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  • The Cannabis Job Market: A Growing Industry

    The Cannabis Job Market: A Growing Industry

    The cannabis industry is growing in times when other industries are suffering. The pandemic saw many businesses close as stay at home orders kept people from visiting their usual stops. Businesses closing also led to many workers losing their jobs and having to search elsewhere for employment. With the wide variety of jobs available in the cannabis industry, thousands of people were able to find a position that was best for them.

    The Upward Cannabis Job Trend

    In 2020, cannabis employment exceeded that of many mainstream industries. More people were employed in the cannabis industry than in web development, engineering, or healthcare. This was important as 2020 saw the most jobs lost due to the pandemic and 77,300 people were able to be employed full-time in the cannabis industry. In 2021 legal cannabis supported over 300,00 jobs across the U.S! It is estimated that by 2025, the legal marijuana industry will employ up to 600,000 full-time workers in the many jobs it offers. 

    Some jobs in the cannabis industry require some sort of science background. The position of master extractor or extraction technician requires engineering and lab experience. These jobs oversee lab conditions and  ensure that all machines are in working order and that products such as oils and concentrates are up to standard. People in these positions also have to maintain strict safety standards, potency, and regulatory compliance.

    The position of master grower also requires some science background in horticulture or botany. These people manage large grow operations and ensure that the crops are being grown in the best ways they can be. There are jobs in trimming, harvesting, and cultivating that aid the master growers in the overall maintenance of crops but don’t require any specific scientific background. People in these positions are often recruited from lower paid cooks or dishwashers in the restaurant industry who are looking for new opportunities. 

    Retail Positions

    Restaurant workers aren’t the only people who can find new opportunities in the cannabis industry, retail workers also often find positions within the cannabis industry. Dispensaries need receptionists and cashiers that greet customers, answer calls, and process final sales. They are also responsible for verifying prescriptions, identification, and eligibility for purchasing cannabis and cannabis related products. Retail workers have experience in this work, and often find a more welcoming and friendly environment when they make the transition to the cannabis industry. 

    In the wake of the pandemic, another job in the cannabis industry was created: marijuana courier. Many dispensaries began offering delivery when the stay at home orders were enforced. People who drove the deliveries out were able to make a wage through their work, but also were given the opportunity to make sales commissions and tips. This position was especially useful for people who were laid off from their jobs and just needed to find work for a short period until it was time to return to their original position. 

    All of these jobs can be easy to find on different cannabis job boards. In preparation for finding a job in the cannabis industry, it is important to read up on the history, social impacts, and medical benefits of marijuana. Employers in the cannabis industry are looking for professionals rather than enthusiasts! Learn more about the opportunities in the cannabis industry in the infographic below.

    The Cannabis Job Market
  • Outreach CEO: The Rise Of The Revenue Innovator

    Outreach CEO: The Rise Of The Revenue Innovator

    “We’re seeing the rise of what we call the “revenue innovator, says Outreach CEO Manny Medina. “The revenue innovator is a different job description that has changed since the pandemic. The new job description is the revenue innovators, the digital-first, and the digital native. Those revenue innovators are the new revenue leaders.”

    Manny Medina, CEO of Outreach, discusses the “rise of the revenue innovator” in an interview today on CNBC:

    The Rise of the Revenue Innovator

    We’re seeing the rise of what we call the “revenue innovator.” The revenue innovator is a different job description that has changed since the pandemic. It’s a data-driven digital-first predictable long-building trusting relationship kind of seller. What we are seeing is this influx and this growth in the type of seller that knows how to drive a digital conversation but is complemented with a hybrid approach of visiting your customer. It’s a very predictable, very data-driven kind of job description.

    The growth happening across our customer base is the growth of that kind of seller. This is a seller and a customer-facing rep who is going to be very data-driven and very innovator-led. If we are going to think of the Salesforce numbers that just came out these are incredible signs of growth for the cloud platform. That’s an incredible sign of growth for us as well because what we are seeing is the system of action is taking place on top of the system of record that Salesforce is providing.

    Second Wave of Digital Transformation

    All of the companies that used to be in the mainstream economy are accelerating into the second wave of digital transformation. The first wave of digital transformation is to move all of the data into the cloud and that is happening but it’s not what companies are talking about. Companies are talking about how do you make me smarter? How do you make my teams more efficient? How do you make my teams digital-first?

    How do I live and thrive in this new hybrid environment post-Covid in which the buyer is not ready to see sellers until post transaction until you are expanding not selling? All of these “before-laggers” are becoming early innovators and early adopters with new technology such as Outreach which is AI-driven and digital-first.

    The new job description is the revenue innovators, the digital-first, and the digital native. They may not have them yet but they are coming online, they are getting these jobs. Those revenue innovators are the new revenue leaders. They are also hiring people of the same ilk that are looking to drive this innovation within their companies. That’s what you are seeing in this transformation. Transformations are always people first.

    It’s this new wave of people that are coming into traditional companies that are driving this second digital transformation. They are forward thinkers and they are data-driven.

