Feature Article: Seven Strategies to Recession-Proof Your Career: Build Your Future Regardless of Health of the Economy
Special Feature: For Job-Hunting Success, Develop a Comprehensive Job-Search Plan
Bonus Feature: 10 Tips for Job-Hunting Etiquette
Quintessential Site: Featured Career Web Site of this Issue
Latest Additions: What's New on Quintessential Careers
Q TIPS: Quick and Quintessential Tips to Guide Your Job Search
Notes from the Editor: About this Issue...
Since 2007, QuintZine has published monthly issues instead of our former twice-monthly schedule.
But when we saw this week's jobs reports from the U.S. government on dramatic layoffs and job loss, we knew we had to
be there for our readers with a special issue.
In this issue, you'll find a terrific article by publisher Dr. Randall Hansen on recession-proofing your career.
To further equip you in case the worst happens, Dr. Hansen also offers a step-by-step
job-search plan. Lastly, he finesses the package with an article on job-search etiquette.
We'll keep our fingers crossed that the job scene gets no worse!
--Katharine Hansen, Ph.D., Master Resume Writer, Credentialed Career Master,
Certified Electronic Career Coach, and editor at
kathy@quintcareers.com
Feature Article: Recession-Proof Your Career
Seven Strategies to Recession-Proof Your Career:
Build Your Future Regardless of Health of the Economy
by Randall S. Hansen, Ph.D.
No politician in 2008 has dared use the "r-word" to discuss the U.S. economy, but whether we call it a slowdown or a period
or reduced growthŠ or a recession, the one thing that is certain is that the economic situation is uncertain at best, with companies
in numerous industries announcing or planning layoffs.
Obviously, certain industries and employers are currently struggling, but if the economy does move into a full recession,
many other industries and employers will also face financial pressures.
The key is not to panic or make any snap decisions. Unless some major negative (and unforeseen) economic event happens, widespread
layoffs are unlikely; in some of the worst economic times, the U.S. has seen single-digit unemployment rates (the highest of 9.7 percent
in 1982) -- and only a few points higher than today's 5 percent rate. On the other hand, it is never a mistake to be prepared and proactive
about your career -- because no one else will be if you are not.
So, in uncertain times -- and really in any economic situation -- what can you do to stay focused on your career and protect your
job? Our article provides you with seven strategies
to help you be prepared for any situation while proactively building what some experts refer to as your career capital --
your value to both your current employer and future prospective employers -- and what we refer to as building your brand.
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succeed in their career goals.
For Job-Hunting Success, Develop a Comprehensive Job-Search Plan
by Randall S. Hansen, Ph.D.
Want to make your next job-search as stress-free and rewarding as possible? Job-hunting success really comes
down to developing (and implementing) a detailed job-search strategy. Truly successful job-hunting cannot succeed when
done haphazardly or within a limited timetable.
While the 10 steps outlined in our article
cannot guarantee job-hunting success, implementing these 10 steps as part of a comprehensive job-search plan should
help you achieve greater satisfaction and success, ultimately finding the job or career of your dreams.
Bonus Feature: Job-Hunting Etiquette Tips
10 Tips for Job-Hunting Etiquette
by Randall S. Hansen, Ph.D.
While much focus in job-hunting is placed on networking techniques, resume-writing, and interview preparation --
and rightly so -- one small, but very important aspect of successful job-seekers, is often overlooked.
What is it that's so often overlooked by job-seekers and career experts alike? It's the simple rules of proper job-seeker
behavior -- job-seeker manners.
Quintessential Careers Announces Plans for Fall 2008 and Spring 2009 Tours.
The Quint Careers RV could be headed your way. We're ready to put on no-cost workshops
at your college, high school, or library!
The Fall 2008 (August-November) Mid-Atlantic Tour will take us through Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina,
Virginia, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Specific Dates TBA. Learn more
and contact QuintCareers Founder Dr. Hansen if you're interested in having us make a stop.
