The Careerists Journal

Jobs For Manufacturing Experts Up by 11% Since October

Jobs for manufacturing experts  are up by 11% since October of last year. Hiring for these positions peaked in January. There was a small drop of less than 1% in February. This information corroborates a story in the Wall Street Journal which said that "indexes of manufacturing output hit their highest levels in seven years in the U.S. ". What NimbleCat's information  adds to the WSJ story is that most of the increase took place in the rust belt.

All of the top five metro areas for manufacturing jobs in February were in or near the rust belt. Detroit claimed almost 5% of new manufacturing jobs , with Chicago, Minneapolis, Milwaukee and Tulsa following along. The increase of manufacturing jobs in Detroit confirms a story in Daily Finance  that places auto manufacturing in the top ten growth industries for 2011. 

 Jobs that are related to manufacturing, namely supply chain, logistics and procurement held steady during this period.

How can you leverage this information? If you're hiring for manufacturing jobs, you can find qualified professionals in your area with People Search on Facebook. If you want to  find out how your Facebook network can help you connect with manufacturing experts, try Throng. Throng creates dramatic graphics that make it easy to see who you're connected to, where they work or study and what their interests are. Tell me what you think at smehta [at] nimblecat [dot] com.

More Jobs for Nurses in Rust Belt States In January

New jobs for nurses were plentiful in rust belt metro areas in January.  Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit and Baltimore together accounted for 10% of new nursing jobs. 

What is interesting about these numbers is that rust belt cities which have cold winters have historically seen retirees move to warmer climates. And you might expect this to be reflected in higher volumes of hiring in southern cities like Las Vegas snd Phoenix, but also in other southern states. Not so. There were more jobs for nurses in the rust belt states than in the southern states in January.

Could it be that this last recession is changing historic patterns? Are people now less likely to move south as they retire? That may well be what we're seeing in this information.

Are you hiring nurses or looking for a job in this field? NimbleCat aggregates over a million jobs each month to create analyses like this one. Our Jobs app on Facebook matches your resume or social profile to highlight the best fit jobs for you. If you are hiring nurses, use NimbleCat People Search to zero in on the best candidates.

Demand for recruiters drops in January

Demand for recruiters has decreased by 30%  from a peak in the fall of 2010. Based on jobs aggregated and analysed by NimbleCat, recruiter hiring increased by almost 30% from April to September of last year. It has declined since November to April, 2010 levels. This may well indicate that many companies have completed the expansion of their staffing teams for the moment.

An article in the Wall Street Journal confirmed the increase in hiring last fall based on interviews with recruiters and an analyis of the titles of jobs aggregated by Indeed. Skip to the end of this post for my plug on why NimbleCat's numbers are more accurate and timely than those from Indeed :-)

IT professionals, project managers and product managers were in high demand in January, as they have been in previous months. In  contrast, human resources and marketing professionals continue to be in the top ranks of job seekers. To reinforce the opening paragraph of this post, 10% of all resumes and social profiles aggregated by NimbleCat in January were for recruiters.

 So, why are NimbleCat's numbers likely to be more reliable than those supplied by Indeed for the WSJ article? 

Indeed gets numbers like those reported in the WSJ by looking for keywords in job titles. NimbleCat identifies and analyses the relevant parts of the job description, omitting boiler plate text and ads. Our scoring engine then classifies jobs  into one of the many job categories that it is trained to  recognize. And we analyse and aggregate jobs in real time so we can  report what happened yesterday, last week or last month.

 NimbleCat aggregates jobs, resumes and social profiles to provide its people and job search services. All this functionality is available from Facebook apps, so you access it easily from the one place that so many of us frequent every day.

 

My NimbleCat Score

(This post was written by Poonam Murgai, V.P. Engineering  at NimbleCat, Inc.)

My NimbleCat score is  .  Click on the score to see more details on  my professional profile. The number 156 in the score image is an aggregate score based on my career in software development;  the star following it indicates that I have management experience.    I use my NimbleCat score to establish my credibility with other professionals I might not know yet, but need to connect with on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other places on the social web.

Most professionals work hard to keep their resumes current.  They get coached on how to refine it, to put their best face forward for the employer.  Some people like to attach their whole life history in their resume - after all it is hard to leave out that waiter's job in school which paid the bills.  Others like to add volume to their resume, describing each project in intricate detail without describing their role.  Resumes like these would have mixed luck getting the attention of the employer, as they just want to know if the individual has the skills they need at that present time, and have thirty to sixty seconds to determine that.

Clearly a focused resume would work better.  Even better would be a way for the employer to quickly determine the best fit candidate.  That is where the NimbleCat score has been instrumental in establishing credibility.   It grades an individual on their education, professional accomplishments, and management expertise after essentially analyzing the DNA of the resume.

