Employment Digest

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Seniors still sidelined as skill drought approaches

Retirement meant anything but kicking back for John Sayles.

At age 69, six months after his retirement party, his company asked him to join a team of engineers in war-torn Baghdad, where he worked 12-hour days, seven days a week on a reconstruction project.

“It’s the best of all worlds,” said Sayles, now 71, a planner who still consults occasionally for the Iowa-based firm from which he retired, Stanley Consultants Inc. “You never know when the phone rings who it’s going to be.”

Programs that tap retirees’ skills and keep older workers on the job longer would seem to be a natural solution to the looming shortage of skilled workers related to the Baby Boom generation’s approaching retirement.
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Don’t dwell on a firing — move on

Pottruck, former head of Charles Schwab, openly discusses the emotional roller coaster that accompanied a public termination from a high position. While he goes through the typical and normal range of emotions anyone who has ever been terminated experiences, Pottruck’s recounting suggests a great deal of self-management through those emotions. I’d add that he should count himself among the few who learned a lot from the experience. He willingly shares the strategies that worked in guiding him through the process from termination to re-employment. His strategies aren’t about using a network or polishing one’s resume. Rather, his strategies are for dealing with one’s self.
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Seniors should start planning job-hunt now

Are you starting your senior year in college? If you want - or need - to have a job waiting for you upon graduation, you need to begin now. Here are 14 activities that are critical to your job-search success.

While these 14 activities are somewhat in chronological order, you don’t necessarily have to complete one activity before moving on to the next. The key is to accomplish all of these activities sometime during your senior year:

Start early. Why should you start your job-search now? It seems like you have a lot of time with nine months until graduation. However, you’ll be surprised at how fast your senior year flies by. And it’s always best to prepare ahead of time instead of scrambling to get things done at the very end. It’s almost guaranteed that the earlier you start, the more job-search success you’ll have.
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20 percent of Americans want to fire their boss

Most U.S. workers are very satisfied with their job, job security and working conditions but 60 percent say now is not a good time to find a job, a study of public opinion polls showed Tuesday.

The report by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, found Americas high job satisfaction has changed little over the past 25 years despite concerns about the job market or overall economy.

There is no question that there is a lot of economic anxiety out there, but most workers who have jobs dont fear theyre going to lose them and they are quite satisfied with them, said Karlyn Bowman, who specializes in public opinion poll research for the institute.
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Keeping Options Open Is Key to 21st-Century Career Paths

“Most US workers don’t know where their careers are going,” says Andrea Kay, a career consultant in Cincinnati. “A career path used to be determined by your manager; now it’s something you design for yourself.”

Like the waning concept of lifetime employment with a single company, the notion of a career path often seems like a mirage to America’s nearly 150 million workers. Companies dissolve due to mergers or management miscues. Occupations are hollowed out by automation or offshoring. Entire industries retrench, restructure and shed a large fraction of their workers — seemingly forever.
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The Multigenerational Workforce Creates Conflict and Opportunity

You’re 38 years old and saw your budding career blossom through the roaring ’90s but then fade a bit in these tentative 2000s.

Your administrative assistant is 19, has been on the job for three weeks and appears to be preparing for his next move, judging from the updated resume he left on the copier.

Your boss is 59, has a thing for Elvis (Presley, not Costello) and knows how to look out for himself.

And today you’re interviewing an overqualified woman who looks like she’s in her 70s and is looking for part-time work to help her buy a bunch of plane tickets so she can spend time with her pregnant granddaughter.

Welcome to the multigenerational American workforce, nearly 150 million strong, where the Greatest Generation and Generation Whatever mix in a crucible of conflict and opportunity.
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Work calling past retirement age

Nearly 7 in 10 workers plan to stay on the job past retirement age including a growing number who say the decision will be driven by financial need, a new survey finds.

The survey echoes others in recent years showing more Americans plan to work longer. But the nationwide poll, by the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University, taps into increasing concerns among many workers particularly baby boomers about the need to supplement their income once they leave their primary job.
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Job opportunities are on the rise for executives, too

The best sign of a solid labor market is when you, the job seeker, actually land the job. But if you’re still looking, there are positive signs.

Last week, The Conference Board reported that its Help-Wanted Advertising Index — a key measure of job offerings in major newspapers across America — edged up in July. The index stands at 39, up from 38 in June. It was 38 one year ago.

In the past three months, help-wanted advertising increased in five of the nine U.S. regions, with the Pacific region experiencing among the greatest growth, according to the report.
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Cover Letters to Recruiters

In the world of recruiters and executive search firms, resumes rule. But this doesn’t mean you should ignore or forgo sending cover letters.

“If a candidate’s resume is a good fit to what I’m looking for, then I’m going to take a look at the cover letter,” says Dan Anderson, a partner in St. Paul-based executive search and recruitment services firm C. Anderson & Associates. At Anderson’s firm, both the resume and cover letter are filed for future reference.
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Simple steps to help cope with job loss

Imagine walking into your office, as always, and discovering that your desk has been cleaned out; your department is shuttered and locked; or you have 30 minutes to collect your belongings and leave. Would you be able to cope with unemployment?

Although companies are hiring–unemployment stood at 5 percent in July, down from more than 6 percent two years ago–the job market is less than robust. And there’s always the risk that your employer will defy statistics: Technology giant Hewlett-Packard Co., for instance, announced last month that it would eliminate about 10 percent of its full-time workforce.

Here are four must-dos if you suddenly find yourself without a job:
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