This past weekend I had the good fortune to attend an independently organized TED (Technology Entertainment Design) event in Manhattan Beach. TED is all about Ideas Worth Spreading; you can find more about this at TED.com. While I learned so much during this one day event, I’ve found myself talking about a particular presentation about play and fun and see how this ‘plays’ out in work – mine, my clients’, and my 13 year old son’s.

Michael Shore, VP of Worldwide Consumer Insights at Mattel Inc. presented valuable research about what fun means to a wide cross section of kids, summarizing this with 10 Expressions of Fun. I’ve been measuring my sense of fun against these. And, after presenting this list to my video playing obsessed son, understand more about what he gets from these games, and appreciate more what we’re all really after. In fact, fun is absolutely key to a satisfying career. Check yourself against these 10 Expressions of Fun. How much are these a part of your work and life?

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Needed: Urban Innovation Hot Spots

Cities should become living innovation labs, says Saul Kaplan. Only then will we come up with bold system changes that work

By Saul Kaplan

I have been asked by Living Cities, a philanthropic collaborative of foundations and financial institutions, to participate in an upcoming economic development roundtable, Changing the Trajectory of an Urban Economy, taking place in Detroit on Mar. 5. Organizers asked each of the participants, public and private-sector leaders from across the country, to provide an answer to the following question:

Given your experience, what are the most “game-changing” ways to use $100 million-plus to change the trajectory of an urban economy?

In other words, if I were given a free hand to use $100 million-plus of grants, what would I do? Here is my answer. I suggest that we turn cities into innovation hot spots.

We are playing defense based on old industrial economy rules and systems. We must play offense to create a 21st century innovation economy in which all citizens can fully participate. A new national economic development conversation should bubble up from cities.

Cities should be living labs. If cities become innovation hot spots, new investment and jobs will be created. We need ongoing R&D for new transformative models and systems. Developing a 21st century innovation economy depends on it and would also enable solutions for the big system challenges we face, such as health care, education, workforce development, and energy sustainability. These are system challenges that will not be fixed with incremental tweaks. We must design, demonstrate, and deploy new system approaches to these challenges. And the solutions should be coming from our cities.

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Internal Hires, Referrals Were Most Hired in 2009

By SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN

Last year, employers filled more than half of job openings with existing employees, a new study to be released Friday shows.

Internal transfers and promotions accounted for an average of 51% of all full-time positions filled in 2009, down from 39% in 2008 and 34% in 2007, reports CareerXroads, a staffing-strategy consulting firm in Kendall Park, N.J. Survey respondents included 41 companies that employ a combined 1.8 million U.S. workers. Last year these firms collectively filled 176,420 positions.

For the 49% of jobs that were filled with external recruits, referrals accounted for the most hires — 27% — and about the same number as in 2008. On average, these yielded one hire for every 15 referrals received. Meanwhile, company Web sites and job boards accounted for 22% and 13% of external hires, respectively.

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I’m currently reading Awakening Joy by James Baraz & Shoshana Alexander. They include this poem in their inspiring book and it seemed fitting to add this to my blog on Valentine’s Day.

Choosing Life by Danna Faulds

The downward spiral starts.
Self-doubt and darkness
vie for center stage, while
I, the passive, drowning
one, waiting for my demise.

Just as I sink beneath the
waves of my despair a
thought arises. Why go
there? I’ve made this
trip a thousand times,
and it leads nowhere.

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Since forecasters are rarely right anyway, but it’s clear that life will never be quite the same again, we all need to be figuring out what’s NEXT, right? Time to take a fresh look at what works and what you want to do that works for you. Necessity is, of course, the mother of all invention.

Economic Report Sings Blues on Jobs

By JONATHAN WEISMAN And GREG HITT

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama’s first official economic report to Congress predicts lackluster employment growth this year and next, even after including the impact of a jobs bill whose prospects appeared uncertain in the Senate.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) rejected a bipartisan jobs bill Thursday from the Senate Finance Committee in favor of a much slimmer proposal. Mr. Reid is looking at a $15 billion measure, the biggest piece of it focused on tax breaks for small businesses that hire new employees. Other costlier provisions the president wants, such as an extension of unemployment insurance, infrastructure spending and aid to struggling states, have to wait.

