Blog for Jobs

All About the New Haven County CT job market

noreply@blogger.com (Hannah) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 19:11:00 +0000

New Haven, a large county of 825,000, is home to the large cities of New Haven and Waterbury. New Haven County is home to many top-level educational institutions including Yale University, Southern Connecticut State University, and Quinnipiac University. The county currently has a college student population of over 55,000.

New Haven County’s unemployment rate is at 4.8%, which is slightly above the CT average of 4.3%. As far as industry employment goes, the majority of males are in the construction industry, and women are most likely to be involved in the healthcare or education fields. 83% of New Haven County’s residents over 25 have a high school diploma, and 27% of them have a bachelor’s degree. This means that there are lots of jobs to go around – just check out New Haven County Jobs to see all that abound in the area.

According to the New Haven Register, the labor force decreased in size in about 2,000 people from April to May 2008, an indicator of an economic downturn. Jobs also dropped by 400 over the course of this year. Donald Klepper-Smith, chief economist at DataCore Partners LLC in New Haven, made the point that the cost of living in New Haven is less than neighboring counties and that “New Haven is ripe with amenities: access to ports, proximity to New York and Boston, and a good mix of arts and culture with professional opportunities through education, science, health care and biotechnology.” According to the U.S. Department of Labor, average hourly earnings rose 6 cents from last month.

Some industries reporting growth in the area are:

1. real estate
2. arts
3. entertainment/recreation
4. mining
5. Educational services
6. Construction

Although indicators may point to a downward trend for jobs in New Haven County, there are still a lot of opportunities out there for those with the proper skill sets in their industry.

All About the Fairfield County CT job market

noreply@blogger.com (Hannah) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 18:19:00 +0000

With just short of 1 million residents, Fairfield County is the most populous county in the state of Connecticut. In addition to being the most populous county, it is also one of the wealthiest counties in the U.S., home to towns such as Greenwich, Fairfield, Wilton, and New Canaan. The county also has its share of economic diversity: many towns are working-class. This economic diversity allows for an equally diverse job market, full of opportunities.Both employers and job seekers in Fairfield County, Connecticut have something to smile about. Although economic times may be tough, the job market is looking up. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, Fairfield's County industry average wage is $64,675 , which is 27.3% higher than the state average wage of $50,793. 82% of Fairfield County's workers are private wage/salaried workers, and another 10% work in government. Although the unemployment rate in CT as a whole is 4.3%, the rate of unemployment in Fairfield County is 3.8%. For those still seeking jobs, check out jobs in Fairfield County, a great resource for finding that perfect job.

The top 5 growing industries in Fairfield County are as follows:

1. Employment services (2,344 new jobs)
2. Full-service restaurants (1,476 new jobs)
3. General medical and surgical hospitals (1,394 new jobs)
4. Clothing stores (959 new jobs)
5. Pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing (954 new jobs)

Declining industries include management, credit intermediation, and newspaper/book publishers. Jobs were lost when First Student Inc, a school bus operator, closed their Danbury facility. A Virgin Atlantic call center was also moved from Norwalk to the U.K. Despite these less than encouraging corporate moves, employers in the area added 4,000 jobs in May alone According to the Fairfield County Business Journal. Labor Department economist John Tirinzonie stated that that this is the first time CT economy "showed some spunk," spurred by job gains and tax rebates. Fairfield County Jobs growth is led by financial services, which produced 200 jobs in May.

Jennifer H is blogging for jobs

noreply@blogger.com (C.M Russell) — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 17:30:00 +0000

A reader, Jennifer H, just emailed us looking to announce her effort to blog for jobs. She writes;

I'm certainly blogging for jobs. I'm a marketing professional,entrepreneur, and published author, blogging away for exposure andpotential job offers.

I've been blogging an unpaid reader blog over at the SeattlePost-Intelligencer on the mistakes that small business owners make - andwhat they can do to fix those mistakes and run their business efficientlyand effectively!

