Reason to give thanks: There is no job shortage for young people

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I know that we have a bad economy, so bad that we have a not-yet-President who is running the country from the Chicago Hilton so that the markets don’t implode while Bush gives pardons for cronies.

But can we just take a minute for a reality check? It’s not really bad for people who are young. It’s a part of the world you don’t hear much about in mainstream media. Think about it. Most media is in NYC, and you don’t make a lot of money as a writer, so most people who are writing in the tri-State area are married to bankers. Yes, this is a huge generalization, but it is a stereotype because it’s true.

Two neighborhoods—Montclair, NJ, and Park Slope, NY—are the bastions of media elite married to banker elite. And it’s a combustible moment there, demonstrated by how we get a lot of reporting about how sad it is for the bankers right now. Who are mostly middle aged.

And we get a lot of reporting about how sad it is for older people in the workforce because those are the people getting laid off. The baby boomers love to report about how much discrimination there is against them. And they have huge pulpits to report that from.

Of course, don’t get me started. The baby boomers had a great run spending tons of money they didn’t have and then bitching that the economic rug is pulled out from under them. But there is no mention that Gen X never even had a good run. How about reporting that?

Read more

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Job hunt tip: The mentor matters more than the company

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I noticed in the New York Times Book Review last week, there was a nice review of Jim Krusoe’s new book, Girl Factory. I was happy to see that, because Jim Krusoe was my first—and most influential—writing teacher.

Jim teaches creative writing at Santa Monica College, (and his faculty page reveals so much about him). He lets anyone join the class, but you have to read your writing out loud. This weeds out almost everyone. Because first you have to write something. And then you have to let everyone rip it to shreds. In front of you.

But wait. It gets worse. Because Jim edits. He slashes most of the writing he reads. And then, if you’re new to the class, you assume he’s wrong, so you read out loud what he has cut and you hear it fall flat as soon as it leaves your lips.

Try it. Read something you wrote out loud to a friend. If it’s bad, you’ll feel right away that boredom has overcome the room. If you have even one flat sentence, you hear it when you read it out loud.

The first time Jim heard me read my writing, he said it was the best he'd heard anyone read in his class in a long time. Then he slashed everything I wrote for the next six years. Sometimes I’d hand in three pages of writing and he’d leave only five sentences.

But this is the thing about those five sentences: they were great. And here’s why I became a dedicated follower: Because I felt like he understood my compulsive need to write my life. And I understood his goal, which was to have interesting sentences. So when he cut full paragraphs that I thought were important because my sentences were boring, I felt grateful that he saved me from banality.

And I channel him every day that I write a post. I think to myself: Is this sentence one that Jim would cut?

I am not so arrogant as to think that Jim would even bother to read any of my sentences today. But I do know that the lessons I learned from Jim are the essence of good blogging. You can't be boring on a blog. People will stop reading.

So if you want to know how to write interesting paragraphs, read the authors who are famous for their ability to stun sentence by sentence. Try Jim Krusoe. Try literary types who sacrifice plot for prose: Ken Sparling, Martin Amis, Ann Beattie. (And, when you are feeling ambitious, Marcel Proust.)

I tell people all the time to pick a mentor rather than picking a job. Jim Krusoe is my first experience with this. He didn’t teach at a college I had ever heard of. And he didn’t even write books that I understood. But he is legendary for churning out well-respected writers, year after year.

Find a mentor with this reputation, and then work hard to make sure you each understand each others’ goals. What you’ll get out of this relationship is a new way to be more of your true self. And this is the best kind of job we can ask for.

We don’t have to find our true calling from a mentor. In fact, what I found from Jim was confidence to think that I should keep writing and see what happens. A good mentor opens doors, in our minds, and you can find that at any job, any company, anyplace your connection with someone is strong.

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Three tips for job hunting, and one good book

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A lot of times we think we know what we’re doing in the job hunt, and then someone surprises us with information we didn’t think of. My latest bunch of surprises came from the book, What Does Somebody Have to Do to Get a Job Around Here? by Cynthia Shapiro, who I have interviewed before, and she is always super smart.

So here’s some advice, based on the surprises I found in the book:

1. There’s one trick to all trick questions.
“All trick questions, even the really scary psychological questions, are crafted so that you will give a negative answer.”

The truth is that positive people are hired more often. And in an interview, people can show that they are that type of person by intentionally presenting their information in the most positive way.

So get all your bitching about your career out of your system before you get to the interview. And each time you are inclined to say something negative, change it or leave it unsaid. Once you get hired, there will be plenty of time to open the spigot of animosity if you need to.

