This post comes from MarketWatch.

“As the U.S. works toward stabilizing its financial markets after unprecedented events on Wall Street, the ripple effects of a cooler business climate in 2008 continue to infiltrate nationwide employment. Employers expect current hiring trends to hold steady through the end of the year, according to CareerBuilder.com and USA TODAY’s “Q4 2008 Job Forecast.”* The survey, conducted by Harris Interactive(R) between August 21 and September 9, 2008, included more than 3,000 hiring managers and HR professionals and over 6,100 workers in private sector companies nationwide.

“Employers are maintaining a conservative approach to recruitment as they maneuver through a weaker economy that has produced its share of casualties,” said Matt Ferguson, CEO of CareerBuilder.com. “Certain sectors such as IT and Healthcare are still showing solid job growth while others struggle with reorganization, cost containment and other measures to stay afloat. Consistent with last quarter’s findings, there is a slight decrease in the number of employers planning to add new workers in the next three months.”

Emerging Trends for Workers: Of those workers who found a new job in 2008, one-in-five (21 percent) reported their job search took them four months or longer.” Click here to read the rest of this article.

This post comes from TMCNet.

With changes in the economy, more opportunities for growth and a need to stay competitive, local employers and employees have turned to education.

In recent years, most companies have changed their attitudes about training and additional education for their workers, and feel those aspects are vitally linked to their success for the future.

Jan Bailey, executive director of workforce and economic development for the Kokomo Region of Ivy Tech, said there are many aspects to education in the workplace.

Students can attend Ivy Tech to earn degrees and certifications in one of eight areas.

“All of our classes are set up so that a student could be a full-time student, devoting everything they do to education endeavors, or it could be a student who is going to school part-time while working full-time,” Bailey said.

Bailey said another aspect of education in the workplace includes adults transitioning from one field to another. Most of the people looking to make that type of switch have no prior skills in the field.

Others interested in education will choose something short term, Bailey said. They can attend a non-credit class just to update a certain skill in one particular area, such as computer software — an industry where significant advancements have made it necessary for individuals to constantly update their skills. Click here to read the rest of this article.

This post comes from The Chronicle.

“Who needs college credit when you have a makeshift diploma from a superstar professor?

David Wiley taught an online course at Utah State University last fall and let anyone fully participate, even if they weren’t enrolled. In the end, five people the registrar had never heard of joined discussions with the 15 or so regular students and got papers graded by Mr. Wiley, who considered the extra work a public service.

The unofficial students paid no tuition and got no formal credit, but they did end up with something tangible: a homemade certificate signed by Mr. Wiley, who at the time directed the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning and is well known in the area of online learning.

That was plenty of recognition for Antonio Fini, a doctoral student at the University of Florence, in Italy. “I include it in my CV,” he says.

Open Teaching is the name Mr. Wiley and others use for their experimental knowledge giveaway. And it suggests how the Web could soon force colleges to re-examine their offerings in the age of digital delivery.” Click here to read the rest of this article.

This article comes from Datamation.

“When you get right down to the nuts and bolts of today’s IT job market, technical skills alone aren’t enough. Employers want IT professionals with equal parts business savvy and technology expertise. In short, differentiate yourself by understanding both the business your company is in and the customer it serves.

The days of the IT department silo are gone. IT professionals who bring together the business role and technology role are best suited to be the business problem solvers for the company’s tech division.

“It’s not technology first, business second, anymore,” says Ian Ide, partner and general manager of the New York technology division of Winter, Wyman, a recruitment firm.

As you move up the ranks of IT professionals, there’s more of a requirement to understand the business and be able to interface with business units. As strategic players in the organization, CIOs and CTOs have always had to understand the business. This requirement, however, is trickling down to other IT players, as well.” Click here to read the rest of this article.

This post comes from Market Watch.

“When a hiring manager for a software company needs to increase his staff, where will he turn for a quick, timely download on the technology labor market? When a Boston-based molecular biologist is looking to relocate to the West Coast, how will she get an expert synopsis of hiring trends? Now there’s a new place people can go online to get unbiased, straight answers: YohTube, available at www.youtube.com/yohtube.

Yoh, a leading provider of talent and outsourcing services and a business unit of Day & Zimmermann, created YohTube to give hiring managers a unique insight to the talent marketplace, and provide high-impact talent with more than just ways to improve their resumes. YohTube is a new and growing library of videos containing actionable insight into recruitment and job market trends. It provides hiring managers with expert advice on how to make better hiring decisions, while giving professionals effective tactics and strategies to find a new job and improve their career.

“In this tight labor market for high-impact talent, high-level job seekers need clear, concise, easily-accessible information they can use to achieve their goals,” says Bill Yoh, President and CEO of Yoh. “We see YohTube as a way to satisfy this demand, serving as a regularly updated portal to the recruitment industry.”

The channel’s videos contain one-on-one interviews with the recruitment experts at Yoh and feature topics such as the current hiring outlook for the healthcare, scientific and technology markets, organizing a resume, preparing for the interview process, and more. Each interview is targeted specifically at job seekers and hiring managers in the field and delivers real-life examples and advice from the front lines.” Click here to read the rest of this article.

“In today’s online era, the concept of a classroom extends beyond a walled room with desks and chairs and into the realm of cyber space. Computer screens are replacing the blackboard and keypads are replacing chalk.

