According to new research from Career Builder, college graduates will be in the cat-bird seat when searching for their first job. In a recent CB Campus blog post, it was revealed that 42 percent of companies will up their starting salaries for recent grads, and 79 percent of hiring managers plan to hire recent college graduates, an increase from 70 percent just last year.

The Career Builder post points out some of the tried and true tips of job seeking preparation tips such as conducting in-depth company research, showing enthusiasm and sharing relevant and related experience outside of just internships.

But, competition will be stiff and the amount of jobs available in your field could be slight, so you will have to really stand out from the crowd. You will make headway by networking at career fairs or at industry organizations. Remember to ask those you meet questions about their company and the company’s culture. Also, offer a resume to your new contact and remember to ask them for a business card. Even if they are not a hiring manager, you can at least have a point of contact inside the company for follow up.

Also, utilize some of your college friends and contacts to help identify job opportunities. Some are hired just prior to graduation, so if you know former classmates who have received job offers and were hired before you, ask them if there are other open positions that you qualify for, and see if they can help get your foot in the door. Many companies offer employees referral bonuses. So knowing a friend or classmate can not only help you find a job, it could pay off for them as well!

Congratulations class of 2007, and best of luck in career world!

Originally
from Spherion Career Blog - The Big Time

by Steve Wajda

These questions are consistently posed by the media and by society as a whole. And while no one states it directly, we mothers usually hear an unqualified “yes” in response. Just one month ago, yet another study was released in which the findings were presented as suggesting that day care kids were worse off. Evidently, a small percentage of these children were more disruptive in class than at-home kids. Never mind that the day care kids had better vocabularies. Never mind that the debate moved immediately to the question of whether moms should be staying home rather than whether dads should instead. We working moms were failing our kids. Oh, to go back to the days when Mom stayed home and Dad earned the cash.

The truth is, though, that we mothers are harshest on ourselves. A Pew Research Center study released Wednesday supports that view. More than half of Americans (56 percent) say that mothers are doing a worse job today than 20 or 30 years ago. By comparison, 47 percent of Americans say fathers are doing a worse job than fathers did 20 or 30 years ago. More telling yet, most women say that today’s fathers are now doing a better, or at least as good a job, as fathers did 20 or 30 years ago. But a full 54 percent of women say today’s mothers are doing a worse job when compared with mothers 20 or 30 years ago. And while no distinction is made between employed and nonemployed mothers, the overall message is that moms are not performing well.

I’d like to suggest that this blog post be the last discussion of this matter. The fact is that women and mothers now work outside the home — in fact more than three-quarters of mothers with children under 18 do. Even more to the point, moms and dads are managing to spend more time with their kids.

A recent study by The Council on Contemporary Families supports that view. The study actually found today’s youth are doing better than their parents and grandparents and that married mothers increased their time doing childcare by 21 percent (and fathers have more than doubled their time (from 2.6 to 6.5 hours per week).

What’s been sacrificed as a result? Time Mom and Dad spend on themselves.

Check out our articles for working mothers.

Originally
from The Monster Blog

by Elizabeth

on May 4, 2007, 10:16PM

Unfortunately, we can’t all work for a dot com where younger workers and older workers can enter the industry on essentially the same footing. There are many industries where the wealth of experience an older person brings to a company actually does make a real significant difference. And with early retirement being offered in many of those industries (and early retirement being a voluntary option), the time to strengthen your retention strategy is now. Canada focus says:

The study showed mature, large companies to be at greatest risk from the demographic shift, due to their hiring history - rapid growth through the 1970s, followed by downsizing in the ’90s that left them with few mid-career employees today. Leadership, sales and technical positions will be the hardest to fill.

The cost of losing older workers is high. Replacing an experienced worker can cost 50 per cent or more of their annual salary and the cost is higher in jobs requiring specialized skills, advanced training or extensive experience - all more likely in 50-plus employees.

Employers often complain the generation now entering the workforce lack core competencies - which can be counterbalanced by older employees. Many 50-plus workers have experience, dedication, focus, stability and enhanced knowledge.