    Outreach Doubling Headcount Again

    Outreach is doubling its headcount again. We almost doubled from the beginning of the pandemic all the way to now and we expect to hit another double in terms of hiring. We expect another 600 to 700 people to come on board. Most importantly, what we are seeing is that our customers are growing as well. We sell seats ahead of sales demand and we are seeing sales seats being bought very quickly.

    We are expecting our customers to be driving double-digit growth across the board. This is a great sign for the economy.

    Outreach CEO Manny Medina: The Rise Of The Revenue Innovator
  • Healthcare Job Trends of the Future

    Healthcare Job Trends of the Future

    As hospitals around the world fill to capacity with coronavirus patients, medical professionals have dedicated their time, safety, and even lives to serve those affected and minimize the spread. Now as the vaccine is released and the public begins to anticipate life beyond the pandemic, isn’t it high time to compensate those who laid down their lives to get us to this point? Augmented intelligence (AI), as opposed to artificial intelligence, is a system meant to work cooperatively with humans to better the institutions already in place. John Nosta, a WHO technology expert on the Google Health Advisory Board, suggests that “the cognitive burden and physical challenges [of healthcare] must be met by the inculcation of technology into clinical practice” in order to not only survive, but to thrive. Apploi is a strong believer that AI technology is the key to subsiding the strain on front line workers who have already given all of themselves during these dark days. In their 2021 healthcare trends report, they outline an ingenious proposal to increase the use of AI technology in the healthcare industry in order to actualize their combined synergy.

    AI technology use is actually not as outlandish as some may think. In fact, “AI has already been adopted in many ways in healthcare unbeknownst to patients”, primarily in the form of electronic health records. The way that Apploi plans to take it a step further is by utilizing patient generated data to create the most effective, personalized treatment protocols. The data would have to come from a “variety of sources [such as]: monitoring devices, online purchasing habits, insurers, employers, calendars, and various other data points” which some may consider to be an alarming violation of privacy. However, all of that information is “already generating daily on [the] devices” that are already being used. The only true difference would be that all of that data could go inexplicably far in advancing personalized, medical treatment plans simply by allowing providers to access it.

    The installation of AI technology would also exponentially decrease the opportunity for human bias and error, which is an important aspect even in environments that don’t regularly balance life or death decisions. “[C]ognitive capacity, fatigue, [and] social biases” are all universal factors that come with being human, (whether one is willing to admit it or not) and can substantially impact the quality of care that a patient receives which in turn could very well go on to influence whether said patient lives or dies. In these last months alone the demand on healthcare professionals has been astounding, so agreeing to implement an AI system capable of taking on even a fraction of that strain should not take much consideration whatsoever.

    As the end draws closer It is more important than ever that adequate time is taken to audit the systems that were hit the hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic. The plan proposed by Apploi requires the improvement on the AI systems that are already in place, which makes it the most ideal part to start with.

    healthcare jobs of the future

  • Salesforce Now Has 1.4 Million Learners On Trailhead

    Salesforce Now Has 1.4 Million Learners On Trailhead

    “If you haven’t been on Trailhead.com this is an amazing place to go,” says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. “You can learn all the technical skills to be successful in this Salesforce ecosystem. Our customers are just on there at an incredibly high rate. We have more than 1.4 million users on Trailhead now and 25 percent said that they changed jobs in the last year because of the skills that they got on Trailhead.com.”

    Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, discusses the signing of the White House Job Training Pledge and announced that they now have over a million users on Trailhead.com in an interview with Jim Cramer on CNBC:

    More Than a Million Users On Trailhead.com

    That (White House Job Training Pledge) is probably the most exciting thing that I have seen happening in the Salesforce ecosystem. We have this broad ecosystem that surrounds our company. While we’re talking about these incredible (quarterly) results here today, the one thing that makes me even more excited is the work we’re doing with people retraining them. Reskilling them is kind of the technical word.

    We’re able to get people onto this service. We call it Trailhead. If you haven’t been on Trailhead.com this is an amazing place to go. You can learn all the technical skills to be successful in this Salesforce ecosystem. Our customers are just on there at an incredibly high rate. We have more than 1.4 million users on Trailhead now and 25 percent said that they changed jobs in the last year because of the skills that they got on Trailhead.com.

    White House Job Training Pleadge – Ivanka Trump at Toyota Plant in Georgetown, KY.

    We Signed the White House Pledge For Jobs To Reskill America

    We even had an amazing event in Indianapolis just a couple weeks ago with Ivanka Trump. We signed that White House pledge for jobs because we’re reskilling America. That’s our job. We want to make sure everybody can participate in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. That’s really exciting to me. To see the success on the faces of the broad range of people who’ve had this capability that is just setting us up for a tremendous future.

    Anybody who participated in jobs that don’t exist anymore, they can get onto Trailhead.com and they can reskill. This is proven, it’s easy, and it’s free. That’s why we’ve had such great support, not just from the White House but from thousands of our customers who are also now deploying this inside their own companies. We have a product called myTrailhead.com so you as a Salesforce customer can set up your own internal reskilling system with your products. That’s a build your own ecosystem. We want everyone to be as successful as we are.

