Seven Hot Jobs for 2012

Lawyers and detectives may be the roles most commonly depicted on TV, but the jobs that get high ratings in real-life are often lesser known. According to salary research from Robert Half, demand for positions such as mobile applications developers, data warehouse analysts and user experience (UX) designers is expected to grow in the coming year as companies look to invest in their information technology (IT) infrastructure and digital presence. Continue Reading

Survey Shows Job Seekers Far More Optimistic Than a Year Ago

While accelerated job creation failed to materialize in 2011, callers to an annual job-search advice hotline were more optimistic than a year ago, as nearly 30 percent estimated they would find a new job within three months, up from 18 percent who said the same in 2010.

However, even as the percentage of optimistic callers surged from a year, so did the percent of those predicting it would take more than a year to find employment. Ten percent of the job seekers felt the job search would last more than 12 months, compared to four percent who anticipated a prolonged job search last year. Continue Reading

One Final Semester – What’s Next?

The job market isn’t exactly ideal for recent college graduates, but recent studies have shown that hiring is finally headed in a positive direction. Bloomberg Businessweek reported that recent graduates of the class of 2011 are seeing progress due to a “window of economic growth,” and that window could be responsible for the greatest increase of hired, newly graduated employees since the school-to-work transition of the class of 2008. Although the increase benefited this year’s college grads in general, grads with degrees in business and accounting saw the most success. Continue Reading

The importance of rewarding employees at Christmas

If the most competitive ingredient that a business has is its people, then it follows that the greatest benefit to a business is to have decisive confident people who readily take ownership of what they do.

Yet surprisingly many businesses do not retain good people. The percentage of people that leave corporations is unnecessarily high. To invest in training for the benefit of your competition may be common practice; but surely to retain such talent makes much more sense?

It is, however, a challenge to persuade employees to take ownership and to be accountable. Initiatives are implemented, structures revised, systems put in place, and training commenced, but with what result? Employees get excited; but there is not the transformation hoped for. Why? Continue Reading

Business Owners Guide To Learning How to Utilize Interns When Creating An Internship Program

When it comes to creating an internship program, there are so many misconceptions out there about what an intern actually does. If you think that an intern is supposed to be making coffee, picking up your dry cleaning, or making photo copies, then you are completely missing the boat. When it comes down to it, interns are some of the best and brightest young minds out there on the job market. Interns are known for injecting new ideas, passion, and energy into businesses that may be stuck in their ways. This is because they are still new and haven’t been sucked into the status quo way of doing things in the business world. Continue Reading

7 Strategies for Overcoming the Resume Black Hole

We hear from job seekers every day who are sending out hundreds of resumes and job applications never to be heard from again. It’s hard to tell if it’s the resume that’s at fault or the company that’s not hiring, already hired, or just sitting in a stack of 500 others never to be found. So I’ve compiled a list of seven ways to overcome the resume black hole that so many resumes seem to go in to. Continue Reading

Job boards must evolve or die

Over a year ago, I wrote about the changes in the job board world. I also promised myself I wouldn’t write about job boards ‘dying’ for at least a year. Well, time’s up!

Are some job boards dying? Well, of course they are. All industries have some companies that are dying – and some that are growing. So, through the Darwinian fight for survival, some job boards die.

But does that mean that all job boards are dying? Of course not. If anything, there has been an explosion of niche sites over the past several years.  Why? Job boards can be very efficient at bringing employer and job seeker together. Continue Reading

The World is Not Flat – Modern Job Search

“Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.” – Dwight David Eisenhower

My current job is in a small company (several thousand people) and many of the people I work with have been at this company for 15 to 20 years and have never seen modern technology. Now I don’t mean PCs, but I do mean they have no idea how mid to large companies operate. When I try to explain some of what we could be doing, it’s like I’m saying the world is round and they still think the world is flat and are afraid they will fall off. So I imagine that if any of them had to look for a job they would probably buy the Sunday newspaper and start looking in the classified ads (I’m sure some of you have no idea what I’m talking about). They would probably go to an employment agency and register (taking a few hard copy resumes with them). And after that, they would probably go to a few company HR departments and fill out applications (leaving a hard copy of their resume). For research, they would go to their local library and look up some companies they might want to work with. Now I know most of us are more up to speed than that, but the job search world of sitting by your computer at home and browsing job search sites is gone. The new world is all about being mobile, using the best technology to “get there first”  and land the best job the fastest. Continue Reading

Good Careers that Don’t Need Excessive Education

“The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn.” – Gloria Steinem

The four-year degree has recently been called in to question due to the large amounts of those with them who can’t find a job. Thousands of recent college graduates are now without work, and are still suffering from the burden of high student loans. Many of those graduates attended college under the pretense that they would be able to obtain a career after graduation.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case anymore.

The once sought after college degree isn’t as important as it once was – especially if it is a liberal arts degree. Employers now want individuals with specific training and actual experience – and usually two year programs do a better job at fitting this bill than 4 year colleges do. Great two year programs that are generally more useful include: Continue Reading

Job Search Wasn’t Built in a Day

“Acting is all about honesty. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” – George Burns

Are we there yet? You either remember that phrase from your childhood or your parenthood. Either way, job search (like Rome) was not built in a day. Patience, dedication and perseverance are your best tools for keeping your sanity in what sometimes seems like an eternity in job search. But for finding a job, your best tools are balancing your search across the major job search resources: Networking, Recruiters, Company Career Sites and Job Search Sites. I get lots of emails offering job search tips, tricks and resources. Today’s post is focused on your recommendations. Continue Reading