Recession-Proof Your Job with Distance Education

November 26, 2008 at 11:15 pm · Filed under Job Seeker Resources ·Tagged , , , , ,

In tough economic times, people’s worries naturally turn to keeping their jobs.  No one relishes the prospect of opening their paycheck and finding a pink slip inside, ruining what you thought was a secure job.  It’s gotten bad enough that even employers formerly thought of as bulletproof (Google, for example) are laying off large numbers of employees.  Some retail outlets like Circuit City are closing their doors outright, and others such as Kay Bee Toys and Wilson’s Leather are closing huge portions of their retail operations.  Even government employees, formerly thought of as having recession-proof jobs, are worried about the stability of their positions.  In times of such economic uncertainty, is there any way you can make your employer see you as a “recession-proof” invaluable asset?  You will, of course, want to stay active in your personal job search and check  local job listings, in addition, there’s one other huge step you can take, too.

One really good way to let your employer know how much you value your job is to educate yourself.  If two similarly benefited and salaried employees are both up for layoff consideration ,an employer is usually going to retain the employee that’s achieved the highest level of education.  An employer wants a worker that is always going to strive to better themselves by upgrading their knowledge, to the extent that some of them even provide 100% reimbursement to employees for the cost of education!  Most employers see helping their employees attain an education as a win-win situation, as they want their workers to be as educated as is possible.

It may seem nearly impossible to keep up with the demands of a full time job, your house and family and friends, while attending college at the same time.  While it’s difficult, it’s not impossible- many people make this arrangement work.  Technology has presented us with another alternative- distance education, or home schooling, for higher education.  You can earn a degree in much less time than you thought possible, and from the comfort of wherever you keep your computer!  You’ll be receiving a quality education without the hassles of buying textbooks, finding parking, making yourself presentable and adhering to a predetermined schedule, and at a comparable cost to classes in a traditional educational setting, as well.

Most online classes consist of reading electronic course packs or text books, and then participating in discussions via email or message board, while competing both individual and group writing assignments.  You’ll want to get familiar with the tools that allow groups in disparate time zones and geographic locations to stay in contact, such as Internet Relay Chat and instant messenger- this is because there is group work involved in many of these types of classes.  The biggest attraction of distance learning is that you can largely set your own schedule- if the urge to write a paper strikes you at 4 AM, you can write it then, and if you wake up thinking about a great point to raise in discussion, you don’t have to wait for class to start to do it.  Costs for online education are comparable to costs of attending classes in a physical location, as well, so it isn’t as if it’s prohibitively expensive, either.

You will need a healthy dose of self discipline to succeed at distance learning, and you’ll need to be personally responsible and provide your own motivation, as well.  You’re going to have to be tough on yourself- no classes to attend means no instructors to harangue you or remind you about assignments, so you’re going to have to keep abreast of things all on your own.  If this sounds like something you can handle, you should ask your employer about reimbursement for online education- everyone wins!

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Are You Setting the Right HR SEO Goals?

November 10, 2008 at 10:01 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , ,

The campaign for meeting HR SEO goals must include the following:.

1. Drive highly targeted job seeker traffic to the corporate website.

2. Add to the employer’s brand by obtaining high positions on search engine ranking pages for pages that contain highly relatable content related to common keyword strings used by the target job seeker.

As you have seen, more companies every day are jumping into the HR SEO field.  All of these vendors are selling pretty much the same thing, usually manifested something like “we will get your jobs out of your ATS, build a micro-site to host them, and then optimize it for the search engines, sending those applicants back into your ATS”.

While this approach will likely lead to pages that are optimized for the search engines to find, it’s still got the problem that it’s not meeting the two stated goals of any SEO campaign.  Just being indexed in Google doesn’t mean that more job seekers will apply for your jobs.  Optimizing a page for the search engines does not mean that job seekers are going to find your pages- structure is not enough, in order to build brand authority you need to get other highly-ranked sites to link to your pages or no one will see your jobs!

Let’s look at why.

