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Branding – Your Key to Success:

We’re all subjected to a barrage of consumer advertising 24/7. Companies use a variety of strategies to burn their brands into our collective subconscious, hoping to get our attention (and then our money.)

Have you ever thought about your career as a branding campaign? How you present yourself to employers? Let’s consider Brand: YOU.

Rising Above the Noise

Successful brands stand out among their competitors. They rise above the base level to grab attention because of some unique aspect. The same should be true for you whether you’re in job search mode or simply in a job.
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Who owns the results of the drug test and background check

Question: In Pennsylvania, Who owns the results of the drug test and background check–- the employer or the employee?

Answer: Drug tests and background tests are generally procured by employers, and employees would have the same right of access as with other types of personnel records.

In Pennsylvania, an employer holds all personnel records, although PA Stat. Ann. Tit. 43, Sec 1321, grants an employee limited access to his/her personnel record.
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Age Discrimination Visible, Older Workers Urged to Stay On the Job

While nearly a quarter (23 percent) of the U.S. workforce knows of an older worker who has been denied a job, promotion or raise because of age, more than twice as many businesses encourage older workers to stay on the job than to retire early. According to a national Hudson survey, 38 percent of workers say their organizations keep older workers because they are difficult to replace, compared to 15 percent whose firms want to make way for younger workers.

Entrepreneurs and small-business operators are especially eager to retain older workers; 49 percent encourage them to stay on the job, compared to 11 percent promoting retirement. Conversely, 26 percent of government workers say retirement is actively encouraged.
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With careers, listen to your heart

Some friends and relatives like to think they know what’s best for your career and will hand out advice freely. “You should be in sales - you’re so outgoing!” Or, “You should get into computers - that’s where everything is headed.”

Well-meaning? Probably. Smart to heed? Probably not.

Even well-meaning friends and relatives usually don’t have a clue about what they’re talking about when it comes to your career. Case in point: Just because you’re outgoing hardly means you’d like a career in sales.
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In the online era, resumes are still an art
In the game of getting a job, the hunt might begin something like this: Eager applicants reach for that sheet of 24-pound ivory-white resume paper and . .

“No one really wants your paper anymore,” said Mike Worthington, co-founder of Resume Doctor. “The way the ATM has changed banking, the Internet has changed the job search. Getting our resume out to someone is literally a mouse click away.”

With scores of employment opportunities found online, it’s easier than ever before to find and apply for work, but the Web-based hunt means job seekers of today must craft a diamond-sharp digital resume sure to survive the fast-paced filtering of information-slammed employers.
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Older job hunters in bind

Christina Laurel’s confidence took a hit months after she moved to Rochester in the fall of 2004.

Laurel, 58, couldn’t find a job. She wanted part-time communications-related work, but had no luck, despite networking, resume mailings and job interviews.

It wasn’t until the Brighton resident participated in a program specifically for older job hunters that her luck changed. At the program, she got schooled on the biases that recruitment managers might have against older workers and learned how to pitch herself to counter such perceptions, among other help.
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Filling the Tech-Talent Pipeline

The future of information technology in the United States will be determined not just in computer labs, but at kitchen tables and on long car rides. Or anywhere else that grown-ups and teenagers get together to talk. It’s those powerful conversations that just might tip a kid toward or away from a technology career - conversations like the one Melody Huang is having with her 19-year-old daughter.

Huang’s IT education has led her on a 20-year global business career - as developer, consultant, business owner and, now, a lead IT architect with Valley Forge, Pa.-based Vanguard Group, the mutual fund company. Encouraged by Huang’s example, her daughter, Katherine, a college sophomore with an undeclared major, took advanced placement computer courses in high school. But these days, she’s uncertain when her mother pitches IT as a great career. “She’s hearing that the jobs aren’t really out there, and you’re going to be pressed down the corporate ladder,” Huang relates. “That perception is definitely out there.”
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The Networking Game

Jenny Konopasek applied for about 80 jobs during both her senior year at Boston University and in the summer after graduation, but she only received a few cold calls in return.

So how did she land her job as an advertising sales coordinator at Variety magazine?

She networked through the BU alumni network.

A friend of a friend of a friend, worked at Variety, and when she heard that the 2004 College of Communication graduate was searching for a job, she contacted her for an interview.
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The Next 20 Years - After a Layoff:

Thank you for being such a strong, competent, dedicated, personable employee… Now here’s your Pink Slip!

It used to be that the only way to be let go from a company was to do something detrimental to the organization (or get caught with a lampshade on your head at the company Holiday Party). Today, however individuals of the highest caliber are being laid-off for a variety of reasons, most of which are due to no fault of the employee.

* Bad financial quarter

* Need to cut costs

* Merging with a competitor

* Duplicate roles

* Downturn in the economy

* And the list goes on…
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Seniors Search for Welcome Mat

f it were left to Alan Greenspan, all Americans might find themselves working as late in life as the tireless 79-year-old chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Though Greenspan might not expect everyone to follow his lead, he did suggest recently that the age of 68 might be more appropriate as a retirement age in today’s world.

His rationale is based on protecting the nation’s beleaguered Social Security system, which is sweating under the crush of 77 million baby boomers entering retirement territory this decade. Delaying workers’ full benefits until they reach age 68 could help extend the life of the system.

Currently, full Social Security benefits are determined on a sliding scale. Individuals born in 1937 or before can retire at age 65, but people born in 1960 or later must work to age 67 to receive full benefits.
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