So not only are people more interested in the older generation, they suddenly find worth (and aren’t anchor weight) in the corporations of today. Couple this with the fact that older workers need some serious help in the job hunt and there is opportunity screaming all over it. Some have taken advantage of this opportunity, will your company?

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Originally
from YourHRGuy.com

by Your HR Guy

on May 7, 2007, 11:38AM

The new
report links people’s jobs to how satisfied they are in their careers
as well as to their general happiness. “Work…is one’s main source of
social standing, helps to define who a person is, and affects one’s
health both physically and mentally,” wrote Tom W. Smith, director of
the General Social Survey (GSS) at the University-affiliated National
Opinion Research Center, in the report.

“We found that occupations that involved a high degree of prestige,
particularly those involving caring for others…were the highest in job
satisfaction,” Smith said in a telephone interview. Clergy ranked the
highest, with 87.2 percent saying they were “very satisfied” in their
careers. Firefighters (80.1 percent) and physical therapists (78.1
percent) were close runners-up. Rounding out the top 10 were education
administrators, painters and sculptors, teachers, authors,
psychologists, special education instructors, and operating engineers.

The results are drawn from over 27,000 face to face interviews with people across the US done between 1988 to 2006.

–

Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst (sm)

Time for a career change? Launch it with…
The Occupational Adventure Guide:
A Travel Guide to the Career of Your Dreams

Originally
from The Occupational Adventure (sm)

by Curt Rosengren

on May 1, 2007, 10:59PM

The findings confound me. I’ve always attributed the gap primarily to women’s career tracks; they’re more likely to work part-time and take time out of the workforce to raise children. This study suggests I should think again. Even after adjusting for hours worked, occupation, parenthood and other factors known to affect earnings, the study found that one-quarter of the pay gap between men and women remains unexplained.

I can’t help but think about my two nieces who will be enrolling in college in September. The sad fact is that no matter how well they perform, they’ll probably earn less than their male peers. Both my nieces are going to top-tier schools; one is attending one of the most competitive in the country. But the study reports that even women who attended highly selective colleges earn less than men from either highly or moderately selective colleges and about the same as men from minimally selective colleges.

The study says sex discrimination is at play. It must be. But I also wonder: Does strong academic performance suggest that young women have too strong a desire to please both in the classroom and at the negotiating table? Are we not instilling in our girls enough of a sense of their own worth?

No matter how I slice it, I come out deeply concerned, not only for our young women but also for our society as a whole. The fact is that in college, women outperform men — earning slightly higher GPAs than men in every college major, including science and mathematics. Imagine if we let them reach their potential outside the classroom. Now think about how we can make that happen.

Check out these related articles:

• The Executive Pay Gap
• Wall Street’s Gender Pay Gap

Originally
from The Monster Blog

by Elizabeth

on Apr 24, 2007, 4:11AM

Originally
from Job, work at home - YourJobZone

by Fairy_Long_Nose

on Jan 1, 1970, 7:29AM

My first year I used my job earnings to put money back in building my business. Prudent investors do not open a business without a cash flow coming in regularly, or 3-6 months reserves. Disclaimer: Steve Cook did, but most of us may not be the next Steve Cook of investing, shucks anyway! For the rest of us, this article may be of help.

How do we know what a prudent reserve is? We have not run this type of business before, thus, costs are unknown! Well some of these expenses are: Car signs, gasoline, business cards, newspaper and Nifty Nickel ads, more gas, tires, lunches networking with investors, earnest monies, computers, printers, did I mention gas, desks, paper, ink, lock boxes, small tools, more ads, high speed cable, stamps, investor club fees, course fees, boot camp fees, copies, and bandit signs.

Keeping the full time job helps pay for these unseen and unknown expenses for awhile.