In the annual Economic Report of the President released Thursday, the White House Council of Economic Advisers projected employers will add an average of 95,000 jobs a month this year, 190,000 in 2011 and 251,000 in 2012, assuming a jobs package of around $100 billion.

Even then, the unemployment rate would remain at 10% in 2010, falling slowly to 8.2% in 2012 and not reaching the pre-recession level of 5% this decade.

Job creation has become the central focus of Democrats in Washington as the 2010 election season begins. Such economic reports are usually dry affairs, but the new version is a political document, devoting its longest chapter to efforts by the White House, Congress and the Federal Reserve to thwart a “second Great Depression.” It lays the blame for budget deficits, middle-class stagnation and the economic crisis at the feet of Wall Street and Republican policies.

“While Wall Street gambled without regard for the consequences, Washington looked the other way,” Mr. Obama wrote in a seven-page message to Congress, more than twice as long as reports going back to the Clinton presidency.

The report credits last year’s $787 billion stimulus law with boosting economic growth in the last three quarters of 2009. But the CEA is not forecasting a sharp rebound. “We are still facing headwinds,” CEA Chairwoman Christina Romer said.

Republicans said the White House report backed up their criticism of Obama economic policies. “The Obama Administration’s report is full of blame for the policies of the past, praise for its own failed policies, and promises about their ideological agenda to grow government,” said House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R., Va.).

Even with the gloomy forecasts and related hostile political climate, Democrats in Congress are struggling to agree on legislation to tackle unemployment.

The bipartisan leadership of the Senate Finance Committee, bidding to show cross-party cooperation, unveiled an $85 billion draft bill Thursday, with a $13 billion centerpiece that would allow firms to forgo paying Social Security payroll taxes for workers hired this year.

White House aide Christina Romer, right, displays report released Thursday.

The bill would also extend long-term unemployment benefits through the end of May, at a cost of $22 billion. And it would renew several popular tax breaks that expired at the end of 2009, including the business research and development tax credit. The breaks would be renewed for another year at a $31 billion cost.

Within hours, Mr. Reid balked, saying the tax-break extenders would “confuse” the jobs bill, or open him up to charges that the bill was “written by lobbyists downtown.”

“We have a bill that is a jobs bill. No one can dispute that we have a jobs bill,” Mr. Reid said.

Even stripped down, its passage is uncertain. Late Thursday, Mr. Reid introduced the bill on the floor and immediately moved to shut off debate, setting the stage for a vote Feb. 22 on the question. Sixty votes will be needed to shut off debate, and Mr. Reid, who now has a 59-seat majority, is betting some Republicans will find the narrower jobs bill attractive. Broadly, Republicans have vowed to filibuster any measure they see as unnecessary government spending, and some conservative Democrats have suggested deficit fears could trump concern over joblessness.

Mr. Reid portrayed his bill as bipartisan, but added he wasn’t clear whether Republicans would support the package. “I have a long list of disappointments where we start out by holding hands and wind up pointing fingers at each other.”

The House narrowly passed a $154 billion jobs bill in December, so another intraparty Democratic clash over the scope of a final version appears inevitable.

The White House report paints a picture of a U.S. economy that has been federalized by the government response to crisis. At the height of the economic crisis, when small businesses were frozen out of private lending, average monthly volume of Small Business Administration-backed loans was $830 million. That volume reached $1.9 billion in September as the administration pumped money into the SBA and loosened its lending rules.

In 2006, private lenders provided 60% of the capital for housing loans, with the rest coming from government agencies such as the Federal Housing Agency and quasi-government lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. By last November, 97% of mortgages were guaranteed by federal entities.

The U.S. savings rate is expected to stabilize at between 4% and 7%, the report says, meaning other parts of the economy will have to make up for the consumer spending binge that has ended for good. Construction and homeownership rates also are not expected to reach their pre-recession peak.

