Where the Jobs Are (WSJ)

Friday, April 15, 2011

APRIL 15, 2011
Mobile App Talent Pool Is Shallow
Companies Scramble for Engineers Who Can Write Software for Smartphones

By JOE LIGHT

This year, magazine publisher Hearst Corp. intends to add five software engineers to its mobile development staff. Social-networking company Ning Inc. plans to nearly double its mobile development team. And Web start-up Where Inc. is on track to double its mobile staff this year after quadrupling it in 2010.

The problem: The talent pool isn't growing nearly that fast.

Mobile applications have boomed. Above, an attendee at the International CTIA Wireless conference last month tested a Galaxy Tab.
."The demand is constant," said Dan Gilmartin, Where's vice president of marketing. "Every company is looking for these people."
The intense competition for mobile engineers, which affects large companies and fast-growing start-ups alike, is emerging as a key bottleneck as companies scramble to capitalize on the fast growth of smartphones and other mobile devices.

Mobile applications have boomed, working their way deeply into fields like retail, media, videogames and marketing. Market research firm Gartner Inc. expects revenue from Apple Inc.'s App Store, Google Inc.'s Android Market and other stores where mobile applications are sold to nearly triple to $15 billion this year.

The technologies are so new— Apple's app store launched in 2008 —that few software engineers have mobile development experience, which requires new coding skills compared to a desktop computer.

That's forcing companies to increase wages, retrain software engineers, outsource work to third-party developers and set up offshore development labs to meet demand.

In the last year, the number of online job listings with the keyword "iPhone" in the text has nearly tripled, while the number with "Android" has more than quadrupled, according to listings search engine Indeed Inc.

.The number of mobile development jobs offered on Elance.com, a freelancer website, doubled between the first quarters of last year and this year, twice as fast as growth on the site as a whole.

"Almost all of our companies are looking for Android and iPhone developers," said Bijan Sabet, a general partner at Spark Capital, a Boston venture capital firm, whose portfolio includes Twitter Inc., Tumblr and OnSwipe.

Ning, a Silicon Valley start-up, plans to almost double its mobile development staff to 17 to work on a hybrid instant-message and social network it launched in February, said Chief Executive Jason Rosenthal.

To attract developers around the country, the 95-person company has run recruitment drives on more than a dozen college campuses and it also holds technology seminars that are open to the public.

If a software engineer doesn't have mobile experience, the company has sometimes been willing to spend several weeks training the engineer to work on mobile platforms, Mr. Rosenthal said.

Given the mismatch between supply and demand, many companies say they have no choice but to retrain software engineers in the art of mobile development. In the last year, Major League Baseball's Internet company MLB.com nearly doubled the number of mobile engineers it has to 19, said MLB.com CEO Bob Bowman.

"If we can find an excellent engineer, we hire him," said Mr. Bowman. "You can't always wait for mobile experience, because you might be waiting a long time."

The mismatch has put upward pressure on wages. According to an October survey by tech job board Dice.com, about 31% of companies reported that average pay among mobile software designers and engineers increased at a higher rate than normal, mostly because of heightening competition for talent.

The Dice survey said the average mobile salary last fall was about $76,000, but several companies said they pay experienced mobile developers anywhere from $90,000 to $150,000 a year.

Hearst Magazines launched an "app lab" this past September to coordinate mobile development across publications. In the last two months, the company hired two mobile developers, bringing its Web and mobile development staff to 15, said Debra Robinson, the company's chief information officer.

Ms. Robinson said competition for developers has forced the company to pay mobile engineers with little experience the same salaries as it would pay engineers with as many as 10 years of experience. In the next year, she expects the company to add another five or six developers.

"There was not much competition when we started, but that's changed now," said Ms. Robinson, adding that the company now has to compete against high-tech companies like Google Inc. talent.

Other start-ups are investing heavily in offshore development. Last summer, Boston-based Where, which runs a mobile ad network and location-based recommendation service, opened a development center in Croatia to supplement its 18-person U.S. mobile engineering staff. The center now employs seven mobile engineers.

