We live in an age when the one-company individual no longer exists.  Your father, mother or grandparents may have worked for one company their entire lives.  Now it is not uncommon to be employed by three, four and even five or more companies during one’s worklife.

Accelerated by unending layoffs, the number of managers and executives who have changed jobs four or more times has increased dramatically according to surveys our company conducts among the individuals who go through our program. (more…)

As approximately 2.9 million young men and women begin their post-secondary education, many are pondering ways they might be able to avoid the high rate of unemployment and underemployment facing the most recent crop of graduates.  They might consider the advice of human resource executives, who said in a new survey that they would advise college freshmen to pursue degrees in engineering, computer science or health care.

According to the survey, which was conducted in August among about 150 human resource executives by global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc., the career paths to avoid included law, marketing/advertising and, ironically, human resources. (more…)

As social and professional networking websites like Facebook and LinkedIn become more popular for connecting with friends and family, more and more people are visiting the sites for more specific reasons, namely the job search.  As the number of unemployed workers continues to grow, job seekers are using these sites to brand themselves to future employers.

LinkedIn has always been touted as the site to network professionally; however, job seekers are now also turning to Facebook and Twitter for job leads, advice and contact building.  Hundreds of recruiters are trolling Twitter, searching for applicants with relevant skills, while job seekers post links to their resumes, websites and examples of their work for previous employers. (more…)

Shifting jobs or entire careers is very risky business. Before one runs off to join the circus, so to speak, serious evaluation must be made before years of hard work toward mastery in a particular field are cast aside for the allure of something completely different.

Under what circumstances should you seek a position at another company?  If you learn that your company is a candidate for acquiring another firm or is itself being bought out, it is time to seriously and honestly assess your current position, or someone else may do it for you.  When a company is merged or acquired, the new management will immediately make changes in the employee ranks.  Individuals who fill positions the new company needs will be retained.  Those who duplicate responsibilities already being handled by the acquiring company are likely to be discharged.  (more…)

A recent conversation highlighted an age-old problem with workers on the computer/IT side of things: what happens when you’re in an interview and the interviewer is asking for 5 years experience on a program that’s only existed for 2 years? Do you lie and risk losing the job at a later date? Do you correct the interviewer and risk losing the job before you get it? Do you even know if it’s possible to have that much experience? Don’t laugh, it was very common for recruiters to ask for 5 years of ASP experience, back when the language had only been around for 2 or 3 years. And then you have the cases when the tech has been out exactly as long as the requirement, so you’d need to be part of the first handful to use it. Expectations aren’t always realistic.

Then you have the really amorphous marketing terms that are fine for a sales pitch, but doesn’t really mean a whole lot to somebody who’s doing implementation (Web 3.0, anyone?).

For your benefit (and the benefit of any recruiters who want to check requirements vs. how old things are), we’ve prepared a list of how old some technologies you might get asked about are. We’ve also included some guides on what to do about some dubious marketing buzz terms that get thrown around. (more…)

Wondering what Chicago’s tech job market is really like right now?  What positions and skills are hot?  Which are cooling off?  Lucky you, we just surveyed some recruiters and staffing agencies to save you some legwork.  If you were around the job market circa the 2001 dotBomb, you might want to sit down in case you start having flashbacks.  Multiple recruiters talked about hiring freezes, and the similarities don’t end there. (more…)