In 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower warned the country about the “military-industrial complex.”  Today, it needs to be more concerned about the academe-academic complex.

What is that complex?  It is the back-rubbing relationship between the administrators in most of America’s higher education institutions and the blind Greek chorus of educators on their faculties.  Together, they have perpetrated the myth that a college degree will provide career security in today’s turbulent global economy.

Here’s how one representatives of the complex put it just last week.  “College and career skills are the same,” opined Ken Wagner, the New York State associate commissioner of education for curriculum.

If that’s so, why are legions of recent graduates moving back in with Mom and Dad because they can’t find work?  And, why did an Associated Press study released last year find that over half of bachelor degree-holders under the age of 25 – an astonishing 53.6 percent of recent college graduates – were either jobless or underemployed?

If you’d like to read more of this column entitled “The Academe-Academic Complex,” it appears on HuffPost.

If you’d like to read some of my other columns on the Huffington Post site, click here.

Work Strong,

Peter

Privacy advocates are fighting for the right to be forgotten on the Web. Online mistakes are visible to everyone, so we need to be sure they won’t live on forever. In today’s workplace, however, we require a different kind of guarantee. We need to preserve our right to be remembered.

It used to be that managing your career was a lot like riding a bicycle. With an occasional pump of the peddles, you could coast for quite awhile and still move forward. Rely on such a leisurely pace today, and you’re likely to suffer a violent crash or what most of us call unemployment.

Why?

Because many our employers are now suffering from “employment dementia.” They don’t recognize all of the contributions we’ve made to their success in the past, and they can’t remember what we did for them just the other day. Our track records have faded away, and our contributions have been lost.

To read more of this column, click http://weddles.com/primer/issue.cfm?Newsletter=66 to reach the latest edition of my Newsletter for Career Activists.

You can also sign up for this free newsletter at the top of my Home Page at http://www.weddles.com.

Work Strong,
Peter

Albert Einstein famously defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. His words could also serve as today’s definition of unemployment. What’s being done over and over again? Networking online. The results it yields never change and are best described as “notworking.”

The conventional wisdom is that online networking is a “contact sport.” The more connections, followers and friends you have, the more successful you will be. That may work with lottery tickets, but in a job search campaign, quality trumps quantity every time.

How is quality networking done online? By building relationships. Those relationships transform virtual contacts into real people, and only real people can become allies.

To read more of this column, click http://www.weddles.com/seekernews/issue.cfm?Newsletter=346 to reach the latest edition of my Newsletter for Job Seekers.

You can also sign up for this free newsletter at the top of my Home Page at http://www.weddles.com.

Work Strong,
Peter

The scourge continues unabated, so I’m reprising one of the most popular columns from my newsletter for job seekers. You’ll find it here:http://bit.ly/LvHwxu.

Work Strong,
Peter

These days, job seekers face not one but two equally difficult challenges. Not only do they have to find a decent job, but they have to find a decent employer, as well. A decent job may remove them from the ranks of the unemployed, but only a decent employer can ensure they stay there.

For the first time in modern American history, those in transition now have to worry about serial unemployment. They must endure a grueling and often lengthy job search, and then they have to deal with the ever present possibility that they may lose their job 6, 12 or 18 months down the road. No sooner are they employed, it seems, than they face the prospect of becoming unemployed all over again.

There are, of course, a range of reasons for this phenomenon. The lousy economy, changing consumer tastes, and the introduction of new technology certainly deserve some of the blame. In far too many cases, however, there’s another cause. It’s employers behaving badly.

To read more of this column entitled “Don’t Look for a Job, Look for Respect,” click http://www.weddles.com/seekernews/issue.cfm?Newsletter=323 to reach the latest edition of my Newsletter for Job Seekers.

You can also sign up for this free newsletter at the top of my Home Page at http://www.weddles.com.

There are two kinds of harmful gaps in a job search. They are a lack of experience and a lack of skills. Both seem like insurmountable barriers because you can’t gain experience without work and it takes time to acquire skills. And yet, there is a way to bridge the gaps so long as you are willing to take off your fuzzy slippers.