That should make it easier to meet Where's 2011 goal of doubling its mobile development team to 60 people, said Where's Mr. Gilmartin. The Croatian employees are paid more than Croatians at other local companies, but less than their U.S. counterparts.

Outsourcing some mobile development work has emerged as another strategy for addressing the shortage. That's been a boon for software development agencies such as 360mind and Pivotal Labs, which has done work for Twitter and Groupon Inc. The staff at 360mind, a 20-person mobile development shop, doubled last year, and is likely to double again this year, said CEO Nick Dalton.

After struggling to recruit Android developers, location-based social network start-up Gowalla Inc. hired Pivotal Labs to build its Android client. Gowalla also farmed out development for its Windows 7 app.

Scott Raymond, Gowalla's chief technology officer, said working with contractors takes more time and involvement but is necessary in today's speedy app market.

"It just takes a really long time to find people to hire internally and we need to move fast," he said.

Write to Joe Light at Joe.Light@wsj.com

Copyright 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Looking for Work? Some Tax Deductions (irs.gov)

Six Tax Benefits for Job Seekers


Did you know that you may be able to deduct some of your job search expenses on your tax return?

Many taxpayers spend time during the summer months updating their résumé and attending career fairs. If you are searching for a job this summer, you may be able to deduct some of your expenses on your tax return. Here are six things the IRS wants you to know about deducting costs related to your job search.

To qualify for a deduction, the expenses must be spent on a job search in your current occupation. You may not deduct expenses incurred while looking for a job in a new occupation.


You can deduct employment and outplacement agency fees you pay while looking for a job in your present occupation. If your employer pays you back in a later year for employment agency fees, you must include the amount you receive in your gross income up to the amount of your tax benefit in the earlier year.


You can deduct amounts you spend for preparing and mailing copies of your résumé to prospective employers as long as you are looking for a new job in your present occupation.


If you travel to an area to look for a new job in your present occupation, you may be able to deduct travel expenses to and from the area. You can only deduct the travel expenses if the trip is primarily to look for a new job. The amount of time you spend on personal activity compared to the amount of time you spend looking for work is important in determining whether the trip is primarily personal or is primarily to look for a new job.


You cannot deduct job search expenses if there was a substantial break between the end of your last job and the time you begin looking for a new one.


You cannot deduct job search expenses if you are looking for a job for the first time.

For more information about job search expenses, see IRS Publication 529, Miscellaneous Deductions. This publication is available on IRS.gov or by calling 800-TAX-FORM (800-829-3676).

THE TAX CENTER TO ASSIST THE UNEMPLOYED

Use These Tax Breaks Before the End of the Year (Kiplingers)

Take Advantage of These Stimulus Breaks Soon
Posted Thu Sep 3, 11:05 am ET
Provided by:


The economic-stimulus plan that President Obama signed into law February 17 includes several tax breaks that will expire in the next few months. Some of these breaks are for big purchases, which may require a few months' worth of planning. And people who lose their job in 2010 won't be able to take advantage of some stimulus-related benefits. Here's a reminder about a few key provisions that are scheduled to end soon -- including a major credit that disappears before the end of the year.

First-time home-buyer credit. The stimulus plan provides a tax credit of up to $8,000 for purchasing a first home between January 1 and November 30, 2009. Keep in mind that this break does not last through the end of the year -- you must close on the home no later than November 30.

You don't have to pay back the credit, as long as you live in your home for at least three years. You're considered a first-time home buyer if you (and your spouse, if you're married) haven't owned a home in the past three years. The credit begins to phase out if your modified adjusted gross income is more than $75,000 (or $150,000 if married filing jointly), and it disappears if your income exceeds $95,000 if you're single (or $170,000 if married filing jointly).

You don't need to wait until next April to get the money. After you close on the house, you can get the $8,000 refund quickly if you claim the credit for a 2009 purchase on an amended 2008 tax return (file Form 1040X.