You need to have optimized pages for keyword phrases that job seekers are actually searching for. If no one is typing in “pediatric nurse jobs in Chicago, Illinois” into the Google, Yahoo, or MSN search box (they aren’t), then it doesn’t matter if you spent $10,000 or just $1 on optimizing that page. If no one is searching for that keyword phrase, there will be no job seekers applying for the jobs.  Can you remember the last time you used Google and went deeper than the first or maybe the second page of results? Chances are you don’t do that very often.  In fact, research shows that more than 85% of all traffic is driven by the results on the first page- so top 10 or top 20 rankings are all that really matter.  If you’re optimizing for a search string that has 4 or more words in it, being on page two means being irrelevant, because there are so few people using that search string that even if you get all the traffic in a month, you’re only getting maybe 100 extra views on your pages.  That’s not going to drive traffic!

So is there anything out there that does work?

The first step you have to take is to do research on keywords- in other words, researching a list of potential keyword search strings and using your research to develop a litany of “keyword phrases” your target audience is likely to use to search for jobs.  You can only then begin to build a “landing page” for your jobs, specifically designed and coded to rank in the top 10 results for the particular phrase you chose to use to attract jobseekers to your jobs.  Again, the key to SEO is knowing what your job seekers are typing into Google.  Then, and only then, do you know what phrases you need to optimize pages for.  Once you have a page that is optimized, most vendors will help to “submit” or promote this page to Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.

This is not difficult to do.

THAT’S NOT ENOUGH THOUGH! Taking the above steps will probably get you into Google’s index- but not on page 1 of the search engine results.  If it’s a competitive phrase, you probably won’t be on page 2, 3 or 4, either.  The final step of the SEO process is also the most time consuming, difficult and expensive process.  However, without the proper marketing, your landing pages and career site are identical to everyone else’s.  You must obtain back links from other high-quality and well-thought-of websites to be seen as the authority.

In closing, there are 3 important parts of any SEO strategy.

1. Doing the proper keyword research to figure out how to drive jobseekers to your career site while building your brand.

2. Implementing web pages that are optimized for those keywords.

3. Marketing the landing page that builds authority and credibility for these new pages.

Any HR SEO strategy that doesn’t consider all 3 of these aspects is bound to fail, and that failure is measurable- if you’re not driving additional traffic to your career site, then the campaign isn’t working.

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Anchorage Alaksa Jobs

October 24, 2008 at 8:40 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , , ,

Are you trying to find Anchorage Alaska Jobs? Well you’re in luck, as Alaska is a state with a lot of opportunities for trained engineers of all types.

Attracting quality engineers to work in Alaska can be a tough sell- the winters are long, the daylight hours are disproportionately dark, and there is a relatively lower standard of living throughout the state. Even with those drawbacks, Alaska has experienced growth over the last 50 or 60 years- the population of Anchorage has grown from 20 thousand in 1950 to over a quarter of a million people today, due to massive feats of engineering such as paving roads to cut down on dust, gravity sewers, and a clean, safe, non-frozen water supply. The natural gas pipeline run down from the Kenai fields was also instrumental in providing a safe, clean, reliable source of energy to the professional community working in Anchorage, supplanting the floor stove, which was susceptible to flooding and overheating, leading to many fires. What did all of these projects have in common? They needed skilled engineers to be successfully carried out!

As the state’s environmental challenges ensure that there will always be large-scale engineering projects to take on, engineers remain in high demand in that state. All one has to do is look at any industry-specific publication, Association web site, or engineering job board to determine that engineers and surveyors are always going to be in demand in America’s northernmost state. There are surely more Alaska engineering jobs available than there are people to fill them, as people in the industry are reporting an increase in the amount of firms trying to lure them away from positions they already hold to work %LINK2%  instead. This is just further evidence that engineering is a recession-proof job- engineers are always in demand, no matter the economic outlook!

