GSETA

Friday Link Round-Up

The Future of Work - Serial Monogamy, Speed Dating, Commitment Issues

View more presentations from Jobvite, Inc.

Here are your links for this Friday before Memorial Day:

• Guidance for Employers on Use of Criminal Background Checks in Hiring--The EEOC has issued revised guidance for employers on how they may use criminal background checks in hiring. Worth reading and using to educate your local employers. Pages 25-26 list best practices that are worth posting and sharing. 

• 10 Jobs That Didn't Exist 10 Years Ago--Some of these jobs simply require people to re-package their skill sets in a new way. 

• What Recruiters Look at in their 6-Second Skim of a Resume--This heat map shows the impact of making a resume simple to scan. It also shows where recruiters spend the most time looking--at your name, current title and company, current position start and end dates, previous title and company, previous position start and end dates, and education.

• Building a Regional Entrepreneurship Network: A Guide to Action--A nice step-by-step guide for putting together a regional entrepreneurship network. Could be a great project for WIBs to lead. 

• Help Wanted: The Future of Work in Advanced Economies--This short paper takes a look at the 5 factors impacting the future of work as we know it, including the impact of technology, skill mismatches, geographic mismatches, untapped talent and disparity in income growth. 

• The Case of the Missing Skills--Over 1/2 of US employers are reporting difficulty finding people with the right skill sets. The biggest reason for this may be the time and resources it takes to re-train workers. 

• Most States Still Years Away from Getting Back Lost Jobs--According to the Wall Street Journal, NJ is still 2-3 years away from returning to pre-recession job levels. Of course, this also doesn't indicate the nature or quality of those jobs that return. 

An Introduction to Content Curation for WIBs and One Stops

Content Curation for Nonprofits

View more presentations from Beth Kanter

In an age of information overload, one of the most valuable services WIBs and One Stop Career Centers can provide to their job seeker and employer customers is to become outstanding "content curators." There is simply too much information online for people to weed through and organizations that are able to effectively find, select and repackage relevant, high quality information will be positioning themselves well. 

What is Content Curation? 

According to Beth Kanter, one of the finest nonprofit content curators on the planet, content curation is the "finding, organizing, filtering and 'making sense sense of' information on the web and sharing the very best of that content with your network." Content curators are editors of sorts, looking for the best information and resources to benefit their various stakeholders. 

Why Be A Content Curator? 

Content curation is first and foremost a valuable service--you help your customers make sense of the constant stream of content that comes at them. This can be particularly valuable for job seekers, who may be overwhelmed by all that they find online related to the various facets of job search. 

As a content curator, you also have an opportunity to establish your organization as a thought leader in specialized niches and effective content curation can be one of the best ways to get attention from employers, who also drown in a sea of information. 

As Fast Company points out, content curators are the "new superheroes of the web." 

How to Be a Content Curator

Content curation first requires you to be clear about the audiences you are curating for and the kinds of information and articles they need. Clearly job seekers are looking for great job search content, but this can be further segmented into job search strategies for different industries or occupations.Employers will be interested in information that helps them run their businesses more effectively, find talent, and save or make money. It may be worth your time to survey your stakeholders to learn more about the kinds of information that most interests them. 

Once you're clear about your audiences, then you need to begin engaging in the three "S's" of content curation, as described in the graphic below. 

Finding great content is only part of the job. You also have to provide some annotation or commentary to help people make sense of the information you are providing. You also need to set up various strategies for sharing the information you find. Social media (LinkedIn, Facebook, blogs, Twitter, etc.) are particularly useful tools for sharing. You can also share via email and email newsletters, depending on your audience. 

Resources for Content Curation

To get the most from your content curation strategy, check out these additional resources:

• Beth Kanter's Content Curation Primer--a great place to start your content curation journey. 
• Best Practices for Content Curation--a nice presentation on content curation tactics and strategies.
• How to Be a Formidable Content Curator--in 17 pretty easy steps. One of the best pieces of advice here is to "own a niche." 
• 30+ Content Curation Tools--many of these tools are free and they can make your content curation job much easier. 

Friday Link Round-Up

Weadership: The Guide

View more documents from kristin wolff

Here are your links for the week:

• 1 in 3 Young Workers Underemployed--According to a new Gallup poll, 32% of workers under 30 were underemployed in April, up from previous months. Younger workers were more than twice as likely as those over 30 to be underemployed. 

