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I’ve been writing, speaking and thinking a lot about modern talent-attraction strategies.
Not long after speaking at a DisruptHR event to define passive jobseekers, I recently joined an Employee Cycle podcast episode to dive deeper into the conversation. Listen to it here.
Continue reading Employer Branding is central to your passive jobseeker strategy
Updated with more perspective on the job-crashing Internet here and more from Vox Media here. Also, though some think there is a mighty economic transition happening, many readers and friends have pointed that I didn’t properly address the ‘lump labor fallacy‘ here, in which I incorrectly assume there is a static number of jobs that are going away. I still think there is perspective worth sharing below. More comments welcome.
In the next 20 years, the United States and the broader global economy will either dramatically rethink its employment structure or a history-altering societal change will take place.
Of course, unemployment numbers are gamed by those who give up on looking for jobs, but the idea here is that it’s hard to understand why anyone seems to think that the overall unemployment numbers for our country will trend anywhere but upward.
Let me be clear, this is armchair commentary from someone with absolutely no background in economics or geopolitical, socioeconomic trends, so I am writing this hoping for outside insight because I can’t figure this out.
Below, I (a) outline the problem as I see it, (b) look at big economic drivers that seem to be chances for more problems, (c) list all the opportunities I understand that could reverse somewhat this trend and then (d) highlight some of the transformational changes that could lie in wait for the next generation, before offering some more reading and then waiting to get yelled at in the comments.
Continue reading Why 10 percent unemployment and worse is our future, unless we rethink our economy
Is our recession another blip in centuries of economic rises and falls or is something darker happening?
Part of me agrees with the recent post from media critic Jeff Jarvis, who voiced a concern I’ve been working through myself: efficiency-creating technology has continued to speed and, well, there are a lot of old people coming.
There is a real conversation happening that a new normal rate of unemployment should be expected, though there is counter to that — we’re just too close to the economic collapse to have any sense of what is normal.
But here’s one additional thought I keep gnawing over.
Continue reading Will jobs ever come back?: maybe there is an answer to the employment bomb
I am leaving my role as Media Director for Back on My Feet, the running-based program to combat homelessness.
I tendered my resignation last Thursday, Nov. 11 and our staff was alerted Monday. My last day will be Friday, Dec. 3, so I’ve offered a full three weeks to help the transition process at an organization with a mission that has come to mean a great deal to me since joining in January.
I’ll be sharing in greater detail here what exactly I will be doing, but, in short, I am taking a full-time opportunity with the media company I helped launch by way of starting in February 2009 technology news site Technically Philly.
Yes, things have been going well there since.
Continue reading Leaving Back on My Feet as Media Director: what I’ve done in a year
I’ve decided to step away from self-employment.
I’ve spent the last year of my life freelancing, by some accounts, at perhaps the worst time to do so in my life and arguably the worst time in the history of journalism.
After a meeting of the most influential media leaders in the region made clear no drastic foundational investment would be made into niche news anytime soon, I knew I needed to secure my finances — as a new homeowner, especially — and take a more cautioned approach toward building News Inkubator, Technically Philly and NEast Philly.
A funny thing happened not a week or two after I made this decision. A friend made me aware of a job opportunity I actually wanted.
On Mon. Jan. 18, I walked into a Locust Street building in Center City Philadelphia and began defining what a media director should do for homeless advocacy nonprofit Back on My Feet.
Continue reading A new job: Media director for nonprofit Back on My Feet
If you peeked at my Blogging clips on this Web site recently, you may have noticed that I have begun contributing to uwishunu.com, a very cool arts and entertainment blog in Philadelphia.
If you have managed some RSS feed for my Disclosures on this site, you may also have seen that uwishunu is a product of the Greater Philadelphia Tourism and Marketing Corp., which means I am currently receiving small funds from a public relations organization.
I’m over it and hope you are, too. If it causes a conflict, we’ll cross that bridge when we have to. Because, right now, I enjoy the work and love the product – I was subscribing to uwishunu long before I became involved.
Below check some of my work and extras from those assignments.
Philadelphia’s technology scene is, well, growing, expanding, maturing, developing, whatever.
There are a host of worlds and working parts to it, different scenes, from Center City, to Old City, to South Philly, to the northwest and West Philly, up to the ‘burbs and, well, in some way, everywhere in between.
The problem is that there is no one home, no one portal, vessel for all of those cultures and news and events and updates.
I think I’ve found it.
With Web designer Sean Blanda and graphic designer Brian James Kirk, I am proud to introduce Technically Philly: covering the community of people using technology in Philadelphia.
Continue reading Introducing Technically Philly: covering the Philadelphia technology community
Hire me to tell your story.
For a birthday, anniversary, wedding or another special event, let me tell your story. I will interview you or your family and compile a commemorative profile, just as it might appear in a newspaper or magazine. If you choose, it can be printed and framed in a variety of styles to your preference. I also could use a publishing service to create a book in a style of your choosing.
I now know a handful of bright people – some family, some friends, some young all smart and competent – who are victims of what is becoming a growing economic hysteria, made worse by media… and blogs. This from the Washington Post:
New unemployment figures from the Department of Labor show average new jobless claims for the past four weeks up more than 200,000 from a year ago to their highest level since Dec. 1982.
The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll found job cuts reaching a broad swath of Americans: nearly two in 10 reported they or someone in their household had lost a job in the past few months, and almost three in 10 said their household had been hit with a pay cut or reduced hours at work.” [Source]
That can only affect this freelance journalist, as it does millions of Americans.
Continue reading Recession thick, but some sectors still hiring
Talk to me in a few weeks. I ought to be some sort of expert on the global energy industry.
Largely on the back of my internship with the Philadelphia Business Journal and my blogging experience in a variety of venues, I am proud to say that I’ve gotten a gig blogging on the energy industry for BNET Industries, an industry-news provider and subsidiary of CBS Interactive.
That means I have a steady alternative revenue stream – for the time being. It isn’t full-time, so no health insurance, but for a freelance journalist, it’s a golden gig to get some steady money (more tips like that in a future post).
