Does the Way You Job Hunt Show Your Age?

How you search for a job depends a lot on your age. A new study out today, The Multi-Generational Job Search by Millennial Branding, a research and consulting firm, and Beyond.com, a career network, highlights job search commonalities and differences among Gen Y, Gen X and baby boomers.

RELATED: Gen Y vs. Boomers: Workplace Conflict Heats Up

Over 5,000 job seekers in total were surveyed, including 742 18-29 year olds (Gen Y), 1,676 30-47 year olds (Gen X), and 2,850 48-67 year olds (baby boomers). The study found a number of similarities in how the three generations approach searching for work: All spend the majority of their time looking online, most favor online job boards, and on average, all three groups spend between 5-20 hours a week looking. More than a third manage their online work histories, fewer than 15% have their own professional websites, and all generations use social media in some form–but Twitter is the least popular job search tool for everyone.

The similarities stop there. Here’s a look at how the three groups differ:

To read more, go to: Does the Way You Job Hunt Show Your Age?

Networking and Business Prep by Email

Research and preparation are fundamentals of productive career planning and management. We investigate companies and roles, we practice interviewing and negotiation, we research contacts and competitive salaries. PrepWork, a start-up venture out of Yale SOM, has added a twist to the preparation for networking, meetings, and interview preparation. They are about to launch a tool that looks up, consolidates, and emails you the social media profiles of your contacts. How is this interesting? Imagine getting ready for a job interview and you know the names of the people you will meet that day. What if you know more about those folks before you walked in the door. PrepWork can scan your personal calendar for those names, aggregate the available online information including Linkedin, Facebook, blog posts, Twitter, etc. and send you a consolidates email of all of it. Information is key to good social and professional connecting and this looks like a resource that can help facilitate productive, actionable conversations.

Job Hunting? The recruiters are on Facebook and Linkedin

Enlightening article about how recruiting practices continue to migrate towards Facebook and Linkedin. If you aren’t looking at options outside job boards, here are some fun facts that might have you thinking twice:

Facebook hires account for less than 1% of the total hires companies are making, according to Jobs2Web, but could rival job boards in 2012 if trends hold

LinkedIn’s revenue from its hiring solutions segment—which among other things helps recruiters search through their profile database for candidates—grew 170%

Beknown, which hosts a job board and other recruiter services, launched its own Facebook app in June and now has nearly 800,000 monthly users

Candidates have been 50% more likely to apply to positions they found through Facebook than through other means, said Mr. Staney [from VMware, Inc. “[Job boards] just blast it out. This is much more efficient and targeted.”

Career Transitions: Five BEs to Maximize Your Next Move

50% of the people reading this post are unhappy with their careers and thinking about an exit strategy.

That staggering statistic is from the What’s Working ^TM Survey released by Mercer three weeks ago. According to the press release, “Nearly one in three (32%) US workers is seriously considering leaving his or her organization at the present time, up sharply from 23% in 2005. Meanwhile, another 21% are not looking to leave but view their employers unfavorably and have rock-bottom scores on key measures of engagement, a term that describes a combination of an employee’s loyalty, commitment and motivation.”

No one wants to be unhappy in their jobs but here we are. The good news is that 50% of people enjoy what they do and are satisfied with their employers. So if you have diagnosed yourself as unsatisfied, what should you do?
As a career coach, I have helped professionals and students prepare for their next career steps; here are five individual qualities I have identified as critical to any successful transition.

Connecting for Careers – Four Ways to Expand your Network

I was recently on a professional development call about successful job search strategies and heard a remarkable statistic. 80% of all open positions are not published on traditional career boards. That means that every time you peruse sites like Monster, Career Builder and Indeed, you are only seeing 20% of the available job market. In many cases the jobs you are interested in have already been filled reducing that number even more. So how do you tap the larger part of the iceberg and find those undisclosed positions? One of the best options is through networking. Here are four ways to expand your network and open doors to new professional opportunities.

Do Job Titles Mean Anything Anymore?

Chief Twitter officers? Are you kidding? Experts say the more specific the title, the better for all of us.

There was a time when job titles were simple. You were either “the boss” or “not the boss.”

That has changed dramatically now that we have fancy things such as worker’s rights and business cards and egos.

Some companies are staffed by small armies of vice presidents. There are chief Twitter officers, brand strategy gurus and senior elbow-nibbling advisers. (I may have made that last one up.)

Click here to read full article 

Graduate Schools Need to Improve Career Counseling, Report Says

April 19, 2012

By Stacey Patton

Shawn Achor: The happy secret to better work (Tedx)

Was Mazlow Right? Science Measures Happiness and Well-Being

End of an Era: VisualCV.com to Cease Operations on December 30, 2011

One of the first movers in the online resume and branding space will be closing its doors at the end of the month. With LinkedIn, Facebook, e-folios, and personal websites, many with more functionality and sustainable revenue streams, there just wasn’t enough there there to compete. Still, it was a great idea and I congratulate the VisualCV team for giving job seekers and everybody else another option to extend their brand.

Dear VisualCV Member

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We regret to inform you that the VisualCV.com website will be ceasing operations, effective December 30, 2011.

Since our launch almost four years ago we’ve been gratified by the response to VisualCV, and how it has enabled thousands of professionals to better represent themselves online. Even more importantly we have been delighted to see VisualCV help people secure significant new career positions. However, we have been unable to turn the site into a viable, self-supporting business and therefore we reluctantly made this decision.

We recognize that many of you need time to recover your resume data from VisualCV — which is why we are providing you with thirty days’ notice. We recommend saving a PDF copy of your current VisualCV. You can easily do this by clicking on the button on the bottom of the page you see when viewing or editing your VisualCV. We also recommend you separately save any images, videos or documents in your portfolio that you do not currently have stored somewhere else.

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