That is only the first year of business, starting the second year new expenses rear there ugly head. CPA, Attorney fees, bigger printers, the second computer so you can take your laptop to with you and comp properties on the spot, and if one crashes you are still functional. Now the long term investor will purchase computer programs, Microsoft Small Business package with Outlook Express, Excel, and Word these will make your business efficient thus saving your most precious commodity- your time. Virus protection is a must there�s fifty bucks. No one can do what you do as good as you and that�s find the deals. So better equipment and programs will help free you up to do what you do best.

You say �wait a minute, I am no computer guru� neither was I that�s why I contract one! Once you have computers you have computer problems! Another unseen but real expense. This is long term thinking.

Hiring out services in the second year is a must for time management, but you can because now you are making money investing and have a job to pay for expenses. This exponentially increases your business success. It may help to, every 4 months cut one day out a week at a time from your job.

Now I am making good money so its time tell the boss �take that job and shove it” maybe, maybe not, February and March can be very slow months, but the bills continue to come in like clockwork.

Then there are the expenses that being new you occur simply because you don�t know any better and buy stuff you don�t need or find out you can get it cheaper else where! Yes that was the voice of experience talking. LOL!

Health insurance is an expense that is a must, no one expects a hospital visit but it can ruin your finances, so the long term investor will calculate that in your monthly expenses.

Credit is always a excellent investment in our business. To keep good credit monthly bills must be paid on time. Which will not occur waiting for a deal to close that you did not expect to have liens on it, or a lien put on it even after you checked title, or any other hidden problems that we are not aware of, why because again you are a new investor. A year or two in the business will uncover a lot of these hidden expenses.

Hopefully this has given you some ideals as to if its time to go full time or not. I have gotten conservative over the years; I have felt the pain of poor decision making, not fun. So now if I must err I will err on the side of safety.

I have seen guys blow in and out of this business because they tried to go full time too quick. Its okay to still work until it is ridiculous to continue, oh and in case you�re wondering�I still work two days a week, as of March 2004.

Update: I have been a full time investor since January 2005

Now enter the age of internet job search. In the past, it was sufficient to have a resume to submit to Human Resources (HR) via fax, mail or simply hand it to a friend to give to HR. Well, those days are over and you need a better method, unless you want to remain unemployed.

In a competitive job market, not only must you have a solid resume, you must also find a way to differentiate yourself from the herd. iAdverto.com empowers job seekers with the tools to showcase their talents in a multimedia environment. The company is revolutionizing the way job seekers present their skills and qualifications. HR professionals can get more information about the candidate to make better decisions. Following a few easy steps, candidates create a personal web page which displays their resume, professional photo, video profile, audio profile, and samples of their work. The link is instantly active and users can send it to potential employers, copy and paste the link in resumes or cover letters or insert the link when posting resumes on job boards.

The service is free and the process is easy. The jobseeker�s personal web page is making text resumes a thing of the past, just like those typewriters.

The phone interview is used to then cull the list of potential candidates down to a smaller group of people who meet certain criteria and appear to be suitable for the job.

In my experience, employers who I’ve worked with who utilize phone interviews often do so for two main reasons.

First they might be the type of hiring manager who for whatever reason likes to start with a large group of potential candidates and then quickly go through the list to identify a smaller group that they want to interview face to face in more detail.

Secondly, hiring managers often utilize the phone interview as a method of interviewing out of town candidates who don’t live in the same city (or state/province/country) as the hiring company.

When you have a phone interview set up you need to keep a few things in mind:

The person interviewing you can’t see you (and you obviously can’t see them either) so remember that they are judging not only what you say, but how you say it.

Ensure that you are in a quiet place when the phone interview occurs.

Ensure that you answer the phone at the time the interview takes place. Don�t miss the call!

Don�t get distracted during the interview. Ensure you are alone and can�t be distracted by anyone or anything.

If you’re using a cordless phone, make sure you have good reception and that it’s fully charged. It’s not a great idea to use a cellphone unless you’re sure you are going to have 100% perfect reception.

As with a face to face interview, try to get an idea from the person interviewing you what happens next in the interview process before the call ends ie. When will you hear back from them? Is there a face to face interview next?