The future outlook for %KEYWORD1%  is rosy, if for nothing else than the fact that the Federal government is constantly increasing funds sent there to develop and acquire new sources of oil and natural gas. Expansion of infrastructure, construction of utility pipelines and the desire to exploit new sources of oil and natural gas ensure that there will be many large-scale engineering projects going on in Alaska, and for quite a while as well. Among young people, engineering isn’t really seen as a “cool” or desirable profession, so as older veteran engineers retire, there are fewer college graduates coming in behind them to take their jobs.

Along with Alaska’s limited transportation and road system, there’s a pretty extreme climate, too. All of these factors combine to form a need for increased ingenuity from the Alaska engineer- at the same time, working in Alaska means not working in a cube, but working in a climate on the cutting edge of design, and it also means respect from others in the industry that know of the difficulty of working in Alaska.

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Looking for a Career Nursing?

September 3, 2008 at 9:25 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , , ,

If you were enrolling in a nurse training program in the mid to late 1990’s, you probably heard that you were really in for it, training for a difficult jobs- you also probably heard that with all these nurse training schools popping up, it was going to be very hard to have a career nursing, as there just weren’t enough jobs to go around.

Well, flash forward to the end of the first decade of the new century.  Prognosticators who study the healthcare industry have been predicting for a while that the situation with regards to the availability of jobs for nurses was going to change- and boy, has it!  Health care providers such as hospitals and nursing homes are waking up to the realization that as people leave nursing positions, it’s becoming very hard to fill those positions with new, qualified nurses.  This has led to extreme competition for qualified nurses, and not only on a local (national) but worldwide scale.

What the nursing shortage should amount to, in the long run, is a much more improved working environment for nurses in the future who choose career nursing as a profession. In the short term, however, this shortage is proving to be difficult to overcome and may actually contribute to the frustrations many nurses feel which cause them not only to leave their jobs but also to discourage others from taking up the profession.

In order to ensure that the current crisis in nursing does not continue much further into the future, the two areas of retention and recruitment need to be addressed. This article will take a look at some of the topics that come up among nurses when it comes to addressing these issues.

With up to 40% of the nursing workforce expected to retire over the next 10 years, it’s very important to keep the younger members of the profession happy, so that the current crisis in the field can be halted.

A common complaint among nurses is that they don’t get the respect they are entitled to, as most people (especially those within the medical community) see nursing as less of a “profession” and more of a “job”.  This is particularly bad when it comes to the case of physicians, as they have been guilty in the past of giving nurses the impression that they are there simply to carry out the doctor’s orders.  Only now that the profession is hemorrhaging people does the system realize how integral nursing is to the healthcare system, and that nurses should be awarded the same respect as doctors, respiratory techs or other medical professionals.  The general public is also becoming more aware of this reality.

The nursing shortage has meant that everyone has realized just how rigorous the training and testing is that allows a prospective nurse to become a registered nurse, and that the number of years required to be trained for this position is equivalent to the number it takes to earn a Bachelor of Arts or any other undergraduate degree.

Too often, nurses report that the conditions in their workplace are poor.  This doesn’t apply to things necessary to doing a job (i.e. sick patient), but instead applies to things that are directly influenced by management policy such as nurse-to-patient ratio, hours of work, use (or lack of use) of support staff, and the condition of equipment.

Most nurses in the US work a combination of both day and night shifts.  Of course, it’s impossible to run a medical facility without nurses, yet the inconvenience of working a night shift is not currently compensated any differently.  One way to increase the attractiveness of the position would be to do as they do in other professions and pay more for workers that take night shifts, and some facilities are already looking at revising work schedules so that night shifts are not as long as day shifts are, with some adding in a “swing” shift.

Government spending increases on healthcare should help resolve some concerns including the concerns nurses have about support staff and equipment.  Nursing is a job that includes quite a lot of lifting, so medical care facilities will need to invest in modern equipment to assist with this burden so that nurses can have longer careers.  Many nurses also report that they are held responsible for performing duties that would traditionally fall to a receptionist or an orderly, and in order for them to stay focused on their nursing duties, care facilities will have to budget better so that nurses aren’t being needlessly overburdened.