    Mark Benioff added these comments during the recent earnings call:

    Learners Changing Their Careers and Lives on Trailhead

    Our ecosystem just developed in a huge economy around Salesforce, one that is going to create more than 3 million jobs and more than $850 billion in GDP by 2022, and that is why we’re so excited about Trailhead, which is our online learning platform and our online reskilling platform that empowers everyone.

    Now we have more than 1.4 million learners changing their careers and their lives on Trailhead, and I’m sure so many of you have met these inspiring people and their incredible stories of how they transformed themselves using Trailhead. And in the quarter, our new myTrailhead product became generally available and now any of our customers can actually create their own branded service just like what we have done and reskill all their employees, customers and partners too.

    myTrailhead Is a Force Multiplier

    So it will be a huge driver of workforce development, which is why we are so excited that two weeks ago, we were with Ivanka Trump at our First-Over Trailblazer Day in Indianapolis, in our headquarters in Indiana, where we signed the White House Pledge to America’s Workers and we plan to give more than 1 million Americans the skills they need and earning Salesforce credentials and badges and do everything necessary to make them successful and to get top jobs in our ecosystem over the next 5 years.

    myTrailhead is an excellent example and an excellent solution, not just how they can scale their people up on this modern technology, but also to prepare them for this modern world. And we see this again everywhere in the world. And we have special programs with companies all over the world to talk about how they reskill the workforce. I mentioned the meeting I had with the CEO of Telstra and his executive team and how concerned they were about the modern reports and what they wanted to do with our reskilling their workforce.

    We have the same conversations with CEOs all over the world. So myTrailhead is a force multiplier. It is so important on so many levels when you think about modern skills and we’re very, very excited about that. Bret, do you want to comment more from a product perspective?

    Salesforce Now Has 1.4 Million Learners On Trailhead.com says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff
  • How LinkedIn is Using Machine Learning to Determine Skills

    How LinkedIn is Using Machine Learning to Determine Skills

    One of the more interesting reveals that Dan Francis, Senior Product Manager for LinkedIn Talent Insights, provided in a recent talk about the Talent Insights tool is how LinkedIn is using machine learning to determine skills of people. He says that there are now over 575 million members in the LinkedIn database and there are 35,000 standardized skills in LinkedIn’s skills taxonomy. The way LinkedIn is figuring out what skills a member has is via machine learning technology.

    Dan Francis, Senior Product Manager, LinkedIn Talent Insights, discussed Talent Insights in a recent LinkedIn video embedded below:

    LinkedIn Using Machine Learning to Determine Skills

    The skills data in Talent Insights comes from a variety of sources, mainly from a member’s profile. There are over 35,000 standardized skills that we have in LinkedIn’s skills taxonomy, and the way we’re figuring out what skills a member has is using machine learning. We can identify skills that a member has that’s based on things that they explicitly added to their profile.

    The other thing that we’ll do is look at the text of the profile. There’s a field of machine learning called natural language processing and we’re basically using that. It’s scanning through all the words that are on a member’s profile, and when we can determine that it’s pertaining to the member, as oppose the company or another subject, we’ll say okay, we think that this member has this skill. We also look at other attributes, like their title or the company, to make sure they actually are very likely to have that skill.

    The last thing that we’ll do is look at the skills a member has and figure out what are skill relationships. So as an example, let’s say that a member has Ember, which is a type of JavaScript framework, since we know that they know Ember, they also know JavaScript. So if somebody’s running a search like that, we’ll surface them in the results. I think that the most important reason why this is helpful and the real benefit to users of the platform is when you’re searching, you want to get as accurate a view of the population as possible. What we’re trying to do is look at all the different signals that we possibly have to represent that view.  

    575 Million People on LinkedIn Globally and Adding 2 Per Second

    Today, LinkedIn has over 575 million members that are on the platform globally. This is actually growing at a pretty rapid clip, so we’re adding about two members per second. One of the great things about LinkedIn is that we’re actually very well represented in terms of the professional workforce globally. If you look at the top 30 economies around the world, we actually have the majority of professionals in all of those economies.

    LinkedIn is the World’s Largest Aggregator of Jobs

    I think there’s often a perception that most of the data’s directly from LinkedIn, stuff that’s posted on LinkedIn and job status is one notable exception to that. Plenty of companies and people will post jobs on LinkedIn, and that’s information that does get surfaced. However, we’re also the world’s largest aggregator of jobs. At this point there are over 20 million jobs that are on LinkedIn.

    The way that we’re getting that information is we’re working with over 40,000 partners. These are job boards, ATS’s, and direct customer relationships. We’re collecting all of those jobs, standardizing them, and showing them on our platform. The benefit is not just for displaying the data in Talent Insights, the benefit is also when members are searching on LinkedIn.com, we’re giving them as representative a view of the job market as possible.

  • CareerBuilder CEO Says Technology is Driving Jobs Growth

    CareerBuilder CEO Says Technology is Driving Jobs Growth

    The release of today’s Jobs Report shows the lowest unemployment in the US since 1969 and CareerBuilder is now predicting that an additional 8,310,003 jobs will be created over the next 5 years. CareerBuilder CEO Irina Novoselsky says that technology is driving that growth, whether the job is a technology-oriented job or a traditional manufacturing job, technology skills are now required.

