plus 3, Police dog finds parole violator first day on job - San Mateo Daily Journal

Police dog finds parole violator first day on job - San Mateo Daily Journal
Present yourself as likeable during job interview - Fresno Bee
Jobs Corps program offers career technical training - WatertownDailyTimes.com
Oregon college graduates struggle to launch careers in grim job market - Oregonian

Police dog finds parole violator first day on job - San Mateo Daily Journal

Posted: 17 Jun 2010 03:58 AM PDT

NEWBURGH, N.Y. — A new police dog has learned an old trick — tracking down a parole violator outside New York City on its first day on the job.

Bloodhound Tank Tebow (TEE'-boh) is handled by Officer Curtis Hahne (hayn) in Newburgh, 60 miles north of New York.

Tank was donated to police Monday and began his career with the officer Tuesday. Two hours later police were dispatched to an apartment complex on a tip the parole violator was there. But by the time police arrived the man had disappeared.

Police say Tank followed the man's scent into a commercial area, through woods, across streets and into another apartment complex several blocks away. They say the man surrendered without incident.

Tank is certified by the National Police Bloodhound Association. He'll also be used to find missing people.

Five Filters featured article: Headshot - Propaganda, State Religion and the Attack On the Gaza Peace Flotilla. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Present yourself as likeable during job interview - Fresno Bee

Posted: 15 Jun 2010 08:42 PM PDT

Understand this: The job interviewer doesn't want your life history, or even your job history.

Even though the interviewer wants to know what you've done that has prepared you for the job at hand, that's probably not a laundry list of your past jobs.

The interviewer is looking for a measure of your skills, your interests, your enthusiasm, your adaptability and your communication style.

You may be perfect for the job, but you must convey that quickly and concisely and in a way that the interviewer thinks, "Hmm. I'd like to know more about you."

On a recent radio show in this area, the topic was the job market for this year's college graduates. A recruiter called to tell what he looks for in interviewing job candidates.

Chief among them, he said, he follows the DYLT rule: Do you like them?

Even when interviewers ask you to talk about yourself, they're looking for the value you can add to the organization. There probably are multiple candidates who can meet their needs.

So the differentiation is whether you've conveyed a competent and likable image. As the recruiter noted, people like to do business with people they like.

Montford noted: "You wouldn't be interviewing if you weren't qualified for the job, per your résumé. The job interview is a process to screen out qualified candidates."

Your résumé, which won you the interview, lists your job progression.

The interview is your chance to burnish the facts with some fun -- a glimpse into the competent but pleasant person that the interviewer would want to bring on board.

Five Filters featured article: Headshot - Propaganda, State Religion and the Attack On the Gaza Peace Flotilla. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Jobs Corps program offers career technical training - WatertownDailyTimes.com

Posted: 17 Jun 2010 01:49 AM PDT

Job Corps will offer free career technical training for those ages 16 through 24 in automotive mechanics, automotive body repair, medical and business office, certified nursing assistant, licensed practical nurse, construction, culinary arts and security, among other careers.

The program for high school graduates and nongraduates is administered by the U.S. Department of Labor and includes up to two years' education and training, campus housing, meals and many other services. There is no cost to eligible students.

The program will hold orientation and application interviews at 10:30 a.m. July 14 at the WorkPlace, 1000 Coffeen St. For more information and to learn what documents to bring, call 478-5529, ext. 102.

Five Filters featured article: Headshot - Propaganda, State Religion and the Attack On the Gaza Peace Flotilla. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Oregon college graduates struggle to launch careers in grim job market - Oregonian

Posted: 12 Jun 2010 09:36 PM PDT

Published: Saturday, June 12, 2010, 10:00 AM Updated: Sunday, June 13, 2010, 7:47 AM

They have worked four years, often longer, juggling jobs and classes, cramming for finals, studying abroad working internships — all with the hope of finding a career foothold despite the worst job market since the Great Depression.

More than 11,000 members of the Class of 2010 from Oregon's seven public universities capped their hard work with commencement ceremonies this week and last.

Now, they move on either to graduate school or to join more than 212,000 other Oregonians looking for work, including untold thousands of last year's graduates still searching for jobs.

Many from the Class of 2009 are living with their parents and working part-time retail jobs they could have landed without a degree. Others are taking more college classes to put off paying back student loans, which average more than $20,000. Many say they've lost self-confidence. Still, none of the 18 students from the Classes of 2009 and 2010 interviewed by The Oregonian expressed regret about going to college.

Job prospects for the Class of 2010, which number about 18,000 students in Oregon when you include those who graduated last fall and winter, are slightly brighter because of a recent increase in employers hiring college graduates, said Edwin W. Koc, research director for the National Association of Colleges and Employers. What's more, recruiters will focus on the Class of 2010, he said.