Tax break for new-car purchases. If you're thinking about buying a new car, it may pay to do so before the end of the year. The stimulus plan lets you write off state and local sales taxes and excise taxes paid on up to $49,500 of the cost of a new car you buy between February 17 and December 31, 2009. If you live in a state that doesn't have a sales tax, you still get a tax break if your state imposes a flat fee on the purchase of vehicles or a fee based on the price you pay. The tax break applies to new (not used) cars, light trucks, motor homes and motorcycles. To qualify, your modified adjusted gross income must be less than $135,000 if you're single, or $260,000 if married filing jointly (the deduction starts to phase out if you earn more than $125,000 if single, or $250,000 if married filing jointly).

Two breaks for the unemployed will expire
COBRA subsidy. When you lose your job, you can generally remain on your employer's health-insurance coverage for up to 18 months, as long as you pay the full premium yourself. The stimulus provides a subsidy that covers 65% of the COBRA premiums for up to nine months after you lose your job. But this break applies only if you lose your job by December 31, 2009. You won't get the break on premiums if you lose your job in 2010.

Breaks for unemployment benefits. The stimulus also provides an extra $25 in weekly unemployment checks until December 31, 2009, and lets you exclude up to $2,400 in unemployment benefits from your taxes in 2009. But neither of these provisions has been extended yet to apply to 2010.

Some of these breaks could be extended into 2010, but it seems unlikely at the moment. "Extension of these items has not yet been included in any major tax bills," says Mark Luscombe, principal analyst with CCH, a tax-publishing firm. "As talk continues of the recession ending this quarter, it appears more likely that at least the new tax breaks on the list may be allowed to expire, as was just done with the 'cash for clunkers' program. If, however, as the fall progresses, concern about the health of the economy continues, some of these provisions could be considered for extension."

Green Jobs (So Fla Business Journal)

Tuesday, August 11, 2009, 2:14pm EDT
CareerBuilder launches green jobs site

South Florida Business Journal


CareerBuilder has created a Web site for environmentally conscious job seekers.

Goinggreenjobs.com allows employers to post their open green positions by full-time and part-time status, skill sets, job titles and categories, and geographic location.


Green jobs growth outpaced other job classifications by nearly 250 percent over the last decade, growing 9.1 percent between 1998 and 2007 compared with 3.7 percent for the overall job market, according to Pew Charitable Trusts.

“The focus on green jobs continues to increase year over year as job seekers look for more environmentally conscious career paths and employers make changes to protect the environment,” said Jason Ferrara, VP of corporate marketing at Chicago-based CareerBuilder.com, in a release. “One-in-ten employers say they have added green jobs in the last 12 months.”

The site also features information on green job fairs and events, green workplace news and information, and advice on how to find jobs.

Job seekers can post up to five different versions of their résumé to increase their visibility to potential employers in a variety of environmental areas.

For Job Hunters - Make Your Linked In Profile Shine (linkedin.com)

5 Steps to a Fantastic LinkedIn Profile

Posted in Career Advice Job Hunting Social Media on August 9, 2009 at 5:34 pm
by Lindsey Pollak

As a Campus Spokesperson for LinkedIn, I am currently in the midst of facilitating a series of training webinars for college career services professionals (sign up here if you haven’t already — they are free!). I recently wrote a blog post for CollegeRecruiter.com advising career services professionals how to improve their LinkedIn profiles. Today I’ve adapted those tips for job seekers and young professionals:

As the largest and most vibrant professional social network, LinkedIn provides a wealth of opportunities for job seekers and ambitious young professionals. But LinkedIn doesn’t work unless you work it.

How can you make the most of LinkedIn? Here are some tips for creating a profile that will impress employers, colleagues, headhunters, professional association members and more:

1. Include keywords in your summary statement. The Summary portion of your profile provides a chance to share the highlights of your bio in your own words. It’s also a place to include key words and phrases that a recruiter or hiring manager might type into a search engine to find a person like you. The best place to find relevant keywords is in the job listings that appeal to you and the LinkedIn profiles of people who currently hold the kinds of positions you want. Check out LinkedIn’s Company Pages feature to search through the profiles of employees at your dream employers. And remember, it is absolutely fine — crucial, in fact — to include unpaid or volunteer work in your Summary. If you are a current student or recent grad, you can include relevant coursework and extra curricular achievements as well.

2. Write for the screen. LinkedIn, or any website for that matter, is not the place for long-form prose. Present your summary statement in short blocks of text with lots of white space. Bullet points are great, too.

