IMDiversity Career Center Blog

IMDiversity Featured $100K-Plus Jobs Restored

2009-06-17T15:51:00.003-05:00

Following our recent migration to a new jobs database and job tools format at http://jobsearch.imdiversity.com, the editors have begun to restore a number of previously popular jobs quicksearch features including our jobs by location and jobs by occupation quicksearches, and our $100K-Plus Featured Jobs section.

As before, the section spotlights select job opportunities offering salary ranges extending to $100,000 or above. However, one new improvement to the section is the $100K-Plus quicksearch link. With this, jobseekers are not only able to review the currently displayed high-paying featured jobs, but can click through to additional matching results and immediately schedule a Saved Search to send them a job alert email whenever any new feature jobs in a range paying over $100,000 are added to the site.

Although jobseekers can "subscribe" to a Saved Search agent without opening a full job tools account, they will enjoy improved tools for managing multiple alerts and posting employer-searchable resume by creating a quick Job Tools account first.

New IMDiversity Job Board Migration

2009-06-17T15:37:00.002-05:00

IMDiversity.com Career Center is continuing the migration to a new job search tools format on a new jobs database http://jobsearch.imdiversity.com.

The new job search site offers featured job opportunities with diversity-committed employers, as well as a greatly expanded selection of network jobs in an easy sort, two-tab interface.

Jobseekers can also use a quick sign-up wizard to open a new, personalized Job Tools account, post an employer-searchable resume using three streamlined posting methods, and create and manage multiple Saved Search Agents -- automated searches using your custom criteria that will send you an email job alert whenever a new job is added matching your specifications.

Another improvement we'll say more about in future posts is the streamlined Saved Search/Job Alert Agent process. Any job search result using your custom search criteria or results displayed through clicking on one of the QuickSearch links throughout the IMDiversity Career Center site can now be quickly instantly saved and scheduled to alert you by email to new job matches as they are added. At our users' request, the Saved Searches do not require creating a Job Tools account. However, opening a Job Tools account makes the process of managing and scheduling multiple custom job alerts even easier.

To get started, create your free Job Tools account now or conduct a job search.

Poll Shows Audience Growth Even as Ethnic Media Struggle

2009-05-28T10:26:00.002-05:00

On the eve of its National Ethnic Media Expo & Awards, New America Media, a collaboration of more than 2,500 ethnic media outlets, has released a poll suggesting that "Ethnic Media Outlets Gain in Readers and Viewers" even as the economic downturn is taking a dire toll on small niche publishers of the sort represented among NAM's affiliates.

In its poll analyzing current figures against those taken in 2005, New America Media has marked singificant growth in Hispanic-targeted media in particular: "The penetration of Spanish-language radio stations and newspapers has increased substantially...Moreover, Spanish-language television stations now reach 86 percent of all Hispanic adults in the United States, while access to the Internet among Hispanics has grown from 24 percent in 2005 to 37 percent this year."

It also finds that "Other ethnic communities are also tuning into their media outlets. African-American audiences for television stations, radio stations and newspapers that focus on Black themes has increased about 10 percent since 2005; Chinese-language television stations and newspapers now reach 70 percent of all Chinese adults in the US, up from 55 percent in 2005; and Korean-language newspapers reach 64 percent of all Korean adults in the country, a boost from 46 percent in 2005."

The report makes an argument for the increasing relevance and importance of ethnic media for addressing the unique interests of niche communities, even as many publications are shutting their doors -- at least on the brick-and-mortar, paper publishing operations. Finding industry "strategies for surviving the economic downturn" is the theme of NAM's annual Expo, which takes place this year on June 4-5 at the Atlanta Hyatt Regency Hotel.

For more, see Poll Shows Ethnic Media Outlets Gain in Readers and Viewers

Important Changes Underway to IMDiversity Job Bank

2009-05-19T13:32:00.001-05:00

IMDiversity.com will be moving this month to a new jobs database format with streamlined job search and resume management tools. We invite you to preview the beta model of our new job bank and its extended network of jobs at http://jobsearch.imdiversity.com.

For jobseekers with existing accounts, your account tools, resume, applications history, jobs in-box and search agent will still be accessible on our current system at http://jobs.imdiversity.com until May 31, 2009. If you have any outstanding applications you would like to make to jobs saved in your in-box, we encourage you to do so or to make a copy of the posting before then.

If you have not visited our site recently, we hope you will explore our new job bank, now with simple new methods to search a vastly expanded network of postings, filter relevant jobs and schedule automated searches. Although the new system does not require it to search for and apply to jobs, creating a new account at http://jobsearch.imdiversity.com/jobseeker/ takes only a moment, and lets you also access the new versions of our easy-to-use searchable resume posting and custom job search agent.

