WorkShoppers Online

$100,000 a year?

"Trends throughout the past three years have shown an increase in base salary, combined with a stronger focus on short-term incentives such as signing bonuses, increased annual bonuses, profit sharing, and stock options."  Source.

Are you "market ready"?

I use the term "market ready" because when you try and make a career move, you are usually in competition with others, or a decision maker needs to say yes in order for you to successfully make your move. In order to win that job, get that promotion, or successfully make a career change, you need to market yourself. And that means connecting the dots between what you have to offer and what your target is looking for.

So, how do you know when you are truly prepared? How do you know when you have the Ready, Aim parts nailed?

You are ready when you have covered these 8 Steps
1. You have captured your starting position and defined your next career step
2. You have a deep understanding of your professional background, including your accomplishments, your strengths, skills and abilities
3. You understand in which kinds of jobs, teams and organizations you fit
4. You have then defined the specific kinds of position and organization you are targeting
5. You have prepared persuasive reasons, backed up with concrete proof why you make an excellent candidate for your target(s)
6. You have created an effective, focused, compelling, proof-based resume that shows the reader "why you?"
7. You have prepared for networking conversations, and have mastered interviews, including the ability to prove your candidacy when faced with behavioural-based interview questions
8. And, you have carefully defined your criteria for making a decision when the time comes.

Source.

Statistics Canada

Statistics available by subject:

1. Aboriginal peoples
2. Agriculture
3. Business performance and ownership
4. Business, consumer and property services
5. Children and youth
6. Construction
7. Crime and justice
8. Culture and leisure
9. Economic accounts
10. Education, training and learning
11. Energy
12. Environment
13. Ethnic diversity and immigration
14. Families, households and housing
15. Government
16. Health Income, pensions, spending and wealth
17. Information and communications technology
18. International trade
19. Labour
20. Languages
21. Manufacturing
22. Population and demography
23. Prices and price indexes
24. Reference
25. Retail and wholesale
26. Science and technology
27. Seniors
28. Society and community
29. Statistical methods
30. Transportation
31. Travel and tourism

Aboriculture

Career Paths in Arboriculture:

• Commercial Residential Sector
• Municipal Sector
• Utility Sector
• Other Careers in Arboriculture

Reference:  http://www.isa-arbor.com/careersInArboriculture/flowchrt.aspx

Auto Industry

Those words describe the situation confronting 75,000 Ford Motor Co. employees -- including about 2,000 in Canada -- faced with plant closings and buyouts as the company moves forward with its plan to cut 30,000 jobs and get business back on track.  Article.

Biotechnology

At Aspreva Pharmaceuticals, they walk the talk when it comes to work-life balance and caring for their employees.  Full article.

Hairdresser

Thanks to a leading think-tank, women now have more justification than previously for dropping big bucks at the salon. It's not just about the cut and colour -- it's about being in the presence of someone who personifies our times: the hairdresser.  In the new report Paradigm Trades: The Iconic Jobs of the Early 21st Century, coiffeurs -- along with other professional "bodily improvers" -- are said to define the spirit of the modern age. Consultants, celebrities and managers are also named as occupations that embody the values of a culture that's increasingly focused on ideas and appearances as commodity. In addition, bodily improvement is highly personal and immune to outsourcing and computerization. The Work Foundation says such vocations offer "an antidote to the rhetoric of globalization."  Source.

Study reveals numbing effect of TV

While parents may find it a pain to have their children watching TV all the time, their kids are likely numb to it while parked in front of the tube.

A University of Siena study published in the latest issue Archives of Disease in Childhood, suggests that watching TV is more effective in alleviating pain for children than a mother's attention.

Full article here.

McGuinty as 'personality'

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has been named world “Personality of the Year” by a business publication based in London.

Source.

Canada's best places to live

MONEY SENSE:  "We started by pulling data for 108 communities of more than 10,000 people. We then crunched truckloads of numbers to discover the very best places to live in Canada." 

In part, our goal was to satisfy our own curiosity and settle those my-place-is-better-than-your-place arguments. But we thought our research would also be of interest to a wide swath of the population, including young people looking for great communities to settle down in, real estate speculators searching for emerging hot spots, job hunters weighing offers from different parts of the country, and, most of all, millions of baby boomers, who are now verging on retirement and looking for new horizons to explore.

We began our search for Canada's best places to live by acknowledging that we could never hope to gauge the beauty of a sunset in each community or the friendliness of its people. So we focused our attention purely on what we could measure.

Full article here.