This article is from Financial Planning.com and was written by Greg Kautt.

Much has been written about how it will be more difficult and expensive to find and retain talented people for the financial planning industry. Some have gone so far as to declare this a major sea change. Actually, it’s the inevitable consequence of an industry growing up. Finding and retaining the right professionals is not more difficult, it’s just that fast-growing firms need higher-caliber recruits.

Unfortunately, folks who have written much of what you’ve been reading about hiring difficulties don’t actually hire financial planners. I, on the other hand, do. In this column, I address what’s working well in our firm.

Reality Check

There are three critical trends affecting staff hiring:

Entry-level professionals from Generation Y. Born from 1976 to 1986, Generation Y workers are not nearly as motivated by money as the baby boomers were. They won’t respond to the same hiring tactics as baby boomers or Gen Xers. To recruit, train and motivate these folks requires different techniques. Click here to read the rest of this article.

This post comes from Fox Business.

Travel agents used to be the go-to people for booking flights and mapping driving directions. But those days are long gone.

Instant access to travel Web sites like Orbitz and Expedia coupled with the popularity of GPS devices have led some to question whether technology has replaced the travel agent. But industry experts believe just the opposite: Technology has given travel agents the opportunity to excel in ways they weren’t able to before.

Travel is On Topic at FOXBusiness.com in April. From tips on booking cheap vacations to flying with your pets, we explore your top travel ideas. Check back throughout the month to find out what you need to know.

For travel agents, being able to communicate with clients at every hour of the day while having access to quick and timely research has become essential, said Joanie Ogg, senior vice president of global sales at Travel Counsellors, an independent travel agency based in the United Kingdom.

“The Internet has actually been the best tool to a travel agent that we could ever ask for,” she said.

Much has changed since the industry’s early days, when airlines relied on travel agents to book reservations and paid them commissions for doing so. In the mid-1990s, airlines began cutting those commissions, forcing agencies to adapt.

“Travel agents recognized they were going to have to move the pendulum and find a way to be important to our industry and still be a profitable business,” Ogg said.

While some agencies sank under the loss of commissions, others swam. The simultaneous rise of online ticket Web sites allowed agencies to focus less on reservations and more on providing the consumer with quality advice and information. Agents across the country began to close their storefront offices, choosing to work from home to avoid overhead costs and capitalize on emerging online capabilities, said Ogg.

Today, travel agencies account for nearly $110 billion in sales, or 41% of all travel booked in the U.S., according to a recent survey released by travel market research firm PhoCusWright. And that’s not including online travel agencies, which might bring that to 60% or 70%, said William Maloney, executive vice president and COO at the American Society of Travel Agents [ASTA].

“Travel agents are still a vibrant force in the industry,” said Maloney, who believes a resurgence in the travel agent market is likely, given that small businesses–especially those so technologically integrated–are primed for job growth.

So, if it’s not airline bookings, what’s generating sales in this market? According to the experts, a shift into niche and specialty markets has proved very profitable for travel agents. There are certain kinds of travel excursions that people aren’t going to plan without consulting someone with experience, said Mike Pina, director of public relations at AAA. Some of these specialty travel areas include adoption travel, health travel, volunteer travel and grandparent travel–all of which require detailed itinerary planning and instruction, he said.

Some web sites are starting to catch on. Visitors to Tripology.com, for example, submit information about the kind of trip they’d like to go on and are then matched up with three real travel agents who specialize in that specific kind of trip (considering budget, destination, special needs, etc). After talking to the agents via phone or e-mail and viewing customer feedback, the consumer can then decide who she/he feels can best help them, and arrange the trip with that agent at the agent’s own price. The site costs nothing for the consumers requesting its services, its merely a matchmaking site for travelers and travel agents.

Since its launch in June 2007, more than 28,000 requests have been submitted to Tripology, said Brett Krasnove, the company’s vice president of product development. The secret to its success? Being able to hook consumers up with the information and advice that only a person with experience can provide.

“With the decline in the economy, if [people] are going to spend money on a vacation, they want to make sure that it’s spent right,” Krasnove said.

Another reason to work with a travel agent: security. A good travel agent will be reliable and able to guide you through any delays or mishaps on your trip. The agent can make changes to your reservation without you having to spend hours on the phone trying to fix your online booking, said Jo Dubiel, a certified travel consultant.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics is expecting little to no job growth in the travel agent sector through 2016. But for those on the front lines, like Dubiel, who serves as the online facilitator for Gatlin Education’s travel course offered in colleges across the globe, that’s just not true.