More information, see: http://www.imdiversity.com/migration/

Updates to the Virtual Diversity Career Fair

2009-03-25T12:41:00.002-05:00

We're pleased to announce the addition of several employers participating in the 2009 Virtual Diversity Career Fair, co-presented by IMDiversity, THE BLACK COLLEGIAN Online, and Black College Wire. The annual event spotlights employers who confirm they are still actively seeking entry-level and student/recent graduate candidates for open positions in the second semester until graduation. Interested candidates of all backgrounds, majors and degree types are welcomed to review and apply for opportunities.

Now available for review on the Fair are profiles and current opportunity postings for the following employers:

Boy Scouts of America

CGI

City Year

Covance, Inc.

FBI

GEICO

Harris Corporation

Mercer

MTA Metro-North Railroad / Human Resources - Employment

Raytheon

Regions Financial Corporation

SRA International, Inc.

The TJX Companies, Inc.

T-Mobile

Walgreens

Whirlpool Corporation

Additional employers will be added on a rolling basis as they come in and announced throughout the duration of the Fair.

Seasonal Special: Entry-Level and Student Job Opportunities

2009-03-04T10:19:00.003-06:00

The Editors are pleased to announce their work on our annual just-in-time features for our site visitors who are seeking entry-level or student internship/co-op employment opportunities before graduation.

We've added new readings and current opportunity updates to our Entry-Level/New Graduate and Internship/Co-op quick search channels, including the annual feature analysis, Job Outlook for the Class of 2009, by Dr. Phil Gardner, from our sister publication, THE BLACK COLLEGIAN Magazine.

The 2009 Outlook definitely looks bleak, says the director of the Collegiate Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University. But there are some remaining bright spots, as new grads in some majors continue to benefit from large retiree pool.

Nonetheless, it is clear that the class of 2009 faces a much more daunting task entering the entry-level job market than we've seen in many years. From our perspective as a producer of multiple jobs and careers sites, employers across a wide variety of sectors are clearly trending toward modest college hiring activity. Compared to this time last year, fewer new opportunities for new college graduates are being featured on our Entry-Level Channel. Anecdotally, many employers report they completed their planned college hiring activity earlier this season, or have scaled back on campus recruitment events.

But the outlook is not entirely hopeless, as we've discovered in an ongoing informal survey of employers this late winter, and IMDiversity is pleased to be a co-presenter of the 2009 Virtual Diversity Career Fair for recent grads and entry-level candidates being hosted on THE BLACK COLLEGIAN Online, and also co-presented this year by our friends at Black College Wire, the news service for Black college students.

Following last year's highly successful Pre-Graduation Virtual Career Fair, this annual online event feature the employers from the Top 100 Employers List, as seen in THE BLACK COLLEGIAN Magazine Second Semester Super Issue, plus other employers from a variety of sectors who confirm they are still seeking diverse entry-level candidates despite the economic downturn and decreased campus recruitment activity. Many are also seeking college students and new graduates for internships and coops.

We will post more about the Fair in the days to come, but in the meantime encourage IMDiversity.com student and entry-level jobseekers of all backgrounds, majors and career interests to visit the Fair, create a quick free THE BLACK COLLEGIAN Online Job Tools account using the Fair's quick preregistration form, and subscribe for Fair updates.

IMDiversity publishes THE BLACK COLLEGIAN Second Semester Super Issue

2009-02-04T10:54:00.000-06:00

We're pleased to announce the release of THE BLACK COLLEGIAN Magazine Second Semester 2009 Super Issue - the Top 100 Employers / African-American History Month Issue!

Online previews of the magazine features will be released at THE BLACK COLLEGIAN Online throughout the month, as well as extra and extended, online-only features.

Highlights include:

TOP 100 Employers for the Class of 2009
Job Outlook for the Class of ‘09
African-American History 101 Contest
Barack Obama: The Making of the President 2008
How to Find Your Dream Job In a Nightmare Economy
Living Beyond the Dream - 40 Years After Dr. King
Diversifying Graduate and Professional School
Career and Life Management Plan: Why Include Graduate School?

The magazine is distributed through Career Services offices on college campuses nationwide.

Job Fair Specials: NPO, NGO and "Dot-Org" Jobs

2008-11-24T15:40:00.000-06:00

Following on the heels of our Multimedia and New Media Jobs Fair, and in the spirit of the harvest/Thanksgiving season, we are continuing with our new series of short-term, time-sensitive Job Fair Specials with a new focus for the rest of the November: "Opportunities in: Nonprofit, Not-for-Profit, NGO and Community Service".

