plus 3, Fight for Jobs Easing at Career Offices - Yahoo Finance

Fight for Jobs Easing at Career Offices - Yahoo Finance
Linking Passion and Career - Human Resource Executive Online
JobsJobsJobs Exceed Industry Standards by Providing the ... - PRLog (free press release)
BmoreJobs.com Helps Local Job Seekers Find Work at ... - Earthtimes

Fight for Jobs Easing at Career Offices - Yahoo Finance

Posted: 18 Mar 2010 05:10 AM PDT

Lisa Bridgett acknowledges she's one of the lucky ones. Since graduating from Switzerland's IMD business school in December, she has landed a job as senior director of e-commerce for Ralph Lauren (rl.). The 35-year-old even turned down a second offer from another luxury goods outfit. But her achievement is due to more than just luck. "I had more than 60 interviews," says the law graduate, whose previous career included management consulting at Accenture (acn.) and a stint as a music industry marketer. "Where companies would normally have three or four interviewers, it would go to seven or even eight people having to vet you. My job search was an extremely busy time." Across Europe, scores of MBA graduates like Bridgett are finding risk-averse companies will hold up to 10 interviews with each candidate before signing new recruits. But the hard slog eventually pays off. Some 93% of Bridgett's IMD classmates have received job offers as of February, vs. 89% at the same time last year. "We're pretty happy," says Katty Ooms-Suter, Lausanne-based IMD's director of MBA admissions and career services. "We got the feeling that the market was picking up, carefully." While figures aren't definitive -- especially because recruiting now drags on for months after graduation -- job offers for the December 2009 class at Fontainebleau (France)-based INSEAD rose 7% compared with July 2009. At London's Cass Business School, both financial services and consulting have rebounded, helped by students being less fussy about the roles they're willing to take. And for schools with two-year programs, like Barcelona-based IESE, banking and consulting are providing more summer internship opportunities than last year. Encouraging>There are encouraging signs in other industries, too, particularly health care and pharmaceuticals. "Some sectors are aggressively recruiting and they're back to paying high sign-on bonuses," says Sandra Schwarzer, director of the careers department at INSEAD. She picks out biotech, renewable energy, public administration, and nonprofits among other positive sectors, and says she is confident recruiting will pick up in consulting, as well. Some of the career changes achieved by graduates this year have been a pleasant surprise. "I've seen switches I wouldn't have thought possible in an economy like this," says Schwarzer. She cites a former member of the military taking a retail sales marketing position, and a financial-services consultant going into health-care marketing. "We've seen it all," she says. That said, the job market remains tough overall. While banks are back on campus, they're still making fewer offers than before the downturn. "We haven't recovered the number of positions," says Gloria Batllori, MBA director at Barcelona-based ESADE. At London Business School, fewer students are expected to get jobs in finance again this year, below boom-time levels of up to 40% of graduates. That's despite recruitment drives at Barclays Capital (bcs.), which is expanding in the U.S., and Nomura (nmr.), which acquired the European assets of failed Lehman Brothers . Career>To help students find work, career services departments have gone into overdrive, bolstering their staff counts and directing additional resources at nontraditional MBA sectors outside of banking and consulting. Oxford's Said Business School has invited representatives to campus from potential employers as diverse as Louis Vuitton (lvmuy.pk.PK) and the U.N. to participate in informal career panels. "We're bringing in organizations that haven't been to the school before," says Director of Careers Derek Walker, noting that Said held 14 careers events for MBAs in February alone, or one every other day. Meanwhile, since December 2008, INSEAD has offered its students a year of additional career services if they graduate without a job. Crucially, schools are maintaining their relationships even with companies that aren't recruiting. One new strategy has been to invite them on campus anyway for "no strings attached" networking events. "We're not asking them to come as recruiters -- it's risk-free," says Karen Siegfried, MBA executive director at University of Cambridge Judge Business School. The approach looks to be paying off now that the economy is better. As the market began to pick up in the fall, says IMD's Ooms-Suter, the groundwork had already been laid. "Companies who had said they weren't recruiting started calling back saying, 'Actually we can take one or two,' " she says. Another novel tactic, employed by London Business School: When Accenture said it wasn't hiring, the school asked the firm to send student resumes to its nonprofit clients -- a relatively new sector for MBAs. Four graduates got hired by Accenture clients this way. European schools also are joining forces to boost employment opportunities for students. After several of its local school partners pulled out of its national MBA fair, GISMA business school in Hannover, Germany, united with five other European programs, including Britain's Warwick Business School, for what is billed to be the first European MBA fair. About 25 companies, including BASF (basfy.pk.PK), Barilla, and the original fair's long-term partner Johnson & Johnson (jnj.), will meet 290 students in April. Others are taking a more singular approach. London's dean, Andrew Likierman, used the World Economic Forum at Davos as a platform to promote students -- a first for the school. Staying>In a further sign of just how tough the market is, students are opting to stay in school longer. Among the first class to undertake the new flexible MBA at ESADE -- where students can opt for a 12-, 15-, or 18-month course of study -- only 10 chose the 12-month option and 50 chose to stay for 15 months. The vast majority of students, some 120, plumped for 18 months, preferring to enter the labor market as late as possible. Meanwhile, for the first time starting this year, students at Judge will be able to take on internships, giving them additional opportunities to impress potential employers. Forget the "triple jump," where ambitious MBAs once changed their location, business sector, and role after graduation. These days, switching countries post-MBA is becoming more and more difficult. Visa regulations, notably in the U.S. and U.K., are getting tougher. "It's protectionism," says ESADE's Batllori, who says that recruiting foreign employees has become too difficult for some companies to manage. "They can hire someone local with equal talent and fewer obstacles," she says. Further complicating matters, recruiters from nontraditional MBA sectors, such as nonprofits, tend to be less well-versed in navigating onerous work permit and visa applications. But ultimately, in tough times, some firms simply prefer local people with an international background. "Companies don't want to take risks so they hire Germans in Germany or French in France," says Alex Herrera, career services director at Spain's IESE. Students at London Business School, meanwhile, are leveraging their school breaks to go home to make contacts in a way they haven't in previous years, says Director of Career Services Diane Morgan, noting however that two-thirds of its graduates manage to stay in Europe. The London school this month hired former HSBC (hbc.) recruiter Dina Khudairi as a senior business development manager in Dubai, the first time it has created a post devoted to career development in another region. "We're very cautious but it just makes you work harder," says Morgan. "Overall it's been really promising. Companies still want good people."