But you work so hard on presenting yourself in your best light in the interview — why not attempt to extend that best you to your whole life instead of those two hours of interviews? People will like you better at work, and your positive outlook will help you to make all your experiences in life better.

2. A thank-you note is too late to express enthusiasm for the job.
“A hiring manager’s mind is made up in the first twenty minutes of an interview, and often nothing can be done to change that.”

During this twenty minutes, most hiring managers are subconsciously screening for enthusiasm. Because people want coworkers who are excited about their job. Ironically, though, most people who are interviewing for a job go into that interview unsure if they want the position, and they tell themselves they’ll make a decision based on the interview.

But if you decide to be enthusiastic about the job at the end of the interview or, worse yet, when you write the thank you note, you are way too late.

To solve this problem, go into the job convinced that you want it. Be enthusiastic about the job and get the job. You may decide later that you don’t want it. That’s fine. But this way you’ll have that decision to make. Note that this means the interview is not the time to ask difficult, probing questions about the company. Save those for after you have a job offer. Ask questions that convey a positive, sunny attitude toward your interviewer and the company. That will get you an offer.

3. No one will tell you that you’ve made a mistake.
“No one will tell you that your resume wasn’t up to par; it will simply land in the trash. No one will tell you that you said something that scared the interviewer during a phone screen; you’ll just never be able to get that person on the phone again.”

Part of the reason is that you never get feedback is it’s too high risk to tell candidates what they do wrong: There is little benefit to the company, since they are not going to hire you anyway, and there is the remote chance that you will bring up a discrimination lawsuit.

The other reason no one will tell you what you did wrong is because it takes extra energy to take time to help someone, and we can’t do that with everyone, so we help the people who look like the strongest performers. It’s like that axiom, “the rich get richer” but in this case, “the best candidates get better.” How to fix this in your own life? Ask for a lot of help from people who are in a position to help you.

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How to get a job that’s way beyond your experience

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The jobs that are the most fun are where our learning curve is high but we can still achieve results. Usually the list of requirements for a job like this is a little beyond your experience. So how do you get one?

First of all, realize that the people who write job descriptions actually have little clue about what they really want in a candidate. That means they are easily influenced if they see a resume that grabs them. The other thing to keep in mind is that candidate requirements are usually insanely optimistic so most people applying will either be way out of the price range for the job, or not quite meeting the qualifications for the job.

In any case, you should always reach for a job way above you, but do it in a way that makes you seem like a reasonable candidate. Here are some tricks:

1. Use the informational interview as a sales pitch.
If you know someone is hiring, and you know you’re not qualified, you might still be able to get an informational interview. In that meeting, first find out all you can about what that particular department or company (depending on size) needs. Then find out what really matters to the person you’re talking to.

If you can sell yourself as someone who has the right type of personality and demeanor for the type of work that needs doing, the hiring manager might believe that you can grow into the job quickly. This leap of faith becomes more realistic when the hiring manager believes that you know a lot about the job and he knows a lot about you (which you selectively reveal in the informational interview).

Tough part: Shifting the meeting to a job interview even though it wasn’t scheduled that way. Be subtle.

2. Sell yourself as a consultant.
People want good ideas. Note, though, that a good idea is one that you can actually implement—one that you can see through from start to finish. People say that their particular industry is not like this, but in fact, every industry is ripe for a good idea sold the right way.

This is typically what consultants do. They go into a meeting selling an idea rather than selling themselves as a fit for a job description. A great example of how any industry needs good ideas is the funeral industry. There are tons of new ideas for how to bury peoples’ remains, and the industry is dependent on the quality of new ideas flowing in.

This is true of all industries, no matter how obscure. So if you come up with a good idea and sell it to the right person in the organization, you might be able to land a job implementing that idea even if you have no experience doing something like that.

Tough part: Learning how to sound like a consultant if you’ve only trained to do an interview.

3. Get people to use you as a reference.
Headhunters don’t fill entry-level jobs, they fill mid-tier and top-tier positions. The headhunting business is all about sourcing, so the more you know about how headhunters source online, the more likely you are to get tapped for a job that is a little beyond your qualifications.

Eric Muller, from Prizm Consulting, says he often searches for resumes with respected corporate brands on them and then he looks for the people listed as references—and he goes after those people. So try getting your friends at your level to list you as a reference and you get a chance to be considered for a higher level position.

Tough part: Getting the right friends.

