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

Where the Jobs Will Be (WSJ)

Landing a Job of the Future Takes a Two-Track Mind
Career Experts Say Positions in Growing Fields Will Require an In-Demand Degree Coupled With Skills in Emerging Trends


By DIANA MIDDLETON

If you're gearing up for a job search now as an undergraduate or returning student, there are several bright spots where new jobs and promising career paths are expected to emerge in the next few years.

Technology, health care and education will continue to be hot job sectors, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' outlook for job growth between 2008 and 2018. But those and other fields will yield new opportunities, and even some tried-and-true fields will bring some new jobs that will combine a variety of skill sets.



The degrees employers say they'll most look for include finance, engineering and computer science, says Andrea Koncz, employment-information manager at the National Association of Colleges and Employers. But to land the jobs that will see some of the most growth, job seekers will need to branch out and pick up secondary skills or combine hard science study with softer skills, career experts say, which many students already are doing. "Students are positioned well for future employment, particularly in specialized fields," Ms. Koncz says.

Career experts say the key to securing jobs in growing fields will be coupling an in-demand degree with expertise in emerging trends. For example, communications pros will have to master social media and the analytics that come with it; nursing students will have to learn about risk management and electronic records; and techies will need to keep up with the latest in Web marketing, user-experience design and other Web-related skills.

Technology Twists

More than two million new technology-related jobs are expected to be created by 2018, according to the BLS. Jobs that are expected to grow faster than average include computer-network administrators, data-communications analysts and Web developers. Recruiters anticipate that data-loss prevention, information technology, online security and risk management will also show strong growth.

The Next Finance Hiring Hot Spots
A computer-science degree and a working knowledge of data security are critical to landing these jobs. Common areas of undergraduate study for these fields include some of the usual suspects, such as computer science, information science and management-information systems.

But those might not be enough. That's because not all of those jobs will be purely techie in nature. David Foote, chief executive officer of IT research firm Foote Partners, advises current computer-science students to couple their degrees with studies in marketing, accounting or finance. "Before, people widely believed that all you needed to have were deep, nerdy skills," Mr. Foote says. "But companies are looking for people with multiple skill sets who can move fluidly with marketing or operations."

Social media has opened the door to the growth of new kinds of jobs. As companies turn to sites like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook to promote their brands, capture new customers and even post job openings, they will need to hire people skilled in harnessing these tools, Mr. Foote says. In most cases, these duties will be folded into a marketing position, although large companies such as Coca-Cola Co. are creating entire teams devoted exclusively to social media.

Similarly, employment for public-relations positions should increase 24% by 2018. Job titles—like interactive creative director—will reflect the duality of the required skill sets.

Back to School
Students will have to study strategy to maximize relationships between third-party content providers and their company's Web team. Other key skills will be search-engine optimization to maximize Web traffic and marketing analytics to decipher the company's target demographic, says Donna Farrugia, executive director of Creative Group, a marketing and advertising staffing agency in Menlo Park, Calif.

Many universities and community colleges are offering certification programs focused on burgeoning sectors. For example, the University of California at Los Angeles's extension program offers a certificate in information design.

That, program, like similar certificate studies at other schools, aims to give students an edge in Web site search optimization—a major attraction for Web-based companies who want to boost user traffic, says Cathy Sandeen, dean of UCLA's extension program.

User-experience design—a sort of architecture for information that Web viewers see—is another emerging field. Jobs there include experience specialists and product designers at firms ranging from computer-game companies to e-commerce Web sites.

Ms. Sandeen says the school will offer a certificate program for user-experience design as well, at a cost of about $3,000 to $5,000. The program will run one to two years, depending on a student's schedule, and will couple product design with consumer psychology and behavior.

"Our students [will] learn to think like anthropologists, evaluating how easy it is to utilize the products," she says.

Not surprisingly, green technology, including solar and wind energy and green construction, are also booming areas. Engineers who can mastermind high-voltage electric grids, for example, will have a great advantage over other job applicants, says Greg Netland, who oversees recruiting for the U.S., Latin America and Canada for Sapphire Technologies, an IT staffing firm in Woburn, Mass. that is a division of Randstad.

"Global sustainability will become more important to employers," Mr. Netland says. "It cuts costs, making experts in the field highly attractive to employers."

Jobs in alternative-energy systems, including wind and solar energy, will require a variety of skills: engineers to design systems, consultants who will audit companies' existing energy needs, and those who will install and maintain the systems.