"If you come out of the Class of 2009, you are going to be treated as someone who has been in the job market for a year," he said. Employers want to see some experience, he said.

After a yearlong search, Jackie Mroz, 22, of Oregon City, is about to get some experience, but at a cost.

She put everything she had into her studies at the University of Oregon, graduating in 2009 with degrees in international studies and sociology and a double minor in nonprofit administration and African studies. She studied abroad in Senegal, took challenging courses, earned a 3.8 grade point average and raced through college in three years.

"It has gotten me pretty much nowhere," she said.

When she graduated, Mroz figured she would quickly land a job with an international nonprofit. After two months, she took on a catering job as she broadened her search. Still living with her parents in Oregon City, she sent out more than 70 carefully prepared job applications and resumes.

"I never got a single interview, except for the catering company," she said.

By March, she had added three more catering jobs.

"I have gone through weeks when I completely doubted myself," she said. "What am I doing wrong? It is a question I ask everyday. ....After a year of getting basically no response, you start giving up."

Mroz recently drove cross-country for a 3-month unpaid internship that she started last week with a nonprofit agency in Baltimore. The agency helps refugee immigrants settle in the United States. After that internship ends, she will pay her way to Kenya for a community development internship through the San Francisco-based Foundation for Sustainable Development.

If those experiences don't lead to jobs, Mroz said, she'll consider graduate school.

Of course some graduates are landing jobs, particularly those with specific technical skills such as John Yeier, 24, who graduated from the Oregon Institute of Technology in Klamath Falls on Saturday. He's the sole member of his class with a degree in embedded engineering , which integrates computer software and hardware in cell phones, cars and other machines. He will work on small plane navigation system software for Garmin AT in Salem.

OIT Class of 2009 graduates also have been unusually successful because they study for technical jobs such as nursing, medical imaging, mechanical engineering and dental hygiene. A survey of the class, with 58 percent responding, found that 71 percent have found jobs related to their degrees and another 21 percent are working.

A recent national survey of more than 13,000 graduates in the Class of 2010 shows that about one in four who applied for jobs will have one waiting for them after they graduate. That's up from one in five students who landed jobs last year, but far below the one in two graduates who found work in 2007.

The Oregon Employment Department's job bank lists 14,373 job openings, but they are most prevalent in low-paying occupations that don't require college degrees such as retail sales, trucking and housekeeping.

Audra Armen-Van Horn, 23, Portland, worked for Victoria's Secret while earning her psychology degree from the University of Oregon. Now, a year after graduating in 2009 and applying for more than 100 jobs, she's still working part time for the store while hoping to get a job with the American Cancer Society.

"I have a bachelor's degree, and I'm making $8.50 an hour," she said. "It is pretty depressing. .¤.¤. But it is a job. I'm happy I have a job."

Malcolm Staudinger, 22, a 2009 graduate in environmental science from Portland State University, lives at home with his parents in Vancouver, Wash., and is now looking to Montana and Alaska for a job related to geographic information systems.

"I apply probably for half a dozen jobs a week and have gotten maybe three or four interviews in the past year," he said. "It is tough because it makes you doubt yourself. You feel like you have these great skills and worked hard and you are constantly getting passed over again and again and again."

This year the college majors delivering the best job prospects are accounting, business administration, computer science, engineering and mathematics, said Koc of the Association of Colleges and Employers. The major with the dimmest prospects -teaching. "This is the worst I've seen for education majors," he said.

Mindy Lary, 27, Beaverton, can testify to that. She graduated in 2009 with a Master of Art in elementary school teaching from the University of Portland and has been substitute teaching since.

"I applied for 75 teaching jobs, anything within an hour's drive of the Portland area, and I didn't even get an interview," she said.

Some recent graduates are trying to create their own jobs. Lisa Anderson, 23, a 2009 journalism graduate from the University of Oregon and receptionist for a Portland law firm, has joined five other journalism graduates in starting a men's clothing magazine and website.

"We printed our first issue in March," she said. "It is definitely a labor of love."

Linda Williams Favero, assistant director of the University of Oregon's career center in Portland, said the job market for college graduates is improving. She helps students and recent graduates polish their job hunting in a 6-session, 3-week seminar. By the time participants finish her class, half have a job or prospects for one, she said.

One day last month, Favero advised nine recent graduates taking her seminar to treat their job search as though it were a full-time job. Tap social networks for job contacts, she advised, and organize information interviews with potential employers, prepare a 30-second elevator job pitch, polish your resume and keep positive.

Matt Petryni, 24, a 2009 UO graduate, said the seminar has helped him regain hope after a discouraging year of rejections from the world of urban planning where he hopes to work. He's heartened by seeing other graduates land jobs, he said.

"So it is not impossible," he said. "That is good to hear right now."

-- Bill Graves

Five Filters featured article: Headshot - Propaganda, State Religion and the Attack On the Gaza Peace Flotilla. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.