4. Blog to become an expert.
It’s amazing to me how many bloggers in the Brazen Careerist network are people with 1-3 years of work experience who sound like someone with a lot more work experience. The reason for this is that blogging forces you to become an expert in your field a lot faster than a day-to-day office job forces expertise.

Blogging focuses on ideas and the person who is writing those ideas. You can position yourself as top in your field offline by becoming top in your field online. Your online position gives you access to people who would not consider hiring you based on your resume and experience, but would consider hiring you based on your blog and your ideas.

Tough part: Having good ideas. Really.

5. Have a realistic idea of your skill set.
It’s very hard to sell something you don’t believe in. So you are going to have a hard time getting a job that’s a little bit beyond you if you don’t really believe that you’re good at what you are saying you’re good at.

Also, though, it’s very hard to sell something you have blind faith in. Think about the evangelists that knock on your front door. Their arguments are not persuasive because they “just believe” they are right. If you “just believe” you can do it, you won’t be able to cut a deal.

So in order to land a job that’s beyond your experience, you need to tread that fine line between having a strong belief in your strengths and not going off the deep end to the point where you sound delusional.

Tough part: Seeing your true self and believing in the person you see. This is actually the tough part of all of life. Which explains why I like writing about career advice so much.

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A recession probably won't affect your job market

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There is a lot of hoop-la over the recession. Or coming recession. Or statistical but maybe-not-really recession. But the truth is that the job market is just fine, especially for the post-Baby-Boomer set.

The health of today’s job market is not so much a function of economic indicators as it is a function of demographic trends. There is a huge shortage of employees. Baby Boomers are retiring and Generation X and Y are less able to replace the Baby Boomers than had been anticipated; employers receive fewer hours of work per person from post-Boomers because of their focus on family (Generation X) and entrepreneurship (Generation Y). Due to these factors, the employee shortage is increasing, and only a knock-down-drag-out recession will change this sunshine outlook for employees.

Deloitte says that employees will be in high demand for the next decade, and that Deloitte’s growth strategy requires that they continue to recruit just as heavily now as they were before talk of a recession. And Forbes reporter Tara Weiss finds that other companies are reacting similarly.

Even in areas where the economic downturns are hitting the hardest — like finance, real estate and manufacturing — younger employees are in high demand.

I recently spoke with Ryan Sutton, vice president at the recruiting firm Robert Half, which specializes in the finance sector. Sutton said, “Demand will continue to be strong. It is so pent up over the years that it’s hard to say whether an economic downturn would really affect a company’s ability to catch up.” Polls conducted by Robert Half show that most companies will continue to ramp up hiring in finance.

In terms of real estate, Deloitte reports that almost 60% of people working in this market will be retirement age by 2010. And groups like Boston’s Urban Land Young Leaders see huge potential for careers in this industry, especially in terms of green building. The bottom line in real estate is that the economic problems are about home prices, not jobless claims: Just because your mortgage is exploding doesn’t mean your career is.

Another example is manufacturing, a sector that is officially in a recession, but that doesn’t mean there are no jobs. In fact, the industry is very focused on the shortage of workers and has ramped up recruiting efforts to attract young people via YouTube, MySpace and Facebook. The $70 million Dream It Do It campaign shows an industry in high-gear hiring mode, unfazed by the fears of recession.

So listen to talk of recession, but don’t let it get you down. There are a few precautions you can take in case you get laid off or downsized. But really, don’t decrease your expectations for your job just because housing prices are tanking and hedge fund managers are suffering. Many people are not convinced that the job market will be hugely affected by this activity.

Often times we get for ourselves what we expect from ourselves. So during talk of recession keep your chin up, and your expectations for your career up as well. This might just be a great time for your career.

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How to job hunt from your current job

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A lot of people worry that they can’t get another job because they don’t have time to find one. This is why hunting for a job from your cube is totally standard. It used to be that people stayed in their jobs 40 years, and a job hunt was an earth-shattering event, and there was no Internet. In that environment, telling people to keep the job hunt out of the office was fine.

Today, people switch jobs every two years between the age of 18 and 32. Which means that most job hunts do not have a start and finish—they are continuous. And this is smart, because so much of job hunting is being aware of the market (i.e. surfing at work) and networking (long lunch, anyone?).

In today’s environment, job hunting from the job you have is totally mainstream. Here are tips on how to do it right:

1. Don’t feel guilty.
Employers expect that you will look for a job while you have a job. Your boss probably did it. And your boss’s boss. And if they didn’t, why not? Why would you quit a job before you have a job when every statistic in the world shows that people who are employed are more likely to get hired by someone else?