The biggest short-term problem facing the industry is the nurse-to-patient ratio.  Most facilities are unable to fill vacant positions, and so the ratio remains at a level that many nurses are uncomfortable with.  However, efforts to address the issue properly still provide hope.

Recruiting of nurses is the second vital focus for the future of nursing.  This milieu will see increasing attempts to train nurses properly, and increased efforts by medical providers to attract good nurses.  Those that can’t offer sufficient training and enticements will soon find themselves without enough nurses to run their facilities!

Unfortunately, universities and colleges are not graduating enough nurses quickly enough, to replace those that are leaving the profession.  Further complicating things is the fact that many of them are not going to work in traditional nursing workplaces such as hospitals but are instead choosing relatively lower-stress jobs with higher levels of pay such as nursing homes or incarceration facilities.

In order to improve the patient to nurse ratio that is such a common complaint among nurses, it is vital to increase the number of students coming out of nursing schools across the country. Universities and colleges need to have the funding available to create these spaces. In addition, facilities and governments will have to offer programs such as student loan forgiveness programs in order to attract potential students to the profession.

The last decade has seen a massive growth in secondary industries targeted towards nurses. These industries include nursing agencies and travel nursing programs which hire their own nurses and then contract them out to facilities in need. These nurses are generally higher paid than their counterparts in the facilities they are contracted out to. In addition, they get to change their place of work frequently, often with all travel expenses paid. Facilities are going to need to take a look at this practice and determine if they are willing to offer the kind of wages and benefits that these nurses are receiving if they ever hope to have a stable work force.

As far as the nursing profession goes, the long term future is bright. The current shortage allows a graduating nurse to virtually write his or her own ticket. In addition, the shortage is expected to grow worse, which has pushed the concerns of nurses into the public spotlight. In order to alleviate the shortage, governments and facilities will have no choice but to meet the concerns of nurses in order to keep them at their jobs.

Alternatively, the future of the nursing profession may lie within nursing agencies. Unless facilities and governments realize that the concerns of nurses need to be met at the ground level, new and established nurses alike will continue to gravitate towards the pay and flexibility that these agencies offer.

Armed with these facts, you should be able to make an informed decision about whether a career nursing is right for you.  Happy job hunting!

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Summer is over… start looking for Jobs.com!

September 2, 2008 at 10:27 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , , , ,

After one of the major job boards reported a major security leak in 2007, you may have become a little bit wary about putting your resume online, for fear that your contact information might be exploited for money-making purposes such as direct mail, email marketing, or identity theft. There are measures you can take, however, to ensure that you’re not at risk, when applying to websites that include jobs.com as part of their domain.

There’s always the option of just not putting your resume on the Internet at all, but that’s going to saddle you with a pretty large disadvantage in that recruiters that use the internet to find candidates won’t be able to find you! Instead, you will have to proactively monitor many different job boards, looking for companies that are looking for you. It’s a lot easier to find candidates for a recruiter when they can search through online databases looking for skill sets that match yours and contacting you about unadvertised job openings. If the case is that you want to be easy to find, you’ll have to post your resume, so how can you do that and ensure that the boards you post to are legitimate and have precautions in place to ensure the safety of your information?

Always make sure that you feel confident before you post a resume to a website. Read their privacy policy carefully, primarily to figure out where they may repost your resume, or who they may sell it to. If they do redistribute it to other sites, do you trust those sites, as well? The best way to get answers to these kinds of questions is to email or call the board directly. You can even log in as an employer and research all their policies on resume searching. These boards want your resume- it’s a large part of how they make money- so any one that’s any good will accommodate your requests without a problem.

The work doesn’t stop after you’ve decided where to put your resume. You have to also be very careful when applying to sites with jobs.com and both opening and responding to email solicitation. Job boards work very hard to ensure that only real jobs get posted, however, a certain amount of junk is bound to get through the filters, so to speak. The old adage- if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is- was never truer than when applied to the Internet. Never, ever give out personal information such as your Social Security number or bank account information- as stated by their privacy policies, a legit recruiter and/or a job board, be it a jobs.com site or not, will never, ever ask for that information in an email.