    Irina Novoselsky, CEO of CareerBuilder recently discussed how technology is driving jobs growth on Fox Business:

    Technology is Driving Jobs Growth

    Technology is driving a lot of that growth. You are seeing it in two ways, both on new industries that are emerging such as AI, robotics, cybersecurity, as you would expect, and the high wage earners are seeing a lot of that growth in jobs like nursing and software development.

    We are also seeing a lot of growth on the low wage in industries that are really the American fabric such as manufacturing. What’s really driving some of the conversations around that is the technology aspect and the skill deficit that’s happening as part of that.

    The top is growing, the bottom is growing, and really the middle is stuck in a dilemma where they have to get more skillset if they are going to get there. They are either going to go up or they are going to be left behind.

    70 Percent of Jobs Have a Major Technical Component

    Employers are saying that 70 percent of their jobs have a major technical component, including in manufacturing. A machinist today has a big technical aspect to their job, more than even a few years ago. Consumers and employees are left looking at how do they upscale and career path in non-traditional ways?

    The four-year education model is really difficult for them, it’s budget constraint, time constraint, so they are looking for unique opportunities to get that education and that skillset and in non-traditional ways.

    Employers Have Turned to Training Internally

    One of the things employers are doing is creating that competency skill training internally. What’s happening is that there are not enough of the skilled employees to recruit. One of the largest things employers are dealing with is open roles for a very long period of time and they are maneuvering this talent deficit by taking it on themselves.

    One of the things that we are doing is no longer mandating a 4-year college degree for some of our roles. We are taking on the onus to bring in the people and train them ourselves. It’s a great opportunity for middle wage earners to start upscale and career pathing, learning the technology skill sets to move up or they are going to be left behind.

  • Facebook Increases Job Search Capabilities to 40 New Countries

    Facebook Increases Job Search Capabilities to 40 New Countries

    Facebook users from different parts of the globe will soon be able to look and apply for a local job using the social media platform.

    The social media giant recently announced that its job search and application feature is being rolled out in more than 40 different countries, including Brazil, Spain, and the UK. The feature was initially only available in Canada and the US.

    The job search feature allows users to search job openings and apply for them directly on the company’s site or mobile app. Meanwhile, improvements made to the feature allows companies with Facebook pages to post their job openings online easily, go through the applications and reach out to shortlisted candidates through Messenger. What’s more, job applicants can also subscribe to a company’s job listings.

    According to Alex Himel, VP of Local at Facebook, the company has seen “a lot of organic activity of businesses trying to hire.” He even cited a Morning Consult Poll that showed that one in four people in the US alone had either looked for or found a job on the platform. And with more than two billion users globally, Facebook is perfectly placed to connect job seekers with local enterprises who are looking to fill low to medium-skilled job vacancies.

    The job search and application tool is a free feature. Companies and job seekers don’t have to pay anything to gain access. While companies can pay for Facebook ads in order to boost their job post to improve applications or target particular candidates, it’s not a requirement. Job postings can be seen on the user’s News Feed and on Facebook’s Marketplace and Pages.

    Facebook users can narrow down their job search based on job category and type. It should be pointed out that the job creator only has access to information on the user’s account that’s publicly available. Applying for a job reportedly takes just a few steps and the user has complete control over what personal information will be shown in the application.

    [Featured image via Facebook Newsroom]

  • Survey Finds 1/3 of Companies Not Satisfied with Digital Employees

    Survey Finds 1/3 of Companies Not Satisfied with Digital Employees

    Accenture has a new report out called Organizing for Digital Success, which is based on the survey of over 200 digital executives in the U.S. at companies with revenue of $1 billion to over $75 billion. These include CMO CDO, CIO, SVP, VP, and senior digital executives at companies in the consumer-packaged goods, manufacturing, retail, financial services, communications, media and technology, SaaS, healthcare, hospitality, and travel industries.

    The report found that nearly a third of companies are not satisfied with the skill sets of employees in their digital organizations.

    As a spokesperson for Accenture told us in an email, “The study found there is a significant gap in the skill sets wanted and the skill sets possessed by digital organizations, and 4 in 5 (81%) of the digital executives surveyed voicing the need for additional hiring.”

    “This data shows a clear disconnect between expectations and reality in the digital branches of many organizations,” they added.

    To give you an idea of what these companies are actually wanting their employees to achieve, here’s a look at the KPIs being measured:

    digital-kpis

    Despite a troubling amount of dissatisfaction, most respondents feel that their companies are either on par with their major competitors (42%) or that they are the sector leader (27%) in terms of digital capabilities. Only 7% think they’re trailing behind the majority of their competitors. 24% believe they’re in the middle of the pack.

    You can find the full report here.

    Images via iStock, Accenture

  • LinkedIn Students App Launched To Help Soon-To-Be College Grads Get Jobs

    LinkedIn just announced the launch of a new app called LinkedIn Students, which is designed specifically to help students who are soon to be college graduates find jobs. The app makes use of LinkedIn’s database of 400 million professionals.