Source: Wall Street Journal, February 12, 2010

This is a disturbing bit of information. I know this has been a very stressful time of looking for positions, and this article can make it more stressful. I suggest 1) take this with a grain of salt as not everyone has been vetted by recruiters, and 2) do your own background check just as you might check your credit history. Read on….

By JOANN S. LUBLIN

You messed up a job search, making a faux pas during an interview or handling a turndown badly. But you probably don’t realize that your mistake, exacerbated by the tight job market, could harm your long-term prospects.

At a networking event last August in Bellevue, Wash., a recruiter pointed to a software developer across the room. He’s qualified, but “very bad in his presentation skills,” he told career coach Paul Anderson and a human-resources official for a big technology concern. “What’s that guy’s name?” Mr. Anderson remembers the HR official asking, and then scribbling the name in her notebook. “I want to add him to our blacklist.”

The developer then walked over to the trio to inquire whether the recruiter had found relevant openings for him. The recruiter replied he was still looking. But once the job seeker left, the recruiter “told us he would never submit him to any clients,” Mr. Anderson recalls.

The developer unwittingly landed on two “do not hire” lists that day—a far from unusual occurrence. While U.S. search firms and hiring managers rarely admit they have such tallies, a growing number keep unofficial blacklists of undesirable applicants. These individuals often remain untouchable for years. Recruiters and employers mainly want to exclude liars, losers and misfits. Yet you also can get banned for minor infractions, such as simply taking a counteroffer. And it’s hard to discover or remove a bad mark beside your name.

“Negative notations about applicants seem more prevalent nowadays because job hunters pursuing scarce vacancies are so desperate” and picky hiring managers have plenty prospects to choose from, says Susan Whitcomb, author of “Resume Magic” and president of Job Search Academy, a Fresno, Calif., company that trains career coaches.Mr. Anderson, head of ProLango Consulting Inc. in Redmond, Wash., canvassed two dozen recruiters and employers last year about blacklists. “Every single one of them kept track of candidates they rejected for employment—in their computers or their heads,” he reports.

While a program manager for Microsoft Corp. until late 2006, Mr. Anderson says he blacklisted certain prospects after his preliminary screening found they had exaggerated their qualifications on their résumés. Mr. Anderson says he and his team had hiring folders on Microsoft’s intranet, and these prospects’ names “were put on the ‘do not hire’ list” in those folders.

Microsoft says it doesn’t maintain such lists. “The only time an applicant would be flagged is if they have failed a background check,” a spokeswoman says. “Any company would want to make note of such failures in their system.” Those individuals can’t re-apply for a finite period, which Microsoft handles case by case, she explains.

Many snub-worthy mistakes occur as a result of job hunters’ anxiety, which is being amplified by today’s high unemployment. An out-of-work software engineer gave Walden Recruiting of Concord, Mass., permission to submit his résumé to a Boston Internet company in late 2008. But he secretly let a rival search firm do so first, according to Marsh Sutherland, Walden’s president. That meant Walden wouldn’t collect a $24,000 fee, notes Mr. Sutherland. “I was very angry,” and yelled at the engineer for lying, he says.

The engineer told him he was trying “to increase his chances of getting interviewed.” Walden and the Internet business blacklisted him, says Mr. Sutherland. The engineer nevertheless sought more referrals from Walden—without success.

The engineer agrees he felt scared about seeking work during the holiday season and “didn’t control the situation” well by dealing with two search firms simultaneously. But he denies giving Mr. Sutherland the right to submit his résumé first. The recruiter’s refusal to help him further “was tough,” adds the engineer, who found his latest full-time job last March.

So how do you find out if your job search is being derailed by an offense you unknowingly committed? Your career coach may be able to learn if an employer labeled you unsuitable.

Key internal contacts also may glean the real reason for your killed candidacy. Bob Greer, a motorcycle service manager, wanted to teach full-time for Motorcycle Mechanics Institute in Orlando, Fla., after running dealer seminars at the vocational school. But an instructor keen to hire Mr. Greer suddenly refused to schedule his interview, claiming the teaching post no longer existed, according to Mr. Greer.

