Career Center Blog | Some surprisingly hot sectors for jobs in 2013

With the endless 2012 election now ancient history and the fiscal cliff just a bad dream, the general feeling this month is that 2013 is going to be at least a slight improvement over the stagnation of the previous year.

Career Center Blog | Logistics training a logical choice for job seekers

Anyone who's been through the holiday season knows that it can often be a logistical nightmare. But the season isn't just about finding a parking space at the shopping mall and preparing for your in-laws. It's also about retailers and

Career Center | How to make it in the manufacturing industry

By Lora Shinn / Special to NWjobs Dallas Jacobson pushed papers while employed at Washington Mutual as a mortgage specialist. But in 2005, Jacobson decided he wanted to work with his hands in a completely different way. After a stint

Career Center Blog | Vets reinterpret job skills in manufacturing program

Finding the right job is like finding the perfect mate; sometimes a matchmaker can help find hidden similarities between two parties and pair them up. For the resurgent Puget Sound manufacturing sector, one of these matchmakers is Thomas McLaughlin, who

Career Center | Chocolate maker Erin Holzer's cool job

What do you do? I am the chocolate maker and engineer at Theo Chocolate [in Seattle]. My role integrates a healthy dose of very defined process engineering and a fair amount of creativity. While I have to create and adhere

Career Center | Some companies bringing jobs back to U.S.

By Dee DePass / Minneapolis Star Tribune Two years ago, Calibur11 in Duluth, Minn., did what any other cash-strapped manufacturer looking to prune costs would do: Turn to China. But the maker of game console cases is happily shifting its

Career Center | Manufacturers struggle to find skilled workers

By Alejandra Cancino / Chicago Tribune Doug Parsons needs to hire more than two dozen skilled workers at his manufacturing plant in Pekin, Ill., but he can't find them. Parsons' problem was heightened last year when company sales grew 60

Career Center Blog | Where should federal dollars be spent for worker training?

Much of the debate in the Other Washington these days is about what the federal government can or cannot do to help boost the economy. The debate is crucially important for the country, but it rarely has much impact at

Career Center Blog | Manufacturing, warehousing recovers but demands patience

In the darkest days of the Great Recession, it seemed as if manufacturing in the Puget Sound region was in its death throes. The economy also devastated the container trade at the Port of Seattle, leading to more job stagnation

Career Center | Where the jobs are: Experts forecast growth in several sectors in 2011

By Randy Woods Special to NWjobs Bank failures, massive layoffs, furloughed workers -- the recession has created a long string of bad news in employment in the Seattle area. But as we begin 2011, there appears to be more than

Career Center Blog | Temp, trade hires may lead job revival in 2011

This week, as greater Seattle gears up for the last-minute shopping binge, most job seekers are pretty much already on holiday from their usual full-time "jobs" of looking for work. With hiring managers either planning holiday parties, on early vacation

Career Center Blog | Who's Hiring? MicroGreen Polymers

Over the last few weeks, I've written about economic indicators pointing toward a coming surge in high-tech jobs and growth in the construction and manufacturing sectors. While most of these reports talked about statewide job increases, they were light on

Career Center Blog | Construction jobs build hope of sustainable recovery

For most of the last two years, when there was news of yet another bad report of job losses, it was a safe bet that the leading industries were construction and manufacturing. After the housing bubble burst in 2007 and