the professional edge

Here’s hoping the Year of the Dragon will be met by a fire breathing tempest of dynamic change and opportunity for the consulting/contracting community. But what I am certain of is that, like the characteristics of the Dragon, 2012 will be a year of unpredictability. I’ve spoken to many about their predictions for the year ahead as well as done a fair bit of research myself. In short, whilst the financial pundits would have us crying in our metaphorical beer (with a potential ‘Eurogeddon’), I have discovered an underlying sense of optimism. Sure the job market may take a hit in the short term, but as we consultants know, this can mean good times ahead for the project and consulting market. My advise to the consultants I’ve chatted to already this year, is to sit tight, if you are on project, stay there, if you are looking for projects, sit tight and don’t be too ‘bullish’ with your day rate.

Projects that are keeping aCE talentNET busy at the moment involve systems training, mining MOS projects, Executive Presence development (isn’t this an interesting topic!) and upcoming change management and instructional design projects.

For an overview the 2012 industry outlook breakdown be sure to read the article on the aCE talentNET BLOG

Have a great month,

Deirdre

Five Out-of-Date Job-Search Tactics

Here’s a tongue in cheek article on out of date job search techniques… one for the humour file, whilst also giving a few tips to those on the job search trail’….found on businessweek.com, written by Liz Ryan.

Forget the fancy paper and piles of bullets—and never grovel

“Is it still correct to use ‘Dear Sir or Madam’ in a cover letter?” a reader asked in an e-mail.

“That isn’t such a great idea,” I wrote back. “No one uses ‘Dear Sir or Madam’ anymore, unless they’re actually writing to a madam, such as Heidi Fleiss.” I’m not sure my e-mail correspondent caught the joke.

It’s not that using out-of-date job-search approaches brands you as older. Rather, it’s that using no-longer-in-fashion job search techniques marks you as out of touch.

Employers pay us, in part, to be aware of trends and phenomena that affect the workplace. Working people (and job-seekers) should follow the news, keep a bead on our changing world, and stay abreast of changes in business, technology, politics, and cultural shifts. That isn’t an unreasonable expectation. If a job-seeker isn’t curious and perceptive enough to notice that the last time he saw “Dear Sir or Madam” on a letter was around the time Chevy Chase impersonated Gerald Ford falling down the stairs, how will he notice what’s changing in his field?

Here are five formerly useful, now dangerous job-search approaches that hark back to an earlier age. Get them out of your job-search repertoire, pronto.

1. Dedicated Résumé Paper and Envelopes.
2. Creaky Cover Letter Language.
3. Here’s Why You Should Hire Me.
4. Endless Bullets.
5. Gratuitous Research.

Keep reading…

Your sector-by-sector guide to 2012

The only certainty is uncertainty: chances are the Australian economy is headed for another topsy-turvy year.

But for the nation’s small- and medium-sized enterprises, there are good sectors to operate in, and not so good.

We’ve taken the pulse of 15 key industries. Here’s SmartCompany’s guide to 2012, sector-by-sector.

Advertising and marketing
Ben Willee, of the advertising agency Spinach, expects this year to be better than 2011, particularly if unemployment doesn’t worsen and the US economy picks up.

And despite the well-publicised blues in retail, Willee notes that the sector – the largest advertiser of all – reduced its advertising by just 2% in the year to September, and the next biggest categories of banking and finance, and automotive are also healthy.

“All the factors and subgroups, it’s poised to go; it’s just a question of when it does go,” he says.

Continue reading this guide found on smartcompany, written by Madeleine Heffernan….

Too many suits, And not nearly enough skirts in the boardrooms

From the economist.com…

“PERHAPS WE WOMEN should just keep out of this male circus,” said one of the participants in a forum on “German Female Executives” run by Odgers Berndtson, a firm of headhunters. Gabriele Stahl, a partner in the firm’s Frankfurt office, recalls this comment because it seems to sum up the way many female managers feel about getting to the top of the corporate tree.

If they ever do. A study by Elke Holst and Julia Schimeta by the German Institute of Economic Research in Berlin found that in 2010 women held only 3.2% of all executive board seats in Germany’s 200 biggest non-financial firms. In the largest companies their share was even smaller. Financial institutions and insurance companies, where at least half of all employees are female, did no better than the rest, and state-owned companies were only slightly ahead. On the supervisory boards, the other component of Germany’s two-tier board structure, women are slightly better represented because some of the seats are reserved for employees, but last year they still made up only 11% of the total—and one-third of these boards had none at all. That list includes household names like Porsche, E.ON and Robert Bosch. The glass ceiling, like everything else in Germany, is pretty solid.

But Germany AG is no worse than many others. Across Europe the proportion of women on company boards averages around 10%, though with large variations: from less than 1% in Portugal to nudging 40% in Norway, thanks to that country’s much-cited quota system. America, at 16%, does somewhat better than the European average, and most emerging markets do less well (see chart 5). Big publicly quoted companies tend to have slightly more women on their boards. But the numbers everywhere have barely moved over the past decade.

Continue reading…

Work and family

Baby blues, A juggler’s guide to having it all!

“THE MOST STRESSFUL thing about having this baby was arranging cover at work for the time I was going to be away,” says Sara Leclerc, an in-house lawyer with an international fire-protection firm. Her new baby girl is asleep and her four-year-old son is watching television. Over a drink and a snack in her stylish house in the woods outside Helsinki she explains that she plans to be at home for about a year, but will keep in close touch with her company and then resume work full-time. Her husband, Pekka Erkinheimo, a lawyer with another company, will do his share. In this part of the world balancing work and children is for fathers as well as for mothers.

Finland’s gap between male and female employment rates is less than three percentage points, among the smallest in the world, and the vast majority of Finnish women have full-time jobs. Anne Brunila, executive vice-president of Fortum, an energy company, says that those who stay at home are often questioned about their choice. But working women’s lives are made easier by employers’ enlightened attitudes, excellent public child-care provision and generous family leave.

This article was from theeconomist.com, continue reading…