You can read more both at the RSS feed on my author website and at theSeattle PI Reader Blog.

author site: http://www.jenniferheigl.com
biz blog: http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/ingoodcompany/

Good luck Jennifer! Volunteering like that is a good way to get noticed. We love that you are blogging for jobs!

Blogger leaves comment, gets a job

noreply@blogger.com (C.M Russell) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 14:01:00 +0000

Kudos to Andrew for this great job hunting story...

As of next Monday, I will be starting work for Outrider, a strategic marketing company based out of St. Louis. I will be coming on board as a Social Media Specialist and working with a small team of other people in the social media area to develop integrated online media strategies and marketing plans for clients. Anyone can see the world is shifting to a more online-centric, social place and the best evidence I can find of this is in the way I came into my new position.

A few weeks ago, I was reading Jeremiah Owyang’s blog and saw a post on people who were “on the move” in the social media industry. I thought, well what is wrong with a little bit of self-promotion? So I left a comment, which you are free to go check out for yourself, basically saying “Hey, I haven’t been on the move…but I would like to be!” And as a result of this, Lisa Young from Outrider reached out to me with some information about the company and the industry as a whole..then I spent a day and a half pouring through Google and every other internet tool I could think of to absorb as much information as I could about the company. Well over the past few weeks, about 97.4 emails, and dozens of hours spent researching different aspects of the company and industry I decided that I really wanted to come on board with the firm and so…here I go!

Blogging is good for recruiters

noreply@blogger.com (C.M Russell) — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 19:13:00 +0000

Here's an interesting article I found on ComputerWorld about blogging for jobs.

January 07, 2008 Corporate recruiters have long surfed the Web to vet potential hires, but now they're also surfing blogs to unearth job candidates, expanding their talent pool and gaining insights they say they can't get from resumes and interviews. Most blog-related recruits are professionals in technology and media because jobs in these fields often require knowledge of the blogosphere, says Kirsten Dixson, a founding partner at Brandego LLC, a career management firm in Exeter, N.H., that specializes in personal branding.In addition to blogs that focus on their industry or field of interest, recruiters say they check candidates' blogs about noncareer-related topics for evidence of writing skills and clues to how well rounded they are.

In June, Brian Balfour's blog, SocialDegree.com, inspired an unsolicited offer for a product manager job from an executive at Zoom Information Inc. "I was impressed by the points Brian was making and the way he was making them," says Russell Glass, vice president of products and marketing at the Waltham, Mass.-based technology company. The blog also offered details about Balfour's work history and education. "It was a no-brainer to give him a call and see if he'd be interested," Glass says.

Continues at CW >>

A blog creates career stability

noreply@blogger.com (C.M Russell) — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 00:50:00 +0000

Penelope Trunk's last column at Yahoo brings blogging to the forefront. I love what she has to say.

Today, that's not true. I've been blogging for almost two years, and while each week there are about 400 commenters on Yahoo! who say how stupid I am, there are also a bunch of people who make their way to my blog and become regular participants in the conversation there.

The blog is my own, and so is the community -- which is now about 150,000 people strong. The blog stays with me wherever I go, and that's important in a job market where people switch jobs every two or three years. A blog creates a network, and the network is yours. The conversation you create about your professional life is one that continues no matter what happens with your employer.

The workforce is extremely unstable today. There are layoffs, downsizings, de-equitizations, and bankruptcies. No one is guaranteed to have a job a month from now. Generations X and Y watched their parents' lives come undone when they depended on the workplace to provide stability in their lives. Today, people do that less and less.

We create our own stability in our lives by taking responsibility for ourselves. A blog is a great way to do this -- it's a professional platform that you have total control over, and you can use it to provide a home base when your work life feels like a game of dodge ball.

Web designer blogs and gets job

noreply@blogger.com (C.M Russell) — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 16:35:00 +0000

Great story about a 22 year old web designer who blogged to get the job.