3. List all experience. One of the most valuable aspects of LinkedIn is the way it connects you with former colleagues and classmates—which, as we all know, are some of our best networking contacts. It would be a shame if a long lost former colleague or classmate, who happens to be a recruiter now, couldn’t find you because you hadn’t listed that shared employment in your LinkedIn profile.

4. Collect diverse recommendations. Nothing builds credibility like third party endorsements. The most impressive LinkedIn profiles have at least one recommendation associated with each job a person has held. Think about soliciting recommendations from professors, internship coordinators and colleagues, employers, classmates with whom you shared an extra curricular activity and professional mentors.

5. Share your news frequently. The best way to stay on other people’s radar screens is to update your status on LinkedIn (the box near the top of your profile) at least once a week. Tell people about events you are attending, major projects you’ve completed, professional books you are reading, successes you are celebrating or any other news that you would tell someone at a networking reception or on a quick catch-up phone call.

Want to become a more active user of LinkedIn? Check out the LinkedIn Learning Center and, for students, the LinkedIn Grads Guide. I also recommend Guy Kawasaki’s LinkedIn Profile Extreme Makeover.

Successful Career Change Advice (from Investors.com)

Investors.com - Lessons From Job Shifts

Shared via AddThis



Lessons From Job Shifts

By Adelia Cellini Linecker
Posted 06/03/2009 05:05 PM ET


Gone are the days when you spent your entire career with one company. Today's work force expects and seeks career changes. The lure of opportunities pushes people to accept challenges and turn them into learning experiences.
Career changes offer chances to land skills, says Kathryn Hall, whose career took her from lawyer to ambassador to winemaker.

Here's what you can learn:

• Assets count. "There are skills that you learn in one venue and they help you in the next setting," Hall told IBD.

Drawing from her experience as a lawyer, Hall tweaked her negotiating skills to suit her needs as U.S. ambassador to Austria. "I had a personal role, a business management role and a policy role," she said of her 1997-2001 tenure in Vienna. "A good negotiator understands the person you negotiate with. You need to know where they are coming from and know their culture."

• Challenges spur growth. New positions mean adjustments. Hall moved from a private law practice to the public arena when she ran for assistant city attorney in Berkeley, Calif., in the early 1970s.

The campaign taught her resilience. "Running for office is really like having psychoanalysis in front of millions of people," Hall said. "The challenge was learning to adapt to criticism and to recognize that it's not personal."

• Dreams change. Most people are destined for various work, says Pamela Skillings, author of "Escape From Corporate America."

"If you're like most people, you have a complex collection of interests, talents and priorities," she wrote. "At the same time, as you grow and evolve and your life circumstances change, your criteria for what makes a true calling may also change."

Changing jobs makes you more flexible to explore new areas.

• Confidence builds. While the first transition might cause anxiety, subsequent changes get easier.

"Have confidence that the most important skills for your new job are skills you have likely developed in your prior career, such as discipline, judgment, time management and interpersonal skills," Hall said.

• Open minds thrive. Don't let experience block growth. A career change can teach you to accept different ways of doing things.

"Be ready to learn new skills, and don't be hesitant to admit what you don't understand," Hall said.

• Research is key. Be smart about where you make the leap. Changing careers into a dead end will prove costly and demoralizing. "Look to growing industries like green products and services or health care," Hall said. "Don't wait for the business world to go back to normal. It won't. We are facing a widespread recalibration throughout the private sector. Look for new normals."

• Passion is a guide. This is a tough time to make career changes, Hall says. If you do something you love, you'll be so much better at it and you'll be a happier person.

Pick a career that you love or a job that leads to that career because "that's where your talents are," said Hall, owner of Hall Wines and who returned to the family business of running vineyards in Mendocino, Calif. "I always knew that someday I'd return to the business of winemaking, because it has been a part of my life ever since I can remember."



© 2009 Investor's Business Daily, Inc. All rights reserved. Investor's Business Daily, IBD and CAN SLIM and their corresponding logos are registered

Investing - the New Normal (Bloomberg Opinion)

Gross, Grantham, Bogle Lift Lid on ‘New Normal’: John F. Wasik



Commentary by John F. Wasik

June 1 (Bloomberg) -- If this past year has taught investors anything, it is that conventional wisdom has suffered a thousand cuts.

