Job Seeker Information

The security breach at a major online job board last year may have made you a little hesitant to put your resume into online databases for fear that your contact information will be used for money-making purposes such as direct mail or email marketing or even identity theft. However, there are security measures you can take that will make your search for internet jobs more secure.

There’s always the option of just not putting your resume on the Internet at all, but that’s going to saddle you with a pretty large disadvantage in that recruiters that use the internet to find candidates won’t be able to find you!  Instead, you will have to proactively monitor many different job boards, looking for companies that are looking for you.  It’s a lot easier to find candidates for a recruiter when they can search through online databases looking for skill sets that match yours and contacting you about unadvertised job openings.  If the case is that you want to be easy to find, you’ll have to post your resume, so how can you do that and ensure that the boards you post to are legitimate and have precautions in place to ensure the safety of your information?

Always make sure that you feel confident before you post a resume to a internet jobs website.  Read their privacy policy carefully, primarily to figure out where they may repost your resume, or who they may sell it to.  If they do redistribute it to other sites, do you trust those sites, as well?  The best way to get answers to these kinds of questions is to email or call the board directly.  You can even log in as an employer and research all their policies on resume searching.  These boards want your resume- it’s a large part of how they make money- so any one that’s any good will accommodate your requests without a problem.

Once you’ve decided which board(s) you trust enough to post your resume to, take proper precautions when applying to jobs and responding to email solicitations. Job boards work hard to ensure that only legitimate jobs are posted, however, it’s near impossible to catch every single one of those “spam” job postings that may get through the filters. What this means to you is that you must keep an eye out for fishy jobs and emails. The old adage is truer than ever on the Internet- if something is too good to be true, it probably is. Never, ever give out your social security number or bank account information. An employer should never ask for that information via email, and a job board will not ever ask you for that information either, as is stated in most of their Privacy Policies.

If you do get a scam or “phishing” type of email and are able to deduce from what job board the sender got your information, it’s in everyone’s best interest for you to let the job board know as soon as possible, and give them as much information about said scam and the person who contacted you as possible.  You can also report fraudulent looking job postings.  The more aware the job boards are of potential rip-offs, the better job they can do to prevent them in the future.

By knowing what internet jobs sites ere your resume is posted on, doing your due diligence in regards to security measures and keeping an eye out for fraud, you can help keep yourself and your personal information safe while conducting an online job search.

Less than a decade ago, people who were enrolling in nursing school were being told that they were crazy, and that career nursing jobs were not viable. They were told that the job was brutal, and that there simply were no jobs out there for nurses straight out of the Registered Nurse training programs.Not any more! For a long time, people who studied the healthcare industry said that there might be a reversal of fortune, and there has been. Gradually, care providers such as nursing homes and hospitals, who depended on nurses to operate, came to realize that as nurses left their jobs they were becoming more and more difficult to replace. This has led to a severe shortage in the number of nurses available in the US- and the situation is getting worse. The shortage of qualified nurses is a global problem, meaning that health care providers have to compete on a world-wide scale to fill nursing positions.

What the nursing shortage should amount to, in the long run, is a much more improved working environment for nurses in the future. In the short term, however, this shortage is proving to be difficult to overcome and may actually contribute to the frustrations many nurses feel which cause them not only to leave their jobs but also to discourage others from taking up the profession.

In order to ensure that the current crisis in nursing does not continue much further into the future, the two areas of retention and recruitment need to be addressed. This article will take a look at some of the topics that come up among nurses when it comes to addressing these issues.

Making sure that nurses are happy within their current jobs so that they stay in the profession is vital to stabilize the crisis. With anywhere from 25-40% of nurses are expected to retire over the next ten years, ensuring that younger members of the work force stay at their jobs is more important than ever.

The general public is coming to the realization that nurses play just as important a role in the healthcare system as doctors and other medical professionals do, and the industry is starting to realize it, as well. Many nurses complain that they are not accorded the level of respect they deserve, as nursing is seen as less of a “profession” and more of a “job”. Physicians are often guilty of this, making nurses feel as if they are simply there to mechanically carry out the doctor’s orders, and nothing more. As the system loses more and more nurses, it will become more and more important to grant those remaining the appropriate level of respect.

Nurses are often short on respect, but the current nursing shortage is changing that. After all, the amount of education required to become a nurse is the same as that required to earn a B.A., M.A., or earn any other undergraduate degree!

Too often, nurses report that the conditions in their workplace are poor. This doesn’t apply to things necessary to doing a job (i.e. sick patient), but instead applies to things that are directly influenced by management policy such as nurse-to-patient ratio, hours of work, use (or lack of use) of support staff, and the condition of equipment.

A standard nurse’s schedule includes a combination of both day and night shifts. Clearly, it’s impossible to run a medical facility without nurses, so it isn’t as if the night shift can just be eliminated. However, some suggestions for parity include paying extra for nurses that work the night shift, or adding a third “swing shift” to the rotation so that the night shift is not as long as the day shift is.

