What a pleasant surprise to open the NY Times Sunday paper and see three familiar names of leaders in the job search industry. All I consider friends. Richard Nelson Bolles spoke at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan recently. If you haven’t heard of Richard Bolles, he is the author of the classic job hunting reference book “What Color Is Your Parachute“. The 39th annual edition will be published in October 2008.
As part of his presentation at the Manhattan Y, two of the resources he recommended for online job search were RileyGuide.com and Job-Hunt.org. Both I know well. Margaret Riley Dikel and Susan Joyce, respectively, operate the two sites. Both are no-nonsense editors/authors that take tremendous pride in the quality and depth of information offered. The material is well researched and the tell-it-like-it-is is refreshing. I recommend that all job seekers visit both sites as the material from each is complimentary.
Richard Bolles, still going strong at 81, conducts periodic workshops at his home in the San Francisco Bay area. Nancy Peterson, of Workforce50.com, recently attended his workshop and will write more in a future blog post. To learn more about Richard, his books and workshops go to JobHuntersBible.com .
What creates job opportunities is the fact that there is a 30% turnover rate in executive positions. This does not mean executives are necessarily getting terminated, they could be getting transferred, promoted, leave for another opportunity, the company could be purchased and re-managed or the company could be expanding domestically or internationally or just be re-arranging the deck chairs. In any case the national average is a turnover rate of 30%, which means if you look at 100 companies and an average transition time of 120 days there is approximately 10 job openings at any given time. This is often referred to as the “hidden or non-published job market.”