According to this article the conclusion a lot of people are coming to is an emphatic YES!

Add tattoo removal as another growth industry in this crappy job market.

Oregon’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose to 12.1 percent in March from 10.7 percent (as revised) in February. The state’s unemployment rate has risen rapidly and substantially over the past nine months, from a rate of 5.9 percent in June 2008.

Source article here.

Read the following cautionary tale from I’m Not Actually A Geek:

A lucky job applicant tweeted the following:

Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.

This tweet caught the attention of Tim Levad, a channel partner advocate for Cisco. To which he responded:

Who is the hiring manager. I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.

Might be a good idea to not immediately share your post-interview impressions on teh Twitter.

Unless of course, they’re extremely, extremely positive. Then it could be helpful… they don’t know that you know that they’re watching you. They think, “That guy was so jazzed to work for us, he twittered all his friends.”

Then again… maybe they wouldn’t like you sharing their private business practices or interview practices with the world.

Sigh… modern gadgetry… why must every useful new tool also have a minefield of potential pitfalls?

If you have career or job search question you would like answered on this blog, click here to Ask Brian.

Reader Cee has a question very in tune with our times.

I landed a job after a lengthy search in Feb. Having been a high flyer and self employed for 15 years I needed a change, but it was very difficult finding employment in this climate. So, although I found a menial job I value it enormously. Trouble is, its the wrong job in the RIGHT company. I took a sales role, absolute last resort, I hate working shop floor, but as I said I was getting desperate. I see a lot of potential for career progress with this company, they encourage it — offering funded study and vocational in house training. Basically, I would love to work within an office role with more creative responsibility - anything to get me off the shop floor. I’m currently demonstrating enthusiasm and passion for the job. Without sounding arrogant, I know I have a ton to offer, and this sales role is not for me (bores me to death), I undersold myself to get it. Oh The irony. Now I need to make them see all the assets I kept quiet about. How?

My question is — how do I play it from now on, they are recruiting for a couple of creative positions now, but I am only half way through my initial three month probationary period . Is it too soon to start asking for a role transfer?! I want them to see an ambitious creative individual invested in company progress, not a flaky dissatisfied person who is an inconvenience, since they did just hire me, and would have to rehire to fill my slot. I feel its an ambiguous step and I want to be sure before I leap.

Brian answers after the jump…

Brian Sayz:

I’ve got your dilemma. You don’t want to seem too eager. You want to play this right. You just jumped into their pond. You don’t want to make waves if it makes you seem too ambitious too soon.

I have no math or science to back this up, but my gut advice is to tell you to wait for another couple of months at least. As you made quite clear, you were getting desperate, and you’re happy to have anything in this job market. So count your blessings on that front at least. Now is not the time to jeopardize the bird you are fortunate enough have in hand.

But I also say wait for another reason. You should get more of the lay of the land first. Spend your time now doing your best to ingratiate yourself to your fellow employees and the company on the whole. You already mention demonstrating enthusiasm and whatnot… also spend some energy making people LIKE YOU. So that when you do make your move, you don’t seem like an arriviste or carpetbagger. You want people to want you to move up. This means your co-workers and your boss.

But also, you should take the time to do more intelligence gathering. You’ve only been at this company a little while. You’ve already identified that it’s the right company for you (just not the right job as of yet). But have you identified what would make you the right fit for the company? What is their current situation? What do they need right now? What problems can you solve?

Because (and it sounds like you know this instinctively) you don’t want to just go to them and say, “I’m better than this job I’m doing right now. Let me do job X instead.” While probably true, that’s not what you want to do. What you want to do is go to them with a pitch. You want to say to them, “You know, I think you should let me do job X, because I can do A, B and C for you. I’ve identified that I you need this done, and I am the man to do it because… I don’t know if you know this… but I have the following qualifications and experiences. I’m not just a salesman. And I expect I can deliver the following results.”

In other words, you’re looking for an opportunity. You don’t tell them to bump you up just because of divine right. And you can’t wait around for them to notice that you have other qualifications. But you should wait for an angle to play that allows you to go to them and point out that there’s a good reason they should let you do more than just sit on the shop floor.

So take more time. It’s not just the politics and the timing you want to get right… you also want to be able to make the right pitch. I don’t know if you play poker or not. But if you do, you’ll know that there are times when… even if you have great cards… it’s not the right time to play them. WHEN AND HOW to play your hand is just as important as the hand you hold.

FedEx Office (most of us will remember them as Kinkos) is offering free resume printing this Tuesday, March 10.

From the press release:

The company invites customers to take advantage of this one-day event by visiting any of its 1,600+ FedEx Office Print and Ship Centers in the United States during regular business hours.  This offer is good for 25 black-and-white resume copies per customer and is only valid for orders placed and picked up in-store.  Customers may place orders by submitting their resume in printed format or as a digital file, and the copies will be printed single-sided on resume-quality paper.

PS. If you’re a FedEx Office executive or PR rep, drop me an email. I’ve got a business proposition for you relating to resume printing.

I don’t have the space or inclination to introduce you to Twitter or how it works (simple google searches should give you a nice rundown of how to join the twittering masses) but I do want to explore using Twitter as a job search tool.