• The Impact of State Employment Policies on Job Growth--Published by the Chamber of Commerce, this report looks at how state employment policies impact the job environment for all 50 states. New Jersey is ranked in Tier III ("Poor"). 

• How Businesses Use Social Technologies--From the McKinsey Quarterly: ". . . when integrated into the daily work of employees and adopted on a large scale throughout a new kind of business—the networked enterprise—social tools  can improve operations, financial performance, and market share"

Friday Link Round-Up

What to expect when you're expecting... The Feds (from ETA)

View more PowerPoint from Tim Theberge

Here are some links for this lovely Friday:

• Tunnels and Cliffs: A Guide for Workforce Development Professionals and Policymakers Serving Youth with Mental Health Needs--From the National Collaborative on Workforce and Disability, this guide provides practical information for service delivery based on the Guideposts for Success.

• Connecting Coffees--DiscoverAbility NJ is sponsoring a series of free informal networking events around NJ for staff who work with people with disabilities. Attendance is limited to 10 per session and you must register ahead of time to attend. 

• Returning to Work After Prison--A study from the MDRC of a transitional program for ex-offenders. Long-term results were disappointing. 

• What Strategies Work for the Hard-to-Employ?--Another MDRC report that found one welfare-to-work program with the best gains provided unpaid work experience, job placement, and education services to recipients with health conditions, increasing employment and reducing the amount of cash assistance received over four years. 

• Re-Employment Eligibility Assessments--News from the USDOL on REAs. 

• The Beginning of the End of Unpaid Inernships--There's a fine line between an "unpaid internship' and exploitation and many workers are beginning to call "foul" on employers that cross the line. Here's another take on the same issue from the New York Times. 

• Funding Mobile Strategies for Social Impact--Some good examples of using texting campaigns with under-served populations. 

 

Friday Link Round-Up

Here are your links for this weeks's round-up:

• 10 Things You Need to Do While You're Unemployed--A good list to share with job seekers. 

• What to Say on LinkedIn When You've Been Laid Off--Good advice here on how to handle yourself on LinkedIn when you're unemployed. 

• 5 Ways Pinterest Can Help Your Job Search--Pinterest is the latest social media darling, providing a very visual way to share information found on the web. Good options for job seekers, but also take a look at the career services offices that are using it to do things like show people appropriate interview dress. 

• Brandkit's Job Search Tracker--This Google doc template can be used by job seekers to track their job search activities. 

• Infographics Toolkit--Another Google doc template that allows you to transform your data into more informative and interesting infographics.

•  Ten Job Interview Myths Debunked--These can help relax anxious applicants. 

• A Study on Job Seeker's Mental Health--According to a new study led by Connie Wanberg, a University of Minnesota professor of organizational and work behavior, the average laid-off worker experiences a gradual improvement in mental health until the 10- to 12-week mark, when the trend reverses. The study found that those participants who reported better mental health tended to conduct more intense job searches, increasing their likelihood of landing jobs.

New Study Identifies Cost-Effective Changes to Local Workforce Training Programs to Improve Outcomes of Individual Training Accounts

According to findings from a new study, job seekers in the United States could realize potential net benefits over 20 years of approximately $41,000 per eligible person if local workforce training agencies implemented training programs that combine higher, more flexible individual limits for expenditures on state-approved training with support from training counselors.

The study, conducted by Mathematica Policy Research and funded by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, is the first long-term evaluation of the relative effects of alternative training models used under the Workforce Investment Act. It examines three models for delivering workforce training services through locally provided individual training accounts (ITAs): Guided Choice, Structured Choice, and Maximum Choice. The study shows that moving away from the status quo to provide more flexible, higher-value training awards, as provided in the Structured Choice model, is cost effective and has large, positive impacts on the long-term earnings of ITA job seekers.

Key findings from the study include:

• Switching to larger, more flexible ITA training awards with counseling could generate $46,000 per ITA job seeker in net social benefits, driven by large, sustained increases in earnings. 

• Individual ITA job seekers who receive larger, more flexible training awards and counseling could earn an additional $41,000 through retirement age. 

• The government could save $5,000 per ITA job seeker by switching to higher-value, more flexible ITA awards as a result of increase tax payments. 

• Compared to the status quo, ITA job seekers selected training that was better matched to jobs within their chosen occupation under a Structured Choice model, which provided greater training funds with counseling. The study's findings demonstrate that this model makes ITA job seekers more likely to complete training, to earn a credential or degree in the field of training and to be employed in the occupation in which they trained. 