A friend employed by the institute told Mr. Greer the instructor didn’t give him the interview because its head of education had overheard Mr. Greer criticize the curriculum during his seminars. Mr. Greer says he also heard from other friends at the institute that he wasn’t being considered for a teaching post for that reason.

That head of education no longer works for the school. Mr. Greer now owns an Orlando motorcycle shop. A spokeswoman, who doesn’t know Mr. Greer, says the institute never excludes qualified individuals from seeking or obtaining employment.

Getting back into the good graces of a recruiter or hiring manager might require going the extra mile. A senior partner at a global executive-search firm placed a red flag in a prospect’s computerized file at the firm when he broke his promise to accept the international presidency of a major retailer in 2008. This was after extensive efforts by the retailer’s CEO to work out an attractive pay deal for the executive, who even signed an agreement to join. The hospitality-industry executive instead advanced to the No. 2 spot at his current employer.

“I didn’t speak to him for a year,” recalls the infuriated recruiter, who marked the executive’s file with “conversation required”—as in “talk to me before recommending this person to another client.” The search firm didn’t arrange interviews for the executive elsewhere.

In 2009, however, the executive offered the recruiter highly detailed information about the record of an acquaintance who was a candidate for a different job and conducted extra reference checks. That man got hired and flourished. The upshot? The recruiter dropped the “conversation required” tag last month.

Similarly, Heather R.Huhman needed a public-relations assistant last summer for Come Recommended, her new online matching service for entry-level jobs and internships. A 20-something applicant forgot about her scheduled phone interview, then called and declared, “Let’s do it right now. I am driving my car.” The young woman said she had prepared questions about the start-up but forgot to bring them along. She didn’t pose any during or after the interview. And “while we were talking, she was honking at people,” Ms. Huhman recollects.

The clueless candidate subsequently applied for several other positions with Come Recommended. Ms. Huhman ignored those applications. “I will not consider her. She is blacklisted,” insists the entrepreneur, who explained to the applicant after the interview why she wasn’t hired. What’s more, Ms. Huhman says she wouldn’t recommend her to any acquaintance in the PR industry.

Things might change, Ms. Huhman concedes, if the woman bought her lunch, requested honest feedback and demonstrated her reliability—such as by performing professionally during a two-week, unpaid tryout. At that point, the entrepreneur continues, “I would give extremely strong consideration to removing her from my blacklist.”

Source: WSJ, February 5, 2010

By SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN
Ever wonder what exactly goes on behind the scenes when you apply for a job? While the recruiting process varies by industry, company and even department, the end result is the same: One person out of many receives an offer.

Indeed, last month there were 6.4 unemployed persons for every job opening, according to the Labor Department. For those who aren’t hired, understanding what happened to their candidacy along the way can be a mystery. Not every firm notifies applicants that they have been rejected, and few say why. But knowing what goes on in the hiring process may give prospects the inside track for a job.

Many employers start filling vacancies below the executive level by using a team of recruiters or human-resources personnel to weed out applications that fail to meet a job’s basic qualifications. “They should only be removing candidates who are a clear miss,” says Peter Leech, chief marketing officer for Onlineshoes.com, a small Seattle e-commerce company.

How this is done, the time it takes, and the number of applicants selected to go on to the next step varies, but there are some patterns. Some screeners eyeball every submission that comes in, while others search for certain keywords among applications. Likewise, there are screeners who consider cover letters in their evaluations and those who ignore them. Career experts suggest erring on the side of caution. Submit a carefully written cover letter and insert keywords—must-have qualifications usually found in the job posting—with every application. Job hunters should expect to wait anywhere from a few days to several weeks before receiving a response to an application, if at all. A recent survey of 56 companies with at least 500 employees found that just 27% have a formal process to decline every external candidate they consider for an opening, reports CareerXroads, a human-resources consulting firm in Princeton, N.J.

If you’re worried that your application never arrived, wait five days and call the employer to ask for confirmation, suggests J.T. O’Donnell, a career strategist in North Hampton, N.H. Express humility and appreciation since it is likely that several other job hunters have made the same inquiry, she adds. Use the opportunity to inquire if there any time frames as to when candidates might hear if they were selected for an interview, she adds.