Stocks don’t always beat bonds. It may not make sense to always have 60 percent or more in stocks and 40 percent in bonds. Stock markets may actually reward politicians.

Three pallbearers of the established canon are Bill Gross, the co-chief investment officer of Pacific Investment Management Co.; Jeremy Grantham, chairman of GMO LLC; and John Bogle, founder of Vanguard Group.

All are beacons in a troubled industry. When I caught their talks at the Morningstar Inc. investment conference in Chicago on May 28, I expected to hear dour forecasts. Yet I didn’t expect notes on the revolution that is undermining the beliefs that investors held during growth eras.

Gross, the world’s most successful bond-fund manager, described what his firm calls the “new normal” investing environment. While he sees “accelerating inflation” toward the latter part of a three- to five-year cycle, he says almost every accepted notion about investing should be examined.

Weak earnings growth translates into “getting used to a 301(k)” -- as opposed to a robust 401(k) -- retirement fund. Stocks won’t always outperform bonds and having dominant positions in equities may not make sense.
Changing Outlook

In Gross’s outlook, the dollar will lose its status as the reserve currency; Brazil, India and China (forget Russia) will offer the best growth; and the U.S. is “consumed out.”

“Everything in this new normal world should be questioned,” Gross said.

What is normal? Certainly not an environment that rewarded investors with 10 percent returns in stocks every year as Wall Street said it would before the dot-com, housing and credit crashes dashed that myth.

That means the accepted wisdom of having 60 percent to 80 percent in stocks may be obsolete and unprofitable. The only guarantees are that the U.S. government will be selling trillions in Treasuries; Americans may start seriously saving again; and the consumer economy may be shrinking long term due to the aging of the population.

Grantham, whose bearish views can often be amusing in the way he presents them, sees some reasonable values in the stock market now, although he’s not sure that a robust rally is in the offing. He also warns that “you can bet on” a bubble forming in emerging-markets stocks.
Grantham’s Optimism

Like many observers, Grantham also sees Americans saving more and consuming less.

“We forgot to save in the last decade because of home prices,” he said. “Now we’ll have to work longer and be more frugal in order to retire.”

Grantham’s only palpable stock-market optimism -- always in short supply in his forecasts -- is the third year of a U.S. presidential cycle.

“Historically, year three has outperformed years one and two by about 22 percent,” he noted. “And there’s never been a major bear market in year three of a presidential cycle.”

For most of us stung by the wretched returns of last year, though, 2011 is too long to wait. That’s why I prefer Bogle’s fundamental approach to portfolios. It doesn’t involve any charts and almost no forecasts.

Bogle says his formula is based on one’s age. The older you are, the more you should have in bonds, approximately matching a percentage of fixed-income investments to your age.

Sage Advice

As one who mostly takes his own advice, Bogle said his allocation produced only an 11 percent loss in his portfolio last year when others with higher percentages in stocks lost from 30 percent to 50 percent.
Of those who got scorched last year, “98 percent of all investors would be willing to swap places with me,” Bogle said.

In keeping with his bedrock views that passive investing through low-cost index funds prevails over time, Bogle eschews absolute return and commodity funds.

What each sage investor neglected to mention was an ever- greater need to customize portfolios not only to hedge market risks but personal labor-market risks as well.

Are you in a profession or industry that’s wobbly right now? Do you have the resources to retrain or re-educate yourself? At the very least, your savings and investments should support some vocational flexibility in these dynamic times.
That’s perhaps the only piece of conventional wisdom that hasn’t changed.

(John F. Wasik, author of “The Cul-de-Sac Syndrome,” is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: John F. Wasik in Chicago at jwasik@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: June 1, 2009 00:00 EDT

Economic Stimulus Plan Jobs - Where to Look (Kiplingers)

Land a Government Job Now
Most of the new jobs being created by the President's economic-stimulus package are outside the Washington, D.C., area. Here's how to benefit, no matter where you live.
By Marty Nemko, Contributing Columnist, Kiplinger.com
May 21, 2009

President Obama's budget projects hundreds of thousands of new job openings in government and for government contractors during his first term. How do you find and land one well suited to you? Here's a guide.