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Linking Passion and Career - Human Resource Executive Online

Posted: 18 Mar 2010 04:06 AM PDT

As with many other industries, the nonprofit sector has an aging workforce. As nonprofits explore ways to attract and retain top-notch young recruits as well as lure talented executives eager to make a change in mid-career, leaders say their best chance of replenishing their management pipeline is by tapping into the desire to give something back to society.

By The Wharton School

The conventional wisdom on the campuses of elite universities used to be that the nonprofit sector could never compete for top job seekers against organizations that promised meteoric career paths such as big-name Wall Street players or respected consulting firms.

But that was before the rise of Teach for America, the unique nonprofit that recruits some of the nation's best minds to spend two years right out of college in the most challenging urban and rural school districts.

By appealing to students' most altruistic instincts, TFA attracted a whopping 35,000 applicants in 2009 for just 4,100 slots -- luring as much as 10 percent of the graduating classes at some leading private schools.

That's why executives from a couple of the nation's more established, traditional nonprofits -- Girl Scouts of America and Mental Health America -- joined experts from Wharton and the University of Pennsylvania at the University's Fels Institute of Government to discuss innovative new approaches that might re-create some of TFA's recruiting magic for their own organizations.

"If you have ever been to a Teach for America event, it's amazing -- they have the schtick down," says Doug Lynch, vice dean at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education.