At the request of several past site users now, as well as a number of hiring organizations, this will place special focus on Featured Opportunities with non-corporate employers. Whether small community organizations in the non-profit/not-profit sectors, global non-governmental organizations, charitable foundations, or sort-of-public/corporate entities such as the Corporation for Broadcasting, many of these employers may be actively promoting excellent opportunities for professionals of all kinds, applied toward particularly rewarding kinds of do-gooder ends. However, such positions may also go under-noticed in regular, high-volume job search results.

So if you're a "dot-org" kind of person, do take a look at some of the employers highlighted in fair, running now through November 30, 2008. If you are interested in these kinds of opportunities, apply to (or offer) any, and would like to see us highlight more of them, be sure to let us know.

IMDiversity's 100K-Plus Jobs Section Back Online

2008-11-10T07:05:00.004-06:00

After a hiatus, IMDiversity has restored our feature, $100K-Plus Jobs, our section of high-paying featured job opportunities offering salary ranges extending to $100,000 or above. Visitors may notice that in some cases, positions that are not regular full-time salary jobs may offer equivalent hourly rates instead.

We had to take this highly trafficked section offline for a period during the fall in order to work on new programming and placement for it. users are welcomed to visit and bookmark the section once again, as well as to create save the $100K-Jobs search results as a personal auto-alert agent by creating a free custom My Job Tools Account at IMDiversity.

Special: Jobs in Digital Media and Arts - Through Nov. 15

2008-11-09T08:18:00.001-06:00

IMDiversity is pleased to announce to its visitors our Special Digital Media and Arts Virtual Job Fair, this week only. The section features time-sensitive opportunities related to digital/multmedia, graphic design, animation and Web content, working with employers in both industry and academia.

Positions seek candidates with experience in areas ranging from television direction to graphic design, interactive communications to gaming artists, photography to audio production.

Because of the time-sensitive nature of the postings, artists and media producers should immediately create a free My Job Tools Account at IMDiversity upon identifying a position of interest so that they can save a personal copy of the posting. Applicants should also take care to note the exact application steps in the in the posting, as a number of them require submission of supplemental materials and portfolio samples (some by snail mail), in addition to the usual resume/CV and cover letters.

Visit the job fair page at IMDiversity

IMDiversity.com Election Night Results and Protection section

2008-11-04T15:13:00.003-06:00

The editors have been working on posting the IMDiversity.com Election Night Results and Protection section, whittling down the crazy array of info out there to compile live coverage streams, a shortlist of places to locate coverage, as well as a detailed section of resources (some ethnic- or language-specific) for identifying, reporting, and getting assistance confronting any voter intimidation, obstruction or other problems today.

Anyone who encounters voter obstruction is encouraged to consult the section, and/or to contact 1-866-OUR-VOTE (English), 800-966-5946 (Multingual Asian), or 1-888-Ve-y-Vota (Spanish), as well as the US Department of Justice Civil Rights Division Voting SectionCall 202-307-2767 or toll-free at 800-253-3931.

ADDED: Jobs for US - Alabama Opportunities Center

2008-10-30T06:47:00.004-05:00

The editors have added this month the latest in our series of job location quicksearch sections, the Jobs for US - Alabama Opportunities Center at IMDiversity.com.

Like other location quicksearches in our online Career Center, the section provides pre-programmed, easy-access searches of featured opportunities in major cities throughout the state, as well as in neighboring states. Search results can be refined with custom criteria and saved to a free Job Tools for later one-click searches, or as an auto-search job agent with alert notifications sent be email.

Other helpful tools bundled in include a salary calculator, links to extended entry-level and student opportunity searches, and a link to graduate and professional school information for those considering going back to get a higher degree.

The new quicksearch can be found in the Jobs QuickSearch section of the Career Center, along with other new quicksearches added this year, most recently Jobs for US - North Carolina, Jobs for US - Colorado, and Jobs for US - Arizona.

Added: IMDiversity.com Featured Jobs in Academia

2008-10-28T12:12:00.004-05:00

As the academic job search cycle winds down for the season, with most application deadlines falling between mid-October and mid-November for extended searches, IMDiversity.com Career Center has expanded its QuickSearch Section: Jobs in Academia, Education, and Training. A new component highlights time-sensitive Featured Jobs with education employers.
Although the section spotlights a broader range of education-related opportunities, including jobs in the primary, secondary and continuing education fields, as well as corporate education and training, this month's focus will emphasize time-sensitive positions in higher education. Current employers range from community colleges to 4-year colleges and graduate degree-granting institutions throughout the U.S., as well as select institutions abroad.

