blogs with jobs

During the last year, financial jobs have become more difficult to find. With many banks slashing workers in an effort to cut costs and make up for money lost through defaulted loans, the industry hasn’t been performing at its best. Credit card companies have been hit particularly hard.

Since many people have been laid off as a result of the national recession, many can’t afford to make their payments, which has left these companies holding the bill. Now one such creditor has announced that it will be cutting jobs in Virginia in an effort to save money.

According to a recent press release, Capital One Financial Corp. will be doing away with a total of 58 employees. Of these cuts, 42 Virginia job will be lost at the company’s facility in Goochland County. The remaining 16 positions will be done away with at Capital One’s headquarters, according to company spokesperson Julie Rakes. All of those who will be effected have already been informed.

Layoffs are expected to effect mainly workers that are responsible for the marketing, acquisition and servicing of credit card accounts, according to the press release.

Rakes went on to say that all of the employees who will be affected will be given 60 days from May 4th to find other jobs with the company or elsewhere. During this period, full-time employees will continue to receive their full benefits. These individuals will also be eligible for severance packages.

Those who do pursue jobs within the company will receive career planning assistance. Workers who seek employment elsewhere will be offered outplacement services.

“The changes support the company’s continued focus on managing costs and operating efficiently,” said Rakes

Capital One is currently one of the largest employers in the Richmond Virginia area, employing approximately 6,700 workers as of January 1st of this year.

One side effect of a national recession is that many people lack the money to buy unnecessary consumer goods, such as extra clothing or electronics. This is turn has an affect on the company’s that provide these products. As a result, their profits take a nosedive, often causing them to layoff workers in order to cut expenses. For these reasons, one clothing manufacture recently announced that it will be doing away with jobs in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

According to a press release put out by Hanesbrands Inc. on April 27th, the company will be doing away with a total of 500 employees throughout its organization. Job cuts will occur at both the company’s corporate management offices and its U.S. distribution centers.

Around 250 of the management employees who will be losing their jobs will be informed of such before the end of this week. Approximately 200 of these cuts will come from the Winston-Salem jobs that Hanes provides. Another 30 positions will be lost elsewhere in the U.S., while 20 employees from the company’s global workforce will lose their jobs.

As far as the company’s distribution operations go, Hanes will be laying off 40 employees immediately from its Winston-Salem distribution center, which is located on Annapolis Drive. These cuts come as a result of a reduced product volume and are part of the company’s effort to close the center by the end of March 2010. In the end, another 200 North Carolina jobs will be lost. Altogether that’s a total of 440 jobs lost in Winston-Salem between now and next March.

Currently, Hanes is in the process of terminating its contract with a third-party that operates a distribution center in Jacksonville, Florida. Approximately 10 of the company’s employees will be laid off there between now and March 2010.

All of the employees that will be affected by the layoffs are expected to receive both severance packaged and outplacement benefits.

In order to do this, products distributed at the Winston-Salem and Jacksonville facilities will be handled by centers in Martinsville, Virginia and Perris, California. The company feels that operating fewer large centers of distribution will increase its efficiency.

According to Hanes report of the first quarter of this year, sales are down by 13 percent in comparison to last year. This means that expenses have to be reduced in order for the company to remain profitable.

“In the face of reduced consumer spending, we must manage conservatively and tightly control costs, including making the difficult decision to lay off employees during this bleak economy,” said Hanes executive vice president of human resources Kevin W. Oliver in a recent press release. “We regret losing talented employees and will miss their commitment and professionalism. We will try to do everything that we can to assist in their transition.”

Prior to the layoffs, Hanesbrands employed around 3,000 people in Forsyth County and had a worldwide workforce of about 43,000. The company believes that the expenses related to restructuring their organization will end up being somewhere around $15 million, most of which will happen in the second quart of 2009.

Finding the right candidate for the job is the most important responsibility held by hiring mangers, but many face a common problem; a quick interview rarely tells enough about a person to know if they would be a good fit for a particular position. Since it isn’t hard for applicants to present the best side of themselves during the course of a short question and answer session, more and more workplaces are relying on pre-employment testing to determine whom they should or should not hire.

According to one study conducted by the American Management Association (AMA), as many as 7 out of 10 employers regularly test either applicants are current employers using some form of a job skills test. Another 46 percent conduct a psychological test on either potential workers or current staff members and 41 percent of businesses use aptitude tests to make sure that workers and applicants have the basic literacy and/or mathematical skills for the job. The AMA also found that, of the candidates tested for the latter, more than one-third did not have sufficient skills to perform the job for which they were applying.

The type of test used for employee selection vary from company to company, but some of the most popular include:

General Cognitive ability tests, which measure an applicants ability to quickly learn information and use it to perform some sort of task or respond to correctly to questioning.

