Battening Down the Hatches

Battening Down the HatchesBattening Down the HatchesThe presence of so many mid- and senior-level executives among those laid off has created a kind of unemployment denial wave.Neither the economy nor the job market will turn around in January, according to recruiters, outplacement counselors and career coaches. In fact, the environment might get worse before it gets better.The U.S. lost more than 2 million jobs during 2008, more than 500,000 in November alone, according to the fruchtwein recent Bureau of Labor Statistics report available at the end of 2008. The U.S. lost another 100,000 during the first weeks of December, according to analyst reports that predicted as many as 600,000 total job-losses through December.Outplacement firms are swamped, according to Sally Havers, senior vice president for business development at The Ayers Group/Career Partners International.We are anticipating some reductions in force in the first quarter of 2009, said Ayers, whose group is bracing for a n influx of the shocked and displaced who will be working for Ayers clients until layoffs scheduled for January and February. There will be a lot of talented people looking around for whats next.Not all the news is bad, however, according to Bob Cozzens, president of the National Banking Financial Services Network a network that connects individual and boutique recruiters nationwide in the same way the Multiple Listing Service connects real-estate agents.There are pockets of activity that are strong some of ur members have had excellent years, even banking recruiters have had excellent years, said Cozzens, whose group represents more than 100 companies and about 300 recruiters who mostly focus on local markets. Even when you see that XYZ bank is laying off thousands of people, our experience is that there are still hiring needs to be filled.Smaller companies may also hire a potential job seeker on a contract basis, tiding him over a rough financial patch, and turn the arrangement into a full-time job when the economy improves enough to justify it, she said.Job seekers have to be a little creative in a market like this, Havers said.Not only do companies need to replace the normal number of those who retire or leave for other reasons, they have to hire people to clean up the mess the rest of the economy made. Financial executives with skills and experience at workouts negotiations between homeowners and mortgage holders to ease payment plans and avoid foreclosures are at a premium right now.Not that theyd be talking too much about that. From a PR point of view, its suicide for companies to lay off a gazillion people, then advertise theyre hiring other people, Cozzens said.The impact of the recession is so broad that, incongruously, its not generating the kind of bitterness of previous recessions, which tended to hit one part of the economy or one class of workers much harder than others, according to Diane Grimard Wilson, a career coach whos president of Gri mard Wilson Consulting Inc. and author of Back in Control How to Stay Sane, Productive, and Inspired in Your Career Transition.But the presence of so many mid- and senior-level executives among those laid off has created a kind of unemployment denial wave that will break during the first part of 2009, she said.A lot of the people who have been laid off this time around are not the type of people who get laid off regularly, she said. Many of them may have unrealistic expectations of how long it takes to get a job, even without a recession, or no expectations at all. So we may get into a period after the New Year where that reality sinks in and they may be in for a dark time emotionally.That, and the inevitable new layoffs in January and February, may be offset by a wave of hiring by managers or companies who know they need the extra bodies but have just not pulled the trigger, Cozzens said. People are just flat afraid. For the positions that are open, employers are dragging their fe et.Waiting for good newsIt will take only a little positive pressure to push those companies into making the hiring decisions they know they have to make, Cozzens said.A new presidential administration, a little good economic news or just a sustained lack of bad news might be enough.People want to believe that Obamas plans are going to help, Cozzens said. Any change might do it. Look at all the money people have pulled out of the market and is just sitting on the sidelines. With a little bit of good news, that money could come back and the market could really spielblttchen up and give the market back some confidence. That will filter back to corporate America and cause more of those foot-draggers to make some decisions. It wouldnt take much.

The Latest on Resume Fonts

The Latest on Resume FontsThe Latest on Resume FontsWhen it comes to designing your resume, the advice most professional resume writers will give is to keep it simple. Dont make it too complicated and dont use weird fonts. But on the flip side, theres much less said on what fonts should be used. To settle this age-old problem once and for all (for now), Bloomberg gave the font situation a long hard look. What this report says is that Helvetica was the safest choice. Helvetica and its sans-serif relatives drip with professionalism and theyre easy to read both great qualities when it comes to font. Resume Fonts That Dont WorkNow that we know whats awesome, lets look at what doesnt work. There are several types of fonts that leave a bad taste in the mouths of many recruiters and HR professionals, but the sins they commit are varied. To help you avoid the bad eggs, take a hard look at the losersThese are just a few of the fonts you should be wary ofTimes New Roman. This has been an old and trusted friend in the font world. And although thats great, it also means that its getting pretty worn out because its seen all the time. Choosing Times New Roman tells your future employers that you didnt bother to change the default in Word.Connected Script Fonts. You didnt handwrite your resume, so why do you want someone to think you did? Connected script fonts look like handwriting (not mine, but someones handwriting) and theyre just as difficult to read. Never, ever use unterstellung when writing a professional resume.Courier. Like Times New Roman, Courier is a relic of days long past. Its the font typewriters used. Youre not using a typewriter, so why are you using Courier? Courier sends the same I cant be bothered message to future employers, along with a potentially ruffling look how cool I am for using an antique font.Comic Sans. Are you really using this font on your resume? Doesnt matter stop doing it right this instant Although Comic Sans is a fun font, your resume isnt a game and thats the message you send by using it. Your resume is a professional document, so always keep that forefront in mind it should look as suit and tie as it is.When it comes to your resume, the font you choose is as important as the outfit you wear to the interview you hope that document will land. Its vital to put your best foot, and font, forward to any HR person who might be reviewing that resume keep it easy to read with a tidy and universally-respected font like Helvetica.