If you are unlucky enough to be a target of one of these phishing scams, or some other sort of deception, it’s in your, the job board, employer, and everyone that uses that site’s best interest to report it to the board as soon as possible and with as much information as possible. You can also report strange-looking or sounding jobs, too- this will help cut down on the number of fake jobs posted to that board. The more you can help the job boards, the better job they will be able to do of prevention in the future.

By knowing where your resume is posted, doing your due diligence in regards to security measures and keeping an eye out for fraud, you can help keep yourself and your personal information safe while conducting an online job search.

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Personal Privacy with your Internet Jobs Search!

September 1, 2008 at 5:15 am · Filed under Job Seeker Resources, Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Last year, one of the big online job boards made it public that they had had a fairly severe security breach. Understandably, this may have made you hesitant to put your resume online, for fear of your personal information being sold to direct marketers or email marketers. You may even have concerns about identity theft. This article is going to show you some ways that you can make sure not to expose yourself to scams such as these during your internet jobs search.

You could always just not put your resume on the Internet, right? Well sure, but that’s going to put you at a pretty big disadvantage, as a lot of recruiters use the Internet to find candidates, and if it’s not there, they can’t find you, which means that you will have to be a lot more proactive, monitoring many job boards before you find a position that matches your skill set. It’s much easier if the recruiters can find you, and another advantage is that they might be able to tell you about unadvertised jobs. If that’s the case, you want to be able to be easily found- so how can you assure you’re not opening yourself up to a ton of risk, and that your information will be safe?

A good rule of thumb is don’t post your resume anywhere that you’re not confident about. Trust your instincts. When you do decide to post your resume to a internet jobs board, make sure you read their privacy policy carefully. They may resell your resume or access to it, and you need to make sure that their affiliate websites and clients also have privacy policies that you can live with. You might even want to set up an employer account so that you can check the boards’ employer guidelines for searching resumes, too. At the end of the day, the best way to get the information you need is to email or call the job board and request it- they want your resume, as it’s how they make money, so they will do their best to accommodate you in most cases.

The work doesn’t stop after you’ve decided where to put your resume. You have to also be very careful when applying to jobs and both opening and responding to email solicitation. Job boards work very hard to ensure that only real jobs get posted, however, a certain amount of junk is bound to get through the filters, so to speak. The old adage- if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is- was never truer than when applied to the Internet. Never, ever give out personal information such as your Social Security number or bank account information- as stated by their privacy policies, a recruiter and/or a job board will never, ever ask for that information in an email.

If you do get such an email and know which job board the person found your resume and got your contact information from, it is in everyone’s best interest for you to notify the job board with as much information about the scam and person emailing you as possible. You can do the same if you see a fraudulent looking posting. The more aware job boards and the Internet community are of scammers, the more they can help prevent them from scamming you and others.

By knowing where your resume is posted, doing your due diligence in regards to security measures and keeping an eye out for fraud, you can help keep yourself and your personal information safe while conducting an internet jobs search.

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Start Your Health Care Jobs Search Here!

August 28, 2008 at 11:31 pm · Filed under Job Seeker Resources, Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , ,

Hello, welcome to my little corner of the web! Today, I’m featuring an article about the general state of the healthcare industry in the United States. This is not a top-to-bottom review of the entire industry, but it will give you an overview, and should give anyone looking for health care jobs a head start on the rest of the pack!

Health care in the United States is provided by a variety of sources, ranging from private insurance to government-funded initiatives. The US spends more on health care than any other country in the developed world; about 16% of the GDP annually is spent on health care. In 2007, that was over 7 thousand dollars per person.