Continued increases in the budget of the United States government in the area of health care are tagged to help resolve, among other things, the concerns of nurses both with support staff and with equipment. The job of a nurse involves quite a lot of lifting, so it is incredibly important if any nurses are going to make it through to retirement that the equipment available in the hospital eases their burden in this area. Many nurses find that they are also doing duties that are traditionally thought of as the responsibilities of receptionists and orderlies, and in order for nurses to attend to their nursing duties, sooner or later facilities will have to streamline funds so that these support levels are taken care of by staff other than nurses.

The biggest short-term problem facing the industry is the nurse-to-patient ratio. Most facilities are unable to fill vacant positions, and so the ratio remains at a level that many nurses are uncomfortable with. However, efforts to address the issue properly still provide hope.

It’s going to be vital to recruit nurses heavily, as well. There will be marked attempts to train more nurses, as well as healthcare organizations making deals to attract nurses to work for them. If medical providers don’t start paying attention, they will soon find themselves without any nurses to run their facilities!

One of the biggest concerns is that the output of nurses from universities and colleges does not match the number of nurses that are leaving. In addition, many graduating nurses are not going to work in traditional areas such as hospitals, instead choosing the lower levels of stress and the higher levels of pay available at other facilities, such as jails and nursing homes.

In order to improve the patient to nurse ratio that is such a common complaint among nurses, it is vital to increase the number of students coming out of nursing schools across the country. Universities and colleges need to have the funding available to create these spaces. In addition, facilities and governments will have to offer programs such as student loan forgiveness programs in order to attract potential students to the profession.

The last decade has seen a massive growth in secondary industries targeted towards nurses. These industries include nursing agencies and travel nursing programs which hire their own nurses and then contract them out to facilities in need. These nurses are generally higher paid than their counterparts in the facilities they are contracted out to. In addition, they get to change their place of work frequently, often with all travel expenses paid. Facilities are going to need to take a look at this practice and determine if they are willing to offer the kind of wages and benefits that these nurses are receiving if they ever hope to have a stable work force.

As far as the nursing profession goes, the long term future is bright. The current shortage allows a graduating nurse to virtually write his or her own ticket. In addition, the shortage is expected to grow worse, which has pushed the concerns of nurses into the public spotlight. In order to alleviate the shortage, governments and facilities will have no choice but to meet the concerns of nurses in order to keep them at their jobs.

Alternatively, the future of the nursing profession may lie within nursing agencies. Unless facilities and governments realize that the concerns of nurses need to be met at the ground level, new and established nurses alike will continue to gravitate towards the pay and flexibility that these agencies offer.
That should be enough to sink your teeth in to. It’s a great time to be a nurse- you’re in very high demand- and it’s likely to only get better.

Get the competitive edge with your recruiting strategy… start using Niche job boards.

 
I’m going to shake things up a bit today, and post an article for employers, rather than one for job seekers.  This should still be valuable to job seekers, though, as a “through the looking glass” view of how employers view you.  The topic today is niche job boards- any board that ends in jobs.com, really, and why you, as an employer, should be using them as part of your recruiting strategy.

Finding a job on the Internet can be stressful and confusing for even the most qualified job seeker. As someone in the recruitment industry, you understand just how many job boards are popping up on the web daily. And you also know the struggle to understand which add value to your recruitment practices and which are not so valuable.

There are many ways to better present your company to qualified job seekers. For starters, going to where your ideal candidates are on the web shows them that you are not taking the easy way out by only using the quantity providers many employers default to. Discovering more about job seekers you feel are qualified lets them know you are serious about filling the position with someone who will excel. And you know best, a key part of selling (products, your company, whatever it may be) is making the “buyer” feel wanted and cared about.

Still not convinced that you need to post on niche job boards? Here are a few reasons to consider:

1. Niche job boards narrow the number of jobs seekers have to look through to find that diamond in the rough you posted. The more generic job boards require clever searching to eliminate jobs that aren’t in the seeker’s area, industry or professional level. With fewer jobs listed, it’s easier for job seekers to find your job, even on the 15^th day of posting.
2. Resume mining on niche job boards is less of a hassle than big boards. Although the quantity is lower, the quality level of the seekers is much higher making it more likely that you’ll find a great candidate.
3. If you’re thinking in terms of budget, hint hint…a vast majority of smaller, niche job sites charge a very minimal posting fee, if they charge at all.

It shouldn’t be too difficult to find niche job boards to post to by doing a simple web search.  A good idea would be to look for associations related to your industry- they are as targeted as job boards come, usually don’t charge high fees, and in general have good pools of candidates.  Always be on the lookout for good boards that end in jobs.com and you should have a resource stockpile in no time!  Good luck, and hopefully this niche board strategy will pay off for you as it has for me!

Today I’m going to discuss the healthcare system in the US to give you a better idea bout what you might be in for when looking for healthcare jobs.  First let’s look at some basic facts about the type of care and locations where the healthcare industry operates.  Who is “the healthcare industry”, anyway?  In the United States, healthcare is provided by an array of public and private entities, funded by both public and private sources.  The breakdown is that the US government foots about 24% of the bill, with private insurance paying about 36% and out-of-pocket expenses being about 15% of the total cost.  That adds up to lots and lots of healthcare jobs for qualified individuals!

