The 15 Most Wanted Workers in Future.

This winter there seems to have been an explosion of positive employment news that’s left skeptics wondering, “Is this news too good to be true?” and job seekers crying foul.

While we are not out of the woods yet, President Barack Obama was cautiously optimistic in a recent radio address. “Even as we have come a long way, we still have a ways to go,” Obama said. “No matter what the economic statistics say, I won’t be satisfied until folks who need work can find good jobs. After a recession that stole 8 million jobs, this is going take some time.”

“By 2018, with no change in current labor force participation rates or immigration rates and an expected return to healthy economic growth, we will have more jobs than people to fill them,” wrote Barry Bluestone, dean of the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University, and Mark Melnik, deputy director for research at the Boston Redevelopment Authority, in their report “After the Recovery: Help Needed.”

The report, which was sponsored by MetLife Foundation and Civic Ventures, a think tank on baby boomers, work and social purpose, predicts that within the next eight years there could be at least 5 million job vacancies in the United States, nearly half of them (2.4 million) in social sector jobs in education, health care, government and nonprofit organizations.

The report identified 15 jobs expected to provide the largest number of potential new career opportunities in the coming decade.

1. Business operations specialists
Total job openings due to growth and replacement needs: 1.6 million*
Current U.S. salary: $44,522**

2. Child-care workers
Total job openings due to growth and replacement needs: 532,1000
Current U.S. salary: $24,354

3. Clergy
Total job openings due to growth and replacement needs: 217,700
Current U.S. salary: $51,746

4. General and operations managers
Total job openings due to growth and replacement needs: 502,200
Current U.S. salary: $94,706

5. Home health aides
Total job openings due to growth and replacement needs: 552,700
Current U.S. salary: $27,345

6. Licensed practical and vocational nurses
Total job openings due to growth and replacement needs: 391,300
Current U.S. salary: $44,738 for LPNs; $39,272 for vocational nurses

7. Nursing aides, orderlies and attendants
Total job openings due to growth and replacement needs: 4,223,000
Current U.S. salary: $30,494 for nursing aides; $33,822 for orderlies; $24,695 for attendants

8. Medical assistants
Total job openings due to growth and replacement needs: 217,800
Current U.S. salary: $35,986

9. Medical and health service managers
Total job openings due to growth and replacement needs: 99,400
Current U.S. salary: $39,956

10. Personal and home care aides
Total job openings due to growth and replacement needs: 477,800
Current U.S. salary: $27,345

11. Receptionists and information clerks
Total job openings due to growth and replacement needs: 480,200
Current U.S. salary: $30,887

12. Registered nurses
Total job openings due to growth and replacement needs: 1.04 million
Current U.S. salary: $61,423

13. Social and human service assistants
Total job openings due to growth and replacement needs: 153,900
Current U.S. salary: $34,324

14. Teachers
Total job openings due to growth and replacement needs: 2.68 million
Current U.S. salary: $54,273 for all; $35,810 for elementary; $47,603 for high school; $68,456 for post-secondary

15. Teacher assistants
Total job openings due to growth and replacement needs: 412,700
Current U.S. salary: $24,429

Who’s Hiring This Week

It’s Wednesday, and that means another list of companies hiring right now! The gist of this is pretty simple: We highlight some companies who are looking for workers right this very moment. You can click on their name to see what positions they have open.

Get clicking!

Brown Mackie College
Industry: Education
Sample job titles: Academic department – director, of business, adjunct sociology instructor

Fidelis Care
Industry: Management
Sample job titles: Benefits manager, marketing manager

New Breed
Industry: Manufacturing
Sample job titles: Warehouse supervisors, operations manager

TransTechs
Industry: Transportation
Sample job titles: Diesel technician, body shop technician

State Chemical
Industry: Manufacturing and business development
Sample job titles: Entry-level account manager, entry-level strategic account manager

Cogent Healthcare
Industry: Health care
Sample job titles: Nurse practitioner, program medical director

Butler America
Industry: Engineering
Sample job titles: Sr. systems engineer (federal systems security standards), quality engineer

Hancock Bank
Industry: Finance
Sample job titles: Senior service desk analyst, Insurance Specialist

Bayer
Industry: Biotechnology
Sample job titles: PV case associate/PV case specialist, Bioanalytical assays and pharmacokinetics

Sony Electronics Inc
Industry: Retail
Sample job titles: Sales specialist (part-time retail sales), manager of product training

The Key to a Successful Job Search: Making Personal Connections

People are your greatest resource when looking for a job. Now, more than ever, it is not what you know but whom you know!

