This week three men shared the 2010 Nobel Prize in Economic Science. Here’s the problem they’ve been working on for decades: The researchers spent decades trying to understand why it takes so long for people to find jobs, even in good economic times, and why so many people can be unemployed even when many jobs [...]
Has Penelope Trunk finally suffered a psychotic break on the pages of BNET? “You don’t need time to job-hunt.” Or did her editor? “Job-hunting does not take all day… It’s too hard. So a bad job does not interfere with a good job hunt.” Why Hunting for a Great Job Will Hurt Your Career is [...]
A major university asked me to submit a proposal. The school is interested in hiring “a career placement professional” to “bring jobs to the table” for its newly-minted Executive MBAs (EMBAs). The school “has career placement but it does not meet the needs of the EMBA program.” The school also has “career coaches,” but it [...]
“The people running America’s colleges and universities have long thought they were exempt from the laws of supply and demand and unaffected by the business cycle. Turns out that’s wrong.” Some might suggest this quote from National Review Online is politically motivated. The real problem is, Bill Barone’s article, The Higher Education Bubble, is chock full [...]
We’ve been talking about the goofy behavior of HR departments in your favorite companies, and its counterproductive consequences. This topic seems to expand the more we talk about it. In a recent thread reader Nic raises a fundamental question and puts a sharp point on the stick: What I see taking place in these idiotic HR departments, [...]
In the August 31, 2010 Ask The Headhunter Newsletter, a reader asks: I am making a career change to improve my life, and I plan to pursue a master’s degree. Any suggestions on how to proceed after I earn it? The U.S. News & World Report school rankings are out again, which reminds me that it seems to [...]
[Some bloggers cleverly carry a theme from one post to the next. I'm not into that. Honest: I wasn't looking to flow the theme from Pissing on the applicant into today's post. Toilet paper just kinda backed up into the system when JaneA posted a comment on Readers’ Forum: HR’s #1 job: Poisoning the well?] Businesses [...]
In the August 24, 2010 Ask The Headhunter Newsletter, a reader says: After being tested and interviewed by the senior vice president of a local company for a senior executive assistant position, they dropped off the planet and made no contact with me. I sent an e-mail to the VP enquiring why there had been no contact and the [...]
MediaBistro led me to the latest career advice in Fortune.com’s Ask Annie column: Employer’s Wacky Interview Questions. I don’t know what’s wackier: the questions, or that Annie Fisher really believes that the mission of career advisors is to come up with clever answers for them. Get this question from an Ask Annie reader: Yesterday an interviewer [...]
Reader Steve Amoia shared a Wall Street Journal article by Elizabeth Garone that might terrify you: Five Mistakes Online Job Hunters Make. (Does this mean that if you’re not an online job hunter, you’ve got nothing to worry about?) Steve writes: I’m curious about something: “Assume your future boss is reading everything you share online,” she [...]