Lynch compares TFA recruiting sessions to tent revival meetings, with swelling music and emotional presentations about combating poverty. "Their message is, 'Come and change the world with [us] for two years.' It's a pretty compelling strategy."

Girl Scouts and Mental Health America are part of a coalition of some of America's best-known social-service nonprofits, charities and faith-based organizations, known as Leadership 18. The Fels program, held in conjunction with Leadership 18, was entitled, "Human Capital Pipeline Challenges: Recruiting, Developing and Retaining Top Talent."

Lynch and other program participants suggest that, as a first step, nonprofits need to consider forming clubs on the campuses of leading universities, while focusing on "immersion experiences" -- such as internships and other hands-on projects -- that would raise awareness of what these more established agencies do.

Such programs help to "break down some of the stereotypes and highlight innovation within the [nonprofit] sector," according to Jeff Klein, director of Wharton's Graduate Leadership Program.

"When students think about careers, we're trying to have conversations that link passion and career -- and that passion is [already] there," Klein says. "I think that's where [the nonprofit] sector differs from the for-profit sector, which is usually less about personal passion."

Familiarity Breeds Disinterest

At the core of the conversation was a particular irony that the members of Leadership 18 -- which actually is now 23 big-name nonprofits, including Catholic Charities, the Boy Scouts, the American Cancer Society, United Way, the YMCA, Goodwill Industries, the AARP and others -- face in attracting and retaining top management talent.

The issue, according to the discussion participants, is one of too much familiarity: In many cases, these well-established groups have been in existence for more than a century and are thus seen as neither innovative nor as a promising career path.

Kathy Cloninger, who has been the CEO of Girl Scouts of America since 2003, says that, among the general public, her iconic organization is so well known for its network of two million volunteers that many people are not aware that there is also a full-time staff of 9,000 employees, including her.

"When I tell people what I do, they ask me, 'Is that a paid position?'" Cloninger says with a laugh. (According to a November 2008 article in Forbes, the CEO's annual salary that year was $446,816.)

According to Cloninger, 55 percent of leaders at the nation's top nonprofits are on the brink of retirement, raising concerns about the size and skills of the upcoming talent pool. In addition, 70 percent of the next tier of managers is in the same age bracket, and only a handful of these organizations are now run by dynamic leaders under the age of 50.

Nonprofits need what she called "a robust pipeline" -- finding ways to attract and retain top-notch young recruits as well as lure talented executives eager to make a change in mid-career.

In fact, in a recent study of the leadership requirements of nonprofits for the next decade, The Bridgespan Group, a nonprofit research organization, found that agencies with revenues of more than $250, 000 "will need to attract and develop some 640,000 new senior managers -- the equivalent of 2.4 times the number currently employed."

The recession has been as difficult a time for the nonprofit sector as for the rest of the American economy -- perhaps even more so, with a notable drop in large donations from individuals and from struggling corporations, and with many state and local governments cutting their contributions as tax revenues plunge.

News reports earlier this year noted that even sales of Girl Scout cookies, which help fund the nonprofit's local-chapter activities, were down noticeably -- by nearly 20 percent in some regions.

But with increasing talk of a rebound taking place in 2010, there are indications that nonprofits may be able to hire more aggressively. A recent survey by global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas showed that nonprofits, along with the government sector, had plans in the waning months of 2009 to add more than 28,000 new workers.

According to David Shern, the CEO of Mental Health America, which until recently was known as the National Mental Health Association, organizations courting college graduates should be equally focused on recruiting older career changers.

Shern -- whose Alexandria, Va.-based organization, with 320 affiliate chapters from coast-to-coast, advocates on a wide range of mental-health issues -- says the agency has been thinking about aggressively recruiting postal workers, who are in touch with local communities and aware of health issues.

"We see [them as] natural helpers," says Shern, who is also a psychologist and leading mental-health researcher. "There are certain postal workers who can watch the elders in our communities. How do we enhance these roles?"

