Posted: 12 Mar 2010 06:08 AM PST

Ruth Lufkin, supervising reference librarian, will feature creative ways to find opportunities through mining the library's resources. She will demonstrate online tools that allow discovery of useful magazine, journal and newspaper information on specific companies, key personnel and particular industries.

Resources that are available remotely to every library cardholder in New Jersey will be highlighted, as well as those specifically available at Bernards Township Library.

The meeting will be held in the Program Room located on the lower level. All are welcome at this free program.

Pre-registration is suggested but not required; those who register in advance using the Program Calendar at www.BernardsLibrary.org will receive an email reminder before the program.

For more information call the Library at (908) 204-3031, ext. 4, or email rlufkin@bernards.org.

Members of the Career Forum and Career Networking Group are especially invited to attend these meetings. Both of these local support groups offer programs of interest to those looking for work or contemplating transition and opportunities to network with other members of the group.

The Career Forum meets at the Somerset Hills YMCA from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. on Tuesday evenings.

The Career Networking Group meets on the first and third Thursday evenings of each month at the Bernards Township Library.

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Job search a tough new mission for returning veterans (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

Posted: 12 Mar 2010 12:31 AM PST

Posted: March 12, 2010 |(5) Comments

Madison - Dressed in khaki Dockers and a button-down plaid shirt, Adam Puhl moved from desk to desk at a job fair Thursday morning, talking up prospective employers.

The 27-year-old Oshkosh man is not unusual in some respects. With a national unemployment rate of 9.7%, many are looking for a steady paycheck.

But Puhl is a Wisconsin Army National Guard member who spent a year in Iraq. Among other things, he designed and installed an electronic system at a military base near Mosul, in the northern part of the country.

Now, despite a physics degree and his military experience, he's out of money and willing to take just about anything.

Unemployment among younger veterans, including many returning from tours in Iraq or Afghanistan, is roughly a percentage point higher than the national rate. Even though federal law guarantees National Guard and Reserve members get their jobs when they return from deployment - or an equivalent position if their job has been eliminated - there's nothing to protect them from layoffs shortly after they return. Further, because of the time spent away, they're often among the lowest in seniority in the event of a downsizing.

"A lot of the younger veterans, they would be the first ones to be laid off due to seniority," said Ken Grant, program director for the Office of Veterans Services in the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development.

There's also no protection if an employer has gone out of business while one of its workers is serving.

Recognizing the need to help veterans find jobs, the first of 18 job fairs for Wisconsin veterans was held at Edgewood College in Madison on Thursday. A job fair is scheduled for Friday from 9 a.m. to noon at the Clement J. Zablocki Medical Center in Milwaukee.

Organized by the state departments of Workforce Development, Military Affairs and Veterans Affairs, job fairs are also scheduled at locations across the state through October.

The goal of the job fairs is to help every veteran of the 427,000 in Wisconsin who wants to find employment, said Secretary of Workforce Development Roberta Gassman.

"We owe our veterans so much for what they have done for us," Gassman said.

Gassman's department has hired more than 70 veterans in the last year and provided job services for about 8,000 during 2009. Among them were six veterans hired by Oshkosh Truck and 15 veterans who earned certification in hazardous materials cleanup and are working to clean the former Tower Automotive site in Milwaukee that's destined to become the new facility for production of passenger train cars.

While many companies are not hiring now, Gassman said, they're likely to begin snapping up employees as the economy continues to turn around and job orders are filled.

Puhl, a sergeant in the Wisconsin National Guard 2nd Battalion, 127th Infantry, returned home in June 2008. He finished his bachelor's degree at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls and figured he'd soon find a job.

"I took my time at first but now I'm out of money," said Puhl, after chatting with recruiters from Madison Gas and Electric and the Dane County Sheriff's Department, two of the 23 employers at Thursday's event.

Puhl is hoping for some kind of research-and-development job "but at this point I'd be happy to take an entry-level position."

Through generous education benefits, many veterans are going to college or technical school once they finish their overseas hitches. That should boost their appeal to employers. Another factor: Veterans should have developed leadership skills and a good work ethic, said Wisconsin Secretary of Veterans Affairs Ken Black.

"They've been developed, and all you need is to bring them on to your team," Black told employers at the Madison job fair.

By noon Thursday, three hours after the job fair began, Manpower already had found a job for one veteran who hadn't worked since 2008, and it was likely to place several other veterans who stopped by to talk and drop off resumes, said Michael Vega, branch manager of the Madison office.

Kirk U'Ren, co-manager of the Wal-Mart Super Center in Monona, talked to veterans who were looking for jobs ranging from part-time work to career management positions.

"They don't need much motivation. They don't need much supervision. They take the task and go with it," U'Ren said.

Jesse Meinke, 27, of Watertown recently returned from his second tour of Iraq with the Wisconsin Army National Guard. Since coming home in late January, the staff sergeant has spent time catching up with his wife and two young daughters. He had built up enough leave time to continue getting paid.