Where are the jobs?

Especially when aiming for a government job, I reject the standard career-counselor advice to use your network to gain access to people with the power to hire you. My clients increasingly find that it's more time-effective to search the best job Web sites regularly by keyword and zip code for on-target job openings and then craft a top-notch application for each.

So where are the jobs?

*

About 85% of federal jobs are not in D.C. They're typically in major cities, both around the country and overseas.
*

To access the federal-job postings, start with www.usajobs.gov, which, as of this writing, lists 47,059 openings. That site has recently added a link for positions created by the stimulus package. Many of those positions will be filled through accelerated hiring procedures. To access that directly, go to http://jobsearch.usajobs.gov/a9recoveryjobs.asp.
*

Visit the individual Web sites of your favorite federal agencies. You can access the major ones from http://dcjobsource.com/fed.html. An agency may have special positions and recruitment programs listed only on its site. That means you'll be competing with fewer job seekers. Also, some federal agencies -- for example, the FBI, Federal Reserve, Government Accountability Office and CIA -- don't have to advertise their jobs on www.usajobs.gov.
*

An even more under-the-radar source of federal jobs is www.fedbizopps.gov. It lists positions, including many overseas (Iraq or Afghanistan, anyone?), that are filled via personal service contracts. Those jobs are less secure than government jobs but usually pay more.
*

Federal agencies, especially the EPA, State Department, FBI, FDIC and Treasury Department, often fill unadvertised openings at job fairs. Some are listed at www.govcentral.com/careers/articles/1871 and at www.fedjobs.com/chat/jobfairs.html.
*

Some private temporary agencies staff federal temp positions. Some of those agencies are listed on www.state.gov/m/dghr/flo/c21666.htm.
*

If you're a student, a good route to a permanent government job is a federal internship. The site www.makingthedifference.org lists 200 federal internship programs. Also see www.studentjobs.gov.
*

There's a directory of federal jobs set aside for veterans and people with disabilities: apps.opm.gov/sppc_directory.
*

For state, county and city jobs, visit your local government's Web site. To find yours, enter, for example, "government jobs" and "Chicago" in a search engine.
*

Lots of stimulus dollars are going to federal contractors -- independent firms that the government hires to do its bidding. Want to become one? The government's portal for potential contractors is www.fedbizopps.gov. Also see www.recovery.gov, which reports where stimulus dollars are going. Want to work for a government contractor? The 100 largest are listed at www.usaspending.gov. Smaller contractors list openings on their own site. The good news is that many or most such openings are aggregated, along with literally millions of other job openings, at www.indeed.com and www.simplyhired.com. Another approach: Regularly check the business section of your local newspaper or a dedicated business periodical, such as Crain's or Business Times, for announcements or articles about companies that have just received government contracts.

Which jobs should you apply for?

1.

Because there are so many applicants for most government jobs, you probably won't stand a chance unless you at least minimally meet most or all the requirements listed in the job announcement. Save your energy for the good fits. There are so many government openings, for everything from chef to chief, you'll likely find plenty.
2.

Federal jobs will be most abundant in areas the Obama administration has listed as priorities: renewable energy, the environment, infrastructure, health care and education. Lily Whiteman, author of How to Land a Top-Paying Federal Job, says jobs are particularly plentiful for contracts and grants managers, procurement officers, financial managers/auditors, IT specialists, intelligence experts, and people with knowledge of the culture and language of Middle East countries.
3.

Don't worry if your first government job isn't perfect -- your priority should probably be just to get into the government. That means applying for jobs you're fully or even overqualified for. Once you're a government employee, you'll find it easier to transfer to something you'll like better.

Landing the job

Finding on-target job openings is the easy part. The challenge is to become the winning candidate -- especially now, with all the publicity around ObamaJobs and the private sector offering so few full-time, long-term positions with benefits.