Positions offered also vary, including both faculty (from ad hoc lecturer to tenure-track professors) and staff/administrator openings, as well as an occasional fellowship. As always, the section also includes pre-programmed quicksearches that can be refined with custom criteria and saved for future use as auto-alert agents. All employers listed have opted to promote institutional diversity through placing their open positions on the IMDiversity.com Career Center.

Because of the short-lived postings and close deadlines for most applications, we encourage visitors seeking academic positions to be certain to create a free account on IMDiversity and save a personal copy of the posting for reference, and to carefully review and follow the application instructions specified in the posting as soon as possible. Note that some of the jobs featured this month are subject to quick expiration, and may be removed at any time by the employers if filled, withdrawn or changed.

Finally, we will also be highlighting select featured academic employers this month, and encourage visitors to also review their employer profiles for more institutional details.

Among our spotlighted employer profiles this month are Northeastern University in Boston, MA and The New School University in NYC. Additionally, we are pleased offer featured jobs with Ithaca College in Ithaca, NY; Oakton Community College in Skokie, IL; and multiple campuses throughout two state college systems -- the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education and the Alabama College System.

If you or someone you know are actively seeking opportunities in academia, please visit the section soon, as most of the positions will close within the next three weeks.

Good luck!

News Supplement: Jobs and the Economy

2008-10-24T10:39:00.000-05:00

This week's supplement to the IMDiversity.com Career Center AP New Headlines again places focus on the jobs and the loss thereof in the nation's continuing economic meltdown.

AP Economics Writer CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER reports that the number of new claims for jobless benefits increased by more than expected in mid-October, "and companies from Goldman Sachs to Yahoo have announced thousands of layoffs in the past few days as the financial crisis, tighter credit, rising foreclosures and myriad other woes take their toll on the economy."

And, of course, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan predicted last week that there's plenty more pain to follow.

Nonetheless, it appears that many people are showing "a remarkable...optimism despite economists' widespread expectations that a serious recession is brewing," says a related report by ALAN FRAM. According to an AP-GFK Poll, "Most expect the economy to generally be better and the stock market to be rising three months from now," but "Majorities also doubt unemployment will fall or home values will rise by then, and people are split over whether their personal finances will improve."

It seems that while most people believe that economic conditions will improve, they are prepared to have to wait for at least a year before "more jobs and higher real estate values" will start improving their own financial conditions on Main Street.

There seems little doubt that this optimism has much to do with election-year fever. As followers of the "hope and change" candidate, supporters of Barack Obama seem to project a somewhat rosier future. Forty-four percent of those polled said they think the economy will improve if Democrat Obama is elected, while 34 percent said it would get better if Republican John McCain wins.

In a sidebar, the candidates' own statements on jobless claims both tend to lay blame squarely on the Bush administration, and a second sidebar comapres their healthcare plans at a glance.

In light of this continuing bad news, the AP has also been running a series of practical nuts-and-bolts focused on navigating unemployment and belt-tightening. An additional piece explains upcoming IRS changes in 2009 that may raise limits on contributions to 401(k) and SEP plans. Also useful are writer David Pitt's "Tips for benefits enrollment season".

Another casualty of the economic crisis, adds Business Writer Joyce Rosenberg, may well be your usual year-end bonus or holiday gifts.

Need help making sense of all the wildly yo-yo-ing jobless claims news coming from the DoL? (And who doesn't?) Meltdown 101: Jobless Claims and the Economy (also by Christopher Rugaber) provides a series of succinct Q&As on how to interpret reported data.

See all the readings in the current supplement.

Career Center Blog Back Online -- and Tackling Layoffs

2008-09-25T08:52:00.000-05:00

After taking a break in the late summer to reorganize a number of sections throughout our site network, the editors are resuming work on the blog.

This fall we'll be posting news about a number of new features, both new articles of interest and news about expanded tools in our featured jobs and jobs quicksearch sections.

Meanwhile, though, we are running a series of occasional readings with a particularly timely focus, as the economy continues to sag and the monthly employment reports do not look too good.

Through our partnership with the WSJ Career Journal, we're running a follow-up to this spring's feature, What to Do After a Layoff -- detailing "how to make the most of a devastating situation".

The piece offered a lot of good advice for how to organize your affairs when the worst happened. But as conomic conditions have continued to worsen since then, the new piece focuses on better advice still for this climate: Don't wait.