I scrapped the resume and wrote a letter instead. In the letter I leveraged the success of my most recent site, Net Business Blog, to demonstrate my knowledge of the web industry. It worked. I got the job I wanted (as well as a ton of interviews with other companies).

Read the full story on his blog >>

QuintCareers article on blogs as resumes

noreply@blogger.com (C.M Russell) — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 12:46:00 +0000

FEATURE ARTICLE: USE YOUR BLOG AS A RESUME?
PART I: PROS AND CONS

by Katharine Hansen, Ph.D.

Editor’s note: This article is the first of two parts.
Part II provides tips and examples for using a blog as a resume.

Through the use of a variety of online tools -- blogs, wikis,
social-networking sites, portfolios, podcasts, Youtube videos,
and more -- individuals, especially younger people, are socially
constructing their identities in ways unimagined a dozen or so years
ago.

Where a dedicated careerist of old constructed a job-seeking
identity through a resume and a few other printed materials
disseminated to audiences that seem puny by today’s standards,
postmillennial upwardly mobile types are establishing their career
identities to vast global audiences using the tools of the so-called
Web 2.0, defined in part by Web guru Tim O’Reilly as comprising
an "architecture of participation." The concept of Web 2.0 “suggests
that everyone ... can and should use digital media to express and
realize themselves,” writes Andrew Keen in The Daily Standard.

Our full article at
http://www.quintcareers.com/job-seeker_blog_resume.html
considers the pros an cons of the blog as resume.

Article: Monster says blogging good for career

noreply@blogger.com (C.M Russell) — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 19:37:00 +0000

Monster's blog has a nice article about blogging for your career.

To Get Ahead in Your Career, Start Blogging

If you’re a young professional, let me give you one piece of advice that could quickly catapult your career into the stratosphere: Start blogging.

Here are two guys who have done just that:

Ryan Healy had been out of college for less than year when he colaunched a blog for twentysomethings in the workforce called Employee Evolution in February 2007. Less than six months later, the well-known career author and blogger Penelope Trunk was so impressed with the expertise Healy was demonstrating through his blog that she started a company with him. At the ripe old age of 23, Ryan quit his entry-level corporate job and is now set to try his hand at running a career development company.
Dan Schawbel, 24, writes the Personal Branding Blog. He’s already been hailed as a young turk of personal branding in Fast Company, has launched his own quarterly publication called Personal Branding Magazine and has been named the first-ever social media specialist by his employer, EMC.

Now could Ryan and Dan have landed their new gigs by following the traditional corporate path? Maybe. But it likely would have taken them years rather than months.

Full post >>

Top 100 HR blogs

noreply@blogger.com (C.M Russell) — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 16:10:00 +0000

Blog for Jobs recently made it onto the "Top 100 HR Bloggers " list.

http://www.businesscreditcards.com/bootstrapper/top-100-hr-bloggers/

Dan Schawbel's personal brand

noreply@blogger.com (C.M Russell) — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 19:36:00 +0000

In 6 months Dan Schwabel has made a name for himself via blogging. He just launched danschawbel.com;

I just launched a unique Personal Branding website ( DanSchawbel.com). I consider it to be the first 360 degree view of a Personal Brand, using myself as an example. My pitch is that everyone in the world will need to have their own custom version in order to have a successful career. I took my professional life and crossed it with my personal life and mixed it with my love for Personal Branding, while integrating it with all web 2.0 technologies.

Dan's the man!

Employer blogs about job, job seeker blogs to get job

noreply@blogger.com (C.M Russell) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 20:38:00 +0000

About a year ago, this company posted a job opening on its blog. But it wasn't the usual job description of 'send us a resume'. They asked interested candidates to add a comment with a link to their online presence and a way to contact them.

Fred, however, quickly came up with a refinement of the idea – asking people to reply by commenting on the post and pointing us to their web presence, a blog, a site, or a profile page - that made the idea work. You can see the results by looking through the comments on our post. We did not get over run and the quality of the folks who commented blew us away.