Applying for a government job is usually cumbersome. That's good news for you. So many people get frustrated with the application process that they do a shoddy job. If you craft a solid application for all the jobs you can, you'll likely prevail. And remember, the pot at the end of the rainbow is quite golden: moderate work hours, unmatched job security, great benefits, and ample vacation and holidays. Thank you, taxpayers.

My job-seeking clients are finding these to be the most potent approaches to beating out the competition:

*

Research your target agency. Whiteman suggests you review its Web site and, particularly, its recent press releases. Then reflect your knowledge of the agency in your application.
*

Call the hiring manager to get application tips. Yes, there's a chance you'll be viewed as pushy, but there's a greater chance you'll get inside information or even develop enough of a relationship to gain an edge against the competition.
*

Use a two-column cover letter. Hiring managers are overwhelmed with applications, so yours should quickly and clearly demonstrate that you're a great fit for the position: On the left side, list the job's major qualifications; on the right, say how you meet each requirement.
*

Tell PAR stories. In interviews and in job-application essays (in federal job applications they're usually called KSAs, which stands for knowledge, skills and abilities), tell one or more anecdotes that demonstrate you have one or more key attributes listed in the job announcement. Each anecdote should usually follow the PAR formula: a problem you faced, how you approached it, and its positive resolution.
*

Create a portfolio. Consider creating a Web site consisting of your work products and resume. Of course, include its URL on your job applications.
*

Make sure your message is clear. Whiteman says that before submitting an application, it must pass the "30-second-test." Ask a person you trust to identify your best attributes from your application in 30 seconds. If he or she can't, it's unlikely a hiring manager will be able to do so.

Marty Nemko (bio) is a career coach and author of Cool Careers for Dummies.

Work from Home that's Not a Scam (WSJ)

CAREERS MAY 6, 2009 Negotiating the Freelance Economy
Article
By SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN

In April 2008, Rebecca Haden lost her job when the small store she managed went out of business. A year later, she's working as many as 40 hours a week and earning much more than she did before -- even though she still doesn't have a job. Her formula? Freelancing her Web skills.

Ms. Haden, of Fayetteville, Ark., is among a growing number of professionals who are making ends meet by working on a project-by-project contract basis. Even as permanent- and temp-job opportunities are shrinking, the amount of contract work to be found on freelance-jobs sites is expanding. What's more, it's moving beyond computer-programming and graphic-design gigs for small employers to include listings from larger companies and assignments in fields such as accounting, law, engineering and sales.

Between January and March, employers posted 70,500 of these work-for-hire positions on Elance.com and 43,000 on Odesk.com, which represents increases of 35% and 105%, respectively, from the same period in 2008. Sologig.com, which lists remote and on-site freelance jobs, says its average monthly postings have more than doubled to around 13,500 per month in the past year. In March, there were 750 jobs listed on VirtualAssistants.com, versus 400 in March 2008.

Rebecca Haden has landed a steady supply of project-based work, in part by using freelance-job site Odesk.
At the same time, the number of U.S. workers employed by temporary-help-services firms in March fell 27% to 1.8 million from the same month in 2008, according to the Labor Department.

As the recession takes hold, more employers are using freelance workers to avoid the expenses associated with hiring permanent staff, says Fabio Rosati, chief executive officer of Mountain View, Calif.-based Elance. "The power of online work is that it's immediate, cost-effective and flexible," he says.

Indeed, freelance workers are often cheaper and more flexible than temp workers, whose jobs, though short-term, tend to be full-time, subject to temp-agency fees, and bound by agency restrictions, such as limits on the permanent hiring of temps.

Mr-SEO.com, an online marketing firm with eight employees, began using freelance help a year ago to handle tasks in Web-site development, administrative services and copywriting. The five-year-old Seattle-based company hired 17 freelancers through Odesk.com for projects that lasted as little as a few days or as long as eight months and counting. "It gives us the flexibility to expand our work force depending on client demand," says Greg Gaskill, the company's president.

Like many workers who turn to freelance positions, Ms. Haden, a 51-year-old mother of four, didn't plan to take on piecemeal work after her layoff. At first, she approached a local Internet company about a permanent job doing Web optimization -- a technique for boosting a site's search-engine rankings. It was a skill she had learned while overseeing her former employer's online store and blog. The firm wasn't hiring, but it offered her a short freelance assignment. She accepted.