General Mills Inc. sends email confirmations only to job hunters who complete an online application for a specific opening at the Minneapolis-based company, says Stephanie Lilak, vice president, chief staffing officer. What’s more, recruiters will only review applications that show a person meets a job’s basic qualifications, based on screening questions, she says.

One common exception many firms make: A job hunter who is referred by an employee or other trusted source. A referred candidate may be given immediate attention, potentially speeding them to the interview stage. Michelle Vasquez, 43, says she landed a phone interview for a senior marketing job last month thanks to a referral from a friend of the hiring manager. Ms. Vasquez, who has been out of work for the past year and a half, was later invited to interview with several of the company’s senior managers, though she later found out she didn’t get the job. “I didn’t have out to fill an online application,” she says. “I went straight into the interview pool.”

The next step is often to have human-resources staff, hiring managers—or both—narrow down applicants to those whose skills and work histories closely match the job description. If they are unsure, they might reach out by email or phone to learn more. In the end, they will typically have a list of candidates, usually no more than 20, to interview. However, as new applications come in, it is possible that the list will grow, especially if several of those initially selected fail to pass the next round, which is usually a phone interview.

Often human-resources personnel, but occasionally hiring managers, will first interview candidates over the phone to save time and cut costs associated with on-site visits. Those calls last anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour or more. In general, the purpose of the phone interview is to make sure candidates understand the job and that it lines up with their salary expectations, says Jo-Ann Gastin, senior vice president, human resources, for Lockton Cos. LLC, an insurance brokerage firm in Kansas City, Mo. If it doesn’t, “there’s no point in going any further,” she says, though on rare occasions exceptions may be made for candidates who name salaries above the maximum for a job. “They’d have to wow us,” she says.

Phone interviews may be used to get deeper information about a candidate’s background to help determine if the person is a strong fit. Candidates also may be evaluated on their communication skills. In Ms. Gastin’s case, “We look to see if they can establish rapport on the phone because we are a customer-service company,” she says.

Sometimes hiring managers will reach out to candidates for a second call before scheduling an on-site meeting to dig deeper. And some firms require candidates to complete personality or competency tests benchmarked according to what an employer considers to be key traits for success in a particular role and are therefore difficult to game. Candidates who don’t cut it are typically informed within a day or two.

Some firms do bring candidates in for face-to-face meetings right after reviewing their applications. Among them is Boston Consulting Group, which mostly hires upcoming college and advanced-degree graduates, says Mel Wolfgang, partner and head of Americas recruiting. The firm assigns teams of up to three recruiters to assess applicants from more than 30 U.S. schools. “We look for well-rounded individuals whose interests and life experiences suggest that they would adapt well,” says Mr. Wolfgang. “We look for evidence that they have led and been empathic with a team or challenging situations.”

Up to six applicants are typically granted first-round interviews per opening, which involve meeting with two company consultants for about 40 minutes each. Of these, about half go on to second-round interviews with up to four company partners. During the meetings, candidates are asked about their work history, career goals and other relevant topics, plus they are expected to participate in role-playing exercises. “You spend a significant time discussing a business problem that the interviewer has actually worked on,” says Mr. Wolfgang, adding that client names and other details are kept anonymous. “It’s a way to explore how you would approach a similar problem.”

At most firms, once interviews are done, hiring managers will convene with colleagues who met the finalists to get their opinions on who should get an offer. “But in the end, it’s still the hiring manager’s call,” says Mr. Leech of Onlineshoes.com. That decision often comes down to fit and level of enthusiasm. “You’re making sure that you pick someone who is pumped up about the role,” he says.

Source: WSJ, January 26, 2010

Los Angeles Hires a Jobs Chief

By TAMARA AUDI

Facing a widening budget deficit and regional unemployment stuck above 12%, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has decided to place a vast swath of city government under a former private-sector executive charged with making Los Angeles more business friendly.