Enter Andrew Parker. Here's his blog and website. He got the job.

Article: Guidance on blogging for jobs

noreply@blogger.com (C.M Russell) — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 14:23:00 +0000

How Blogs are changing the recruiting landscape

By Sarah E. Needleman, Career Journal

Corporate recruiters have long surfed the Web to vet potential hires, but now they're also surfing blogs to unearth job candidates, expanding their talent pool and gaining insights they say they can't get from resumes and interviews.

Ryan Loken, a Wal-Mart Stores Inc. recruitment manager, says he spends one to two hours a week searching through blogs for new talent or additional information about the candidates he has interviewed. "Blogs are a tool in the tool kit," he says. Since he joined the Bentonville, Ark., retail giant three years ago, Mr. Logen estimates that Web journals have helped him fill 125 corporate jobs. Most of the recruits were referred to him by bloggers and blog contributors, and some were the writers themselves.

In addition to blogs that focus on their industry or field of interest, recruiters say they check candidates' blogs about noncareer-related topics for evidence of writing skills and clues to how well rounded they are.

Most blog-related recruits are professionals in technology and media because jobs in these fields often require knowledge of the blogosphere, says Kirsten Dixson, a founding partner at Brandego LLC, a career-management firm in Exeter, N.H., that specializes in personal branding.

Continue reading on Career Journal

College girl blog leads to internship

noreply@blogger.com (C.M Russell) — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 15:32:00 +0000

Hannah, a 19 yr old student at Penn State recently got an internship based on her blog, Nahliz. Read her sincere 'job application'. The internship required candidates to not send a resume, but create a blog and answer 3 questions: who are you, what motivates you and why should I hire you.

She got the gig.

My blog got me a promotion!

noreply@blogger.com (C.M Russell) — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 15:29:00 +0000

Congrats to Matt Martone of Hotjobs. His blog is 1 yr old today, and wouldn't you know it? It got him a promotion. Read about it here.

Just another example of those who blog for jobs.

Girl blogs, gets job

noreply@blogger.com (C.M Russell) — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 13:56:00 +0000

Hat tip to RecruitingBloggers.com who discovered this girl who got a job based on her blog. In her post, Rebecca Bollwitt writes:

The reason why this article hits close to home is because my current employer hired me, more or less, based on my blog and podcasts. I’m not sure if my Surrey posts affected their judgment or dissing Dan Cloutier on the Canucks podcast had a hand in it, regardless I’m pretty sure they knew exactly what they were getting.

Why blog? Ask Aaron Toponce

noreply@blogger.com (C.M Russell) — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 19:16:00 +0000

A Google recruiter spotted Aaron's blog and gave him an interview. Yet another example of blogging for jobs.

Brian Balfour's blog leads to job

noreply@blogger.com (C.M Russell) — Sun, 27 May 2007 14:40:00 +0000

Brian Balfour, a 23 year old who writes a blog called Social Degree, got his latest job through his own blog. The online profile site ZoomInfo hired him based on his blog. Russell Glass, VP of Marketing saw his blog and liked what he wrote about social networking and offered him a job. "I was impressed by the points brian was making and the way he was making them", said Glass.

Nice job Brian! Just another way people are blogging for jobs.

Experts: More Job Seekers Using Blogs As Resumes

noreply@blogger.com (C.M Russell) — Sun, 27 May 2007 01:18:00 +0000

Job seekers have a new way to stand out from the pack of prospects.There is now no need to knock on any doors, call recruiters or even send a resume.Forget online job boards or even old-fashioned networking.The hottest way to land a dream job is to write a blog, a Web journal of sorts."There's definitely a trend to using blogs both for looking for a job and a recruiter looking for a prospect or a new employee,” said Debbie Weil, author of “The Corporate Blogging Book.”

Experts said blogs can give employers insight into a person’s writing ability and how one thinks. Blogs also provide a more in-depth look at qualifications than a standard resume.“There's so much more you can put on a blog. You can put video, you can put pictures, you can write in a much more expansive way about who you are and what you know about,” said Weil.With more than 75 million blogs on the Web right now, recruiters and employers ranging from national superstores to Internet companies are using these online journals to search for talent.

