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Results tagged “training”

Career Center Blog | Scholarships now available for interactive media, gaming

It's been a long-standing, vexing problem for the local interactive media sector: The Puget Sound area has plenty of companies that need game designers and computer engineers, and countless job seekers who'd love to break into this business they've loved

Career Center Blog | Shiny new year brings new job training programs

Well, we seem to have made it. After briefly going over — then being pulled right back from — the dreaded "fiscal cliff" over the New Year's holiday, job seekers in Washington state and everywhere else can breathe a little

Career Center Blog | New job? 9 things not to do your first week

You just landed a job -- finally! -- and you've got the jitters. Of course you do. It's not easy being a newbie. All those traumatic first-day-of-school memories come flooding back. What to do? I mean, beyond working really hard? I find it really

Career Center Blog | Will the long-term unemployed soon get a rescue platform?

Earlier this year, while going about their usual business of investigating the nation's power brokers and exposing corruption wherever they find it, the journalists on the CBS TV news magazine "60 Minutes" told one of the more uplifting stories to

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 Blog | Preparing vets for the bumpy transition to civilian job search

If the roaring hydroplanes and the screaming F/A-18 Hornets overhead weren't enough to remind you, we just enjoyed another Seattle Seafair this weekend. While strolling on the waterfront past the mighty U.S. Navy and Coast Guard ships, I couldn't help

Career Center Blog | Who has it tougher: Olympic athletes or job seekers?

Citius, Altius, Fortius... After tomorrow night, we'll start finding out who will run faster, leap higher and finish stronger than the rest, in accordance with this time-honored Olympic motto. As we prepare ourselves for another two weeks of wall-to-wall TV

Career Center Blog | Some career-independence assistance from ESD

The smoke from the fireworks has cleared and the picnic leftovers are in the fridge, but two recent announcements from the Washington state Employment Security Department (ESD) are continuing the independence celebrations a little longer. One is a new page

Career Center Blog | Upgrading your skills on a shoestring budget

If you're among the ranks of the unemployed at the moment, ask yourself this question: Are you becoming MORE or LESS marketable with each passing day? Most out-of-work professionals would probably say the latter, in my experience. Once you've lost

Career Center Blog | Three tips to rev up forgotten resume elements

The rise and near ubiquity of online resume-processing algorithms has done quite a number on the art of resume writing over the past few years. Almost gone are the days when an eye-catching font, a coordinated color scheme and a

Career Center Blog | Congrats, new grads: It's back-to-school time

Whenever we get two days in a row of perfect sunny weather in early spring, as we just did this weekend, I think back more than 20 years ago when I was just finishing up with college, studying for my

Career Center Blog | Time running out on ESD's entrepreneurial training program?

For many of the long-time unemployed, the idea of starting and running their own business is a tantalizing dream of self-reliance. (Wouldn't you love to be your own boss this week and declare your own snow days?) Some of these

Career Center Blog | Four ways to invigorate your job search in 2012

According to the rash of December predictions of job trends in the Seattle area, this coming year is expected to be just as difficult for job seekers as the previous one. As a recent Manpower survey showed, the Seattle-Bellevue area

Career Center Blog | Who should pay to update your skills? You or your employer?

Last week, NWjobs blogger Matt Youngquist wrote about the skills gap -- the increasing divide between the qualifications companies seek and those job hunters actually possess. According to a new study from global management consulting company Accenture, 55 percent of

Career Center Blog | Free job-skills training program extended

In this era of draconian budget cuts and endless belt-tightening, it's good to finally see that reason has prevailed. One of the Employment Security Department's (ESD) best bargains -- the free Microsoft e-learning courses offered through WorkSource -- has been

Career Center Blog | Artist Trust gives a career EDGE to creative professionals

For many people, the idea of "being an artist" often runs counter to the concept of "having a career." This is one stereotype that does have at least some basis in fact: Most artists I've met are extremely talented and

Career Center Blog | How professional envy can help your career

We're told not to get hung up coveting the careers of those more successful than us, to stop getting bogged down by what we don't have and focus on building up what we do. However, new research on envy shows

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 | Tips for corporate newbies

Last week, a reader who spent his entire career working in public service wrote me in a panic. After spending a year at home with his young son, this reader (let's call him "Julius") had returned to work, this

Career Center Blog | New vacancies often require new training

Last week, a small ray of hope shined down on the bleak local job landscape, like a Seattle sunbreak on a cloudy spring day. The Employment Security Department's twice-yearly Job-Vacancy Survey was released, showing that spring 2011 job vacancies were

Career Center Blog | WorkSource's new OCE&E building offers one-stop shopping

Back in 2009, the last time I was out of work, I have to admit that one of my least favorite job-search chores was making visits to my local WorkSource office. The staff was always very helpful and impeccably nice

Career Center Blog | Gen Y to employers: Your on-the-job training programs stink!

Much has been written about how Generation Y -- the under-30 crowd in the workforce -- has had to adjust their attitude in today's crippled job market. As Associated Press reporter Cindy Krischer Goodman (no relation) wrote last fall,

Career Center Blog | Summer e-learning, networking opportunities to come

Before I launch into my update of job search networking and workshop events for the rest of June, I wanted to send out a reminder about a great learning opportunity that many job seekers may have missed from the Employment

Career Center Blog | Taking your new career for a 'test drive'

One of the many repercussions of the Great Recession in the overall job market has been a rapid reshuffling of workers in newly defined roles. For instance, the recent slow thaw of the job market is giving a glimmer of

Career Center Blog | Let employers know how innovative you are

For much of the last couple of years, the economy has slowly climbed out of the deep hole of the Great Recession and returned many corporate balance sheets into the black. However, most of the multitudes who were laid off

Career Center Blog | Why you should build relationships, not networks

In my last post, "Philosophies to building long-lasting relationships," I interviewed Carol Olsby, a global human resources expert who emphasizes that genuine long-term relationships are essential to professional career success. Here, we'll get deeper into the heart of what everyone