Dubiel has said the number of students she sees in any given course has doubled because of the flexibility a travel agent career offers. She has seen it open doors for foreign students who “know the problems of international travel and are looking to specialize within their own built-in market,” as well as retirees, those looking for a second income, and those who are bilingual.

“There will always be a need for knowledgeable, professional assistance in planning a business trip or long dreamed about vacation,” she said. “The agencies and their agents who have found their niche market and specializations will be sought out by people seeking their own rewarding experience.”

BEIJING (AP) — By some measures, China has tied the United States as the online population leader with its government reporting that the number of Internet users there has soared to 221 million.

The figure, reported Thursday by the Xinhua News Agency, reflects China’s explosive growth in Internet use despite government efforts to block access to material considered subversive or pornographic. It was a 61 percent increase over the 137 million Internet users reported at the start of 2007.

But the numbers alone can be deceiving.

Nielsen Online estimates the U.S. online population at 221 million as well, but it counts only those with home or work access, as the vast majority of U.S. Internet users do. By contrast, one-third of Chinese Internet users surf through cybercafes.

And China’s Internet penetration is still low, with 16 percent of people online, compared with a world average of 19 percent, Xinhua said. The Pew Internet and American Life Project places U.S. online penetration at 71 percent.

China still lags the United States, South Korea and other markets in online commerce and other financial measures, though e-commerce, video-sharing and other businesses are growing quickly, and companies have raised millions of dollars from investors.

“We’ll see this growth continuing,” said Duncan Clark, chairman of BDA China Ltd., a Beijing technology company. “Even though China might overtake the United States in total (Internet) population, it still lags in the size of its Internet industries, and there will be a lot more opportunities.”

Beijing promotes Internet use for business and education but operates extensive online censorship. Web surfers have been jailed for posting or e-mailing material that criticizes Communist rule or is deemed a violation of vague national security laws.

Most recently, Chinese Web surfers have been blocked from seeing Google Inc.’s YouTube and other foreign sites with videos about protests in Tibet and the security crackdown there. In March, the government said it would shut down 25 Chinese video sites and punish 32 others for violating new rules against carrying content that is deemed pornographic, violent or a threat to national security.

The Xinhua report cited February data from the government’s China Internet Network Information Center. An agency spokeswoman, who would give only her surname, Zhang, declined to give more details. She said the agency would release a report in July.

The U.S. online population has largely stabilized, meaning that when March figures for China are released they may show that the country has already overtaken the United States.

BDA’s Clark said the Chinese online population should keep growing by 18 percent annually, reaching 490 million by 2012 — a number larger than the entire U.S. population.

The boom has produced Chinese success stories such as games site Tencent.com and search engine Baidu.com, which are competing with foreign rivals for market share.

The Internet’s mushrooming popularity has been driven in part by a regulatory quirk: Fixed-line phone companies are losing potential new customers to mobile phone services but are barred from getting into that market themselves. So they are trying instead to bring in new revenues by promoting low-cost broadband Internet access, which has brought high-speed service to millions of homes. Phone companies also are experimenting with Internet-based cable television.

Web businesses are looking for another boost when Beijing takes the long-anticipated step of issuing licenses for third-generation, or 3G, mobile technology to support video, Web-surfing and other services. No date has been set.

With the world’s largest mobile phone market, at 520 million accounts, China has a vast potential pool of wireless Internet users.

“There will be a lot more opportunity to move online,” Clark said.

This article comes from T.H.E. Journal and is written by by Ruth Reynard, Ph.D.

“I am what is currently known as a “digital immigrant” simply because I did not grow up with new technology–”digital native” (Prensky, 2005, pp. 8-13)–but acquired certain skills and understanding of new technology through necessity. As that necessity demanded, I acquired skills that would help me navigate and survive new challenges while remaining true to my own already established ways of knowing and learning and processing of information. My background in higher education has been in traditional research-based universities that have been driven by asking questions, not teaching.

In more recent years higher education has been challenged increasingly to provide good teaching and even insitutions that previously had the luxury of mainly focusing on literary disciplines and research are being challenged to provide good teaching expertise through their faculty. Additionally, more of this teaching focus in both teaching instutions and other more traditional institutions is being driven by employment standards. As a result, K-12 preparation is also focusing on employment standards rather than conventional academic standards. The result is an entire educational system that is more employment-driven than knowledge-driven. While this is understandable in many ways, there is also a subsequent gap in the knowledge ability of students.