Medicine is practiced in a variety of facilities throughout the United States. Obviously, there are for-profit hospitals, operated by private corporations, and there are also nonprofit hospitals, which are usually operated by the government or nonprofit or religions organizations. Hospitals provide a small amount of outpatient care in emergency rooms and specialty clinics but are run primarily to provide inpatient care.

The law uses a “fee for service” business model when it comes to healthcare similar to other service industries, meaning that the patient must pay out-of-pocket, in full, for all medical treatment rendered. If a patient has insurance, they will pay a set monthly premium that will help pay most of the cost of medical treatment, however, a deductible (a minimum part of the total cost) is usually paid up front. Alternatively, the patient may have to pay a “co-payment”- a small part of the cost of every procedure.,

Managed Care organizations include HMOs (Health Maintenance Organizations) and PPOs (Preferred Provider Organizations. A PPO general has a higher cost than an HMO, but a PPO allows the patient to choose where they receive their care, while with an HMO they are constrained to “in-network” providers. The PPO has been the dominant of the two, over the past decade, and it is common today for a physician or hospital to have contracts with a dozen or more health plans, each with different referral networks, contracts with different diagnostic facilities, and different practice guidelines.,

There are many individuals that are not covered by private insurance, but are covered by government programs such as Medicaid (which provides care to the poor), Medicare (which provides care for the elderly and disabled), or the Veterans Administration (which provides care to veterans, their families and survivors). In 2006, Medicaid provided coverage for 38 million Americans while Medicare did the same for about 40 million. Another 11 million people are eligible for coverage but are not enrolled in any kind of government program.

The number of physicians accepting Medicaid has decreased over the past decade due to high administrative costs and low levels of reimbursement. Another program, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program was created in 1997 to provide coverage for children in families that earn too much to qualify for Medicaid yet can’t afford to buy health insurance- however, this program is already losing funding in may states.

Thanks for taking the time to read this; I hope it was as illuminating for you to read as it was for me to write! Keep this information in mind as you go forward in your hunt for health care jobs and you will be well served in the future.

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Looking for Career Nursing Jobs?

August 28, 2008 at 5:05 am · Filed under Job Seeker Resources, Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , ,

Less than a decade ago, people who were enrolling in nursing school were being told that they were crazy. Career nursing jobs were not considered to be viable. They were told that the job was brutal, and that there simply were no jobs out there for nurses straight out of the Registered Nurse training programs.

Shortly before the turn of the century, however, the situation began to change in reality, as people who had studied the practice of nursing had long suggested it might. All of a sudden, hospitals, nursing homes, and other places that depend on nurses to run realized that staff members who left the job were not being replaced by new people. The result was a shortage of nurses that continues to get worse each year. One of the biggest problems for the United States is that the shortage of nurses is not localized; it is a global problem. In order to ensure an adequate supply of nurses nationally competition must be faced far beyond regional considerations.

What the nursing shortage should amount to, in the long run, is a much more improved working environment for nurses in the future. In the short term, however, this shortage is proving to be difficult to overcome and may actually contribute to the frustrations many nurses feel which cause them not only to leave their jobs but also to discourage others from taking up the profession.

In order to ensure that the current crisis in nursing does not continue much further into the future, the two areas of retention and recruitment need to be addressed. This article will take a look at some of the topics that come up among nurses when it comes to addressing these issues.

Making sure that nurses are happy within their current jobs so that they stay in the profession is vital to stabilize the crisis. With anywhere from 25-40% of nurses are expected to retire over the next ten years, ensuring that younger members of the work force stay at their jobs is more important than ever.

The general public is coming to the realization that nurses play just as important a role in the healthcare system as doctors and other medical professionals do, and the industry is starting to realize it, as well. Many nurses complain that they are not accorded the level of respect they deserve, as nursing is seen as less of a “profession” and more of a “job”. Physicians are often guilty of this, making nurses feel as if they are simply there to mechanically carry out the doctor’s orders, and nothing more. As the system loses more and more nurses, it will become more and more important to grant those remaining the appropriate level of respect.