Financial Opportunities
Despite the slashing of positions seen in the financial sector during the economic crisis, recruiters also expect thousands of new jobs to be created in the compliance field, says Dawn Fay, district New York/New Jersey president of Robert Half International.

Ms. Fay counsels job seekers to look at the misdeeds of the past year or two to identify where new jobs will bloom in the financial sector. "It was a year of Ponzi schemes and banking meltdowns," she says. "Be strategic and position yourself as someone who can mitigate those risks."

That makes risk management an emerging specialty with strong growth in jobs expected. Those on track to be financial analysts can get additional certification in risk management through organizations like the Risk Management Association or the Risk and Insurance Management Society.

"Risk management was a mainstay in financial companies, but I believe it will be present in every Fortune 500 company," says Jeff Joerres, chairman and chief executive officer at staffing firm Manpower Inc.

Hospital Upgrades
Health care is expected to continue to see a surge in hiring, with more than four million new openings estimated by 2018, according to the BLS. Hiring for physical and occupational therapists will likely be strongest. But new specialties are popping up, particularly in case management, says Brad Ellis, a partner with Kaye Bassman International, an executive-search firm based in Plano, Texas.

Case managers do everything from managing the flow of information between practitioner and insurance company to mitigating risk to the hospital.

"If you're a licensed nurse, for example, getting a certificate in risk management from the state board of health would make you extremely competitive," Mr. Ellis says.

Harris Miller, president of the Career College Association in Washington, D.C., says IT will be increasingly important in the quest to drive down health-care costs, too. Students specializing in nursing informatics, which combines general nursing with computer and information sciences, at the master's degree level will swap a clipboard for a smart phone to manage patient data. Schools like Vanderbilt University are offering nursing informatics degrees via distance learning, and certification is offered through American Nurses Credentialing Center, based in Silver Springs, Md.

The strong push toward making medical records and information more accessible through computerized record-keeping means opportunity, Mr. Miller says. "This is going to require people who are skilled in the hardware and software of nursing informatics."

Write to Diana Middleton at diana.middleton@wsj.com

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.

Shortcuts to Social Networking - NYTimes.com

Shortcuts - Putting Yourself Out There on a Shelf to Buy - NYTimes.com

Websites for Job Hunters - from WSJ

WALL STREET JOURNAL
TECHNOLOGY NOVEMBER 25, 2008, 8:44 A.M. ET

For the Jobless, Web Sites Offer More Options

By PUI-WING TAM

Unemployment in the U.S. has hit a 14-year high as companies cut back. That has sent masses of laid-off workers flocking to the Web in search of opportunities -- and job sites have been stepping up to meet the challenge.
New job sites with names like MarketVendorJobs.com have sprung up to take advantage of growing user interest amid the economic downturn. Established sites, such as CareerBuilder.com, have also started rolling out new features to improve the relevance of job listings for candidates and make their résumés stand out, among other things. And some sites, such as Vault.com, are providing career counseling and other new services.

Business-networking site LinkedIn last month began offering online outplacement services to companies so that laid-off workers can more easily find their next gigs. It also has introduced technology that better matches its members with appropriate jobs. Using an algorithm, the site searches words within a job posting and then matches up members who list skills that fit the job. In January, the company plans to debut a feature that makes it easier for users to notify members in their online network that they're searching for a job.
Meanwhile, Glassdoor.com, a salary-review and employee-review Web site, this month retooled its home page so that jobs listed near the users' hometown and relevant job categories immediately pop up when an individual logs on. Vault.com has created a $999 service for job seekers to get two 45-minute career-coaching sessions over the phone to help them land a new job.
But some consumers may be overwhelmed by the number of job-search sites and all their new features. Scores of career sites are competing for clicks, so users must master multiple search tools -- only to discover that sometimes there is redundancy in the listings. Career counselors advise job seekers to learn advanced search strategies on several sites so that only relevant results are displayed. They're also told to find niche sites that focus on an industry or region to further narrow their search.
Alice Ziroli, 46, began looking for new jobs online earlier this year when the pharmaceutical company she worked for shut down its local sales division. But when she trolled sites such as Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com, she says she found their offerings too vast.
"I didn't find them user-friendly," says Ms. Ziroli. She eventually found a job-search engine called Indeed.com, which has a simple Google-like home page and allowed her to narrowly specify her job-search criteria. Last month, Ms. Ziroli started a new $65,000-a-year job -- slightly more than what she made before -- as a sales representative for a hospice-and-health-care company just 18 miles from her Diamond Bar, Calif., home.

