Employment Digest

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Build Your Rolodex of Networking Contacts

How important is networking in your job search? Take a look at the astonishing numbers surrounding how job hunters ultimately become gainfully employed.

14% of job hunters get jobs through newspaper classifieds. 13% of job hunters get jobs through employment agencies. 5% of job hunters get jobs through career services on college campuses.

NEARLY 64% OF JOB HUNTERS GET JOBS THROUGH NETWORKING!
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The Elephant in Your Resume

Self-inflating fibs are easy to spot. So stick to accentuating your positives — and maybe spinning them a little, too Fans of the late, beloved children’s author Dr. Seuss will recall Marco, the protagonist in And to Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street. Marco is an embellisher: In his imagination, a horse-drawn wagon becomes a full-out circus parade. The wagon becomes a sleigh, then a chariot. The horses turn into elephants, all products of Marco’s invention.

Someone like Marco would find instant trouble in today’s job market, where embellishing details about job history and experience can lose you an opportunity — or get you fired.
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For young vets, jobs are hard to come by

Paul Briones thought he had done everything right to relaunch his career in the civilian work force.

After serving five years in the Army as a radio operator and GPS tracking specialist, the 26-year-old had become an expert in his field and banked on his military experience to help him land a job.

But he left the service after a deployment to Iraq and now finds himself unemployed - and frustrated with what some say is an increasingly unforgiving job market for young veterans.
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Changing Direction In The Middle Of A Career

Whether it’s because they’re laid off or their business is cooling off, many Rochester-area residents are switching careers. In uncertain times, some turn to careers that virtually guarantee them a job.

Bruce Rosenbaum owned a business and sold electronics. Lisa Brillian worked at Xerox with engineers and parts buyers until she was laid off; along with hundreds of other people.
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Are you a baby boomer about to retire? Concider a second career

In the next decade, it is estimated about 76 million baby boomers will hit retirement age, but don’t try to talk to them about it - they are much too busy. And to be honest, they don’t really want to even think about it. ”Most of the time, people have their heads down, still working,” says Dwight Moore, an industrial psychologist. ”Their companies might have information about finances and pensions, and their spouses or partners might start asking questions, but it’s really not on their radar screens.”
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Career goals rebooted

As an eager freshman in the fall of 2001, Andrew Mo’s career trajectory seemed preordained: He’d learn C++ and Java languages while earning a computer science degree at Stanford University, and then land a Silicon Valley technology job.

The 22-year-old Shanghai, China, native graduated this month with a major in computer science and a minor in economics. But he no longer plans to write code for a living, or even work at a tech company.
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Attitude Adjustment

A massive new study of the U.S. workforce has some sobering news for corporate America: many of today’s young workers are massively disaffected with their jobs and often constitute a negative influence on the whole workplace.

The survey, of 7,718 workers in every industry, by researchers from Ken Dychtwald’s Age Wave group, the consulting firm The Concours Group, and Harris Interactive, found that today’s workforce can be segmented into six distinct categories whose differences revolve more around attitudes toward work and life than age, gender, race or ethnicity. Among these groups are “Self-Empowered Innovators”, a segment that’s hardworking and entrepreneurial; “Maverick Morphers,” a group that’s distinguished by its penchant for innovation; and “Fair and Square Traditionalists,” the 20% of the force that clocks in, works hard, and doesn’t make waves.
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Expand Your Professional Network

As a counselor, I help my clients find sources for finding jobs. There has been a big emphasis on using job boards,career and job Web sites and recruiters and agencies. At Pace University we post jobs and have an alumni job listserv and we send daily listings to our alumni. In addition we have an Experienced Professionals Job Fair twice a year. All these sources account for anywhere from 10 percent to 20 percent of jobs available. Where do the rest of jobs come from?
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Advice for recession-scarred job hunters

With the job market returning and companies hiring again, now comes a new wrinkle: How do you write a resume that explains what you’ve been doing for the past four years?

This was a period, after all, when people with master’s degrees drove cabs. When tech workers bounced from temp job to temp job. When the titles “self-employed” or “consultant” were euphemisms for “out of work.”
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Web portfolios grow beyond techies

When the staff at a Scholastic Corp. unit heard that Cindy Eng was being hired as their editorial head earlier this year, they did an online search of her name.Fortunately for Eng, their searches led them right to her Web portfolio, a personal Web site that trumpeted her professional accomplishments, including the books she helped publish and the companies she’s worked for. “I think it set their minds at ease that their new boss knew what she was doing,” said the Fanwood, N.J., resident.Eng’s story illustrates what some career consultants have been telling professionals for years: Having an online presence is an important part of managing your career. They are recommending that people build online identities through Web portfolios, blogs and other forms of online publishing.The idea is to control the information that pops up rather than risk something embarrassing - or nothing at all, said William Arruda, a career consultant in New York.Just be sure that your Web site looks professional and your blog, or Web log, is smart, otherwise you will have defeated the whole purpose. Also, know that a Web site or blog will never replace a well-written resume and a stellar work history.Web portfolios are Web sites that people build to show off their professional accomplishments. A good site will include more than just a resume. It might provide links to published articles and papers or evidence of successful project management. Words of praise from clients, peers and industry superstars are also common.The company that created Eng’s Web portfolio, Brandego, calls these “testimonials” and tends to sprinkle them throughout their clients’ sites.
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