A benefit of the current nursing shortage (if you can consider it a benefit) is that non-nurses are finally starting to realize how rigorous the training and testing processes for becoming an RN are. It takes just as long to become a nurse as it does to earn a B. A., B.S., or any other undergraduate degree!

Another oft-cited concern of professional nurses is that the conditions in their places of work are very poor. In this case, work conditions do not apply to the many different situations a nurse will have to put up with from patients during a course of a day; rather, they concern areas of the job that are directly informed by management policy, such as hours of work, nurse to patient ratio, the use of support staff, and the condition of equipment.

A standard nurse’s schedule includes a combination of both day and night shifts. Clearly, it’s impossible to run a medical facility without nurses, so it isn’t as if the night shift can just be eliminated. However, some suggestions for parity include paying extra for nurses that work the night shift, or adding a third “swing shift” to the rotation so that the night shift is not as long as the day shift is.

As the government continues to ramp up medical spending, the concerns of nurses with regards to support staff and equipment will gradually alleviate. Nursing is a job that requires a lot of lifting, so it’s important that hospital equipment is available to assist nurses with this endeavor, if they are to work the full span of a nursing career at a healthy level of fitness. Often, nurses report that they are taking care of duties that could be better performed by a receptionist or orderly and healthcare providers are going to have to juggle their budgets to be able to afford the support staff that their nurses need.

In the short term, the nurse to patient ratio will continue to be the biggest problem concerning both nurses and patients. The nursing shortage means that most facilities cannot fill vacant positions needed in order to bring the ratio down to a level that nurses are comfortable with. However, by properly addressing the issue, there is hope that this situation can be resolved.

It’s going to be vital to recruit nurses heavily, as well. There will be marked attempts to train more nurses, as well as healthcare organizations making deals to attract nurses to work for them. If medical providers don’t start paying attention, they will soon find themselves without any nurses to run their facilities!

It’s of no small concern that colleges and universities are not producing enough nursing graduates to fill the current demand, or even enough to replace those that are currently leaving the profession. A parallel concern is that of those who DO graduate nursing programs, ever increasing numbers are choosing to work at relatively lower levels of stress and higher levels of pay in institutions such as prisons and nursing homes.

In order to improve the patient to nurse ratio that is such a common complaint among nurses, it is vital to increase the number of students coming out of nursing schools across the country. Universities and colleges need to have the funding available to create these spaces. In addition, facilities and governments will have to offer programs such as student loan forgiveness programs in order to attract potential students to the profession.

Over the last 10 years, several “secondary industries” targeted towards nurses have come to the forefront. Industries such as travel nursing programs and nursing agencies hire their own nurses and then contract them out. These nurses generally make more money than those that choose more traditional employment and they have the added benefit of a constantly-changing workplace, often with all travel expenses paid. Healthcare organizations are going to have to take a long hard look at matching these kinds of benefits if they want to attract quality nursing personnel.

As far as the nursing profession goes, the long term future is bright. The current shortage allows a graduating nurse to virtually write his or her own ticket. In addition, the shortage is expected to grow worse, which has pushed the concerns of nurses into the public spotlight. In order to alleviate the shortage, governments and facilities will have no choice but to meet the concerns of nurses in order to keep them at their jobs.

Alternatively, the future of the nursing profession may lie within nursing agencies. Unless facilities and governments realize that the concerns of nurses need to be met at the ground level, new and established nurses alike will continue to gravitate towards the pay and flexibility that these agencies offer.
I hope you’ve found this discussion useful, and it’s obvious that a career in nursing is something that needs to be thought about pretty seriously. Good luck!

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Healthcare Jobs Information – Helping Jobs Seekers Make Right Decisions

August 26, 2008 at 10:12 pm · Filed under Job Seeker Resources ·Tagged , , , ,

Welcome back if you’re a returning visitor and just plain welcome, if you’re new, today I am talking about healthcare jobs! As you know if you’ve been here before, this is where I give advice to job seekers. Today, I am featuring an article about the US healthcare system, designed to give those looking for healthcare jobs a high-altitude view of the industry as a whole. Let’s get started!