Personality tests, which are used to determine an applicant’s normal pattern of thinking, feeling and behaving. These test often include sections geared toward finding out how motivated a particular individual is and if they are trustworthy.

Job skills tests, which can be used to determine if the individual posses the necessary skills to perform the job they are applying for. Some skills that might be tested include the ability to negotiate, make decisions, explain information or close a deal. They can also be as simple making sure that the applicant can type at a predetermined minimal speed.

If the job in question is for a managerial position, an applicant may be required to take a test that shows whether or not they have the ability to manage other workers effectively.

Other popular forms of employment testing include background checks, drug tests, and for some positions tests of the applicants physical abilities.

With the media’s attention turned towards the nationally experienced recession, it seems like there is little good news being posted about jobs across the country. Despite this there are employers adding new positions in various places. For example, the newest data from the Louisiana Workforce Commission shows that the state added a total of 4,300 new non-farm jobs during the month of March.

“It is very clear that Louisiana’s employment picture continues to outperform the rest of the economy,” the executive director of the Commission, Tim Barfield, said in a recent statement. “Nonfarm job totals every month this year have outpaced the totals from a year ago.”

Of Louisiana’s 8 metro areas, six of them saw an increase added jobs last month. Baton Rouge, where employers created 2,100 positions, saw the most growth. New Orleans, with 1,700 new jobs, came next, followed by the Shreveport-Bossier area, 700 new positions, Lafayette, 400 additional jobs, Houma-Thibodaux and Monroe, both of which added 300 positions. The Lake Charles metro saw no change in the number of jobs while Alexandria lost 100 positions during March.

A Year-over-year comparison from March 2008 to March 2009 showed that the state saw the largest increases in job in the service and construction industries. The latter may come as a surprise, considering the fact the many other states are seeing huge decline in construction employment. The largest decrease in jobs in Louisiana occurred in the manufacturing sector.

Despite the addition of new jobs, Louisiana’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose slightly from 5.7 percent in February to 5.8 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The discrepancy in sets of statistics could be caused by an increase in the number of people that call the area home.

Louisiana’s jobless rate continues to show that the state is doing better than many other areas throughout the country. During the same period the national unemployment rate jumped form 8.5 percent to 8.1 percent.

When conducting a job search during a time of economic struggle, having the perfect resume (click here for more information) is extremely important. At this time, hiring managers are finding themselves overwhelmed with a huge number of applications due to the fact that there are fewer employers recruiting new staff members. Below you will find several helpful tips to creating a stellar resume.

For starters, many people make the mistake of creating a general resume and sending it out to every company they apply for. Although this may sound like a time saver, it actually looks extremely unprofessional. For each position you apply for, tailor your resume before sending it in, including the objective and positions listed.

On the same note, don’t simply tell employers the responsibilities you held at prior jobs; be specific. For example: Don’t write that you managed client accounts. Instead list the number of clients whose information you were responsible for. Numbers and specific information make your skills seem more real and more relevant.

The way you organize the information on your resume is also extremely important. When typing up your work experience you should put the positions that you’ve held that are most relevant to the job your applying to first. Order them from the most relevant to the least.

When listing the skills you posses that are important to the position you are applying for, remember to use keywords. Nowadays even smaller employers are using HR computer programs to sift through applications. Since these software programs usually look for certain keywords, not including them can mean that human eyes never see your resume. If the job listing included specific qualifications, then use the same words when creating your resume.

When you format your resume, don’t type long blocks of text. Since hiring mangers usually skim over applications, it’s important to include lots of white space. Doing so makes will make it easier for the eyes to take in as much information as possible in as little time. Using bullets to denote a new block of information will also help in this regard. Also, pay attention to the font you use. Don’t go smaller than 12 point and chose a font that clear and easy to read.

After you finish typing you resume, make sure to proofread it at least twice. Typos are very unprofessional and can make you appear as if you don’t pay attention to detail. If you’re not great at editing, then have a friend or family member help you out.

Connecticut engineering jobs offer both good salaries and job security, despite the fact that the state is not one of largest tech centers in the country.

Since employers are having a difficult time finding properly trained professionals to fill these vacancies, competition for existing talent is high. Because of this, experienced engineers are able to be more selective when searching for a new job.

High-tech and engineering positions may be challenging to hire for now, but by 2016 employers will really be struggling. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 850,000 such jobs will be created during the 10-year time period that will end in 2016.

(more…)

Several factors have caused nursing jobs (click here for more information) to become one of the fastest growing occupations in the country. Since the population is growing, more nurses are needed to take care of the number of people that get ill every year. Add to this the fact that many nurses are retiring and that nurses now have more responsibilities, and you have the perfect recipe for a lot of available jobs in healthcare. The only problem with this is the fact that the supply of nurses can’t seem to meet the demand, which means that employers are having to get creative in order to make sure that their patients’ needs are being taken care.