The Spring 2009 (Dates TBD) West/Mid-West Tour will take us through Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas,
Colorado, Utah, Nevada, California, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Iowa, Missouri, and Kentucky.
Get more details on this tour or
contact QuintCareers Founder Dr. Hansen.
Juju is a meta-search job site searches the top 250 American, 60 British, and 110 English- and
French-Canadian employer career centers and major job boards in parallel and in real time.
Job-seekers can search for jobs by keywords, job category, job listing currency, and location.
Juju, built on the foundations of the first job search engine on the web that was launched in 1998,
it was re-launched under the Juju brand in January 2006 with new technology, a new interface,
a new team, and a philosophy to make the job search easier.
"We think that traditional online job-search methods take too much time
and make it difficult for job seekers to find a comprehensive set of relevant
jobs," the Juju web site says, "so we strive to create tools that make
web-based job listings more accessible and our search results more
relevant. Our job-search engine provides quick access to jobs found
on thousands of employer websites and job boards all around the web
and offers features that will help you find the jobs you're looking for
more efficiently."
CareerHero
-- a cool social network site for college and high school students to safely explore various careers via interviews
and executive profiles – career heroes – chat, blogs, forums, and more. Underlying goal of the site is to
inspire students to dream big and help them achieve your career dreams. No cost.
CareerOneStop -- a
career site sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor Employment and Training Administration that offers
a vast array of resources and workforce information to job seekers, students, businesses, and workforce
professionals to foster talent development in a global economy. Job-seekers can easily be
connected to employment and training opportunities available at local One-Stop Career Centers. No cost.
FindMortgageJobs --
where mortgage industry job-seekers can seek mortgage employment nationwide by
searching job postings (by keywords, job function, industry, state), creating an online profile,
and establishing a job alert to notify you of new job listings. No cost to job-seekers.
iMantri --
an online peer-to-peer community for seeking and offering mentoring and coaching. The site facilitates
connections between mentors and mentees and also provides a framework and tools for fostering mentoring
relationships online. Use mentor matching engine that is based on profile characteristics, demographic details, and other criteria
to find mentors or mentees. No cost to job-seekers.
Find even more career and job site additions to Quintessential Careers by visiting our
Latest Additions section.
Quintessential Careers Press New Book!
Quintessential Careers Press Announces a New Book on Behavioral Interviewing.
The Quintessential Guide to Behavioral Interviewing, by Katharine Hansen, Ph.D.
(Quintessential Careers Press). A free book that's like attending boot camp for intensively
learning about and preparing for this popular form of job-interviewing. You'll learn the premise behind
behavioral interviewing -- why employers like to use them. You'll discover how to identify the skills and
behaviors that employers are targeting with with behavioral questions... along with a huge collection of
questions and sample responses. A must read for all job-seekers.
Q TIPS: Quick and Quintessential Career & Job Tips
HRLeaders.org recently offered some tips for moving up when everything is going down.
Some of them apply primarily to the HR sector, but here are those that benefit everyone:
Things are never as bad as they seem. (They're never as good either.)
Accept uncertainty and help the organization to accept uncertainty.
Recognize and ignore what you can't change or do; focus on what you can change and do.
Tough times are the best times to embrace new challenges and learning.
Focus on the fundamentals -- they matter in tough times more than in good.
Don't stop measuring -- to make optimum decisions and to document your own contributions.
Ever wish you had been the calm, cool and collected person in the midst of a challenge? Now's the time to be that way.
This will pass; the good we do in bad times will provide geometric returns in good.
While the outlook seems gloomy for the workforce in general, the scene is decent for upcoming college grads, according to
CollegeGrad.com's report, Top 500 Entry Level Employers for 2008. As students begin their spring semester at college campuses nationwide,
entry-level employers are increasing their hiring by nearly 12 percent in 2008. This is the largest projected increase in entry-level hiring
CollegeGrad.com has seen since 2005.