    According to the company, it helps students discover jobs that are ” a best fit for graduates with your major, companies that tend to hire from your school and the careers paths of recent alumni with similar degrees.”

    “Think of it as your personal job exploration guide, providing tailored jobs related recommendations based on real data from the career paths of hundreds of millions of successful professionals,” says LinkedIn’s Ada Yu. “You can use these insights to discover and explore career opportunities you hadn’t considered or even known were possible!”

    You can see an overview of the app here or you can just go download if from the App Store or Google Play if you’re in the U.S. It’s unclear when it will become available for other regions.

    Image via LinkedIn

  • Jobs Site Identifies 10 Professions in Which Women Earn Less

    Jobs and recruiting site Glassdoor regularly shares interesting insights into employers, and has a new report out examining the gender pay gap. Based on its findings, the company is shining a light on on ten professions in which women earn less. These are as follows:

    1. Computer Programmer (Women earn $0.72 for every $1.00 men earn)

    2. Chef (Women earn $0.72 for every $1.00 men earn)

    3. Dentist (Women earn $0.72 for every $1.00 men earn)

    4. C-Suite (e.g.: CEOs, CFOs) (Women earn $0.72 for every $1.00 men earn)

    5. Psychologist (Women earn $0.73 for every $1.00 men earn)

    6. Pharmacist (Women earn $0.78 for every $1.00 men earn)

    7. CAD Designer (Women earn $0.78 for every $1.00 men earn)

    8. Physician (Women earn $0.82 for every $1.00 men earn)

    9. Optician (Women earn $0.83 for every $1.00 men earn)

    10. Pilot (Women earn $0.84 for every $1.00 men earn)

    “Here at Glassdoor, we believe in equal pay for equal work and also provide a platform for employers who want to pledge their commitment to equitable pay practices,” the Glassdoor team says in a blog post. “More than 1,700 employers to date have pledged to pay women and men equally for equal work and experience.”

    Glassdoor also identified 10 jobs in which women earn about the same as men (Event Coordinator, Logistics Manager, Food Services Professional, Internal Medicine Resident, Technical Coordinator, Supply Chain Specialist, Academic Counselor, Clinical Dietician, Field Services, Professional, Hardware Engineer) and 10 in which women earn more than man (Social Worker, Merchandiser, Research Assistant, Purchasing Specialist, Physician Advisor, Communications Associate, Social Media Professional, Health Educator, Procurement Professional, Business Coordinator).

    It’s worth noting the gap isn’t nearly as wide in the professions in which women earn more compared to those in which men do. You can look at the relevant numbers here.

    You can find the full gender pay gap report here.

  • LinkedIn Partners With Snagajob, Product Integrations On the Horizon

    LinkedIn Partners With Snagajob, Product Integrations On the Horizon

    LinkedIn announced a partnership with hourly work marketplace Snagajob in an effort to create new resources for jobseekers looking for this kind of work.

    The partnership will begin with a special Lynda.com trial for Snagajob members. Various product integrations and opportunities for joint research are planned for later in the year, but these things were not specified.

    “Snagajob members can access the one-month free trial to Lynda.com content today to immediately take advantage of thousands of courses to help them acquire and improve on skills like communication, customer service, management, and more,” LinkedIn’s Scott Roberts said.

    “We will also be collaborating with Snagajob to partner on joint research of the hourly market to provide deeper insight into the workforce and career trends. We look forward to sharing more about our work together as we look for ways to bring the deep expertise and knowledge of the job market to help professionals everywhere achieve their professional goals,” he added.

    LinkedIn recently reported its quarterly earnings, and talked a bit about its Lynda plans during a related conference call. CEO Jeff Weiner said we can expect to see Lynda content more deeply integrated across LinkedIn’s premium products as well as more of Lynda content in the enterprise.

    Image via LinkedIn

  • Apple Opening First iOS App Dev Center in Europe

    Apple Opening First iOS App Dev Center in Europe

    Apple announced that it will open its first European iOS app development center. It’s to be located at partner institution in Naples, Italy.

    The center gives where students can acquire skills and training pertaining to the development of iOS applications. It will support teachers and provide a specialized curriculum geared toward the growth of Apple’s developer ecosystem.

    Apple itself will work with partners throughout the country on curriculum development and additional student opportunities. Eventually, the company will expand the program to other countries.

    CEO Tim Cook said, “Europe is home to some of the most creative developers in the world and we’re thrilled to be helping the next generation of entrepreneurs in Italy get the skills they need for success. The phenomenal success of the App Store is one of the driving forces behind the more than 1.4 million jobs Apple has created in Europe and presents unlimited opportunities for people of all ages and businesses of all sizes across the continent.”

    “Thousands of companies are expanding because of their work with Apple, which supports hundreds of thousands of jobs in communities large and small across Europe,” Apple says. “Milan-based Laboratorio Elettrofisico makes some of the most sophisticated magnetization equipment in the world and their technology enables some of the industry-leading magnetic features found in Apple products. Apple also works with Europe’s leading manufacturers of Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems, which create tiny components that power some of the incredible sensor and audio technologies found in iOS devices.”