Adding New Features

A CareerBuilder.com spokesman says that, in this environment, the more features that a site offers the better for a job candidate. Monster says it is rolling out improvements to its site early next year with features that will make it easier to upload résumés and apply for a job online.

CareerBuilder.com and other sites are adding features to improve the relevance of online job searches.
Still, job-search sites are experiencing a dramatic spike in usage. The total number of minutes that Internet users spent on such Web sites jumped 13% in October from a year earlier, while the total number of job-site pages viewed rose 20% in the same period, according to comScore Inc., a market-research company based in Reston, Va. Overall, the number of unique visitors to job-search sites is up 12% in the past year, more than the 5% increase for the Internet as a whole.
"Engagement with these job sites is a lot higher now," says Andrew Lipsman, a comScore spokesman. "It's not just how many people are on these sites but how much time overall they're spending on them."
Job-oriented sites are capitalizing -- literally -- on the newfound interest. Glassdoor.com late last month got $6.5 million in new venture-capital funding, just four months after its June launch. LinkedIn also announced last month that it had received $22.7 million in new funding from strategic investors such as Goldman Sachs Inc. and McGraw-Hill Co.
Niche Job Sites
Some job-search sites cater to certain industries. Dice.com, for instance, is targeted at technology professionals. Its sister Web site, eFinancialCareers.com, is tailored for finance-industry workers -- an area that has been particularly hard hit. In September, eFinancialCareers.com launched an emergency toolkit that bundles tips and articles on how finance workers can network, customize their résumés and interview better in order to land a new job.
Other sites try to stand out by providing more career-improvement data and features apart from just job listings. With numbers submitted by users, Glassdoor.com offers salary data for positions at numerous companies. So based on nine submissions, individuals searching for engineering-manager positions at Google Inc. would see that total compensation for such a job might add up to $241,000, including salary and bonuses.
And some sites are now emulating features found on social-networking sites: CareerBuilder.com in February launched BrightFuse.com, where professionals can network and interact with one another. A CareerBuilder.com spokesman says BrightFuse.com will add new features next year to highlight each member's skills, such as allowing writers to upload samples of their work.
One thing career sites haven't been able to perk up for job seekers is the total number of job listings. As of earlier this month, the number of job listings on Dice.com was down 9% for the year so far, compared with the same period in 2007, says a spokeswoman, who declined to reveal underlying numbers. At Indeed.com, the number of open positions has stayed flat at about five million jobs over the past year, says Indeed.com Chief Executive Paul Forster.

'A Mixed Picture'

"It's very much a mixed picture" out there jobwise, says Mr. Forster. "There's a lot of weakness in certain areas, such as in the mortgage, retail, financial, construction and hospitality industries. But some areas like defense and health care are strong."
Marc Hirsch, who started looking for a new job six months ago, says many features on the job sites helped him. The Roanoke, Va., resident, who has a background as a chemist, used LinkedIn, CareerBuilder.com and Indeed.com to get job alerts sent to him and liked how many of the listings came with salary information and estimates. "There was a lot of garbage that came back" through the online searches "but some quality opportunities too," says the 52-year-old.
Ultimately, though, the job sites proved to be just a starting point for him. Through one job listing he found on a career Web site earlier this year, Mr. Hirsch got his résumé sent to General Electric Co. While the company didn't have anything suitable at the time, GE kept his name on file.
When a position as an applications engineer came open, GE contacted him and he got the post, he says.
Write to Pui-Wing Tam at pui-wing.tam@wsj.com
Copyright 2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