Layoff Rumors? Get Ready To Get Busy
What to do when the rumors start flying

Focusing on how to proactively prepare for the worst, the article's suggestions go beyond the basic, obvious checkboxes -- updating your resume, etc. The moment you get a whiff that things may not be 100% stable at work, it suggests, you'd do well to carefully start gathering the materials you would need to be accessible outside of the office, preparing a workspace and business line in your home, and other actions enabling you to "hit the ground running". When/if disaster strikes, you'll need to be ready on day one to "meet your new boss" (you) and have the resources to statr your new full-time job (finding one).

-- Finally, starting this fall, we'll be supplementing such features with occasional special focus reportage in our Career Center AP News Headlines section. Readings will focus on the big employment picture and trends, at both national and lcoal levels, as well as the areas and industries where there are continuing worker shortages.

So stop back soon.

Job Hunter Chronicles: Sys Admin Found Last 3 Jobs Online

2008-07-28T22:15:00.000-05:00

From The Job Hunters Chronicles:

A new submission by Alex Alborzfard, a systems administrator, took up the question we posed at the launch of our new Chronicles section: "Does Anyone Really Find a Job Online?"

The answer in Alborzfard's case, at least, is: "Absolutely".

There's no going back for this IT professional, who says he has found his last three jobs using online job boards, search agents and networking tools, and that he will "Never Buy the Sunday Paper Again!"

But, he cautions, the time- and cost-saving convenience of online job sites does not mean that old rules don't apply: using online measures alone cannot replace good, old-fashioned networking. In addition to making use of online job search and automated-search technologies, he suggests that social networking sites such as LinkedIn are have also played an important role in his success finding employment online.

Read the full submission here.

New Feature: The Job Hunters Chronicles

2008-06-05T17:24:00.004-05:00

New on the IMDiversity Career Center, we're pleased to kick off our new feature, The Job Hunters Chronicles, with three submissions.

Although the software engineer, a dot-com executive, and a journalist who works as a government liason for a non-profit service agency are all in very different occupations, they share a common theme in their job hunting stories.

K.D., a software engineer who wanted to relocate from San Francisco to Chicago, took a fairly traditional approach to posting his resume on an online job board, and was lucky to be contacted by a desirable employer. However, he recalls that that first contact was just a foot in the door. He had not anticipated the highly time-consuming electronic back-and-forth that ensued, including multiple interviews and a sample of original code programming solving a problem the company sent him.

David Fox, a dot-com executive, focuses on the importance of using online tools to thoroughly research a prospective employer. In his case, the time spent researching the products and even the flaws of his current employer's websites -- and then corresponding with a hiring manager about them at length and in detail -- paid off.

Shawn Chollete, who had worked as a journalist, similarly landed a good job at a NPO through a seemingly round-about fashion: through networking on sites like Facebook and MySpace, and ultimately cross-referencing these social resources with contacts in job postings he wanted to apply to.

If there's one common thread among our inaugural user contributors to The Job Hunters Chronicles, it seems to be that simply posting to job boards and applying to jobs is only the first step in a job search process. Following up by using the widest range of online tools to research, communicate with, and present themselves to their prospective employers is key to successfully concluding a job hunt online.

Amen.

Do you have a story to share with other jobseekers abot what worked or didn't work for you in online job searching? Please submit it to The Job Hunters Chronicles, or feel free to leave a coment posted here on this thread.

Job Hunters Chronicles: Does Anyone Really Find a Job Online?

2008-05-08T15:47:00.004-05:00

This was a question that we overheard recently, and that became the topic of an extended discussion on Facebook. The frustration in it was clear as a bell, and it ultimately led the editors at IMDiversity to decide we wanted to explore the topic more deeply.

From the inside perspective of folks who work with web technology and in the areas of student and professional recruitment (online and offline), we can say with some authority and certainty that the answer is, "Yes, some people do find and get jobs using online tools..."

But from the same perspective, we also have to add, "...but it's not always as quick and straightforward as it seems."

Remember those Super Bowl commercials a number of years back where an office worker just posted a resume on an online job board just sat back and waited for the job offers to flood in along with piles of gifts and bouquets of flowers? Well, we've been in the business for some time, and while we've certainly seen jobseekers get connected with hiring employers and ultimately close on good employment opportunities through using online tools, we've never seen one get a floral bouquet with it...not one!

Just "going fishing" by taking a 10 minutes to drop a resume on a job board may be an adequate job hunt strategy for a very elite job seeker with stellar credentials, mounds of experience, an eloquent writing style that allows his or her winning personality to radiate off the virtual page, and the ideal skillset and references, background and presentation style to make a perfect organizational fit that is recognized by a highly active, dedicated and keen-eyed recruiter just itching to make this one hire out of several ASAP.