    Apple says the App Store has helped developers in Europe earn over €10.2 billion from selling their apps around the world. 75,000 jobs in Italy alone are attributable to the App Store, the company says.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • LinkedIn Names Top 25 Skills of the Year

    LinkedIn Names Top 25 Skills of the Year

    Just as it did last year, LinkedIn revealed the top 25 skills that can get you hired this year.

    “With 2015 in the rearview mirror, LinkedIn analyzed hiring and recruiting activity and uncovered the 25 hottest global skills in the past year,” a LinkedIn spokesperson tells us. “As these skills were continually sought by companies well into the final months of 2015, we expect them to continue driving demand in the early part of 2016.”

    According to the company, January is when the largest percentage of LinkedIn members are looking for a new job.

    “If your skills fit one or more of these skills categories (a grouping of related skills), there’s a chance you either started a new job or attracted the interest of recruiters last year,” says LinkedIn’s Sohan Murthy. “We noticed that companies were still recruiting and hiring for these skills well into the final months of 2015, so we expect these skills will remain in-demand in the early part of 2016. This means if you have one or more of these skills, you’re likely to continue getting interest from recruiters in the new year.”

    The biggest trends LinkedIn points to are a rapid increase in members listing cloud skills like Hadoop, HBase, and Hive, as we well as continued prevalence of data mining/analysis skills and the cooling off of game development, online marketing, SAP ERP systems, computer graphics/animation, integrated circuit design, and recruiting. The company notes that employers are still looking for all of these skills – just not quite as much as last year.

    Here’s a look at last year’s results.

    Images via Wikimedia Commons, LinkedIn

  • LinkedIn Announces New Features For Job Seekers

    LinkedIn announced that it is now surfacing new insights within its network to help job seekers. These include what connections (if any) the user has at a company, whether or not the company has a history of hiring “people like you,” and who you would work with if you got the job.

    According to LinkedIn, 89% of career builders networked while seekign their current job, and of those who networked with former colleagues, 53% said those efforts helped them land a job. Those who reached out to a former boss said doing so was 61% effective.

    LinkedIn will now show your connections to a company front and center on job postings.

    There’s also a new “Meet the Team” feature that shows employees with similar roles at the company to “give you a sense of the team’s background and expertise.”

    According to LinkedIn, successful job seekers are nine times more likely to research the current employees of hiring companies.

    “When we asked professionals who recently landed a new job about the process, the #1 obstacle they faced was not knowing what it’s really like to work at the company,” says LinkedIn’s Vidya Chandra. “With our new Premium insights, we aim to make crucial intel about a company more transparent. You’ll now have important details about a company’s growth rate, average tenure, and top schools and companies they hire from so that you can determine if a company is truly the right fit for you.”

    “With our newly redesigned job postings, LinkedIn provides unique, at-a-glance insights to put more power in the job seeker’s hands,” Chandra adds. “Is this job the right job for YOU? If so, you can use our people related insights to make sure you’re putting your most competitive foot forward.”

    The company says this is “just the beginning,” so I assume more features to help job seekers are on the way in the coming year.

    Images via LinkedIn, Wikimedia Commons

  • LinkedIn Releases New Handbook for Marketers

    LinkedIn has a new eBook out looking at the most in-demand marketing jobs based on research by LinkedIn itself and HubSpot. They looked at LinkedIn recruiting data and LinkedIn member profiles of marketers.

    The offering is called The Marketing Skills Handbook: A Deep Dive into Today’s Most In-Demand Marketing Jobs.

    They found that the top three skills named in recruiter searches for marketing skills are SEO/SEM Marketing, Digital and Online Marketing, and Marketing Campaign Management. At the same time, only one of those (Digital and Online Marketing) actually matches the top three skills marketers name on their profiles. The other two are Social Media and Marketing Event Management.

    According to LinkedIn, three marketing job titles have seen “tremendous” growth in the past decade: Digital Marketing Manager (+248.0 percent); Brand Ambassador (+147.5 percent); and CMO (+62.4 percent).

    “Companies, led by Google and HubSpot, are offering certifications to marketers for learning digital and other skills,” says LinkedIn’s Sean Callahan. “Additionally, LinkedIn acquired Lynda.com to make it easier for marketers and others use online video to gain the skills they need to succeed in their jobs.”

    “Over the past two decades — which has encompassed the rise of the internet, search, email, social, and mobile — marketing has been transformed,” the eBook says. “Ninety-seven percent of marketing executives, according to a survey from Forrester Research, expect that the pace of change will only accelerate. That means that the big changes marketers are grappling with will likely only get bigger, and the marketing world will remain in flux for the foreseeable future.”

    You can find the whole thing here.

    Earlier this week, LinkedIn announced the launch of new Microsoft Office 2016 training courses through Lynda.com, which it acquired this year.

    Image via LinkedIn

  • GiantGator Launches To Be ‘Most Extensive Search Engine for Freelance Jobs’

    GiantGator Launches To Be ‘Most Extensive Search Engine for Freelance Jobs’

    A new freelance job search engine called giantGator launched today, aggregating job postings for freelancers from a number of sources including Freelancer.com, eLance, UpWork, Guru.com, and others.