In a society that exults in its uber-connectedness, it’s odd that distance is the defining culture of today’s job market. Everything we do, from networking with others and communicating with recruiters to contacting those who might be our future coworkers, is done – not at arm’s length, but at the tips of our fingers – as we sit at home in our fuzzy slippers and peck away on our keyboards.

No matter how much we revel in our connections and friends and follows, however, the net effect of such distant interactions is shallow relationships.

To read more of this column, click http://www.weddles.com/seekernews/issue.cfm?Newsletter=344 to reach the latest edition of my Newsletter for Job Seekers.

You can also sign up for this free newsletter at the top of my Home Page at http://www.weddles.com.

Work Strong,
Peter

That’s the secret to a successful job search, whether you’re looking for a new job or a better one. If you’d like to know more, read the column in my newsletter for job seekers. http://bit.ly/16NKhJN

Work Strong,
Peter

That’s the title of a recent column in my newsletter for job seekers. It explores what you must do to overcome the bias against the unemployed in today’s job market. You’ll find it at http://bit.ly/UgtFOQ.

Work Strong,
Peter

If your employer is like many others these days, it is constantly on the lookout for some new benefit that will help its employees feel the love.

So, the next time the HR Department conducts a survey and asks what new benefit you would most like to have, tell them a curriculum in career self-management. It’s the benefit that keeps on giving.

Traditional benefits – especially health insurance – remain important, of course, but they do little to differentiate one employer from another. Why is differentiation important? Because talent retention is now critical to business success, and distinctive benefits have a measurable impact on a worker’s decision to stay or go.

Unless you’re the CEO, your salary increases are barely staying ahead of inflation, so benefits are an important additional way for you to be compensated. While free meals at work and on-site day care are helpful, however, they have a short term impact on your wellbeing. Eventually, there are no more novel ways to serve mac and cheese and the kids grow up.

So, what should you ask for? The most revered benefit – job security – has now joined the rotary phone as a quaint artifact of another time. But, security does still exist; it’s just taken on a new form. Today, you can achieve “career security” – the ability always to be employed and always by an employer of your choice.

Even better, career security isn’t actually a benefit. It isn’t provided by your employer and therefore only available when the economy is strong and the organization is doing well. No, career security is something you give yourself, and it’s accessible whether the economy or your employer is up or down.

But here’s the rub. Career security doesn’t happen by wishful thinking or with a sprinkling of pixie dust. You must create it. And the only way to create it is to be fully educated in the body of knowledge and set of skills that enable to manage your own career effectively.

To read more of this column,” click http://weddles.com/primer/issue.cfm?Newsletter=65 to reach the latest edition of my Newsletter for Career Activists.

Work Strong,
Peter

Time is the greatest enemy in a job search.

The longer the hunt for a new job takes, the greater the frustration, futility and the possibility of making a mistake. So, the best way to conduct a job search is to use every minute of every day wisely.

Unfortunately, the Internet has caused a lot of people to adopt a quantitative approach to their job search campaign. They “pour and pray.” They shoot out a huge stream of applications to openings posted on job boards and employers’ Web-sites and pray that at least one will yield a response.

While making such an enormous effort may feel as if you’re investing your time wisely, however, the results indicate otherwise. The quantitative approach is almost always a failure. Why? Because you end up applying for a job you don’t want or can’t get.

Employers are risk averse and very finicky. When you apply for a job in which you aren’t very interested, they will sense your indifference and focus on applicants where they have a higher chance of success. And, when you apply for a job for which you aren’t qualified, they will quickly decide you’re a “trash applicant” and summarily discard your resume. In either case, all you’ve done is waste your time.

So, what’s a better approach? Use a qualitative application strategy that I call “select and succeed.” It involves using two screens to evaluate job postings so you only apply for those you truly want to do and can actually get. As a result, you use your time wisely and optimize your chances of being hired.

To read more of this column entitled “Don’t Waste Your Time,” click here to reach the latest edition of my Newsletter for Job Seekers.

You can also sign up for this free newsletter at the top of my Home Page at http://www.weddles.com.

Work Strong,
Peter