But you and me ain't that very elite person. Folks like us have to, as the old adage goes, "treat finding a job as if it was our job." We know that getting a good job can take some thought, resourcefulness and sometimes a little luck.

We also know that no matter how clever the technology that stands between us and the job of our dreams, that doesn't mean that more traditional strategies, preparation, negotiation and yes, offline action, can be tossed out the window. We've seen that even the most advanced resume database tool cannot save the applicant with the sloppy and unproofread resume, or lackluster or cocky or careless cover letter. We've seen some great jobseekers and great jobs pass each other by like ships in the night just because of slightly mistyped or outdated contact information on one side or another or both.

All we have to do is look at the spam in our email in-boxes to be reminded that sometimes, the powerful automating and communications technologies that are created to make our lives easier can tend, as they evolve and spread, to become so complex that we have to stop and periodically reassess how we can make the best use of them.

The editors will address this issue in a number of ways on our site this year, and we want to invite you to share stories about your online job search experiences for an upcoming new feature, The Job Hunters Chronicles.

We are seeking submissions from you -- the jobseeker, our readers or other site visitors -- in short-article format sharing your insights about how you used the Internet in a job search, and your frank experiences of what "worked" or "definitely did not work" for you in locating, applying to, or negotiating for job opportunities using online methods and tools. What tips or strategies or pitfalls to avoid?

If you have a good story to share with other jobseekers, please send them in to The Job Hunters Chronicles.

New Grad Job Features Winding Down this Week

2008-05-08T14:59:00.002-05:00

As we move toward the conclusion of this year's Pre-Graduation Virtual Career Fair ending this coming weekend at THE BLACK COLLEGIAN Online, co-presented by IMDiversity, we are pleased to announce the addition of new opportunities links and recruiter's messages by additional participants including...

Citizen Schools National Teaching Fellowships

Civilian Opportunities with the Department of Navy - Naval Inventory Control Point

New opportunities added by IBM

Additionally and simultaneously, a number of fresh featured Internships/Fellowships and Entry-Level/New College Hire/Trainee Jobs have been posted the job channels at IMDiversity.

These free seasonal features are intended to connect diverse students and new college graduates to employers who are currently publishing opportunities available to students or to entry-level candidates just before graduation. In years, the editors jokingly referred to them as "the procrastinator's special," as in, where were you when the career center was holding all those campus job fairs last semester?

Of course, by this time, the opportunities we were featuring with early summer start dates are few on our jobs databases; over the past couple weeks, they've been replaced by many more that are already being filled for next fall and winter.

But these features this year also dispel the myth "employers have filled their college hiring needs" this close to graduation. We've heard from college recruitment professionals at a diverse range of companies and organizations -- from multinationals to non-profits to government agencies -- who told us the campus recruiting season definitely left them with remaining openings. Others had extended application deadlines for some frankly amazing opportunities, as well as well-paid fellowships, leadership projects, and internships offering substantive work experiences coming up quickly for the summer.

This year's virtual career fair was one of the liveliest and most well-trafficked we've hosted in some time, and also had some of the most robust participation by the companies. We definitely appreciated the time jobseekers took to fill out our Career Fair survey to tell us about which sites they visited and which had scheduled interviews with them. We also appreciated the input of employers who often provided very detailed, helpful advice about applying to the specific opportunities they were hiring for.

We feel that the active participation of both helped make the 2008 Pre-Graduation Virtual Career Fair a real success, and are considering making such a feature a regular event on our sites for the future. Meanwhile, we'll continue to welcome feedback, suggestions or success stories from all who participated, and hope others still seeking a job will visit the fair in its final weekend.

General What's New Postings Moving to New Address

2008-05-02T09:53:00.002-05:00

After taking some time off to reconfigure our postings, IMDiversity's editors and contributors/bloggers have determined to separate the general "What's New" postings that we had been posting in this space for posting on a stand-alone but related address:

http://imdiversity.blogspot.com

This current blog, http://diversitycareers.blogspot.com/, will continue to be updated with appropriate content related to career development, workplace issues, diversity- and employment-related topics, and announcements of opportunities and events of interest to a wide range of visitors coming from the Career Center channel of our main site IMDiversity.com, and from elsewhere.

However, those announcements that are primarily related to internal news and announcements of goings-on with the IMDiversity.com and THE BLACK COLLEGIAN Online network, as well as THE BLACK COLLEGIAN Magazine, will be posted on http://imdiversity.blogspot.com. These items will be primarily of interest to regular active-job-seeker visitors and clients of our organization, those making use of our jobs and resume tools, etc. on our main site, as well as those interested in corporate news and information about IMDiversity, Inc.