    A spokesperson for giantGator tells WebProNews, “Thanks to the Freelancer’s Union study, we know that an estimated 53 million Americans are freelancing – but how many freelance jobs are out there, and how easy are they to find?”

    The estimated number of posted freelance projects giantGator has aggregated since February is 1.36 million, and the average number of projects posted daily is 8,245. The typical lifespan of a posted project is about four days, it says.

    giantgator-infographic

    “These new numbers demonstrate how extremely fast-paced the freelance marketplace is operating,” the spokesperson says. “giantGator aims to streamline the daunting search process for freelancers by aggregating opportunities in one place.”

    The interface is simple, and certainly nothing fancy, but it’s useable, and to the point, which is really all you need when you’re looking for a job. No need to overcomplicate things.

    It gives you a couple of sliders that let you indicate what kind of wages you’re looking for (see image above), which helps you refine your searches.

    The running count of how many new projects have been added in the last 24 hours is nice too, as it can give you an idea of how much the job pool is being updated. You can also set alerts for specific searches.

    GiantGator can be used to search for jobs in writing, application development, database administration, design, sales, SEO, data entry, ecommerce, video services, marketing, lead generation, research, etc.

    Image via giantGator

  • LinkedIn Shows Top 20 Countries Where People Are Moving For Work

    LinkedIn Shows Top 20 Countries Where People Are Moving For Work

    LinkedIn recently shared a list of the top 20 countries where professionals are moving for work based on its internal data. The United Arab Emirates takes the top spot by a fairly wide margin, followed by Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, and Singapore.

    “We determined the top 20 countries that saw the most migration activity (the absolute number of members moving in and out of a country) and ranked them by their net migration (the number of members arriving to a country minus the number of member departing a country) as a percentage of country membership,” explains LinkedIn’s Sohan Murthy. “The results tell us which countries in 2014 had the most professional migrants in 2014 and the general direction in which they moved – potential indications of economic performance through 2015.”

    LinkedIn shared a similar analysis last year finding comparable results.

    According to LinkedIn, 28% of all members who moved to the United Arab Emirates last year came from India, which is the top originating country. The UK, Pakistan, U.S., and Qatar round out the top five. Most who moved to the United Arab Emirates worked for professional services, technology, financial services, and engineering firms. The most common occupations among those moving there were salespeople, marketing specialists, project managers, corporate finance specialists, accountants, consultants, and mechanical engineers.

    On the opposite end of the scale, 40% of those leaving India moved to the U.S. The United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada round out the top five there. Tech was the main driver for those leaving India, with software engineers, consultants, project managers, salespeople, and graduate research assistants making up over a quarter of all members who left the country in 2014.

    Image via LinkedIn

  • Amazon Fulfillment Center To Open in Illinois And Create Over 1,000 Jobs

    Amazon announced on Monday that it is opening its first fulfillment center in Illinois, which it says will create a thousand new full-time jobs. This is the sixth fulfillment-related announcement from the company in about three months.

    It will be a nearly 500,000-square-foot location in Joliet. As far as jobs, employees will process smaller items, such as books, electronics, and consumer goods at the fulfillment center.

    “We are excited to create 1,000 great full-time jobs in Illinois with competitive wages and comprehensive benefits starting on Day One,” said Mike Roth, Amazon’s vice president of North America operations. “We are grateful for the support of local and state leadership in helping to bring Amazon to Illinois and we look forward to being an active member of the community.”

    “We are thrilled that Amazon has chosen Joliet as the location for its new Illinois fulfillment center,” added City of Joliet Mayor Bob O’Dekirk. “The company is not only the leader in the e-commerce sector, but it also will create quality jobs for a diverse community throughout Joliet and Will County.”

    John Greuling, President and CEO of the Will County Center for Economic Development, said, “The company is the leader in logistics innovation and technology. We welcome Amazon to Joliet and Will County and look forward to a long successful partnership.”

    The project is being developed by GLP.

    In May, Amazon announced a one million-square-foot fulfillment center in Carteret, New Jersey, which it said would create “hundreds” of full-time jobs. Later that month, the company said it was hiring for over 6,000 new jobs in its centers in Baltimore, Breinigsville, Carlisle, Chattanooga, Chester, Haslet, Hazleton, Hebron, Jeffersonville, Kenosha, Lexington, Middletown, Murfreesboro, Petersburg, Plainfield, Robbinsville, West Columbia, Whitestown, and Windsor.

    In early June, Amazon announced a new center in Dallas, creating hundreds more jobs, and then announced one in Shakopee, Minnesota, creating over a thousand more. At the end of the month, it announced the launch of selling and Fulfillment by Amazon for businesses in Mexico.

    Image via YouTube

  • Microsoft Announces 7,800 Job Cuts from Phone Division

    Microsoft has announced that it will cut up to 7,800 jobs, mostly in the company’s phone hardware business. The company is also writing off $7.6 billion related to its acquisition of Nokia’s phone business despite only spending $7.2 billion to acquire it last year.