The Top Entry Level Employers list represents more than 165,000 jobs
for the class of 2008, and is available online.
Among the 2008 Top Entry Level Employers listed, 60 percent anticipate hiring morecollege grads in
2008 than 2007. Twenty-one percent will hire the same number and 19 percent will hire
fewer college grads than in 2007. At the top of the list, Enterprise Rent-A-Car plans to hire 8,500 new grads,
while the smallest featured employers will hire as few as 10.
While the list includes many return Top Employers from previous years, such as Lowe's, Liberty Mutual Group,
and Sodexho, many new additions have joined the list, including EMC with 1,200 planned hires, FactSet with
550 planned hires, and hi5 Networks with 20 planned entry-level hires.
Significant growth is being projected by companies of all sizes and in all industries throughout the list. Among the
largest companies, Progressive Insurance is projecting a 42 percent increase in entry-level hiring for 2008. Fund for Public Interest
Research is projecting an impressive 260 percent growth in hiring -- going from 125 entry-level hires in 2007 to 450 in 2008.
The E-Myth Insider for entrepreneurs inspires some tips for job-seekers in an economic downturn adapted from
ideas for entrepreneurs in rough times:
Reactivate your network. If you've neglected your network, now's the time to rebuild it and add new contacts.
Strengthen existing relationships. Make contact with friends and family. Be a helpful contact to others, and they
will help you when you need it.
Make strategic plans. Think about what you'd need to do if you were downsized. Prepare by updating your resume
and following the advice in these two articles from Quintessential Careers:
If your school, organization, business or other
entity has a Web site, we welcome you to link to Quintessential Careers.
If you already have a link from your site, we want you to know we
appreciate it. If you don't have a link to us, please
send a request to your site's Webmaster to establish a
link to Quintessential Careers. Thanks so much!
For more details (including sample HTML copy), see our
Link to Us page.
Need a career expert for a story or article you're working on? Searching for college,
career, and job news? Interested in learning more about Quintessential Careers?
Our Press Room
is your one-stop location for getting the information and resources you need.
QuintZine: Topics in Upcoming Issues
WATCH FOR feature articles on these topics in upcoming
issues of QuintZine:
* State of Online Job-Search Annual Report
* Internet Job-Search Mistakes
* Career Focus Quiz
* Credit Reports and Job-Search
* New Grads: Expectation/Entitlement vs. Reality
* College Grad Job-hunting Readiness Quiz
* Using Mind-mapping Techniques for Interview Prep
* Interview Post-Mortem
* Hiring Decision-makers' Top 30 Peeves about Executive Resumes
* 10 Critical Interviewing Tips
* Study Skills
* Academic Success
* Wheel of Wellness
* 3 Generations of Workers: Y, X, Boomers
* Employee Healthy Benefits
* College Financing
* Scholarship Do's and Don'ts
* The Academic Job Search
* Perks of Working in Higher Ed
* Signs Your Job is in Jeopardy
* Blogging Way to New Job or Holiday Job-Hunting
* Office Politics
* Maternity Leave
* Jobs on the Cutting Edge
* Job Search IQ Quiz
* Resume Bullet Points: Before and After
* GLBT Job-search Issues
* The Value of Internships Abroad and Study Abroad
* Top 10 Fears of Job-seekers
* For Job-hunting Success, Develop a Detailed Job-Search Plan
* Keep Your Career Dreams Alive
* MBA Career Portfolios
* Pre-Hire Background/Credit Checks
* Financial Aid/Scholarship Timetable
* Build Confidence and Avoid Insecurity in Job Interviews
* Empty Nest Job-seekers
* Lifelong Networking
* Networking for the Shy
* Working Night Shifts/Odd Hours
* Quintessential Career Profiles of YOU, our readers
* Q&As with well-known career experts
* Book reviews
. . . and much, much more...