Career experts estimate that approximately 75 percent of all job openings are never advertised. Positions that become available because of internal promotions, retirements, and employees leaving the organization for career advancement, often are not posted. Rather, these positions are filled through personal connections established long before the opening ever existed. Somebody knew somebody!

So, what is the secret? How do you tap into this hidden job market?

The most successful job searches rely on connecting with people on a personal level. Traditional job-search methods, such as applying through newspaper advertisements and human resources departments, primarily are conducted electronically. This creates the false impression that technology has made the job search more efficient when, in fact, technology has decreased your ability to establish relationships and be invited to interviews. To increase your chances of landing a job offer, move your job search from your computer to your connections!

The key to a successful job search is making personal connections. Here are several suggestions for adding a personal touch to your job search strategy.

• Do Not Rely on the Internet

The popularity of online job searches makes the Internet, by far, the most competitive method of job search. A better way to distinguish yourself is to find out the name of the hiring manager and contact him or her directly by telephone. Begin the conversation by introducing yourself and assuring the manager that you have followed the organization’s formal online application process. During this conversation, quickly outline your background highlighting the special talents and unique qualifications that make you the best candidate for the job.

As the conversation ends, remind the manager of your sincere interest in the position and your desire to be selected for an interview. If the position is already filled, ask if the organization has additional openings or if the manager knows of other organizations that are hiring. Once a personal connection is established, and you have moved yourself from being a piece of paper to becoming a person, it is amazing how individuals will extend themselves on your behalf.

• Courtesy Counts

Before contacting any manager or practitioner in your career field, be fully prepared to present yourself in a professional manner and to demonstrate the utmost courtesy and respect for their time.

Remember, you are the one who needs help, so you are the one who should do the work! It is not the responsibility of the manager to “keep you in mind.” You must follow up and continue to reconfirm your interest with professional contacts. Likewise, if anyone provides a referral or recommendation on your behalf, provide that person with your résumé, make him or her aware when they may be contacted for a reference check, and always express your appreciation for their support – with a thank-you note by mail (not e-mail)!

Once you acquire a position, the same courtesies apply; let your references know where you are employed and, again, express your appreciation for the part they played in helping you find your new position.

• Maximize Face Time, Not Facebook

Connect, connect, and connect! Attend professional development functions, association lunches, and networking events. Get to know people in these organizations. This means attending events on a regular basis, engaging individuals in genuine conversations, and being willing to contribute your talents to committee work or task forces. Eventually, you can mention that you are searching for your next professional opportunity, but the personal connections should be made first, before expecting people to be willing to help you.

• Go to Job Fairs

These events allow you to meet the greatest number of employers in the shortest amount of time. Again, when attending these events, be prepared to introduce yourself and tell prospective employers about your unique qualifications. The dialogue does not end there. The smart job searcher follows up on each connection by getting a business card and sending a letter reminding the employer of the meeting and the conversation you had. The savvy job seeker always asks for the interview and always thanks the employer for their time.

• Say “Thank You!”

Make it a priority to acknowledge the time and efforts of anyone who assists you with your career advancement. Depending on the profession, your appreciation can be expressed with a formal business letter or a hand-written thank-you note. Whatever version you prefer, demonstrate your good manners by expressing your appreciation in writing. The courtesy and thoughtfulness communicated by sending a thank you is the easiest way to stand above every other candidate or practicing professional.

• Return the Favor

Appropriate business etiquette requires that professional favors are reciprocated. Whenever possible, make a concerted effort to assist your colleagues. In addition, once you are in a professional position, pay it forward! When young professionals approach you for assistance and advice, be willing and available to help.

Making professional connections is the critical element that sets candidates apart, especially in today’s competitive market. The relationships you build when conducting a job search are the beginning of a professional network that will serve you well throughout your career.

By Karen Lamb

They Are Hiring This Week. Hurry Up For Catch This Opportunity.

For the past several months we’ve been highlighting available positions in different regions of the country every Tuesday. Although we mostly write about job and workplace advice, we realize many of you are also looking for jobs for a variety of reasons.

We also read all of the feedback you give us. You liked seeing a list of companies hiring but some people didn’t like waiting a few weeks until it was their location’s turn again. We adapt and are willing to try new things all the time. So we’re trying something a little different today. These are 10 companies hiring right now, and they have a significant amount of available positions–many across the country. With this method we hope to make finding a job easier for everyone, so that someone on the West coast doesn’t have to wait until next week because we’re only featuring Southern jobs this week.

Here are 10 companies that are looking to hire right now. Click on the company names to see a full list of their available positions across the country.