The problem with all of what we currently do in the general scope of education is that we, the educators, hold on to how we learned and how we process information and knowledge rather than thinking through the realties of how new students and future students think and process and the challenges they will bring to our courses. Even those most innovative “early adopters” among us struggle to discover effective uses of technology in education but do not really understand how our students perceive what we do or how they process the content we give them. All of this is further challenged in the delivery and distribution of learning. At present enough is not known to establish conclusions about which is better, but we know enough through our own experience to realize that things are different. New technology has challenged the way in which education is delivered, but newer technologies are now challenging how people process information and what they expect to be able to do with that information.” Click here to read the rest of this interesting article.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has announced their Executive Leadership Forum called, “Surviving and Thriving in 2012 and Overcoming the Key Challenges of the Future.” The conference will be held June 8 - 9, 2008 in Washington D.C. and will be held at the J.W. Marriott. According to The Chronicle the forum will, “will bring together the most influential leaders in American higher education — college and university presidents, chancellors, and other senior administrators. Led by Chronicle editors and reporters and a diverse group of expert panelists, we’ll examine the key management challenges facing higher education in the next 4 years and what college leaders can do now to start preparing for them.”

Participants will receive briefings on a variety of topics such as these:

• The coming demographic shift of students and what it means for college management.
• The benefits and pitfalls of going carbon neutral.
• Town, gown, and the bottom line: college as local economic catalyst.
• Sustainability: myth, reality, and return on investment.
• The challenges of internationalizing college campuses.
• The president of the future.

Now in its third year, The Chronicle Executive Leadership Forum is unique among higher-education conferences. Explore the program and register now to guarantee your participation at this important event.

This post comes from the L.A. Times.

“With baby boomers preparing to retire as the best educated and most skilled workforce in U.S. history, a growing chorus of demographers and labor experts is raising concerns that workers in California and the nation lack the critical skills needed to replace them.

In particular, experts say, the immigrant workers needed to fill many of the boomer jobs lack the English-language skills and basic educational levels to do so. Many immigrants are ill-equipped to fill California’s fastest-growing positions, including computer software engineers, registered nurses and customer service representatives, a new study by the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute found.

Immigrants — legal and illegal — already constitute almost half of the workers in Los Angeles County and are expected to account for nearly all of the growth in the nation’s working-age population by 2025 because native-born Americans are having fewer children. But the study, based largely on U.S. Census data, noted that 60% of the county’s immigrant workers struggle with English and one-third lack high school diplomas.

The looming mismatch in the skills employers need and those workers offer could jeopardize the future economic vitality of California and the nation, experts say. Los Angeles County, the largest immigrant metropolis with about 3.5 million foreign-born residents, is at the forefront of this demographic trend.

“The question is, are we going to be a 21st century city with shared prosperity, or a Third World city with an elite group on top and the majority at poverty or near poverty wages?” asked Ernesto Cortes Jr., Southwest regional director of the Industrial Areas Foundation, a leadership development organization. “Right now we’re headed toward becoming a Third World city. But we can change that.”

How to respond to the inexorable demographic trends is a question sparking a flurry of studies, conferences and new programs. This week, a USC conference featuring Cortes, former federal housing secretary Henry Cisneros and other community leaders will explore ways to help immigrants better integrate into career-oriented jobs and civic life.

The Los Angeles Community College District has launched a workforce development committee of city officials and community leaders to figure out how to better prepare students for skills needed in the region.” Click here to read the rest of this article.

This post comes from the Computing Technology Industry Association. It also illustrates why Gatlin Education’s online IT certification programs are in such high demand.

“Research released by CompTIA shows that there are skills gaps in several key areas. When comparing reported proficiency in skills to the importance of those skills, the skill with the widest “gap” in proficiency is security/firewalls/data privacy.

What does this mean for IT professionals? It is obvious that in order to move ahead, IT pros have to be skilled at their job and able to keep up with changes in the industry. By taking note of the skills gaps, and ensuring their own proficiency in those skills, IT pros may be able to speed their move up the career ladder.
Stan Godard, manager of direct service education at Ricoh, is knowledgeable about what hiring managers are looking for in job candidates. He is in charge of managing trainers and helping with the curriculum development and instruction they do. When talking with students or instructors, Godard said he will share his feelings on the importance of certification in career advancement.