In the US, a diverse selection of individuals and legal entities pay for health care- patients are offered both inpatient and outpatient services by charitable, commercial, or governmental entities. The healthcare system is funded by a mix of public and private funding, with the government picking up about 45% of the total annual cost.

There is also a huge market in the US for medical devices, medicines and medical research and development. Most spending on medical R and D is privately funded; however, non-profit organizations and the government provide some funding as well. Most medical research and development for direct medical application is conducted in commercial labs, and most general research is funded by the government (for example, the National Institute of Mental Health) or by universities.

The law uses a “fee for service” business model when it comes to healthcare similar to other service industries, meaning that the patient must pay out-of-pocket, in full, for all medical treatment rendered. If a patient has insurance, they will pay a set monthly premium that will help pay most of the cost of medical treatment, however, a deductible (a minimum part of the total cost) is usually paid up front. Alternatively, the patient may have to pay a “co-payment”- a small part of the cost of every procedure.

Most health care coverage provided through a person’s work is provided through managed care organizations which pay much lower prices for medical services than an individual would if they paid out of pocket. The thing that makes managed care different from traditional insurance is that the health plan organization has contracts with specific health care providers, as the managed care organization is able to bring their numbers to bear to negotiate price reductions.

There are many individuals that are not covered by private insurance, but are covered by government programs such as Medicaid (which provides care to the poor), Medicare (which provides care for the elderly and disabled), or the Veterans Administration (which provides care to veterans, their families and survivors). In 2006, Medicaid provided coverage for 38 million Americans while Medicare did the same for about 40 million. Another 11 million people are eligible for coverage but are not enrolled in any kind of government program.

The number of physicians accepting Medicaid has decreased over the past decade due to high administrative costs and low levels of reimbursement. Another program, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program was created in 1997 to provide coverage for children in families that earn too much to qualify for Medicaid yet can’t afford to buy health insurance- however, this program is already losing funding in may states.

Thank you for taking the time to read my article, and if you liked it won’t you leave a comment? I hope you are well served in your healthcare jobs search by my advice- feel free to contact me if you’d like to discuss the healthcare industry in general!

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URLs Ending in jobs.com-the Part Time Job Seekers Friend!

August 25, 2008 at 8:09 pm · Filed under Job Seeker Resources ·Tagged , , , , , ,

Hi everybody! Today, I will be taking some time to speak to the person looking for a part-time job. This is a bit of a departure from what is usually a more career-oriented column but I feel this information is valuable as well! Looking for part-time jobs on the Internet is really no different than looking for a full-time job on the Internet. The same basic rules apply- make sure that you have a way for employers to contact you that isn’t the Internet- voicemail, a cell phone, or an answering machine, for example. You should also be prepared to interview on-the-spot, and you may even be offered employment during your first interview! A resource that you may not have heard of before when looking for part-time jobs is Go Jobs.com.

Most of the major job search engines have a section for part-time employment, and there are niche job boards that specialize in part-time work, as well. The nice thing about using these boards is that you can generally apply for these sorts of hourly positions right from the comfort of your computer desk. Most major retailers- JC Penny and Wal-Mart, for example- have special sections where people looking for hourly positions can apply directly.

Most online applications for part-time work are the same as those for full-time jobs- they will require contact information, education, and employment history, as well as salary information and your availability. Some of these applications will also ask for references.

When looking for a part-time job, it’s important to not only look online, but to be observant of your surroundings. Lots of retail stores keep “Employment Wanted” signs in the window when they are looking for help, and you can always ask to speak to a manager if it isn’t immediately obvious that the business is hiring. Many smaller employers advertise on Classified sites such as Craigslist, and the printed newspaper is often a good resource when trying to find a part-time job, as well.

There’s always help available, too- your high school guidance office, college student employment office, and the state Department of Labor office, as well as the public library, can all be excellent resources for finding a part-time job, and they are all either free, or very inexpensive as well!

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