From WSJ - Work at Home, Reputable Websites

WORK & FAMILY By SUE SHELLENBARGER
Nice Work If You Can Get It: Web Sites for At-Home Jobs
As gasoline prices soar and joblessness mounts, the nonstop stream of email I get from readers wanting to work from home is rising, too. Also multiplying are the online scam artists who seek to profit on that desire.
So like the ancient philosopher Diogenes searching for an honest man, I set out looking for a few honest Web sites that actually help people find real, paying home-based work. I selected only sites with a track record and users I could interview. Help in my search came from Tory Johnson, founder of WomenforHire.com1, an employment Web site, and co-author of a forthcoming book on working from home; and Peter Weddle of Weddles.com2, a researcher, consultant and author on recruiting and online employment.
YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED
3
Sue Shellenbarger answers readers' questions4 about work-at-home opportunities on the Web and U.S. states that plan to post child-care inspection complaints and reports online.
A word of caution: Although at-home opportunities are increasing, most are only for part-time, low-paid work without benefits; some people who use these Web sites make as little as $5,000 a year. Many work very hard at tasks most people would find difficult, such as telemarketing. Competition for at-home work is keen; prepare to wait months to get a client, project or assignment. That said, here are some options:
If you have professional skills and experience, and are prepared to slug it out for clients in the global marketplace, a free-lance site may be for you. Elance.com5 and oDesk.com6 each link clients with about 90,000 skilled free-lancers apiece, roughly half of whom are in the U.S. The sites post client feedback and publish results of optional professional-skills tests free-lancers can choose to take through the site. The sites also serve as secure intermediaries for clients' payments, in return for commissions of about 4% to 10% of free-lancers' fees. Information-technology workers, such as programmers and Web developers, are the sites' biggest market, but they're fast expanding into graphic design, writing, engineering, translation, marketing, accounting, administrative and legal services.
HOMEWORK

For information on finding trustworthy at-home work opportunities:
• bbbonline.org7 and click on "For Consumers."
• WomenForHire.com8, offers resources and ideas on working from home.
• FTC.gov9, type "work at home scam" in search box.
One exceptional success story comes from Arron Washington, 24 years old, a Hinesville, Ga., programmer who dropped out of college after realizing he could make as much as $60,000 a year on oDesk.com. "The offers just kept pouring in," he says.
If you like providing customer service, selling stuff by phone or in some cases making cold calls, companies that outsource call-center services for retailers, infomercial vendors and other clients are expanding use of at-home agents. Workers are typically paid by the hour, by the call or by the minute spent talking, plus incentives; most make a total of about $8 to $17 an hour.
West Corp. (west.com10), with 15,000 home agents, is undergoing "rapid expansion," says Dan Hicks, a senior vice president. LiveOps.com11, which claims to have 20,000 home agents working at least a few hours a week, plans to bring on several thousand more this year, says Jon Temple, president, world-wide operations. Arise.com12, with 8,000 home-business owners as agents, plans to add 4,000 more by year end, says Angie Selden, chief executive. AlpineAccess.com13, with 7,500 home agents, will hire 2,500 more people by December, says CEO Christopher Carrington. Executives at Convergys.com14, with 1,000 home agents, and VIPDesk.com15, with 300, also say they're expanding. WorkingSolutions.com16 claims 4,000 active agents and plans to hire as many as 600 more by December. In a new twist, a few of these companies, including West, are making home agents permanent employees with access to group benefits. Convergys and Alpine Access subsidize the benefits.
If you like the idea of being a "virtual assistant" -- a jack-of-all-trades who performs online many of the same services as an administrative aide in a brick-and-mortar office -- TeamDoubleClick.com17 offers links to clients. Pay is typically $10 to $20 an hour for taking calls, booking events or travel or other tasks. But entry barriers are high; some 80% of the site's 300 to 500 weekly applicants fail mandatory entry tests on typing, computer and phone skills. And only 10% of the site's 49,000 VAs are working, says co-founder Gayle Buske.
Other sites serve as job boards. Sologig.com18 says a sizable minority of the 8,000 screened free-lance opportunities it has posted can be done from anywhere. A smaller site, VirtualAssistants.com19, offers access to screened postings for $14.95 a month. And tJobs.com20 and teleworkrecruiting.com21 also charge a fee for access to screened work-at-home postings, which they collect from employers or elsewhere on the Web.
Write to Sue Shellenbarger at sue.shellenbarger@wsj.com22

URL for this article:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121564902139141075.html

Hyperlinks in this Article:(1) http://WomenforHire.com (2) http://Weddles.com (3) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121564872600341053.html (4) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121564872600341053.html (5) http://Elance.com (6) http://oDesk.com (7) http://bbbonline.org (8) http://WomenForHire.com (9) http://FTC.gov (10) http://west.com (11) http://LiveOps.com (12) http://Arise.com (13) http://AlpineAccess.com (14) http://Convergys.com (15) http://VIPDesk.com (16) http://WorkingSolutions.com (17) http://TeamDoubleClick.com (18) http://Sologig.com (19) http://VirtualAssistants.com (20) http://tJobs.com (21) http://teleworkrecruiting.com (22) mailto:sue.shellenbarger@wsj.com