Lessons from TFA

The remarkable recruiting success of the newer nonprofit Teach for America has some lessons to offer the well-established members of Leadership 18, the program participants agree. There was considerable discussion of the way the older nonprofits could pool their resources for a common hiring effort that might rival the attention-grabbing efforts of TFA.

Several note that TFA is essentially a large-scale human resources organization, since the teachers' actual work is done within the framework already existing in school districts, while conventional nonprofits are more mission oriented.

Barbara Hewitt, senior associate director of career services at Penn, says she recently helped two seniors on the Philadelphia campus start a social entrepreneurship club -- a sign of the type of passion and commitment that conventional nonprofits could tap into.

Moderator Harris Sokoloff, a professor of education at Penn, says the possibility of organizing "a rotational model" of students working on internships within the various Leadership 18 agencies could develop both skills and a career interest in nonprofit work.

"There's an opportunity to change perceptions," says Lynch. "Everybody loves the Girl Scouts -- the [problem] is that they're not seeing it as a career or as an opportunity in which they can develop. Even when [working for] a smaller nonprofit, you may get thrown into a much more senior position than when working for IBM."

Cloninger notes there are important limits to the TFA comparisons. While that agency's mission is focused on recruiting talent for just two years -- with a promise by recruits to stay active in education reform after moving on to grad school or a well-paying private-sector post -- established agencies such as the Girl Scouts are really looking for people who can make a longer-term commitment that might eventually lead to new blood at the higher levels of management.

"I love Teach for America, but they are a unique situation," she says. "We really want to work to create a sector that draws and retains people and is a legitimate career, so the strategies are longer term than just getting in and getting out."

For younger recruits, career advancement is a big concern that nonprofits need to address.

The nonprofit leaders say executives often have opportunities to move between different groups such as the Girl Scouts, the American Cancer Society or Mental Health America -- a career path that isn't well known or publicized. As in corporate America, there is no need to stay in one place when opportunities arise elsewhere.

"We are just at the beginning of thinking how to position this whole sector [as a career opportunity]," says Cloninger.

Thomas McKenna, a former national executive director of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, who now teaches at Penn's Fels School of Government, adds that better collaboration among Leadership 18 members could help to promote job movement between the large agencies.

According to McKenna, studies show that, while large nonprofits have a difficult time competing with Wall Street or with large corporations on pay, those same surveys show nonprofit careers offer higher job satisfaction, at least initially.

"But what happens in nonprofits is burnout," he adds. "Essentially, studies show that workers don't feel there are opportunities for them to advance, to learn new skills, to broaden what they can do."

At the higher levels of nonprofit management, conflict with board members is most frequently cited as a reason for leaving.

Cloninger notes that, in well-established organizations such as her own, change can be a struggle.

"We're innovating all the time, but we're also sitting on a bureaucratic framework that has evolved over 100 years." (The Girl Scouts was launched in the United States in 1912.) Conflict can arise when "young people come into the organization wanting to make a contribution, and they've got layers of management who say, 'You can't do that,' or their idea is stifled, or the board doesn't approve, or whatever."

Ultimately, the participants agree traditional nonprofits stand the best chance of replenishing their management pipeline by tapping into the desire of successful young men and women to give something back to society.

Lynch says it's telling that, over the course of this decade, the other campus recruiting success story, in addition to Teach for America, has been the Central Intelligence Agency.

"I would argue that it's the same thing as Teach for America in that they have very coherent and concrete human capital strategies, and it's all centered on the mission -- whether it's going into inner city schools or protecting the world from terrorism."

Republished with permission from Knowledge@Wharton , the online research and business analysis journal of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

March 18, 2010

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JobsJobsJobs Exceed Industry Standards by Providing the ... - PRLog (free press release)

Posted: 17 Mar 2010 11:19 PM PDT

PR Log (Press Release) – Mar 18, 2010 – Victoria, Australia – The most preferred Australia job board – JobsJobsJobs – has once again outperformed the online recruitment industry for giving out more career options and job placements across every industry in Australia.

