The Work Buzz

Last week we brought you a list of 10 companies hiring…and, because we love you,  today we do it again. We try to cover a variety of industries with these lists. If you feel we’re leaving your industry of interest out, drop us a note in the comments!

The following are 10 companies throughout the US hiring right this very minute. So click on their names and see what they have to offer. Continue reading – Who’s Hiring This Week

Does the thought of making small talk make you cringe? Does schmoozing make you feel like a schmuck? Devora Zack, author of “Networking for People Who Hate Networking: A Field Guide for Introverts, the Overwhelmed and the Underconnected,” is just like you and has written today’s guest post on this very topic.

Zack, who’s the president of Only Connect Consulting and an expert in personality and the workplace, travels the nation, rubbing elbows with and making presentations to executives in private industry, the public sector and federal agencies; she’s also an introvert … so who better to write about introvert networking than a person who shatters the stereotype?

Continue reading – Networking Made Easy for Introverts

If the Emmy Awards are any indicator, high school staff, police investigators and business owners/executives lead the most interesting lives — or at the least the lives that make for good TV. Out of the 24 actors nominated for an Emmy award for lead actor or actress in a television series: Four of their characters work in public high schools, four work as investigators for a police department and four are business owners or executives.

But that’s not where the similarities stop.  

Three of the characters who garnered Emmy noms for their respective actors work in health care, two are comedy writers, two are mid-level managers and two are lawyers — for a grand total of 20 out of 24 characters that share an occupation with at least one other Emmy-nominated character.

With all the different careers paths out there (the Bureau of Labor Statistics  lists 280 different occupations in its Occupation Outlook Handbook), that’s got to say something about our entertainment — or occupational — preferences. 

Below, a list of Emmy-nominated characters that are also professional peers. Continue Reading – Doctors, Detectives, Educators and Executives Top

Education has become something of a go-to during the Great Recession. Millions of workers have lost their jobs since the end of 2007, and suddenly the job market was filled with education, experienced workers who were usually sought after. Skilled professionals with a decade or more of experience found themselves competing against younger, less experienced professionals who had a better grasp of new and emerging technology and trends. Heading back to the classroom quickly became an attractive – and in some cases necessary – step toward finding a job.

In a recent New York Times article, Steven Greenhouse takes a look at professionals returning to school and their reasons. As you might expect, many workers want to refresh their skills and catch up on the changes that occurred since they graduated. For the unemployed, closing a gap in skill levels is their best chance to get their résumés on the top of the stack. For employed workers, it’s a way to advance in the company and stay ahead of job seekers applying for jobs. Continue reading – Is Going Back to School the Right Move?

We wanted to let you know that we have modified the comments section so that you can now reply to a specific comment. You will then see a particular conversation in a threaded format. Hopefully this makes it easier for everyone to read and discuss posts.

Here is an example of what a threaded conversation looks like, care of the WordPress blog:

In the previous format, all comments were posted one after the other, with no indent, so that you weren’t always sure what a reader was replying to. Now, to reply to a specific comment, you  just hit the reply button next to it and enter your message. It will appear nested beneath the original comment.

If you want to leave a general comment not directed at a specific commenter, then you can simply enter your text in the reply box at the bottom of the page as always.

So now that commenting on posts (whether you love them or hate them) is easier, get to it! Use that Reply button. We love to hear from you.

For the past several months we’ve been highlighting available positions in different regions of the country every Tuesday. Although we mostly write about job and workplace advice, we realize many of you are also looking for jobs for a variety of reasons.

We also read all of the feedback you give us. You liked seeing a list of companies hiring but some people didn’t like waiting a few weeks until it was their location’s turn again. We adapt and are willing to try new things all the time. So we’re trying something a little different today. These are 10 companies hiring right now, and they have a significant amount of available positions–many across the country. With this method we hope to make finding a job easier for everyone, so that someone on the West coast doesn’t have to wait until next week because we’re only featuring Southern jobs this week.

Here are 10 companies that are looking to hire right now. Click on the company names to see a full list of their available positions across the country. Continue reading – Who’s Hiring This Week?

Another silver lining in the unemployment cloud: Workplace fatalities have declined during the recession. 

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, incidences of workplace fatalities were 17 percent fewer in 2009 than in 2008. The 4,340 fatal workplace injuries reported for ’09 is the lowest number on record since the BLS started keeping track in 1992.

While a large part of that has to do with the fact that there were fewer jobs in general, the BLS reported that injuries per 100,000 workers declined from 3.7 in 2008, to 3.3 in 2009.  Bloomberg also reported that, according to the National Council of Compensation Insurance, workplace injuries have been on the decline for 10 years, reflecting an overall trend toward safer workplaces. Continue Reading – Workplace Fatalities Reach Record Low

College dorms aren’t just about having a place to sleep and study; they allow students to easily form friendships. Similarly, recreational sports leagues are partially about the love of the game and partially about meeting new people. People who move to a new city are encouraged to join these leagues for a reason: to make friends.

Workplaces can serve a similar purpose. While you might not be looking for a job just to make friends, you might form new relationships as a result of spending 40 hours of your week at work. Some workers are finding out that these friendships continue past the day they submit their resignation letters and into the days of collecting Social Security. Continue reading – Is the Workplace Really the ‘New Neighborhood?’

We’ve talked a lot about the importance of putting forth a professional (or at least discreet) image on Facebook and how employers are paying attention to your online reputation. But, as it turns out, employers aren’t the only ones forming opinions based on social media profiles.

According to a recent CareerBuilder survey, workers and job seekers are paying pretty close attention to the social media profiles of employers as well  – and based on the survey results, it seems they have formed some fairly strong opinions about what they like — and don’t like — to see.  

Among the information respondents said they’d most like to see on a company’s social media page:

• Job listings — 35 percent
• Q&A or fast facts about the organization — 26 percent
• Information about career paths within the organization — 23 percent
• Evidence that working at the company is fun — 16 percent
• Employee testimonials — 16 percent
• Pictures of company events — 12 percent
• Video of new products/services — 10 percent
• Company awards — 9 percent
• Research or studies that the company has conducted — 9 percent
• Videos of a day on the job — 8 percent

On the other hand, top social media turn-offs were:

• Company communication that reads like an ad — 38 percent
• Failure to reply to questions — 30 percent
• Failure to regularly post information — 22 percent
• Removing or filtering public comments — 22 percent

Continue Reading – Employers Embrace Web 2.0