Friday Link Round-Up

Here are your links for this last week of April:

• Collective Impact--Complex problems--like unemployment--require complex solutions and collective action. This excellent article outlines the five requirements for having collective impact. 

• Virtual Career Network--USDOL has launched a healthcare virtual career network to provide career guidance, information on healthcare jobs and links to education. 

• 7 Ways to Customize Your Job Search for Your Dream Job--The more job seekers customize, the more likely they are to get the job. 

• How to Get in Front of Decision-makers--This is key to the job search. 

• 7 Examples of Great Cover Letter Openings--Fresh ways to write great opening lines for the cover letter. 

• No End in Sight--On the economic perils of our long-term unemployment problems. 

1 in 2 New Grads Are Jobless or Underemployed

The recession has been hitting young people particularly hard. According to the AP: 

About 1.5 million, or 53.6 percent, of bachelor's degree-holders under the age of 25 last year were jobless or underemployed, the highest share in at least 11 years. In 2000, the share was at a low of 41 percent, before the dot-com bust erased job gains for college graduates in the telecommunications and IT fields.

Out of the 1.5 million who languished in the job market, about half were underemployed, an increase from the previous year.

Broken down by occupation, young college graduates were heavily represented in jobs that require a high school diploma or less.

In the last year, they were more likely to be employed as waiters, waitresses, bartenders and food-service helpers than as engineers, physicists, chemists and mathematicians combined (100,000 versus 90,000). There were more working in office-related jobs such as receptionist or payroll clerk than in all computer professional jobs (163,000 versus 100,000). More also were employed as cashiers, retail clerks and customer representatives than engineers (125,000 versus 80,000).

According to government projections released last month, only three of the 30 occupations with the largest projected number of job openings by 2020 will require a bachelor's degree or higher to fill the position — teachers, college professors and accountants. Most job openings are in professions such as retail sales, fast food and truck driving, jobs which aren't easily replaced by computers.

So college grads are pushing high school grads and dropouts out of opportunities and the situation doesn't look like it will be getting better anytime soon, as most jobs are being created in low-wage, low-skill sectors that can't be easily outsourced or done by computers. The question is, how do we respond to this? 

Friday Link Round-Up

How to make the best powerpoint slides!

View more presentations from Lee Jackson

Your collection of links for this week:

• Independent Workers are Here to Stay--From the New York Times, some helpful tips for freelance/contingent workers. 

• 5 Illegal Interview Topics and How to Dodge Them--This can be a tricky area for job seekers and these strategies can be helpful. 

• Job Candidates Purgatory: Multiple Interview Per Job--It used to be that candidates only had to go through 2-3 interviews before a job offer. Now people are being forced to endure 10 or more interviews at multiple locations. 

• 50 Behavioral Interview Questions You Might be Asked--Job seekers should be prepared to respond to these questions. 

• Over 100 iPhone Job Search Apps--Most of these are free. 

• Memo to the Times: Hold the Funeral March for US Manufacturing and The Promise of Today's Manufacturing Jobs--a sort of point/counterpoint on US manufacturing.

• How to Redesign Your Resume for the 6-second Attention Span--some excellent advice here for both job seekers and staff. 

Friday Link Round-Up

Find a Job Without Looking

View more presentations from David Crandall

Here are your links for the week:

• CLASP Litmus for Legislation--CLASP has developed some criteria for evaluating proposals to restructure workforce development. 

• Federal Funds to Train Jobless are Drying Up--This recent NYT article points out that we are now spending 18% less on workforce development than we did when unemployment was at 5%.

• Where Are Jobs for Young People?--The Philadelphia Inquirer notes that entry-level jobs have been decimated in the recession, taking a disproportionally greater toll on the younger generation. 

• What Employers Want from the Long-Term Unemployed--No surprises here, although good advice for job seekers to focus in interviews on the future and what they could do for a prospective employer,  rather than on past experiences. 

• LinkedIn Industry Trends-- LinkedIn worked with the Council of Economic Advisers to gather data on the big industry winners and losers in the recession. 

• LinkedIn Job Seeker Webinar--Speaking of LinkedIn, they offer a free monthly webinar for job seekers to learn how to use LinkedIn as part of their job search. The next session is May 9. Could also be a good session for staff to attend.