It would be absolutely impossible to do all your job hunting from home, because business hours are the hours that both you and your possible new manager are working. Get your work done well at your current job no matter what. You owe that to your employer. Beyond that, your time is yours and job hunt if you want.

2. Schedule interviews for the beginning or the end of the day.
The goal is to interrupt your current job as little as possible while you’re looking for a new job. In terms of schedule, this means an interview before you’d typically need to be at work or an interview at the end of the day. In the latter case, you might even be able to get all your essential work for the day done before you leave. Less disruption means fewer inquiries about your intentions.

3. Don’t dress up for interviews if you can help it.
It’s awkward to tell your current boss that you are looking to leave. It makes working with him hard because he knows he’s not your first choice. So you don’t need to be sneaky beyond what is ethically comfortable, but you don’t need to beg the question either. This means that if you have an interview, you can leave early from work simply by saying, “I have personal plans,” which would be true. But if you have personal plans and you look like you’re dressed up, people will ask. Who dresses up for anything at 4pm except an interview?

4. Don’t do phone interviews from your cube.
Your voice will sound insane—like you’re running from the FBI or hiding an illicit phone call from a parent. Which you sort of are, since everyone in the office can hear you, and as soon as there is a hushed voice in a cube, the rest of the office hushes to try to hear. On top of this, there is no way that you will give your best interview when you are trying, in the back of your mind, to convince yourself that none of this is happening.

A potential employer will respect you for saying that you cannot do the interview immediately but they can schedule a time—at lunch perhaps?—when you can leave the office to do the interview. You will sound like a good time manager.

The most important thing to remember is that what you’re doing is in the range of normal and fair. If you sound unsure of yourself during your job hunt, you won’t land a job. So the first thing to get sure about is the fact that you should be hunting. From your cube.

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How to get a job you’re not qualified for

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Getting hired even when you’re not qualified is one of the most important skills to have if you want to keep your work life interesting. Because if you are always taking jobs you’re qualified for, then your learning curve is really flat, and your work life is really boring.

So here are three ways to get hired when you’re not qualified for the job.

1. Create a project from a different arena that interests you.
One reason my resume is so varied is that I have always done two things at once so that I can switch up as soon as my learning curve flattens. For example, when I was playing professional beach volleyball, I was also writing stories every day. So I was ready to go to grad school as soon as I got tired of volleyball.

In grad school, I didn’t have to write–the writing was done. This was when the Internet was emerging as a mainstream tool, and I realized that my writing was perfect for the Internet. So I took all my printed out pages to the computer science lab and asked one of the professors to teach me HTML.

I wrote my master’s thesis in HTML. I might have been the first English graduate student in the whole country to do that. It got me a job managing the web site for a Fortune 100 company, even though I had almost no marketing or technical experience.

2. Take responsibility for your own education.
In my new job, I spent the next six months reading whatever I could about the Internet. I read about advertising and copywriting, I read about programming, I read about everything. I had no idea where I would fit in the Internet industry, but I knew I had to learn about it to succeed in my new job as Internet maven.

I also talked with a wide range of people in my job, so I could learn from them. My next job was being the interface between the IT department and the marketing department. They were not communicating well. How did I know how to communicate with IT people? I have no idea, except that I had read so indiscriminately that I actually sounded knowledgeable about IT issues, especially for someone who went to graduate school for English literature.

3. Just apply.
I have not always had jobs I loved. I was at an advertising agency, and I was really, really not suited for the work. So I was unhappy and desperate to get out, and I started sending my resume out in sort-of indiscriminate ways.

This is a bad job-hunt tactic, and I don’t recommend it, but one of the side benefits was that I sent my resume to jobs where I did not meet the requirements. For example, the job I got had a description that included “MBA required.”

How did that happen? Most of the time the manager or HR person writing the job descriptions has little idea what they really want or need. So write a good cover letter about why you’re a good fit, and ignore the part about qualifications you don’t have. Talk about your track record for delivering what they want.

If you can do that, then you can apply. And doing that makes you are a better candidate, better than they know they need.

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How to choose among many terrible job offers

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People ask me this question a lot: If it’s such a good job market for young people then why can’t I find a good job?

The answer is that there are tons of really bad jobs being offered. For all the talk of flexibility in the workplace, very few companies are actually offering engaging jobs with flexible hours. You usually have to pick one or the other.

