Career Links: The Post-Finance Job Market, Niche Job Sites, and the Secret of Entrepreneurship

By Zack on August 31, 2009

Ezra Klein Contemplates a Post-Finance Job Market: "If the financial sector is somehow shut down, or radically shrunk, they'll just go to the next most profitable industry. Doctors get paid a lot, but there are sharp constraints on supply, so you'd just have more competitive medical schools, as opposed to more doctors. We'll have a lot more lawyers. Many more management consultants. Potentially more engineers and researchers, though those gigs require specialized graduate education -- frequently in the hard sciences -- and I'd imagine there's not too much overlap between college kids interested in organic chemistry and college kids who end up in finance at 23."

Cheezhead Thinks Niche Job Sites Should Band Together: Diversity Groups have seen larger layoffs in the recession, and Rathin Sinha thinks niche sites could better serve these groups if they collaborated. "Essentially, the market needs a destination where these groups can come together. It needs a place where the right jobs for the right audiences can be searched. It needs a place where employers who want to reach all of these audiences can do so with a single click of the mouse."

Twenty Set Reveals the Secret of Young Entrepreneurs: It's Education. "When people ask me how to become an entrepreneur, I ask them, “What is something you can do this week to take the first step?” If you can’t answer that question with a tangible, actionable item, the answer for you is probably that you should get more education."

The Thin Pink Line Looks at Office Etiquette: Carol Frohlinger points to a study that shows 25% of employers have fired an employee for violating the company's email policy. She then gives some advice about how to avoid becoming one of those 25%.

Ben Casochna Makes Some Career Corollaries: Ben says the career advisers obsession with "passion" is similar to writing instructors fixation with "voice." "As with careers and passion, I don't disagree with the fundamental point here, but I do worry about the intensity with which this advice is dispensed to aspiring writers. How, exactly, are you supposed to improve the "voice" of your writing? How do you know whether the sound of the words on the page are most true to you? What is "aliveness" and can not writing have bounce in its step but still lack a singular voice that would be familiar if you heard it again?"