The most important reason is that job searching (and job posting) on Twitter is still in it’s infancy. So, first movers might be able to pick up some quick leads and opportunities before the masses catch on.

How To Job Search On Twitter

There are basically 3 main ways to use Twitter as a job search tool.

First, and most basicly, you can use Twitter to shout your job search into the void. Posting, “I am such and such professional in such and such place looking to get a job as an XYZ,” is the most obvious way. It seems the most useless way right now… but it might become more valuable in the coming months as more and more employers do keyword searches on twitter to find candidates.

So, it won’t hurt to put yourself into the Twitter stream. I would suggest posting general descriptions as well as specific skill or experience descriptions. For example, saying you do sales… well, ok, there’s probably a lot of people who do that. But tweeting that you specialize in telecom sales in Latin American markets (and speak spanish) might cause you to show up if someone searches for more specific skill sets. So do general tweets as well as narrow tweets. Can’t hurt.

Also, posting can be useful if you have a bunch of people following you. But at the moment, most people who aren’t in the media or tech fields probably have way more people connected to them on Facebook than they have following them on twitter. So, if you’re in PR and you have 75 other PR folk following you on twitter, then tweeting is literally the best way to get your job search out there. For the rest of us, I’d recommend using you Facebook status update to do the same thing. It would probably reach more people.

The 2nd way use twitter to job search would be to follow people. If you can somehow begin following the person who does the hiring at the company you want to work at, well… let’s just say that’s the best stalking I can imagine. Or, if you know a specific company you want to work for, you could try to follow as many people as possible who work at that company. You never know when mentions of openings or opportunities might crumble down…

A lot of companies are getting wise and are setting up specific twitter accounts. So if your dream company has set up an account to announce job openings, then you’d darn well better start following that account religiously. And as soon as a position you like get’s tweeted, jump on that baby before everyone else does. Have your resume ready to submit.

Finally, the third (and in my opinion, most promising) way to job search on twitter is by using twitter search.

Quite simply, this method of job searching/job posting could become huge. Right now, very few companies are posting jobs on twitter. But this could explode over the next few months because it’s quick and it’s free. So, until the masses catch on, if you’ve got an eagle eye on the twitter search, you can jump all over opportunities other non-twitter-savvy folks will miss.

I suggest simple keywords like “job opening” “job opportunity” “help wanted” or “new position”. Stuff like that. Again, there’s not tons of stuff out there yet. But I expect this to change rapidly. For example, I just did a search on http://search.twitter.com for “job opening accounting ann arbor” and got nothing. Just not enough out there yet. But when I put in “job opening accounting” I got a couple of openings from an account called Raytheon Jobs, which redirects to an official looking jobs page for the Raytheon corporation.

Finally, one final thought. If you are in a field like media or tech, you can’t afford NOT to use Twitter for your job search. I’ve already heard stories of hiring managers at hip advertising agencies tweeting job openings as a way to weed-in the most tech savvy candidates.

A new CareerBuilder.com survey finds that nearly 40 percent of the 3,000 HR reps and managers polled plan to make administrative cuts at some point in 2009.

Furthermore, 65 percent of those who plan on cutting costs are also scaling back on company events like social gatherings and picnics. Sixty-one percent will curtail business travel.

Benefits, Perks To Be Trimmed in 2009. Via Cheezhead.

We are like doctors in that way. Everyone is a good person who deserves to be saved. We want to save everyone. And like good doctors, we do our best to help all our clients. We listen, and we do our best to help. That’s what makes our job rewarding.

So share your personal sob story of job search woe with us.

But…

But keep it out of your job search and interview process.

Telling an interviewer about why you really, really need the job is job-search-death. We all think our personal cases and our personal stories are so much more important and valid than anyone else’s.

But especially in times like these, trust me, they’re not.

Don’t… in a resume… in an interview… in a discussion with your employer… burden them with the tale of your job search woe. Your story is not unique. You are not any better or worse off than all the other people applying for the position. You are not, for that matter, any better or worse off than any of the other job seekers in this job market.

Don’t go into…

• How you need the job because of your credit card debt.
• How you were wrongly terminated from your last job.
• How your last boss was a tyrant.
• How many interviews you’ve been on and how hard it has been to find a job.
• How the bad economy has brought you here. Don’t you think that’s true for everyone?
• All the reasons why this is below you; how, given other circumstances, you wouldn’t be in this position.
• How your wife/mother/son has a disease and you need the money to pay the bills.

It’s not that your potential employer is inhuman… it’s just that every human being on the planet has very real, very valid and very humane reasons for needing employment and a solid income.

To assume you’re above and beyond this fact is silly, and it puts an emotional burden on the person you’re trying to convince to hire you.

Trust me, they’ve probably heard similar stories all day.

So, don’t give them a sob story on your job search. It just makes you part of the crowd, number one. And you want to stand out. Positivity and can-do attitudes stand out. Not Debbie Downers.

But also, number two, and most importantly… remember, you want to be offering to solve their problems… you don’t want to beg them to solve yours!

That’s the quickest way to get hired!