To provide learners with the best experience, many educators are opting for a blended approach: a traditional classroom with face-to-face interaction supplemented by online resources. One University of Missouri researcher has found that while this approach is currently not necessarily more effective, there is hope for developing an effective hybrid approach to learning.

“I couldn’t find any research on the subject of blended learning when I was trying to decide for my own class whether blended learning was effective,” said Shawna Strickland, director of the Respiratory Therapy Program at the MU School of Health Professions. “In theory, it sounds great, but there was really no hard evidence that it works. In addition, it is important to ask the question: ‘do the students even like it?’”

In her latest study, Strickland compared the course delivery methods in two respiratory therapy courses taught by the same teacher. One group of students completed the course in a traditional environment, while the other group completed the course in a blended environment. The method of course delivery, the final examination grade and the course grade were recorded for each student. Strickland studied the students’ satisfaction with the course through the information provided by each student on a standardized student evaluation of the course.” Click here to read the rest of this article.

This post comes from Market Watch.

“Well-Paying, Middle-Skill Level Positions Continue to Thrive.

State Must Invest in More Job Training to Meet Demand Healthcare, Manufacturing, Transportation Sectors Lead Growth; Report Calls for Guaranteed Two-Year Training Post-High School.

Countering assumptions that a college education will be the only ticket to a stable economic future in Illinois, nearly one million openings in “middle-skill” job market — those that require more than a high school diploma, but less than a four-year degree — are projected for the state by 2014, according to a new study released today by experts from The Workforce Alliance (TWA) and the Skills2Compete-Illinois campaign, an affiliate of the national Skills2Compete campaign.

 The influx of middle-skill job openings (including new jobs and replacement) would account for almost half of all openings between 2004 and 2014. Low- and high-skill jobs will account for 23 and 30 percent of total openings respectively. The report, which for the first time tracks jobs at the middle-skill level, dispels claims that Illinois is headed toward an “hourglass” labor market with a small number of highly-skilled jobs, and a much larger number of low-skill jobs.

In fact, middle-skill jobs will continue to represent the largest share of the state’s labor market, totaling nearly half of all employment by 2014 - the same percentage they accounted for in 2006.” Click here to read the rest of this article.

This post comes from Examiner.com.

As Wall Street comes undone, it threatens to take some long-serving workers with it. In the wake of the chaos, star financial executives at floundering firms like Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch are facing tough choices as recruiters beckon them to other employers.

A Wall Street Journal article profiles the laments of Lehman employees the world over, from New York to Scottsbluff, Neb., to London. “What’s going to happen to the little people who have given this place so much dedication? This is all so sad,” says Elizabeth Datis, a 45-year-old administrative assistant. Employees had been holding out hope of a bailout, the story says, until the company filed for bankruptcy Monday.

Trend strategist Gerald Celente sees the situation reverberating beyond Wall Street workers and U.S. borders. “There will be many more ‘too big to fails’ and there won’t be enough money to bail them all out. First it was Bear Stearns; then it was Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, A.I.G.; tomorrow there will be others,” says Celente, director of the Trends Research Institute. “And the failures will extend beyond the financial sector. In the coming weeks, months and years, we’ll see a steady stream of banks, giant retailers, consumer product companies, manufacturers, leveraged buyout firms and home builders going under. The next economic shoe to drop will be in the commercial real estate sector.” Click here to read the rest of this article.

This post comes from Market Watch.

“In a nationwide research study polling men and women whose household income exceeded $100,000 annually, Matters at Hand(TM) found that most respondents feel they need to get their wealth and life-planning affairs in order.

“Our market research survey exposed critical findings indicating that most Americans realize they don’t know enough to ask the right questions to get the right products from the right advisors,” said Camille Jayne, Matters at Hand founder. “Many don’t even realize that their affairs are out of whack.”

Matters at Hand, a company that facilitates wealth-management advisory services and provides educational tools, retained MarketLab Research to conduct the online survey in May 2008 polling 550 Americans between the ages of 25 and 70. Among the findings, Jayne said the respondents believe they don’t know enough to manage their life-planning matters.

 ”Most sleep comfortably because they think, ‘I have a trust. I have life and property/casualty insurance. I file my taxes. I have good advisors. My life-planning must be in good shape.’ Unfortunately, many of these sound sleepers should be tossing and turning,” Jayne said. Click here to read the rest of this article.

This post comes from Business West.

“Kara Kapinos, director of student services in the School of Business at Western New England College, said that the majority of continuing-education students today, who are also referred to often as ‘non-traditional’ or ‘returning’ students, are most concerned with first getting into the academic pipeline, and then with getting out as expediently as possible while still receiving a quality education.

“What we’re finding is that the quicker a student can complete a degree program, the better,” she said. “Today’s non-traditional student is interested in one thing: completion, completion, completion.”

Kapinos said that’s why everything from admissions to class registration to academic advising is moving to online channels. What’s more, area administrators who specialize in continuing education say two major trends are driving this academic sector of late: technology and economy.

The former is aimed largely at making the educational process more accessible and streamlined for continuing-education students, while the latter has an effect on enrollment rates that, in some cases, puts more people in that pipeline, looking, and hoping, for opportunities.” Click here to read the rest of this article.