On Monday, Mr. Villaraigosa is expected to name Austin Beutner, a former partner at private-equity giant Blackstone Group and co-founder of the boutique investment-banking firm Evercore Partners, as the ailing city’s first economy chief.

The 49-year-old Mr. Beutner will have broad powers. About half of city government departments — from the Port of Los Angeles to the city’s sprawling Department of Water and Power utility — will report to him. Mr. Beutner will report directly to Mr. Villaraigosa.

In a letter Mr. Villaraigosa sent to Mr. Beutner when hiring him, the mayor said, “I recognize we need a top to bottom revitalization and refocus of our economic development team here at City Hall to make certain job creation is the overarching focus at all levels and in all offices and departments.”

Mr. Beutner’s appointment is a part of “a greatly expanded and retooled vision of economic development in the city,” said Chief Deputy Mayor Jay Carson. “We have to view every decision we make through the prism of job creation.”

Southern California’s economy has been among the hardest hit in the country. The area’s housing market was one of the first to collapse. And in Los Angeles, mainstays such as the film industry have suffered as other states woo productions away with rich tax incentives. Last week, the city was dealt a psychological blow when Northrop Grumman Corp., the last major firm of the region’s once-dominant aerospace industry, announced it was moving its headquarters to the Washington, D.C. area.

Like many cities, Los Angeles has slashed services as it tries to close an $80 million budget gap. City revenue, much of it generated from business taxes, has plummeted. If the trend continues, the city could face a deficit of more than $1 billion in two years, according to some predictions. An estimated 150,000 jobs have been lost in the city since January 2008. The unemployment rate in Los Angeles County was 12.6% in October, compared with 10% for the U.S. overall.

In an interview, Mr. Beutner said his goals were to create jobs, and “to make Los Angeles the most business-friendly city in the country.”

Mr. Beutner faces a daunting task. Los Angeles business owners have long complained they are trapped in a tangle of regulations and taxes that make doing business in the city difficult and expensive. In a November survey of Los Angeles business owners, 74% characterized the city as unfriendly to business.

“We have a city government that thinks last about the effects of laws and regulations on the business community, and how [those laws and regulations] affect businesses staying in Los Angeles and new business coming into the city,” said David Fleming, founder of the Los Angeles County Business Federation, an association of business chambers that conducted the survey.

Mr. Beutner said one of his first steps would be to better familiarize himself with the city and he planned to meet with city-hall staffers, labor unions and visit city sites, such as the ports. He said he was aware of business owners’ complaints about prohibitive taxes and regulations, and would seek to reduce red tape to make the city more business friendly.

Mr. Beutner, whose title is first deputy mayor and chief executive for economic and business policy, starts Monday. His annual salary is $1.

Businesses don’t have to go far to escape the problems of the city and still be part of the metro area. Los Angeles is surrounded by a myriad of smaller cities knitted together by an expansive highway system. Many Los Angeles residents buy everything from groceries, to the refrigerator they keep them in, outside the city. Some major stores that sell big-ticket items have moved to neighboring cities to avoid the high cost and difficulty of doing business there, such as delays in obtaining building permits, and a range of fees and taxes higher than most other cities in the area, business leaders said.

However, the city does have some tools at its disposal. The Department of Water and Power, the biggest municipal-owned utility in the nation, has an enormous capital-expenditure budget. It could try to lure firms to locate in the area by promising to purchase equipment such as solar panels from them, for example.

The mayor’s office also concedes that institutions such as the airport, one of the 10 busiest in the world, haven’t been managed in a way to maximize their business-development potential.

Mr. Beutner acknowledged the scope of the challenge. “The hardest thing is going to be to change the mindset here,” Mr. Beutner said. “For the first time in a long time the city is going to be forced to change the way it does things. The most fundamental thing is to change the mindset of those who work in the city [government]. We serve business. They’re our customers as opposed to the other way around.”

Mr. Beutner was part of a State Department effort under President Bill Clinton to create jobs in post-communist Russia. Mr. Beutner said the effort worked well and that he helped find financing for rabbit farmers in far-flung corners of Russia and established a lending system for homes and autos.

