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We have just published the Career Energy Guide to the top 10 choices for Career Changers in  2010. I hope you will find it valuable. (more…)

Later this week the UK may formally come out of recession. Gross Domestic Product is expected to stop contracting, meaning that the economy is starting to grow again, which is the technical end of a recession. (more…)

The joy in the markets was almost palpable. Unemployment up by only 88,000; far less than expected. Total unemployed still less than 2.5 million, youth unemployment has not topped 1 million. What a relief. Whoopee! (more…)

The CBI have called on the government to spend £125m on providing 50,000 new youth apprenticeships. Under the plans each participating employer would receive £2,500 for every apprentice it took on. The government has allocated £500m to a recruitment subsidy fund, the CBI sees the cost of the apprenticeship scheme as coming from this fund. (more…)

More redundancies were announced this weekend and the outlook is for a long hot summer with unemployment rising to 3 million. Many job seekers will be concerned about their future prospects, not least because they fear that a lengthy period of unemployment will leave a gap in their CV which is hard to explain.

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The first thing we all do when starting to look for a new job is to write or update our CV. But how often do we stop to think about the effectiveness of what we are doing? CVs have been around a long time but are they really that good?  Might there be a better way of communicating who we are and what we offer to prospective employers? (more…)

The line of taxis stretched half a mile back from Paddington Station to Edgware Road on Friday afternoon, much of it in double file. How many cabs is that? Empty taxis, along with silent restaurants and deeply discounted holiday packages are amongst the best instant indicators of the depth and likely duration of a recession; they are all luxury services which consumers can shun because there is a cheaper alternative. And judging by the Paddington taxi queue this recession is going to last far longer and go much deeper before it ends. So where does that leave the job market, and those hunting for work? (more…)

The government will announce today that specialist recruitment firms are being called in to help job centre staff to place unemployed professionals and senior managers into new roles. The Employment Minister is quoted as saying that job centres are “dealing with people who haven’t presented before”. That is certainly the case. Which is why the solution is not a quick fix using a hurriedly drafted group of recruiters (who only have a limited number of jobs at their disposal) but a thorough and radical overhaul of state funded job seeker provision to bring it up to standard. (more…)

Today’s not unexpected news is that the UK job market is weakening rapidily, with the number of permanent jobs available dropping at a record rate. If you are one of the many thousands of job seekers affected by redundancy, or fearing the worst, what are you going to do? Be pro-active, or freeze like a rabbit in the headlights? (more…)