Use the NimbleCat Grader™ application on Facebook   to grade your professional profile on Facebook or LinkedIn, or to grade a resume.  You can then see how you compare with your peers, and get hints on how to improve your resume or profile based on NimbleCat's analysis.   Now you can put your NimbleCat score in your email signature, on your Facebook or LinkedIn profile, or anywhere you want to stand out.

 

Seattle Produces Almost As Many Software Jobs As All Of California

California produced almost 10% of all software jobs in the United States in December. However, the single metro area of Seattle produced almost as many jobs as all of California. Clearly good news for Washington state, but there's a silver lining for California as well.

The good news for California job seekers  is that  more software jobs are being created in California than before. When I wrote about this last June, the San Francisco Bay Area ranked sixth among all metro areas. In December, the Bay Area ranked third, just behind Seattle and the DC metro area.

I also took a look at what companies were hiring for in the software space. One trend I noticed last June and again in December is that software producers are creating more quality assurance jobs. The ratio of software engineers to software quality is now two to one. This number was closer to three to one in years past. As a user and a producer of software, I'm glad that there's more emphasis on quality.

NimbleCat posts weekly on the state of the job market in different industries. If you are hiring for software jobs, use NimbleCat  to identify credible candidates and quickly connect with them on LinkedIn, Facebook or by email. You can find us at http://www.nimblecat.com or on Facebook .

Job statistics reveal valuable economic trends

(This post was written by David Seaver, Director of Marketing at NimbleCat, Inc.)

Economic statistics traditionally rely heavily on data reported to government agencies, as well as on opinion surveys of experts. The Wall Street Journal article referenced in last week’s post based its conclusions partly on a well-regarded survey of purchasing managers. But at what point do the these sources leave us with only half of the real story? I suspect that this situation occurs frequently, but there are remedies. Because job posts are a strong indication of a company’s future plans, statistics derived from them can supplement economic data and provide key insights that are essential to understanding the larger picture.

Last week’s post looked at a two different types of manufacturing jobs, pursuant to an article by the WSJ which discussed a rise in manufacturing. In this post, I’d like to follow up  on the meaning of the numbers in that post and on issues with both how organizations gather statistics and how these statistics are analyzed.

NimbleCat’s statistics, which are extracted from job postings (rather than opinion surveys), confirmed that positions for both manufacturing process experts and supply-chain/logistics experts are, indeed, rising, month over month in the US. When we look at regions, however, there are two very different stories. The first category shows a concentration in traditional industrial areas: Detroit, Milwaukee, Minneapolis. The second shows concentrations in regions more commonly associated with commerce, government, and possibly imports: DC leads the list, Detroit falls to third, Chicago moves from fourth to second, and Boston suddenly appears in fifth, not having made the first list at all.

The first set (jobs for manufacturing experts) denotes what most people connect with manufacturing—busy factories full of people and machines, building and assembling products. The primacy of Detroit almost certainly reflects the rebound of Ford and GM, in particular.

The second set appears to have little to do with the “nuts and bolts” of manufacturing. Rather, it probably reflects activities related to corporate and government procurement processes and the large volume of imports that are a part of our economy.

Statistics like those cited by the WSJ, while correct up to a point, may fail to reflect our  present post-industrial reality. I would suggest that, in effect, they display a worldview better suited to the Eisenhower era, in which growth in manufacturing meant actual expansions of factories in the US, increased domestic production, and across-the-board job growth and opportunity.

NimbleCat’s more granular statistics show that while this still occurs, many jobs that are classified as manufacturing jobs may not, in fact, contribute to domestic manufacturing. I suspect that they almost certainly reflect opportunities for global manufacturing concerns, rather than domestic companies. The primacy of DC in the logistics/supply-chain realm is likely to reflect a net drain in resources (i.e. taxes), quite possibly with little to no wider benefit, and with no net gain in domestic economic productivity.

NimbleCat posts weekly on the state of the job market in different industries. If you are a job seeker, you can benefit from the over one million jobs that we aggregate each month. The Jobs app on Facebook selects fresh, suitable jobs for you every day. Try it at  http://apps.facebook.com/ncjobalerts.

Jobs for manufacturing experts up almost 10% in Q4, 2010

The number of jobs for manufacturing experts grew by almost 10% during the fourth quarter of 2010, according to an analysis of jobs aggregated by NimbleCat. These numbers not only confirm a story on worldwide growth in manufacturing  in the Wall Street Journal from this Monday, but also indicate that we can expect  domestic manufacturing to grow in 2011.

The WSJ article was based on a survey of purchasing managers. Rather than surveying what people said, I looked at the number of posted  jobs for manufacturing engineers and lean manufacturing experts.

There has been a steady increase in the number of jobs for these professionals over the past quarter, including in December, which is often expected to be a slow month for hiring.

I also looked at where manufacturing jobs were created in December. The picture for all manufacturing jobs is very different than the picture for manufacturing experts, as the last two bar graphs show.

