By some estimates, this is the toughest job market in two decades. Indeed, the fact that the unemployment rate just topped 10% indicates how difficult things are right now. Which means that relying solely on the job boards may be a bad idea. Indeed, CNN Money points out that this is not even close to enough if you are serious about succeeding in the job hunt:
According to Paul Bernard, a veteran executive coach and career management adviser who runs his own firm, many job seekers make the mistake of relying too heavily on online job boards, particularly at the start …read more

My good friend Dr. Thomas Ho made me aware of a development from Google this evening that I think will be pretty interesting if executed well. And let’s be honest, most of what Google does is done fairly well.

It appears that Google will be adding some social search functionality to their toolbox. Currently in development in the Google Labs, we’re told it should be coming publicly available soon.
The idea is that when you search, there will be results offered from those in your social networks as well. So, if you’re searching for images, you can bet that your friends images …read more

I’ve written about Xobni, the 3rd party Outlook search plug-in, a few different times on the this here website (here, here, and here). They’ve now released version 1.4 and have addressed some speed issues that a number of people mentioned in comments on my post.
The other nice thing they’ve added is the ability to immediately show LinkedIn profile information for anyone you receive an e-mail from. VERY NICE! I’ve already used it to connect with a few more people on the LinkedIn site that I didn’t realize were users.
One more feature worth mentioning is that you can now specifically …read more