Welcome to ‘Looking Around’. My plan in this blog is to highlight some of the trends, if any, I see as I look around the resources I come in contact with throughout the week, as well as provide a filtered list of things you might want to check out in more depth.

We all know that the amount of information available is far greater than we can currently process, especially if we plan to also use that information, and so my hope is that by providing a small stream of articles from the torrent of possibilities that this blog will be a go to to keep you in touch without the burden of undiluted information overload.

So without further ado…This week, this year for that matter, has had two definite themes emerge. The first is the effects of recession on jobs and there has been an increase in news articles discussing job fairs, organisations offering assistance, etc. For those who have actually offered advice the key word has undoubtedly been “Networking”, with many blogs and twitters offering advice in this area. We all know networking is important for our job seekers and by no means a new concept for the experienced and successful career developer so the most obvious reasons why this is occuring would be:

1. In a recession, open market jobs are significantly reduced and as such hidden market options such as networking come to the fore.

2. Due to the downturn in the global workforce more experienced, educated and employment savvy job seekers are now in the market and while many could still benefit from interview advice, career path revitalization, etc. networking is a proven way of getting quick results while still keeping the candidate active, motivated and on the move.

Here’s my list of the best articles/blogs that caught my eye as interesting or useful this week:

Career Advancement in times of Recession – (Australian Source – Australia hasn’t seen the impact hit as hard as in other countries)

How Social Networking Sites can derail Your Job search – I’ll most probably write an article myself on this as well as the benefits that traditionally are missed through social networking opportunities in the near future.

College Job Fairs cater to Various Audiences – Discusses how due to recent events the audience of job fairs has become more diverse.

8 Free Office Applications for Job Seekers Who Can’t Afford New Software – Money can be tight when job searching but there are many open source free business options. This wouldn’t be my favourite list of tools, but it may get you started as options to offer your job seekers.

10 Career in Demand in 2009 – There are a number of these lists currently circulating. The fields missing in this list that occur in most others is education, teaching and training.

Jobless Turning to Coaches, Resume Writers in Big Numbers – The paradox of our line of work is when everyone else is finding it difficult we have more work to do.

Photo by Ed Yourdon

Technorati Tags:
blogs, information, job fairs, networking, news, recession, themes
Add to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us | Yahoo |