“Blogs are a great way to find employees," said Russell Glass of ZoomInfo.com.Glass selected Brian Balfour to work for his Internet search engine company because of his blogs on social networking.“The most impressive thing about Brian's blog was how each post was succinct yet on target,” said Glass.Balfour said the unsolicited job offer surprised him at first since his blog was relatively new. But it couldn’t have come at a better time.“I had just come off of selling a previous company that I owned, and I was looking for new opportunities,” said Balfour.

Experts said it’s critical to focus your topics on your industry and highlight what you know.“It's pretty easy to show you're on top of industry issues by referring to an article in the Wall Street Journal or a trade magazine related to what you do,” said Weil.Balfour added, “You want to try and be creative, be yourself, show your personality.”Pay close attention to your writing style, spelling and grammar, experts recommended. Also, avoid anything too controversial or personal.“Basically, if you wouldn't want an employer to see it or read it, I wouldn't post it on your blog,” said Glass.

Balfour is happy in his new position but is amused he is still getting job offers.“I have been contacted quite a few times from my blog to be hired,” said Balfour.Some companies are now creating their own blogs as a recruiting tool. They often include information about the company, personal stories from employees and details on how to apply for a job.

If you are writing a blog and want to get noticed, experts said it is important to increase your readership.One way to do that is to post comments on popular blogs that are similar to yours and to leave a link to your blog.That way, experts said, readers will click through to get to your Web site

A Good Solid Blog from Justin, Finance Candidate

noreply@blogger.com (C.M Russell) — Sat, 26 May 2007 23:00:00 +0000

Just came across the blog of Justin Williams in Miami. He's a recent college grad looking for a job in finance. Right now he tends bar to pay the bills but he's actively job hunting and preparing himself for the real world. He's off to a good start. Blogging is a great way to stand out and be noticed.

Article: More Workers Blogging for New Jobs

noreply@blogger.com (C.M Russell) — Fri, 18 May 2007 15:18:00 +0000

The reasons why people publish an online blog can vary, but career experts say a blog can be an effective addition to a job hunt. Workers who have found new jobs through the blogosphere say job-hunting bloggers should take a professional approach and focus their blogs around their areas of expertise.

Read the article from the Globe and Mail

If you blog, they have to hire you

noreply@blogger.com (C.M Russell) — Wed, 16 May 2007 20:19:00 +0000

Steven Rothberg of CollegeRecruiter.com has a great interview with Peter Clayton about young job seekers and blogging for jobs. In this podcast he says if you blog about the company you want to work for "they have to hire you". Its a good listen, check it out.

Shaine Mata, Blogger

noreply@blogger.com (C.M Russell) — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 21:19:00 +0000

Shaine Mata . net

"I find myself in a position where I know that blogging will limit my options at landing certain jobs. I know I’ll never be a super-spy at the CIA anymore. I don’t mean that I’d be blogging all kinds of secrets; rather, I couldn’t do any covert ops. That’s one dead dream. Of course, I’m being silly. Seriously, I worry that blogging will limit my options. I have not yet suffered such a result; but, I don’t rule it out. At this point, the dice are cast and there is no turning back."

Read Shaine's full post, My blog is a resume.

The Blog is the New Resume

noreply@blogger.com (C.M Russell) — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 15:04:00 +0000

Great post here about the blog as the new resume.

One Guy and a one week job blog

noreply@blogger.com (C.M Russell) — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 01:49:00 +0000

Check out this guy's novel approach to job hunting.

"My name is Sean Aiken, and like many others in my generation, I can't tell you what it is that I want to do with my life. Help me figure it out by offering me a "One Week Job." I am travelling week to week throughout the country working various jobs offered to me with all my wages donated to the Make Poverty History campaign."

OneWeekJob.com