Lab-on-a-Chip Could Replace the Diagnostic Lab

Lab-on-a-Chip Could Replace the Diagnostic Lab Lab-on-a-Chip Could Replace the Diagnostic Lab Lab-on-a-Chip Could Replace the Diagnostic Lab In another example of how engineering is playing an important role in improving the way medical care may be delivered all around the world, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Rochester Institute of Technologys Kate Gleason College of Engineering is taking a different approach to emerging lab-on-a-chip technology. Michael Schertzer is leading a team developing digital microfluidic devices that can be used to assess biological fluids by introducing electricity. The devices are, in effect, small, portable laboratories for diagnosing diseases, and the hope is that the credit card-size devices will eventually replace all of the equipment of a traditional laboratory. The potential benefits are faster results and lower cost, making them especially valuable in remote or impoverished areas where no traditional laboratories are located. When most people think of microfluidic devices, they think of a pipe and making it small, Schertzer explains. You have a channel and you push fluid through it. Whats different about what we do is that we dont have a channel. We have two plates, a top and bottom, and a checkerboard of electrodes. By applying electric fields, we can make small droplets of fluid and move them around the checkerboard of electrodes. In addition to the general benefits of lab-on-a-chip, this approach allows the device to be more flexible in several ways including in the number and types of reagents it can handle. If were doing a biological test that has many different biological fluids in it or different reagents, we can do that without increasing the complexity of the device, he says. Digital microfluidic devices can create, move, merge, and mix discrete droplets of fluid through the application of asymmetric electric fields. Image: RIT If you are doing the test with a channel microfluidic device, it can be difficult to do protocols that have lots of different reagents because of the complexity of the fabrication, Schertzer says. The digital device also allows testing in different ways. For example, in a hospital, testing could be done on multiple patients for one particular biomarker, for instance, for brain cancer. With the same device it could be testing someone at home for diabetes. Another use for the same device is to look for many different biomarkers at the same time in a single patient. A lot of microfluidic devices with a channel are attached to things like mechanical pumps or valves. Our devices, because they are all electronic have no mechanical parts, give another advantage, Schertzer says. All is needed is a power source and switching mechanism. Applying voltage to the checkerboard requires some sort of computer brain to serve as a controller, which could be something small such as Bluetooth on a cell phone. Schertzer said there are still some engineering challenges, mainly related to being able to autonomously control the droplets moving around in space. In other ways, these devices are easier because they dont have channel pumps and valves that have to be dealt with, he said. The team is also interested in integrating digital microfluidics with other forms of microfluidics to capitalize on the benefits of both. With digital, there are advantages in multiplexing, but other researchers at RIT are working on other forms that offer other advantages. The team is looking at whether there is an interface that can be incorporated to go from a channel-based device to the digital device, and can they integrate something to allow cell sorting or particle separation in the digital platform. Those are the kinds of questions we are trying to answer now, Schertzer says. While he envisions the device first being available to medical centers, ultimately hes thinking that perhaps it could be something non-medically trained people could use at home, testing for any concerns - for example, prostate cancer. It would be amazing if you do these tests at home and then beam something out to your Apple watch to tell you that your levels for this protein are high. And then the watch would respond with here are some interventions for that. Schertzers general timetable is that it will take one to three years to iron out the technical problems so that prototypes for devices for biological testing or gene therapy could be ready in three to five years. He became interested in the health care field while attending a conference on microfluidics in Turkey as he was working on his Ph.D. At the time, he was more interested in heat transfer, but when he heard speakers talk about the use of microfluidics in fighting conditions like cancer and diabetes, the opportunity to help people appealed to him. Now he delights in seeing that same kind of spark ignited with students in his lab, who may have decided on engineering because they were good in math and physics and hadnt really thought about the final impact engineers can have in so many areas. Engineers sell themselves short about that and also about the creativity you need to be designing things like this, he says. Nancy S. Giges is an independent writer. For Further Discussion It would be amazing if you could do [diagnostic testing] at home and then beam something out to your Apple watch to tell you that your levels for this protein are high.Prof. Michael Schertzer, RITs Kate Gleason College of Engineering