Why you can't compare a household budget to the budget of a country

Paul Solman, writing for the PBS Newhsour's The Business Desk, explains why you can't compare a family budget to the budget of a country. Essentially, his answer is that a country can tax and a family cannot, but it should make sense that lopping off some zeroes to compare the spending of an apple to orange orchard is not a sound analogy.

Social Jobs Partnership

Facebook has launched their Social Jobs Partnership, which is an aggregate of Work4Labs, Monster, Jobvite, BranchOut and, DirectEmployers US.Jobs. This is a parternship of non-profit, government, for-profit and Facebook developers into one aggregator, creating a vertical search engine of the partners' jobs.

Like most aggregators, such as Indeed or SimpliyHired, you can search a variety of job posting services and boards simultaneously from the vertical search engine interface and be redirected to the posting on the originating site's own board. So, no, you can't apply with your Facebook profile.

At this time, the service offers one filter for "veteran-friendly" posts.

Justice Sotomayor explains that "princess" is not a career

iCancer

I am doing research for a presentation I am preparing on crowdsourcing and I became interested in this project, iCancer, which wants to crowdfund research into a virus to treat a specific type of cancer. I wanted to spread the word about the project and I am interested in what others think about this project or crowdfunding in general.

What Happens to a Dream 'Betrayed?' Authors Blame Trade for Middle Class Demise From PBS Newshour

Do you have time for a visual resume?

This article originally appeared in my employer's e-newsletter to external clients.

Do you have time for a visual resume?

Many of our student clients feel a great deal of pressure to stand out from their peers. Creating a distinct resume or portfolio is one of the methods that they could use to make an impression on an employer. But do human resource professionals have the time to view these resumes? Is a visual resume the correct method an applicant should use to stand out?

Websites for creating a visual resume

Though an applicant could create a free online presentation of their resume using a free website hosting service, such as Google Sites, or could upload a slide presentation of their resume on Slideshare, at least three start ups have created a visual resume tool. Visualize.me and re.vu both create an infographic-style rendering of a person’s resume, based on the user’s LinkedIn profile. Visualize.me allows the user to create a badge for their personal website that connects to their “vizualized” resume, as well as uploading the link to the profile on a variety of social networks. The re.vu resume includes candidate’s name, headline and highlights, as well as a career timeline. A link to the resume can be pushed out to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

However, how many new candidates have been discovered by employers clicking on theses badges? If any have turned into interviews, how many of them were new grads?

Resume on a T-shirt

The company Resume T-shirts will print a T-shirt for a person with their resume on the back, while the front of the shirt has the tagline “resume attached”. Each T-shirt costs 19.99 (US), fairly affordable for most students, or possibly a gift from a parent. Personally, I could see myself tormenting my high school age relatives with one of these, but I’m not sure if they would get any summer job offers from the T-shirts. If you saw a person in the line at a grocery store wearing their resume on their back, would you be interested in following up?

Combining visual resumes with career planning

The startup Resumup allows users to create a visual resume and then generate a chart that will show the user the steps they need to take to progress to the next level in their career. You can view a YouTube demonstration of the career mapping process, since while they are still in private beta, you need to solicit three friends to join their service before you can use the career mapping tool.

Not only does the site suggest the steps you need to take to progress from entry-level to supervisor or manager in your chosen profession, it will also scan your connections, either on LinkedIn or Facebook, to see if you can find a mentor or advisor. This augmented visual resume may actually help graduates determine how they could progress in their career, and might be something that could be used at an employer presentation. However, until it is out of private beta and has enough members to generate good career planning advice, the idea may be excellent but the execution may not be effective.

Based on the examples provided, would you be likely to contact a candidate based on a visual resume, would it make a difference if it was an online badge or a T-shirt, and would this method work for your current recruitment needs?

Job Boards, Applicant Tracking Systems and other work search methods from PBS Newshour

I would make a distinction between the employer job postings (specifically from the employer's site) and the major Internet job boards. I also endorse Peter Cappelli's Why Good People Can't Get Jobs, which provides a good explanation of how an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) can defeat job seekers.

Watch Is Applying for Jobs Online an Effective Way to Find Work? on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

Why you should learn to code

Though I don't think that the ability to code will save the world (or your career) some basic coding, just like some basic math, should be a requirement for most "knowledge workers". The infographic is courtesy OnlineCollege

Gen Y Infographic

Infographic of Gen Y in the workplace. I like the stat about how more full-time, employed Gen Y workers have an MBA than have no higher education at all.