Jobs for manufacturing experts are focused in traditional US manufacturing centers - Detroit, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Chicago. When we include supply chain and logistics jobs in the mix, the Washington DC metro area jumps to the top of the list; Atlanta and Boston rank higher as well.  

Do you need to connect with manufacturing and supply chain experts? You can connect with them faster with NimbleCat's People Search. You can also find People Search on Facebook. If you are looking for a job in manufacturing, get daily alerts on jobs with Jobs on Facebook.

 

Social Networking Has Grown up, Left School And Gone To Work

On Tuesday, NimbleCat released three Facebook applications that help unlock the professional value of your social networking. We all know about the growing importance of these activities: by some estimates, average users visit Facebook twice a day. I myself just checked Facebook: it’s 11 am and nineteen of my friends are on Facebook chat. All but one of them are people I friended for professional reasons. The other one works at Facebook.

It’s clear that people are using social networking at work for work, and plenty of people have proven that it’s easy to grow your network. A colleague did an experiment where he networked promiscuously on LinkedIn for several months. He sent out as many invites as he could and accepted all incoming invites. Within a short time,  he had over a thousand connections and was getting more invites than he had time to look at. Did he get anything out of it? Yes—he could claim to be a master networker—and no, he did not have any idea about who in his large network might be truly valuable to him. It was like having a fast car that’s up on blocks.

It’s easy to build your network; it is much more difficult to reliably extract value from it. Do you remember all the really good (pick a profession) guys in your network? Do you end up scanning your list of connections when you have a question? If you said yes to either of these questions, you should be looking for a better answer.

At NimbleCat, we think this is a very important problem, and we’re working hard to fill the gaps. People Search on Facebook or on our web site is the answer to creating value as you grow your network. Don’t just add connections; first figure out who you need to add to your network. Do you need to recruit good sales people who have worked at a major networking provider? Or perhaps you are a sales person and need to connect with senior IT managers who work at large consumer companies? Conventional search engines are optimized for finding things, rather than people: Google or LinkedIn searches become incredibly tedious when you need this kind of focus. NimbleCat’s People Search will either pinpoint the right prospects or tell you it could not find any. Either way, you can move on to the real task of connecting with these new prospects, or look elsewhere.

If you’re on Facebook, People Search is easy to try—just click http://apps.facebook.com/ncsearch and you’ll be able to find people from our growing database of over a million and a half people. If you are not, go to the NimbleCat web site http://www.nimblecat.com. You can use it from our home page. After you try it, tell me what you think. Email me: smehta (at) nimblecat (dot) com or comment here.

55% Of New Biotech Jobs In Clinical Research

55% of all new biotech jobs created in the United States in November were for clinical research professionals. Another 11% were for validation professionals. Clearly,  biotech companies are pushing hard to get new products to market.

Here's what I found when I looked further. Almost 10% of these new biotech jobs are being created in New Jersey, near Princeton.  Yale University has an active biotech program so this makes sense.

Now I wanted to know which companies were hiring, so I looked at a sampling of jobs for that metro area from the over one million jobs NimbleCat aggregates each month.  

A single company, Johnson & Johnson dominates hiring in the clinical research space in the Princeton area.  J&J and its subsidiaries are hiring for more than 30% of the clinical research positions near Princeton. The second largest group of employers in that area are temp agencies and outsourcing companies.

 And, not surprisingly, New Jersey created the largest number of biotech jobs in November. California was next, followed by Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Ohio.  Within California, the San Francisco Bay area claimed the top spot with 5% of all new biotech jobs in the country.

In addition to aggregating biotech jobs, NimbleCat adds new biotech professionals to its search engine every day.  You can leverage this to connect with experienced biotech professionals  right now. Try our People Search app on Facebook or visit us at nimblecat.com. 

 

 

 

Generalists dominate ranks of professionals in the job market

 Many more generalists than specialists are looking for work in this year's down job market. This is based on a analysis  of data for the past three months. NimbleCat's grading engine can differentiate between a specialist and a generalist (product plug intended!). This enabled me to track how many marketing and HR generalists and specialists were in the job market over the last three months. In each case generalists in the job market constituted over 40% of all professionals in those fields and  topped the list by a margin exceeding 50%.

This validates what most of us might conclude from  anecdotal evidence.  It certainly is likely that, in difficult times, companies will prefer to hire for specific, highly focused jobs.  Therefore, they are more likely to hire specialists.

So, does your social profile or resume peg you as a generalist or a specialist? Find out. Go to www.nimblecat.com, click on the green"find a better job" button, create a free account, and grade your LinkedIn profile or resume.

Did NimbleCat grade you correctly? Tell me at smehta(at)nimblecat(dot)com or just comment here. Also look for a Facebook app in the near future that makes  grading your profile much easier.

As a follow up to my post last month - the number of recruiters in the job market continues to be higher than it was earlier in the year. This was true in September and the trend has continued in October.

Connect smart with experienced professionals, and find cool tools for job seekers at NimbleCat.