Ms. Haden, who holds a master's degree in linguistics, wrote about the experience for a popular blog on Web optimization. "People started approaching me with work pretty soon after that," she says.

'I Just Do the Fun Stuff'
One gig she landed introduced her to Odesk, which, like some other contract-job sites, can monitor freelancers' work. Since then, Ms. Haden says she's landed a steady supply of Web-optimization assignments through Odesk, as well as through her personal Web site and blog. Most months, she earns more than double her previous income. Ms. Haden says the work has been fulfilling, and she has put her permanent-job search on hold indefinitely. "I get to pick and choose what I do now," she says. "And I just do the fun stuff."

Family Money
Take This Dream and Crunch It

Many other laid-off professionals appear to be taking up freelancing, either as a new career or as a way to weather the downturn. Freelance-job sites say membership among individuals, which is free in many cases, has risen sharply. For example, Guru.com has nearly 878,000 freelance members today, up from around 760,000 a year ago.

Freelance-job sites also say they're seeing more midsize and large employers posting assignments, and the jobs have expanded into more business functions, such as finance, manufacturing and law. For example, roughly 1,700 new jobs were added to the sales and marketing category on Elance in March, a 50% increase from a year ago. That's led to new types of contract workers, too.

Last month, Lynn Welch became one of those new freelancers when she began a 96-hour home-based consulting stint for Axsys Technologies Inc., a large, publicly traded manufacturer of infrared technologies based in Rocky Hill, Conn. She was laid off in March from a senior marketing position at a midsize technology firm and says her Axsys contract is one of four freelance assignments she's landed either through networking or Guru. She's so far earned roughly $10,000 from freelance gigs in online marketing.

Pitfalls of Contract Work
Despite her successes, Ms. Welch, who is 40 and lives in a Washington, D.C., suburb, says she still deals with some of the pitfalls that come with contract work. For example, she says she once spent several hours researching and explaining how she'd handle a potential project, but didn't get the gig. "Some [employers] want to pick your brain and have no intention of paying you," she says. Now Ms. Welch is more cautious about sharing information with employers before a contract is signed. "If they're asking for a lot of details, that's a warning sign," she says.

Sites like Odesk, Guru and Elance guarantee payment after jobs are completed in return for commissions of about 6% to 10% of freelancers' fees. But many other sites hold individuals fully responsible for billing clients and collecting payments.

There are other downsides to freelancing, from the lack of health coverage and paid time off to the need to make your own retirement contributions. Striking out on your own also requires regularly searching for and vetting potential new assignments, while ensuring that you complete on time the ones you've already secured. Furthermore, you may need to invest in equipment such as computer software and a business phone line.

Carving Out a Niche
Should you decide to take up contract work, there are ways to help ensure the process goes smoothly. First, make sure to be very specific about your skills and expertise when you fill out a profile on a freelance job site, says Kate Lister, author of "Undress for Success: The Naked Truth About Making Money at Home." Doing so will help you stand out from the competition. "You want to carve out a niche," she says.

To figure out how much to charge for your work, research the rates that experienced freelancers demand for similar services, suggests Ms. Lister. The information can usually be found in members' profiles on freelance job sites. "Look at their portfolios and ask yourself, could I produce that level of work? Could I do much better than that?" she says. After settling on a figure, Ms. Lister suggests starting out at a slightly lower rate to build a track record.

Another option is to offer to work for just a few hours at first to prove yourself, suggests Gower Idrees, founder of RareBrain Capital LP, a consulting firm specializing in high-growth businesses in The Woodlands, Texas. Since early 2007, Mr. Idrees has hired about 1,500 freelancers from Guru -- including former big-company executives, many as consultants. "I've used them in every way possible," he says.

Mr. Idrees recommends discussing potential projects with hiring managers over the phone whenever possible, rather than using email, in order to build trust and negotiate a fair pay rate. That way, a potential freelancer "can educate [the company] on what the challenges really are," he explains. Sometimes, he says, employers aren't aware just how many hours a project will require.

Write to Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com



Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page D1