Value of Education from PayScale.com

PayScale.com offered their first Google Hangout on the Value of Education, aka is it worth it to go to college?

The discussion was wide ranging and had a good mix of speakers--a marketer, an economist and a school counsellor--though the moderator could have done a bit more to distribute time amongst all of the panelists.

A story from NPR about a high achieving student choosing the trades over college seems to echo some of the arguments made by the speakers, while also addressing the only the remedial student enters the trades argument. It's a shame that we are still dealing with that stereotype, but this weird belief that only the stupid, usually male, students become tradespeople just won't die in the minds of some parents--and kids.

One area they didn't touch on was when you needed a degree, or a graduate degree, to do the job that you want. For example, if your local authority only hires teachers with a graduate degree to teach in the K-12 schools, you can go to school for a year to be a Teaching Assistant--but that is not a Teacher. And without the four year degree you can never progress into higher level administration or even into instructional or curricular design. In some cases college is the only way to get into a profession, so suggesting that they just pursue the "lite" version of the career is also a waste of their time and money.

However, their point about taking the associate degree, getting some work experience and pursuing additional education with the assistance of their employer is one we try to impress on our students all the time.

There are also some cases where a trade and a degree can go hand in hand. For example, a person who pursues a degree in history but who also works as a carpenter--whether as a full-time worker and a part-time student, or vice versa--may be able to use their trade to leverage their degreed career. As a carpenter and a historian, they could work in a museum (or form their own company) to build and repair exhibits; they can work in historical interpretation as a carpenter; they can also use their skills and knowledge to preserve historic homes or buildings. I wish sometimes that people would consider how a trade and a college degree can enhance one another, rather than the liberal arts depriving our economy of a plumber. (In fact, a chemistry class would have helped the plumber who told me that I could boil lead out of my water--but I consider him to be unusual and not the norm.)

They are also trying to continue the conversation on Twitter with the hashtag #valueofed, but they couldn't have anticipated the Twitter shutdown during their hangout.

Points to PayScale.com for using Google Hangouts. I'm looking forward to more of these.

Pay Equity in Crimefighting

This one comes from BUST stating that Batgirl was/is a feminist. Since she is like a patron comic saint to many librarians, this is a cool plea for equal pay for equal crimefighting.

 

Adecco 2012 Graduate Survey

Adecco, a recruitment firm, has released their key findings for their 2012 Graduate Survey. According to their summation, the survey focused on respondents between the ages of 22 and 26, was conducted by phone and completed before graduation.

Based on the key findings, this is another "are the kids alright?" survey, where the graduates are revealed to be selfish little babies that can't be bothered to unplug from Facebook to answer a client's call. Since some of these kids found their jobs through Facebook, in some cases this is like asking people to not use the phone...and the surveyors disapproved of graduates that wanted to take a personal call, as well. According to the summary 23% of respondents said they wouldn't take a job where they couldn't make a personal phone call.

I would like a reality check on that one: how many people, no matter what their ages, would not take a job if they couldn't make a personal phone call--such as confirming a dental appointment or reminding your spouse that it is her turn to pick up the kids or your mother-in-law from her chemo appointment? C'mon, that one is just ridiculous--especially if your mother-in-law regularly notifies you by text message.

And my examples are also enforcing the stereotype, since I am implying that only "older, responsible" adults could have the same telephone needs, such as medical appointments and kids, when many 22 to 26 year old people could also have these same needs. At least I didn't assume that a personal phone call is always a booty call, like this article from the Kansas City Star did.

I would also like to take a look at the first question, which the summation seems to believe is the pinnacle of Generation-I selfishness: "...over the next 10 years, only three percent of recent grads said they’d expect to stay at any given job for more than five years.  A third (33 percent) only expect to stay for three years or less". I would like to know how this one was worded on the actual survey, since the meaning here is not clear: does this mean that they will quit and move on, or that they expect to be laid off when their company moves all their jobs to China or India? Rather than suggest that this is a question about worker loyalty, this question may be a pragmatic assessment of the current labor market and its unkindness to workers.

I really wish I could see the questions on the survey, since I think this says more about our preconceptions about graduations than their actual thoughts about the workplace.