But many people are looking for special setups with a job – for example you need a lot of flexibility so you can write a novel, or you have no idea what you want to be doing and you want time to think but you don’t want to starve, or you only want to work for six months before you travel in east Asia.

Each of these circumstances screams: Retail. Or some version of a bad job that is similar to retail.

When I graduated from college the job market was terrible, so I have a lot of experience in retail jobs (and getting fired from them). So I thought I’d give you a primer on how to select a job from a smorgasbord of terrible jobs offers.

Get the word on the street
There’s tons of gossip about what it’s like at brand-name entry-level jobs. If you want to train during the day for the Olympics, work at Home Depot. It’s their specialty. If you have big medical issues work at Starbucks. Even people working part-time are sometimes eligible for their great benefits.

Alex Frankel wrote Punching In: The Unauthorized Adventures of a Front-Line Employee. He spent two years working in the service sector and he gives the low-down on each of the big name brand stores that he worked at. And there’s a preview in Fast Company this month, which I will summarize.

Gap: Bad. Endless shirt-folding.

Apple: Good. Great employee education process.

The Container Store: Picky. You’d better love their product if you’re applying for a job.

Conduct your own interview
Look, it’s not like the service sector is overflowing with applications. Even though you are looking at dead-end jobs, you are still in high demand. This is still an employee-driven job market. So leverage your demographic luck and turn the tables on the interviewer. Conduct your own behavioral interview to determine if the manager at the terrible job will be good. (Note: If don’t know what a behavioral interview is, click here. If you want to know how to ace one yourself, click here.)

Kronos is a firm that teaches retail businesses how to hire good managers. Steve Hunt is from the talent management division of Kronos, and he says that the best way to tell if your manager will be good is to understand how the manager got hired. The company should have a clear set of guidelines for evaluating management candidates and the company should hire managers. Hunt recommends that you ask how the company measures and evaluates a manager’s people skills. How your manager answer this question can tell you a lot about how serious they are about making sure their managers aren’t jerks.

If all the jobs are lame, pick a mentor who is good.
I used to work for Esther Williams – the bathing suit beauty queen who was still sending a headshot from 1950 even in 1995. Well, actually it was I who was sending the headshot, since signing her autograph was my job. It was a great job because I was playing beach volleyball all day, trying to get on the professional tour, and I could deal with Esther’s fan mail at night.

It sounds fun, maybe, to people who like reading sappy letters from lecherous men, but signing the autographs was no walk in the park: She was always telling me to make her E loopier. But there was a redeeming quality about the job, and that was that Esther is a marketing genius. And I learned a lot from her about how to build a brand. This is when I realized that it’s not the job that matters but what knowledge the person you work for can share with you.

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What if the interviewer never calls you back?

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Every once in a while I’ll publish job-hunt questions people ask me a lot. And it’s that time again. But today I’m publishing a question that stumped me:

“Why don’t interviewers get back to me after the interview? I go to the interview, I feel like we click, and the hiring manager or human resource representative never says another thing to me again. Ever.”

I sent this question to my well-placed, hot-shot human resource friend who works at a company that a slew of you want to work for but cannot be named in this blog, and this is what he told me about the issue:

The primary reason candidates don’t hear back after the interview is that most recruiters and/or interviewers don’t shut the discussion down when they know it’s a non-fit. This is rooted in human nature and avoiding conflict.

For example, two weeks ago I interviewed a terrible candidate. I spoke with him for a half-hour, and then told him, “You know what? I have to be honest with you that I’m going to pursue other candidates who appear more highly suited for this role. I want to be transparent about that because I know you may have other job opportunities you are considering, and I want to be up front that compared to other candidates I’m considering, they appear to be more strongly suited for the role.”

Most people won’t have that conversation in the moment, and instead say, “Thanks for your time, I have some more people to interview, and then I’ll get back to you with the decision on whether we’ll be moving forward.” This closing remark creates more work and clutter, and then the “getting back to them” never happens.

By not being transparent, the interviewer feigns that there will be more evaluation, and I believe interviewers think that it makes the eventual turn-down more palatable. But in all honesty, it just creates inefficiency and friction in the system.

Another way to look at this problem though, is that it’s simply poor execution, because the opportunity cost of letting people dangle doesn’t have to be absorbed by the interviewer. Example: If you interview with me, what are the consequences for me treating you poorly? Not any really. You as the candidate don’t want to burn a bridge lest [my company] should happen to call you in the future, so it’s not like you are going to take me to task.