Roger Altman, who founded Evercore with Mr. Beutner in 1995 and is now its chairman, said one quality that is likely to serve Mr. Beutner well in his new role is his ability to remain calm. “I never saw Austin lose it, ever,” Mr. Altman said.

Mr. Beutner left Evercore in 2008, after a 2007 mountain-biking accident that broke his neck and nearly killed him. Mr. Beutner says he is fully recovered and back to cycling. Mr. Beutner is married with four children, and has lived in Los Angeles for a decade.

Source: WSJ, January 14, 2010

While visiting friends in Colorado over the holidays I had the great good fortune to meet and spend time with a woman who told me she didn’t know what she wanted to be when she grew up. She is 86 and an artist who brought a train car onto her property and transformed it into her home. Bright and warm, her sense of color and design fill the space. She has brought striking color and imagination to the lives of so many, and continues to develop ideas and create art. She is curious about the internet, i phones, and cameras. She asks pertinent questions, and keeps important quotes nearby throughout her cozy home.
And she’s on alert for learning more about what she wants to do when she grows up. This artist embodies the curiosity and playfulness that empowers her to keep trying new things in her work, and life. Surrounded by nature and people who pay attention to their spirit and the spirit around them, she stays keenly attuned to her environment.
I left Colorado reminded that quiet, and the awareness that has the opportunity to bloom in quiet, empowers us to connect to inspiration and curiosity. Now back in Los Angeles I am acutely aware of how much discipline it takes to tune in and pay attention to the quiet. This is the quiet that sparks new interests and makes the statement ‘I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up’ something fun, instead of scary.

Landing a Job of the Future Takes a Two-Track Mind

Career Experts Say Positions in Growing Fields Will Require an In-Demand Degree Coupled With Skills in Emerging Trends

By DIANA MIDDLETON

If you’re gearing up for a job search now as an undergraduate or returning student, there are several bright spots where new jobs and promising career paths are expected to emerge in the next few years.

Technology, health care and education will continue to be hot job sectors, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ outlook for job growth between 2008 and 2018. But those and other fields will yield new opportunities, and even some tried-and-true fields will bring some new jobs that will combine a variety of skill sets.

The degrees employers say they’ll most look for include finance, engineering and computer science, says Andrea Koncz, employment-information manager at the National Association of Colleges and Employers. But to land the jobs that will see some of the most growth, job seekers will need to branch out and pick up secondary skills or combine hard science study with softer skills, career experts say, which many students already are doing. “Students are positioned well for future employment, particularly in specialized fields,” Ms. Koncz says.

Career experts say the key to securing jobs in growing fields will be coupling an in-demand degree with expertise in emerging trends. For example, communications pros will have to master social media and the analytics that come with it; nursing students will have to learn about risk management and electronic records; and techies will need to keep up with the latest in Web marketing, user-experience design and other Web-related skills.

Technology Twists

More than two million new technology-related jobs are expected to be created by 2018, according to the BLS. Jobs that are expected to grow faster than average include computer-network administrators, data-communications analysts and Web developers. Recruiters anticipate that data-loss prevention, information technology, online security and risk management will also show strong growth.

A computer-science degree and a working knowledge of data security are critical to landing these jobs. Common areas of undergraduate study for these fields include some of the usual suspects, such as computer science, information science and management-information systems.

But those might not be enough. That’s because not all of those jobs will be purely techie in nature. David Foote, chief executive officer of IT research firm Foote Partners, advises current computer-science students to couple their degrees with studies in marketing, accounting or finance. “Before, people widely believed that all you needed to have were deep, nerdy skills,” Mr. Foote says. “But companies are looking for people with multiple skill sets who can move fluidly with marketing or operations.”

Social media has opened the door to the growth of new kinds of jobs. As companies turn to sites like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook to promote their brands, capture new customers and even post job openings, they will need to hire people skilled in harnessing these tools, Mr. Foote says. In most cases, these duties will be folded into a marketing position, although large companies such as Coca-Cola Co. are creating entire teams devoted exclusively to social media.