“If you are looking at it from a hiring manager point of view there are things that they need to look for …. “ Godard said. “Primarily when we are talking to the students we want to talk about things like the value of the certification to them and what the hiring manager is looking for … we like to tell them that the certifications demonstrate that they not only have the knowledge and ability to do the job but also to learn the changing technologies as they evolve in the industry.”

The ability to keep up with changing technologies is a key factor in job stability and advancement. This is common sense – no one is going to want to hire someone who knows Windows ’95 backwards and forwards, but can’t grasp Vista or even XP.

The research shows that, according the respondents, the skill that is by far expected to grow most in importance over the next five years is RF mobile, wireless technology (39% say it will be important one year from now vs. 55% say it will be important five years from now).” Click here to read the rest of this article.

This article comes from Kansas.com.

The oil and gas industry, like its manufacturing and health care counterparts, is facing a worker crisis.

Only 15 percent of the industry’s work force is between the ages of 20 and 40, while more than 50 percent is between 50 and 60.

The American oil and gas industry lost 60 percent of its work force in the oil downturn between 1986 and 2000, according to figures supplied by the Kansas Independent Oil and Gas Association.

Now KIOGA is stepping up efforts to recruit new workers. At its midyear meeting in Hays today, KIOGA will launch the Kansas Oil and Gas Industry Career Toolkit.

The Toolkit will be used by KIOGA at career fairs and school presentations across Kansas, introducing Kansas students to more than 70 jobs and careers in the oil and gas industry. It will provide job descriptions, typical education requirements, salary information, career paths and working conditions.

“We’ll be putting a lot of information about the tool kit on our Web site to give school counselors and teachers a chance to look it over and see what it’s all about following our launch presentation at Hays High School,” said KIOGA executive Ed Cross.

Labor shortages are one of the industry’s biggest challenges, according to KIOGA. The lack of qualified and talented applicants is limiting the ability of the industry to expand activity.

The Toolkit joins several other KIOGA initiatives over the past several years to improve the ability of the industry to recruit, train and retain workers.

KIOGA continues to work with Pratt Community College to offer entry-level training for workers entering the oil and gas industry, a program that has drawn more than 600 workers since it was launched in September 2005.

An initiative with the Kansas Department of Commerce is using mobile laboratories and site-based experiences as part of a high-definition remote training system.

A final initiative is to develop a leadership training program for emerging executives in the oil and gas field. KIOGA is hoping to work with universities and colleges to offer that program.

This post comes from The Chronicle.

At least one million community-college students are denied access to federally guaranteed student loans because their institutions do not participate in the federal programs, according to a report to be released today by the Project on Student Debt, a nonprofit advocacy group.

The study found that one in 10 community-college students, including one in five black students at such institutions, do not have access to federal student loans. That leaves few alternatives for students who need to borrow money for college, the report says.

“Without other options, students with real financial need will either turn to risky, expensive borrowing through private student loans or credit cards, or give up on going to college,” says the report, “Denied: Community College Students Lack Access to Affordable Loans.”

At the financial-aid offices of at least three community colleges that did not participate in federal loan programs, students were urged to look into alternative and private loans if they needed help to finance their education, the study found. Click here to read the rest of this article.

This posts comes from Inside Higher Ed.

Instead of sifting through existing texts to find case studies suitable for his course, Matt Cookson decided to go straight to the source. In his Introduction to Public Relations class, which he teaches as an adjunct at the University of New Hampshire at Manchester, he uses content pulled directly from online archives of The New York Times — embedded within the course management system itself.

Except it isn’t a course management system, exactly, though it does allow faculty members to post assignments and readings online for students to download. Calling it a social network wouldn’t be fair either, though it does offer personalized profiles for students and professors. An “integrated online course content, portfolio and communications tool” is a bit closer, but its actual name is Epsilen. Last September, the Times announced a partnership with the service in its push into the distance learning market.

Last month, it finalized a deal to purchase a 53 percent majority stake in the holding company that markets Epsilen, an environment that was originally developed at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis’s Purdue School of Engineering and Technology. (For the record, Felice Nudelman, director of education for the Times, called it “the most robust Web 2.0 learning platform in the world.”)

Click here to read the rest of this article.