Brown Mackie College
Industry: Education
Sample job titles: IT instructor, student accounting advisor

The Nielsen Company
Industry: Data and research
Sample job titles: Business analyst, senior software developer

General Mills
Industry: Manufacturing
Sample job titles: Manager of social media, reliability engineer

Pitney Bowes
Industry: Business communications
Sample job titles: Competitive sales specialist, customer service associate

JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Industry: Finance
Sample job titles: Financial advisor associate, information risk analyst

URS Corporation
Industry: Construction and engineering
Sample job titles: Maintenance test pilot, contracts administrator

Furniture Row Companies
Industry: Furniture retail
Sample job titles: Sales manager trainee, warehouse team member

Averitt Express
Industry: Transportation
Sample job titles: CDL-A dedicated truck driver, part-time dock associates

Covance
Industry: Biotechnology/ pharmacy
Sample job titles: Principal investigator, paramedic, associate director of clinical data management

Saks Fifth Avenue
Industry: Retail
Sample job titles: Sales consultant, manager of database marketing, marketing director

We’ll be tweaking these companies hiring lists over time, so your feedback is always welcome.

By Anthony Balderrama

25 Companies Hiring Right Now:

If you’ve ever found yourself in a job search, you know the frustration that often accompanies it. You’ve prepared your resume, pressed your suit, practiced your interview answers and are ready to go. All you need is that job offer.

The entire job search process can feel like a test of patience. You can only write and rewrite your résumé so many times before you want to pull out your hair. Although revising your cover letter and attending networking events are excellent ways to be a great job candidate, you can get burned out quickly. And if your job search lasts for several months, the burnout can linger.

In order to ease some of the anxiety of a job hunt, we’ve decided to bring the jobs to you. Across all industries throughout the country, these companies are ready to hire qualified workers in August. In other words, they want hard workers like you. You’ve spent a lot of your energy getting ready for the right job, so we have put together a list of 25 companies hiring right now:

Adventist Health System

Industry: Health care
Number of openings: 1,200
Sample job titles: Registered nurse, nursing, physical therapist, occupational therapist, pharmacist, speech language pathologist, physician, physician assistant, management, supply chain, nutrition services, human resources, information technology, accounting, marketing
Location: Florida, Texas, Illinois, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kansas, Colorado, Kentucky, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Missouri

AT&T

Industry: Telecommunications
Number of openings: 2,000
Sample job titles: Retail sales consultants, retail store managers, call center customer service representatives, premises technicians
Location: Nationwide

Auto-Wares

Industry: Automotive parts/retail
Number of openings: 57
Sample job titles: Counter sales, parts delivery
Location: Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio

CB Richard Ellis, Inc.

Industry: Corporate real estate
Number of openings: 187
Sample job titles: Service engineer, senior IT BSA, financial analyst
Location: New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, and more.

Comerica Bank

Industry: Banking/financial services
Number of openings: 50
Sample job titles: Customer service representatives, assistant banking center managers, banking center managers and commercial banking officers
Location: Texas, Arizona, California, Florida and Michigan

Enterprise Rent-A-Car

Industry: Travel/tourism
Number of openings: 500
Sample job titles: Sales/management trainee
Location: Nationwide

Freeport McMoRan

Industry: Mining
Number of openings: 450
Sample job titles: Architect, mechanical engineer, accountant, benefits analyst, truck driver, mechanic
Location: Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Connecticut

Gentex Corporation

Industry: Automotive electronics
Number of openings: 140
Sample job titles: Production team members, electrical design engineers, software development engineers, electrical project engineers, program managers, technical team leaders, manufacturing process technicians, software test engineers, product design engineers
Location: Zeeland, Mich.

Go Wireless

Industry: Retail
Number of openings: 75
Sample job titles: Store manager, sales associate
Location: New York, New Jersey, Florida

Guitar Center

Industry: Retail
Number of openings: 55
Sample job titles: CRM business architect, manager of user experience, senior marketing campaign analyst
Location: Westlake Village, Calif.

Harland Clarke

Industry: Marketing services and technology solutions
Number of openings: 50
Sample job titles: Senior programmer analyst, systems admin engineer, customer care specialists
Location: San Antonio, Glen Burnie, Md.

HealthPort

Industry: Electronic medical records
Number of openings: 60
Sample job titles: Medical record techs, IT
Location: Atlanta

Holland America

Industry: Leisure/entertainment
Number of openings: 65
Sample job titles: Reservation sales, oracle developer, maintenance engineer, marketing specialist
Location: Seattle

Intercontinental Capital Group

Industry: Mortgage
Number of openings: 100
Sample job titles: Loan consultants, team leaders
Location: New York, Phoenix, King of Prussia, Penn., Columbus, Boca Raton

LMS Intellibound

Industry: Industrial
Number of openings: 56
Sample job titles: Site manager, warehouse supervisor, unloader, administrative
Location: North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, South Carolina, New York, Maryland, Mississippi, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana

Marcus and Millichap

Industry: Commercial real estate
Number of openings: 90
Sample job titles: Commercial real estate agent, commercial real estate investment broker, executive assistant, brokerage administrator
Location: California, Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Florida, and more

MetLife Home Loans

Industry: Mortgage Banking
Number of openings: 250
Sample job titles: Mortgage loan specialist, closer, funder, underwriter, underwriting manager, operations manager
Location: Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, Hauppauge, N.Y.