Similarly, employment for public-relations positions should increase 24% by 2018. Job titles—like interactive creative director—will reflect the duality of the required skill sets.

Back to School

Students will have to study strategy to maximize relationships between third-party content providers and their company’s Web team. Other key skills will be search-engine optimization to maximize Web traffic and marketing analytics to decipher the company’s target demographic, says Donna Farrugia, executive director of Creative Group, a marketing and advertising staffing agency in Menlo Park, Calif.

Many universities and community colleges are offering certification programs focused on burgeoning sectors. For example, the University of California at Los Angeles’s extension program offers a certificate in information design.

That, program, like similar certificate studies at other schools, aims to give students an edge in Web site search optimization—a major attraction for Web-based companies who want to boost user traffic, says Cathy Sandeen, dean of UCLA’s extension program.

User-experience design—a sort of architecture for information that Web viewers see—is another emerging field. Jobs there include experience specialists and product designers at firms ranging from computer-game companies to e-commerce Web sites.

Ms. Sandeen says the school will offer a certificate program for user-experience design as well, at a cost of about $3,000 to $5,000. The program will run one to two years, depending on a student’s schedule, and will couple product design with consumer psychology and behavior.

“Our students [will] learn to think like anthropologists, evaluating how easy it is to utilize the products,” she says.

Not surprisingly, green technology, including solar and wind energy and green construction, are also booming areas. Engineers who can mastermind high-voltage electric grids, for example, will have a great advantage over other job applicants, says Greg Netland, who oversees recruiting for the U.S., Latin America and Canada for Sapphire Technologies, an IT staffing firm in Woburn, Mass. that is a division of Randstad.

“Global sustainability will become more important to employers,” Mr. Netland says. “It cuts costs, making experts in the field highly attractive to employers.”

Jobs in alternative-energy systems, including wind and solar energy, will require a variety of skills: engineers to design systems, consultants who will audit companies’ existing energy needs, and those who will install and maintain the systems.

Financial Opportunities

Despite the slashing of positions seen in the financial sector during the economic crisis, recruiters also expect thousands of new jobs to be created in the compliance field, says Dawn Fay, district New York/New Jersey president of Robert Half International.

Ms. Fay counsels job seekers to look at the misdeeds of the past year or two to identify where new jobs will bloom in the financial sector. “It was a year of Ponzi schemes and banking meltdowns,” she says. “Be strategic and position yourself as someone who can mitigate those risks.”

That makes risk management an emerging specialty with strong growth in jobs expected. Those on track to be financial analysts can get additional certification in risk management through organizations like the Risk Management Association or the Risk and Insurance Management Society.

“Risk management was a mainstay in financial companies, but I believe it will be present in every Fortune 500 company,” says Jeff Joerres, chairman and chief executive officer at staffing firm Manpower Inc.

Hospital Upgrades

Health care is expected to continue to see a surge in hiring, with more than four million new openings estimated by 2018, according to the BLS. Hiring for physical and occupational therapists will likely be strongest. But new specialties are popping up, particularly in case management, says Brad Ellis, a partner with Kaye Bassman International, an executive-search firm based in Plano, Texas.

Case managers do everything from managing the flow of information between practitioner and insurance company to mitigating risk to the hospital.

“If you’re a licensed nurse, for example, getting a certificate in risk management from the state board of health would make you extremely competitive,” Mr. Ellis says.

Harris Miller, president of the Career College Association in Washington, D.C., says IT will be increasingly important in the quest to drive down health-care costs, too. Students specializing in nursing informatics, which combines general nursing with computer and information sciences, at the master’s degree level will swap a clipboard for a smart phone to manage patient data. Schools like Vanderbilt University are offering nursing informatics degrees via distance learning, and certification is offered through American Nurses Credentialing Center, based in Silver Springs, Md.

The strong push toward making medical records and information more accessible through computerized record-keeping means opportunity, Mr. Miller says. “This is going to require people who are skilled in the hardware and software of nursing informatics.”

More on Jobs of the Future: The Next Finance Hiring Hot Spots

Source: WSJ, December 29, 2009