master's in business administration."

"Teacher seniority rules are meeting resistance from government officials and parents as a wave of layoffs is hitting public schools and driving newer teachers out of classrooms. In a majority of the country's school districts, teacher layoffs are handled on a "last in, first out" basis. Critics of seniority rules worry that many effective and talented teachers who have been hired in recent years will lose their jobs. "

"When James Watson was 24 years old, he spent more time thinking about women than work, according to his memoir "Genes, Girls and Gamow." His hair was unkempt and his letters home were full of references to "wine-soaked lunches." But when Mr. Watson wasn't chasing after girls, he was hard at work in his Cambridge lab, trying to puzzle out the structure of DNA. In 1953, when Mr. Watson was only 25, he co-wrote one of the most important scientific papers of all time."

"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."

"Personal Branding redefines many of the concepts used in career development and shows our clients why career development is important at all phases of their careers and not just when they are in transition."

"Can you teach a dinosaur to dance? More importantly, can you teach him to network in 21st Century style? I was skeptical. But George Langis, a veteran turnaround executive, dispelled doubts by learning new networking steps that may hasten his job hunt. He went from conventional handshake networking to creating a personal brand that would be easily marketable online. Though Mr. Langis still hesitates to plunge into "tweeting," his experience could benefit countless other older applicants with rusty job-hunting skills. "

"When I do a seminar for prospective career changers, I always ask the audience how many people are using LinkedIn to communicate directly with contacts in their new industries. Typically, only a handful of people raise their hands. But given the fact that tapping the social-media groundswell is one of the best ways to launch a new career, active participation in sites like LinkedIn should be 100%."

Career Quotes

"The idea that employers perform Internet searches on job candidates is nothing new -- and the frequency of these searches is climbing. Some experts report that up to 85% of hiring managers "Google" a candidate before or after an interview."

"Internal transfers and promotions accounted for an average of 51% of all full-time positions filled in 2009, down from 39% in 2008 and 34% in 2007, reports CareerXroads, a staffing-strategy consulting firm in Kendall Park, N.J. Survey respondents included 41 companies that employ a combined 1.8 million U.S. workers. Last year these firms collectively filled 176,420 positions. "

FEBRUARY 19, 2010 │ VOLUME 4, ISSUE 6 In This Issue: Quinn Outlines Plans to Streamline GED Process WIB Suspends New Licensing Policy Nancy Giles to Emcee 2010 Awards Reception Spotlight on Opportunity Award Winners Albany Lobby Day is March 9! Vocational Conference Introduces Foster Youth to New Opportunities Obama Defends ARRA As Administration Steps Up Job-Creating Programs Workforce Marketplace

"Before Andree Bogaerts returned to work as an attorney last fall after nine years at home with her three children, she says, she took a little training first-"a crash course in Excel spreadsheets from my 12-year-old daughter." "