Because of this, there has been a rise in the number of employers hiring travel nurses. Travel nurses are healthcare professionals that take temporary positions at hospitals in order to fulfill staff vacancies. After their contractual period is up, these professionals often move on to another hospital in another area. Since hospitals are in desperate need for travel nurses, there has been a huge rise in the number of websites catering to this profession. In hopes of helping travel nurses wade through the Internet to find the best sites in the web, Onward Healthcare recently released a list of the 101 Best Travel Nursing websites.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there will be around 500,000 new travel nurses jobs in the country. Since the demand continues to increase for this profession, Onward Healthcare says that they want to be able to continue to best serve these medical workers by providing them with the most up-to-date information available on the Internet.

“Our goal was to offer an all encompassing list of nursing websites that would be useful to our RNs in the field,” said Onward Healthcare’s Director of Corporate Marketing Steven Dobrowski in a recent press release. “However, we also wanted to present our travel nurses with a broad rand of practical sites and social network that would appeal to their life on the road.”

In order to view the list of helpful websites, check out Onward Healthcare’s website.

As many as 400,000 new Perth jobs may be available over the course of the next decade.

The area has recently experienced a substantial population boom with no end in site. Already the demand for housing, public transport and medical and educational services is beginning to impact the city. As a result, many new jobs will have to be created in order to continue to meet the needs of new residents.

A recently-released study by a leading demographer stated that the growth of the population will most likely exceed the level expected by the state government. Because of this, the report advised officials to begin looking into the future and creating new positions that will serve the expanding city.

(more…)

Recruiting software company Bullhorn recently announced that its services have been implemented by EPCglobal, one of the United Kingdom’s leading staffing solutions companies for the engineering and construction industries.

EPCglobal’s implementation of Bullhorn will allow the company to increase productivity among recruiters and sales managers by reducing the amount of time staff spends on client and candidate administrative work. The software also will make it faster and easier to access information on job orders, recruiting activity and placement status, according to an article by TransWorldNews.

“Global staffing firms such as EPCglobal recognize the competitive advantage of working with a true on demand, Software as a Service solution that makes complete access to all of their business information available anytime and from anywhere and additionally makes it easy to launch new offices around the globe without incurring expensive infrastructure costs,” Barry Hinckley, president and co-founder of Bullhorn, said in the article. “Bullhorn is pleased to partner with EPCglobal in its effort to continue expanding globally and growing strategically.”

(more…)

Constant talk about the recession in the news has many worried about the state of their jobs. Even those who are currently employed are concerned about what might happen if they are laid off. Will they be able to find another job? A recent survey from CareerBuilder says that chances are, yes.

According to the survey conducted on behalf of the company by Harris Interactive, almost half of those who have lost their jobs in the last three months have been able to find work elsewhere. Of those who were recently laid off, 41 percent reported that they have been able to find a new full-time permanent position. Another 8 percent of those polled said that they have been able to find part-time positions.


”This is encouraging news for the 3.3 million workers who have lost their jobs in recent months,” said CareerBuilder North America’s President Brent Rasmussen. “It’s going to take longer to find a job in today’s market, but there are opportunities out there in key areas such as healthcare, government, education, sales and technology. It’s important to devote five hours or more to your job search every day, check online listings, talk to recruiters, join social networking sites - use all the resources you have available to you.”

Although a large percentage of laid off workers were able to secure employment, 49 percent reported that their new job paid less than their previous employer. On the opposite end of the spectrum, 15 percent were able to find positions that included a salary higher than they had received at their last job. Around 20 percent of respondents found positions that required them to work fewer hours, while 12 percent took on positions that required more time at the office.

Interestingly enough, age and gender played a part in an individual’s ability to secure employment. While 59 percent of men who were laid off found new full-time positions, only 49 percent of women were able to do the same. Workers who were in the 35 to 44 age bracket had the easiest time finding work, with 68 percent finding new jobs. Younger workers, those who are 18 to 24, had the hardest time, with only 41 percent finding work. Job seekers who were 55 or holder followed, with 46 percent reporting that they were hired for a full-time position.

Of those who participated in the survey, 32 percent reported that they received a severance package upon being laid off. Approximately 69 percent of these individuals were able to live off it for 2 months of less. A fourth of respondents said their package didn’t even last them till the end of the month. Because of this, 45 percent of participants said that they had to use money from their personal savings to make ends meet.

Participants in the survey were job seekers that had been laid off from their full-time jobs during the course of the last 12 months. A little more than 800 people took part in the poll.