Carrying a green Libby's tote bag with pens and pins handed out by employers, Meinke spoke to recruiters and said he's not worried about finding a job.

"I just have a lot of confidence and faith in myself. I would bring a lot of energy to any job," Meinke said.

But his last paycheck from the military is coming next week. And the job search is getting more urgent.

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Pioneer of online job search starts over again (The Wilmington Star-News)

Posted: 12 Mar 2010 06:47 AM PST

So he's taking another crack at it, going after Monster, Career Builder and similar commercial job sites. Warren is starting a nonprofit job listing system that could lower the costs that employers pay to list positions and make the process easier and more fruitful for applicants.

He has the enthusiastic backing of hundreds of large companies, including IBM Corp., American Express, AT&T Inc. and Johnson & Johnson, the kinds of employers that spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year searching for new talent.

"This is probably the most significant play that I've seen ... since the invention of the online job board," said Joshua Akers, vice president of RecruitingBlogs.com, a social networking site for human resources professionals.

The commercial rivals say they are ready for new competition. "We remain confident that we're one of the most cost-effective sources of hiring for recruiters today," said Monster spokesman Matt Henson.

Warren, 68, says that those commercial sites charge employers so much to list openings that the companies don't post all their jobs – leaving potential applicants unaware of opportunities. Warren also believes that the sites push too much advertising on jobseekers and include too many "work at home" scam jobs.

Meanwhile, employers want ways to have a direct relationship with jobseekers. Many say they prefer resumes that are tailored to the positions they're trying to fill, not a generic resume posted online. As the ranks of the unemployed have doubled to roughly 15 million, recruiters say the response to jobs they post on the boards has gotten overwhelming.

The solution that Warren hopes to launch next month is being hatched by the DirectEmployers Association, a group formed by more than 500 large companies. Warren is executive director.

The association's plan calls for companies to list jobs under the Internet's ".jobs" domain name – similar to ".com" or ".edu" – to better organize job listings on the Web. For instance, someone can visit ATT.jobs to see all the listings at that company.

DirectEmployers' software will automatically code such listings to make them easily searchable by city or occupation. The association also will sort the listings in as many as 30,000 regional ".job" Web addresses it hopes to begin rolling out in March, such as "atlanta.jobs." That will help people search for jobs in specific places. The group hopes to add thousands of occupational domain names, such as "engineer.jobs," later this year.

Companies that belong to the association pay a $15,000 annual membership fee and will receive prominent placement on the ".jobs" Web sites. Smaller companies can purchase a ".jobs" domain name for about $125 a year and then post jobs for free. They can also work through their state employment agencies, which post jobs online at no charge.

At those prices, the new ".jobs" system could be another online innovation that undercuts what currently exists – much as the invention of job boards themselves undermined newspaper help-wanted ads.

Monster.com's basic rate is $395 per job posting, though it offers volume discounts. Companies also pay to search the resumes that applicants have posted. (Jobseekers can access the sites for free.) Considering that some Fortune 500 companies hire thousands of workers a year, even in tough times, the cost of listing all their open jobs can approach $1 million.

One company planning to participate in Warren's new system is Newell Rubbermaid Inc. Mike Rickheim, vice president for global talent acquisition at the consumer products maker, still plans to use commercial job boards to post some positions, but that "will likely continue to trend downward" once the new system is running, he said.

Still, the commercial job boards say they are ready. Henson at Monster.com said the company's recent acquisition of Yahoo's HotJobs gives it the world's largest online jobs and resume databases. Monster has developed new search technology for its site that makes it easier and quicker for employers to sift through resumes and find the most relevant ones, he said.

Career Builder, which is owned by Microsoft Corp. and media companies Gannett Co., McClatchy Co. and Tribune Co., didn't return several calls seeking comment. The company says it lists 1 million jobs and 31 million resumes. Monster wouldn't provide equivalent figures.

Warren started Online Career Center, the first online job board, in 1992. It was bought by TMP Worldwide in 1995, then combined with Monster.com in 1999. Warren says he left Monster that year after the then-chairman of the company set a goal of raising the price of an online help-wanted ad to $1,000.

"I just did not agree with that philosophy," he said. "I thought the Internet was more open than that and I thought the price of ads would be going down in the future and that's exactly what's happening," he said.

Still, Warren insists he isn't seeking revenge against Monster or any other company. "I wouldn't know anyone at Monster if I walked in the door today," he said.

Instead, he said, his goal to help more people get back to work faster.

That might be a stretch, according to David Autor, a labor economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Efficiently matching applicants and companies is only a small part of the problem when it comes to filling jobs. An employer still has to decide who is the best fit.

"The challenge for employers has not changed in the Internet age," he said. "It's hard to figure out who is the right person to hire."

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Job Search

Friday, March 12, 2010

“Job search tips offered March 30 in Bernards Township (The Bernardsville News)” plus 2 more

“Job search tips offered March 30 in Bernards Township (The Bernardsville News)” plus 2 more

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