Types of Healthcare Services

• Ambulatory care- aka “outpatient” care, where no hospital stay is required
• Home Health Care = Nursing services, ordered by physicians and provided in the patients’ residence
• General Practice- general practitioners of “family medicine”
• Specialty Practice- specialty physicians- oncologists, pediatricians, cardiologists, etc.
• Non-Physician  - physician assistants and nurse practitioners

Where are Healthcare Services typically administered?

·        Private Hospitals (usually operated by private corporations, for a profit)

·        Nonprofit Hospitals (usually operated by religious organizations or independent nonprofit organizations, or governments)

·        Specialty Clinics such as prenatal clinics, surgical centers, or family planning clinics

·        Hospice care (for patients with less than 6 months to live, typically subsidized by charities and/or government and provided in the patients’ home)

What other things does the medical industry do?

·        Research, development, production and marketing of pharmaceutical drugs

·        Manufacture of Medical equipment/ devices

·        Medical research

This may come as a shock to you- it certainly did to me- but the US spends over $7,000 a year per person, for a total of 2.25 TRILLION dollars (facts are from 2007).  That means that we spend more, as a function of either GDP or on a per-capita basis, than any other developed nation in the world, and as I stated before, it means a lot of work for people looking for healthcare jobs.  Healthcare counts for 16% of our yearly GDP!

The US is the only wealthy industrialized nation in the world without a universal healthcare system.  About 16% of the total population is uninsured, with the rest being insured either through the government, their employer, or privately purchased insurance.  There are also programs, funded by taxpayers, to provide healthcare coverage for the elderly, the disabled, children, veterans, and the poor.  In fact, the government is the largest insurer in the country, spending 45% of the total cost of healthcare every year.  Federal law mandates that medical services providers must provide emergency care to anyone that requests it, regardless of their ability to pay.  There’s a real problem with healthcare costs rising faster than wages or inflation- in the year 2001, over half of all people who declared bankruptcy did so because of “medical causes”.

The healthcare industry in the US is not thought of very highly throughout the rest of the world.  The World Health Organization conducted a study in 2000 that ranked the US healthcare system as the best in the world in terms of responsiveness and expenditure, but 37^th overall in performance and 72^nd overall in overall level of health.  However, that particular study has been widely discredited as not correlating very well with patient surveys about their own feelings on their medical care.

Bear these basic facts in mind when you decide if the healthcare industry is right for you, and come back for part 2 of my series on healthcare jobs!

If you’re in the job market in Southern California, finding web developer jobs in Irvine will be very competitive.  This article will help you get ready for that search! Did you realize that technically, programmable computers have been around for centuries?  The first was a humanoid designed to entertain rich guests at parties- it played the drums, and by moving pegs around on its gears, it could be made to play several different rhythms!  The first modern equivalent was the Jacquard loom, invented in France in 1801.  This machine incorporated space for a punch-card, and based on what card was entered, could be programmed to weave several different patterns.  If you’re looking for a web developer job in Irvine, this could be helpful- it’s a very competitive area!

In 1896, International Business Machines was founded as the Tabulating Machine Company, by Herman Hollerith.  He expanded the use of punch cards and they were actually used to program computers all the way through the 1970’s.  The punch card was a major advance in the science of computing, as for the first time the whole machine didn’t have to be reconfigured to run a variety of programs. 

In 1954, the first high-level programming language- Fortran- came on the scene.  This was a major step forward as it allowed programmers to enter instructions in algebraic terms; these instructions were then converted by a compiler into machine language used by the computer to carry out calculations.  At this point most programs were still entered into computers using punch cards or long strips of “tape”.  By the end of the 1960s, computers had advanced to the point where instructions could be directly typed into the machine itself, due to advances/cost decreases in memory and parts.

Time marches on, and computers aren’t immune to the effects of time, either- computer programming languages nowadays work on quite an abstract level from their earlier counterparts.  This means that more computer processing power is needed, but it also means an easier learning curve for new programmers, and simplification/streamlining of the process for experienced programmers.  This has led to quite an increase in demand for programmers in developed countries, as the economy marches ever towards the service sector.

The five most important elements of any computer program are

• Efficiency: the amount of system resources a program consumes-the less the better.
• Reliability: how often the results of a program are correct.
• Robustness: how well a program anticipates situations of data type conflict and other incompatibilities that result in run time errors and program halts.
• Usability: the clarity and intuitiveness of a programs’ output can make or break it’s success. This involves a wide range of textual and graphical elements that makes a program easy and comfortable to use.
• Portability: the range of hardware and OS platforms on which the source code of a program can be compiled and run.

The steps of development of a software program are usually:

• Requirements Analysis- what does the software need to do?
• Modeling- anticipating usage scenarios
• Implementation- bringing the software on line
• Failure Elimination- debugging and further testing

Bear these things in mind when you start you programming career- these are the most fundamental aspects of computer programming.  Keep these things in mind when you search for Irvine web developer jobs and you will be ahead of the game!