In the mix of hundreds of candidates in process, there’s no clear measurement of what is really going on, unless you write a letter to my boss or blog about it (which few people take the time to do).

So what can you conclude from this? The people who get back to you and tell you flat out no, or, better yet, are transparent enough to tell you no right there in the interview, are the people who are the best to work for. And that’s not helpful, is it? I mean, they are rejecting you. So what are you going to do with that piece of knowledge?

Here’s an idea for candidates in the post-interview process. How about sending a thank you note, placing a followup call or two to show interest, and then if you don’t hear anything, move on?

And instead of spending time whining about how rude the interview process is, focus on turning the next interview into a job offer. If you get good at interviews, you don’t have to worry about people who don’t let you know about rejection because you won’t get rejected.

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Five ways the job hunt is about to change

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One of the biggest workplace changes that will take place in the next few years is the way people are hired. So how do you get ready for the changes? Be a good candidate for one thing. But also, be conscious of how employers will start shifting to meet the good candidates, because you want to be right there with them.

Here are four ways hiring practices will change:

1. Companies will make recruiting young employees the top priority.
There is a massive shortage of workers beyond what anyone predicted. Companies were ready for baby boomers to retire. Companies knew they would rely on Generation X and Generation Y to replace those boomers.

What companies could have never predicted is that there are other factors exacerbating this shortage. Gen X is downshifting to spend more time with their kids. So they are working fewer hours. And Gen Y is flocking to entrepreneurship and self-employment. Even those interviewing at companies are finding that travel and moving in with parents is more appealing than the jobs being offered.

This means that the workers replacing baby boomers come from a much smaller pool than anticipated. And one of the most popular topics on the management consulting circuit is recruiting and retaining Gen Y workers. Companies have little idea how to do it, but they know if they don’t figure it out, they will not be able to maintain their growth. (Note: Some companies do get it – Business Week lists some big ones.)

2. Candidates will drive the hiring process rather than employers.
The conundrum of the new workforce is that they are always looking for a job, but furtively. Like, at a party for their girlfriend’s start-up, or while commenting on their father’s best friend’s blog.

There is a growing trend among young people who have honed their skills, and are good at marketing themselves, and have a clear sense of what makes a good job: They don’t need more job offers.

Street Attack is a company that attracts this type of candidate. The company is cool – it markets cool brands in innovative ways to young hipsters. And the opportunities for employees encourage personal growth. So someone like Jennifer Coe, a Street Attack account manager, is part of a large class of employees who is always looking for a job, but always performing very well in her current job and does not need someone to bring opportunities to her. She knows how to make them come her way. This is the kind of candidate everyone wants but cannot recruit.

3. Companies will stop writing stupid ads.
The custom of writing insanely uninformative job descriptions to attract applicants is not working because decent applicants don’t apply.

Companies routinely write vague offers like “salary dependent on experience” when the salary actually does not go above entry level. Or the company asks for impossible skill sets like “five years of design experience and good knowledge of accounting practices.” Companies also say things like “great opportunity” when it is actually a dead end, and “fun office environment” when the office is actually full of people biding time until they can get the hell out and retire to North Carolina.

JobFox is an employment matching site that presents a model for creating better job descriptions. An extensive set of questions – based on industry-specific research – helps companies write the kind of job descriptions that actually inform people about what is being offered. JobFox knows the pitfalls of the job specifications, and the transparency and honesty of the JobFox-generated description could become an industry standard.

4. The quality match will take center stage.
Companies are forced to invest so much in hiring candidates they can’t afford to make mistakes. And candidates have so many choices that they can afford to demand a great match. This means the matching process between company and employee is going to become personalized.

One form this might take is hiring people via their blogs. Blogging lets candidates show their ideas and their personality, and their work habits, which are all the things that matter to an employer. A blog is like a living, breathing resume and network rolled into one, which makes it a very practical job hunting tool for candidates and employers.

Young people are loyal to brands, so another form of personalized job matching could come with companies interacting with people in ways that allow the candidate to know the company. This is a way that a company like Street Attack can attract candidates. But larger companies do this as well, for example Pepsi has edgy videos on MySpace.

And companies like JobFox will continue to develop tools that help employers and employees hone their presentation skills to the point that they can tell each other exactly what matters so that they can create a genuine match.

5. The workplace will get great.
That’s right. The current gulf between what employees want and what employers are offering will have to close, out of financial necessity for both parties. And we’ll see a super-motivated workforce raising productivity levels to record highs while moving from job to job, to gather skills, contacts, and growth opportunities.

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