In fact, this is how we had planned to approach the integration of the blogs into our site activities from the beginning, believing that it was in the interests of our readers who were seeing different kinds of content. However, it took us a little while to (re)secure and configure the http://imdiversity.blogspot.com address.

We hope this change will be beneficial to our readers and site visitors moving forward.

-- The editors

Nearing Graduation and Still No Job. NOW what?

2008-03-15T06:37:00.000-05:00

"School's out, you have that degree and you are ready to conquer the world. Only

one thing stands between you and your professional success: You don't have a

job. So now what? Should you begin a massive online resume campaign and then

wait for employers to call? Should you take any job you can get now and hop

around until you find one that fits? Should you enlist the help of a headhunter?

Should you ask everyone you know for a job?"

These are the timely questions explored in Pamela McBride's feature article, You're a Graduate and No Job - Now What?, from THE BLACK COLLEGIAN's Second Semester Super Issue, and they will likely resonate for a number of soon-to-be-grads who are struggling to fend off
senioritis, growing anxious about what lies ahead.

More so than in recent years past, many of our readers from the Class of 2008 who have not yet landed jobs after the campus recruiting are understandably uneasy about the mixed messages they've been receiving about their employment outlook. On one hand, official reports of a general economic slow-down are punctuated by news reports of a hiring drop across many sectors (not only clearly struggling ones like manufacturing and those directly affected by the housing bust) and rising unemployment in many states.

On the other hand, as Dr. Phil Gardner reports in his annual study of the Job Outlook for this
year's college graduates, there are bright spots on the horizon that should help motivated
new grads get a shot at launching rewarding careers. Shortages of skilled, educated workers in
areas such as IT, healthcare and secondary education have created a good range of opportunities for certificate- and degree-holders in these fields, according to numerous industry reports.

(However, taking advantage of the good, better-paying opportunities in these areas may mean
widening a search to jobs outside the most popular locations, looking at businesses in new
regions that could require relocation.)

In many other industries, however, the bright spot for new grads is the result demographic
trends: The retirement of workers from the "Baby Boom" generation that has been forecast for a number of years is now clearly upon us. As retirees leave the workforce, many employers are
retooling their approach to hiring to fill vacant positions with young candidates, sometimes
following a period of "probation" and additional training, or sometimes directly hiring out of their intern pool.

In fact, this year, THE BLACK COLLEGIAN's annual Top Employers survey showed that many national organizations and smaller employers had planned robust college hiring
activities for 2008. Among the Top 100 hiring employers ranked in our survey, some indicated in our follow-up survey that they were still accepting applications from students and new grads
even after their campus recruiting was over for the season.

As a result, we are holding a spring 2008 Pre-Graduation Virtual Career Fair, creating a space to connect jobseekers with those employers who specifically told us they are still actively considering entry-level applicants for open positions.

Hosted on our site at www.black-collegian.com, the Fair is co-presented by IMDiversity.com, and all entry-level/student jobseekers of all backgrounds are welcomed, as are employers who use both THE BLACK COLLEGIAN Online and IMDiversity.com.

The Fair begins March 15, and will be updated on an ongoing basis in the run-up
right until graduation at the end of April / beginning of May. Students who still need a
post-graduation job (or, in some cases, a summer appointment or internship) are encouraged to
make repeat visits to the Fair, as it is updated during this period, and review and apply to
open positions right away. Time is of the essence, in most cases, which is why we have
decided to circumvent our normal, paid job listings and publish the employer-provided,
direct-access links to the relevant open positions where students and grads still have a shot.

We extended our congratulations on making it through the school year, and our best wishes in
your search. We also encourage you to let us know if you land a position for an upcoming special feature we will be publishing.

March 15 - April 25, 2008 @

THE BLACK COLLEGIAN Online

GO

Don't Put Your Job Hunt On Hold for the Holidays

2007-12-21T17:59:00.000-06:00

While some of the editors are getting ready to take a few days off (alas, not all of us will be off this next week), we leave some good advice from the career experts at the WSJ/Career Journal:

Don't Put Your Job Hunt On Hold for the Holidays

It's a myth that hiring slows down between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day, says popular Journal columnist PERRI CAPELL. Sometimes, in fact, it's the very opposite, as "managers try to fill jobs before their budgets expire."

"Not only don't things slow down in December," says Tim Jones, vice president of human resources for Ixia, a communications technology test systems maker. "but there's a sense of urgency to fill jobs in many cases."