    “I am committed to our first-party devices including phones. However, we need to focus our phone efforts in the near term while driving reinvention. We are moving from a strategy to grow a standalone phone business to a strategy to grow and create a vibrant Windows ecosystem that includes our first-party device family,” said CEO Satya Nadella in a memo to employees.

    “In the near term, we will run a more effective phone portfolio, with better products and speed to market given the recently formed Windows and Devices Group. We plan to narrow our focus to three customer segments where we can make unique contributions and where we can differentiate through the combination of our hardware and software. We’ll bring business customers the best management, security and productivity experiences they need; value phone buyers the communications services they want; and Windows fans the flagship devices they’ll love.”

    About a year ago, Nadella announced a significant shakeup and set in motion the company’s biggest-ever job cuts – 18,000 in 12 months.

    “I deeply appreciate all of the ideas and hard work of everyone involved in these businesses, and I want to reiterate my commitment to helping each individual impacted,” he said

    Last month, Microsoft sent around 100 Bing maps data collection engineers over to Uber.

    “We will continue to source base mapping data and imagery from partners. This allows us to focus our efforts on delivering great map products such as Bing Maps, Maps app for Windows and our Bing Maps for Enterprise APIs,” said Nadella in today’s memo.

    Around the same time, Microsoft and AOL announced a huge agreement which saw AOL assume management and sales responsibilities for all of Microsoft’s display, mobile, and video ad inventory.

    Of that, Nadella writes:

    “We also announced our decision to sharpen our focus in advertising platform technology and concentrate on search, while we partner with AOL and AppNexus for display. Bing will now power search and search advertising across the AOL portfolio of sites, in addition to the partnerships we already have with Yahoo!, Amazon and Apple. Concentrating on search will help us further accelerate the progress we’ve been making over the past six years. Last year Bing grew to 20 percent query share in the U.S. while growing our search advertising revenue 28 percent over the past 12 months. We view search technology as core to our efforts spanning Bing.com, Cortana, Office 365, Windows 10 and Azure services.”

  • Twitter Promises to Work on Its Diversity Problem

    Twitter Promises to Work on Its Diversity Problem

    Twitter has made a promise, albeit a bit vague, to make sure its workforce is more diverse.

    The company has partnered with the UN’s HeForShe initiative, a “solidarity movement for gender equality that brings together one half of humanity in support of the other half of humanity, for the benefit of all.”

    “Twitter will use its full reach to advance gender equality around the world, amplifying the HeForShe movement to reach millions of individuals. In 2014, Twitter, along with others in the technology industry, took the bold step of transparently sharing their workforce demographic data. To advance gender equality within Twitter and across the tech industry, Twitter will continue to support key initiatives that provide women with mentoring and opportunities in STEM, and reform its own people practices to increase the representation of women at Twitter,” says Twitter.

    The company didn’t go into detail as what it would do in future hiring practices, but it did make a general promise to make the company more representative of the general population.

    Twitter says it is “wholly committed to building a representative workforce, and is dedicated to ensuring fairness in all people decisions, including hiring, promoting, and paying.”

    As of today, only 30% of Twitter’s workforce is female – and only 10% of its technical workforce.

    Of course, Twitter is far from the only tech company with these sorts of diversity issues.

    Earlier this week, Facebook confirmed that it was implementing a “Rooney Rule” of sorts, forcing departments to consider at least one minority candidate for any open position before making a hire.

    Image via Garrett Heath, Flickr Creative Commons

  • Trying to Get a Job? Clean Up Your Facebook Profile (But Don’t Delete It)

    Sure, you may be qualified for that job you’re trying to land, but something you said on Facebook might turn off potential employers. This has been true for years, but companies’ reliance on social media to screen potential employees is only rising. According to a recent study, over half of employers are researching job applicants on social media.

    The study was conducted by CareerBuilder, who found that 52% of companies surveyed are checking on potential employees’ Facebook, Twitter, and other social media accounts. That’s up from 39% just two years ago.

    As an employer, are you increasing your attention to possible employees’ social media accounts? What exactly are you looking for? As an potential employee, how important is it to clean up your social media accounts? Let us know in the comments.

    According to the study, here are the biggest red flags for employers and the percentage of which caused them to reject a candidate:

    Provocative or inappropriate photographs – 46 percent

    Information about candidate drinking or using drugs – 40 percent

    Candidate bad-mouthed previous company or fellow employee – 34 percent

    Poor communication skills – 30 percent

    Discriminatory comments related to race, religion, gender, etc. – 29 percent

    One of the more interesting finds from CareerBuilder’s study is that whitewashing your social media accounts may be a good idea, but deleting them entirely might not be so smart.

    “As this trend continues, some employers are starting to consider a candidate’s absence from social media to be a red flag. More than one third (35 percent) said they’d be less likely to interview someone they couldn’t find online,” they say.

    Long story short, employers might find it strange if you’re not on Facebook or Twitter – not only that, but they might overlook you if they can’t find any information about you online.

    And if you’ve done your due diligence and made much your information private, you may find a friend request waiting in your notifications. The study found that “35% of employers who screen via social media have requested to be a friend or to follow candidates who have private accounts.”

    What could you find in a possible employee’s social media past that would cost them the job? Let us know in the comments.