From accounting jobs, administration jobs, sales jobs and retail jobs to educational jobs, over a thousand job seekers everyday finds a suitable career through JobsJobsJobs Australia online recruitment services.

Since the quarter of 2008, when companies have turned to online job boards and recruitment for their staffing needs, JobsJobsJobs Australia has catered to this demand by providing businesses with the people they need.

"Today, hiring managers and employers are looking for skilled professionals who can fit the job role easily without having to spend on additional skill enhancement and personal development trainings," says JobsJobsJobs Australia.

"And where else could they find such a large pool of highly skilled professionals than online and at online job boards like JobsJobsJobs Australia"
Because of this, JobsJobsJobs skilled candidates benefit from a wide range of career options and job vacancies posted at JobsJobsJobs from Australia's top multi-national corporate to local businesses.

To date, Aussie job seekers are offered various job and employment opportunities across a range of industries in Australia. Through these job and career opportunities, JobsJobsJobs aims to help skilled candidates refine their job search strategy and find the right career that matches their education, skill and passion.

To know more about JobsJobsJobsJobs Australia's services visit http://www.jobsjobsjobs.com.au/

About JobsJobsJobs Australia

JobsJobsJobs is an online job board that promotes fair career and employment opportunities for all Australians across every industry. Their customer service centric organization aims to facilitate greater choice in the job board market by embracing new web technology and delivering exceptional as well as superior recruitment and employment services.

Their imaginative and friendly approach allows the organization to deliver a solution that is better suited to the modern job hunter. Intuitive navigation, smart design and a more personalized job hunting experience are the hallmarks of JobsJobsJobs online recruitment services.

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BmoreJobs.com Helps Local Job Seekers Find Work at ... - Earthtimes

Posted: 15 Mar 2010 04:02 AM PDT

BALTIMORE - (Business Wire) BmoreJobs.com will bring local job seekers and employers together at an intimate job fair focused on placing qualified applicants with key local employers.

This Showcase Career Expo will take place on Thursday, March 18, 2010 from 11:00am to 3:00pm at the Sheraton Baltimore North Hotel in Towson.

Twenty local companies will be hiring at the job fair. Positions will be offered in a variety of disciplines including accounting, customer service, technology and sales. This event is FREE for job seekers.

Recruiting professionals from the DAP Products and the State of Maryland will be exhibiting at the career expo, along with Tritech, Vector Security, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney and other leading companies.

Despite the lingering recession, Greater Baltimore's economy continues to hold its own, according to data compiled and released by the Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore in February 2010. When compared to the 25 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S., Greater Baltimore had the third lowest unemployment rate – 5.4% – and saw an employment decline of just 0.2%, the seventh smallest drop nationally.

"Even though we are seeing a relatively low unemployment rate in the region, we still have locals who are in search of work. The good news there, too, is that the area ranks 3rd nationally for the number of job postings per unemployed person," said Shannon Landwehr, Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore. "The jobs are here and we are seeing them in several industries – from health care to high-tech IT jobs in cybersecurity and engineering. The employment outlook in our region remains positive."

Job fairs such as the Showcase Career Expo are critical to the local economy and job growth. BmoreJobs.com's local job fair events reintroduce a "human" element into what has too often become an impersonal online recruiting process.

"This Expo makes it possible for local employers to find qualified, available, local job seekers with a personal and professional approach," said Mark Babbitt, CEO of BmoreJobs.com.

For more information about the event and how to attend, go to the website.

About BmoreJobs.com

BmoreJobs.com presents Baltimore area employers with a large and diverse group of local job seekers who are ready to go to work now, along with career opportunities at the Baltimore area's best companies. BmoreJobs.com serves the unique needs of our community in an exclusively local and highly personal way. For more information please visit our website.