In fact, from the perspective of IMDiversity's editors, December has been an active month for the posting of jobs on our job banks. The activity seems to have been at least partially boosted by the fact of imminent or slightly extended deadlines for internships, coops and other entry-level or educational opportunities for the late spring and summer (yes, already), where a high volume of applications must be in early enough in the new year so that decisions can be made for a summer start.

For others, the holidays can be an ideal time to "line up one's ducks," fine-tune your resume, take the time to do the kind of employer research we all know we should be doing thoroughly, but don't always have time and focus to do as well as we should.

So, while we wish everyone a happy holiday season, we also urge those who are in an active job search to not let too much momentum go to waste over the next couple of weeks, but keep up the efforts to make 2008 a very happy new year indeed.

Good luck!

New edition of THE BLACK COLLEGIAN on campus

2007-10-29T13:44:00.000-05:00

The staff at IMDiversity is pleased to announce that the First Semester Super Issue of THE BLACK COLLEGIAN has made its way to college campuses. Available at colleges nationwide, primarily through career services offices, as well as through direct personal subscriptions, the new Career Planning and Job Search Issue features:

The annual TOP 100 Diversity Employers List
Careers Focus on Engineering, Science and Technology, including an interview with NASA astronaut Joan Higginbotham
A new special report on the progress at New Orleans' HBCUs two years after Hurricane Katrina, in collaboration with Black College Wire
Kanye West feature profile
Campus to Careers section

The magazine is free for students through the campus career center. Stop in and get your copy for these features and many more today, or stop in at the THE BLACK COLLEGIAN Online later this month for some previews and extended features.

From the Author: Secrets of the Hidden Job Markets

2007-10-22T14:14:00.000-05:00

Following up on a comment left on our September blog post about the new book, Secrets of the Hidden Job Markets, we responded to the author, Janet White, to invite her to share in a little more detail the idea behind her "contrarian" job-hunting approach, which calls on jobseekers to"Change Your Thinking to Get the Job of Your Dreams."

More specifically, we were interested in how White's "non-traditional" approach could serve the interests of underrepresented minority and women jobseekers in particular. Thanks to Ms. White for taking the time to share her response:

IMDiversity: Why and how is the non-traditional approach outlined in the book relevant specifically to the interests of underrepresented minority and women jobseekers?

Author Janet White responds: The point of my book is that you have within yourself the most powerful job-finding tool that exists – your mind. Your thoughts are so powerful that they can help you get, or hinder you from getting that dream job – regardless of your gender, skin color, age, country of origin, disability or whatever.

This is because of the Universal Law of Attraction, which states that you attract to yourself anything you focus on, feel strongly about or believe to be true. Just as soil turns seeds into plants, so the LOA turns your “seeds” of thoughts, feelings and beliefs into “demonstrations” that will reflect those thoughts, feelings and beliefs right back at you, whether you really want them or not.

The problem is that most people focus on what they don’t want and then they complain when it shows up. When you change your thinking, everything changes – what you do, what you say, how you act, and most importantly, you change the way other people respond to you.

For example, if you believe you’re being discriminated against because you’re a minority woman, you will find yourself in situations in which female diversity candidates receive a cool reception.

But when you believe you are welcomed by businesses because of your unique talents, experience and expertise, and your ability to help them accomplish their goals, then that will be your experience and your diversity status will be irrelevant.

Secrets of the Hidden Job Market: Change Your Thinking to Get the Job of Your Dream was written specifically to get you to realize what you believe to be true about yourself and the process of job hunting, and to help you have the experiences you want.

About Secrets of the Hidden Job Market: Change Your Thinking to Get the Job of Your Dreams: http://www.jobmarketsecrets.com/.

What do you think about this topic? Leave us a comment on this post.

Surveyed HR and Training Executives Unsure How to Apply Diversity

2007-09-06T17:23:00.000-05:00

Surveyed HR and Training Executives Unsure How to Apply Diversity, reported by Kim R Wells, on his blog, Professional Edge:

According to a recent article by Kathy Gurchiek in Society of Human Resource Management's HR News, putting diversity into practice has been a challenge for many firms. For many of you young professionals looking to access and advance in today's top corporations this may be of interest to you.

According to the article, organizations are increasingly committed to diversity in their workforce, but one-fourth of more than 2,000 senior HR and training executives polled are unsure how to apply it and leverage its benefits; a conclusion based on findings by the Boston-based Novations Group, a global consulting organization that commissioned the Internet survey of 2,046 workers conducted in February 2007.

Kim Wells is a regular columnist and blogger for IMDiversity and THE BLACK COLLEGIAN, as well as a business consultant and Career Services Director at Howard University.