Millennium Pharmacy Systems, Inc.

Industry: Health care (pharmacy services, long-term care)
Number of openings: 60
Sample job titles: Staff pharmacists, dispensing pharmacist, pharmacy techs, customer service representatives, customer service supervisors, customer advocate, staff accountant
Location: Rhode Island, North Carolina, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida, Maryland, Washington, D.C. and Illinois

National Agents Alliance

Industry: Insurance
Number of openings: 321
Sample job titles: Insurance sales representative (entry level and experienced), administrative assistant, recruiter
Location: Nationwide

Plymouth Auctioneering

Industry: Arts and entertainment/sales
Number of openings: 60
Sample job titles: Traveling art auction sales professional
Location: International travel (100 percent travel)

Saber Healthcare

Industry: Health care
Number of openings: 55
Sample job titles: Director of nursing, occupational therapist, physical therapist, administrators
Location: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida and Missouri

Shared Technologies, Inc

Industry: Telecommunications
Number of openings: 50
Sample job titles: Sales executive, sr. sales executive, technician
Location: California, Pennsylvania, Florida, Texas, New York, New Jersey, Nevada Arizona, Maryland

Shelter Development, LLC

Industry: Housing/health care
Number of openings: 50
Sample job titles: Property manager, dining services director, clinical, assistant controller, assistant property manager, service technician, senior living program director, staff accountant
Location: Baltimore

Sutter Health

Industry: Health care
Number of openings: 1,700
Sample job titles: RN, nurse managers, directors, physical therapist, occupational therapist, HIM, pharmacist, IT
Location: Northern California region, including Sacramento, Central Valley, Bay Area, Peninsula

Tetra Tech

Industry: Government contractor – engineering
Number of openings: 85
Sample job titles: UXO technicians, field technician, lead UNIX/Linux technician
Location: Nationwide

Losing A Job, Losing An Identity

We get a lot of questions from readers here at our Blog, Business and Career Tips (and if you want to ask us one, feel free to leave it in the comments here) and on Twitter. Looking at what everyone is saying, we realize that people are struggling to not only find a job but also stay sane in these tough times. And the times are tough. The frustration is palpable.

I was flipping through the pages of Pink Slipped: A post-layoff survival guide and figured one chapter in particular would be helpful to you. Edie Milligan Driskill, CFP, CLU, author of Pink Slipped, devoted an entire section to post-layoff identity.

The answers to the following two questions will tell us a lot:

1. Who were you the day before you lost your job?

2. Who are you today?

If the answers to those two questions are not exactly the same, then you’ve got some work to do.

Driskill goes on to explain that the title on your business card (real or imaginary) doesn’t mean that’s actually who you are. It can. As she says in the book, an accountant is an accountant as long as he or she has a CPA license. Whether or not the accountant is on someone’s payroll is irrelevant. Or another example she gives is that a physical therapist who gets a job as a waitress in order to make ends meet might not consider herself a waitress. She’s a physical therapist working as a waitress.

That might sound a bit hokey to some of you, but think about it this way:

One strategy that employers use to encourage people to be productive and stay around is to find titles that will feed their egos and give them status within the organization. If you were handed one of those titles and you bought into it, you forgot that it was a rental contract. Believing that you actually owned it will cause you to have an overall harder time dealing with the loss of your employment.

Losing a job is hard on all aspects of your life. It’s an unwelcome surprise. It affects your finances. You’re reminded of it daily when you’re at home instead of at work. If you connected yourself more to the idea of the job than the actual work you like doing, you’re going to have a hard time coping and a hard time finding work. Job titles differ from company to company, as do the responsibilities and expenses that come with them. Your job search needs to encompass a range of options that let you do what you like (and hopefully make what you’d like). That’s why we like to recommend job seekers:

• Search for jobs by skills, not just by titles
• Know what they’re good at and what they like doing so that they can find work that suits them–not just another job they hate like the last one they had
• Know what they don’t want to do, because ruling out what doesn’t work makes it that much easier to find the job that will work.

Pink Slipped: A post-layoff survival guide is out now if you want to read more about handling unexpected unemployment.