March 4th, student protestors in Oakland picketed as part of ‘National Day of Action for Public Education.’ Protests started back in September 2009 at UCLA, and has now spread across the United States as an all-out movement to fight increased tuition costs for college students. The protests migrated to Colorado last week when about 600 people marched from Denver’s Metro Campus to the State Capitol. At the same time, protests turned violent at Northern California’s UC Berkley when police attempted to block a walking demonstration. Participants around the country were trying to shine a light on the growing number of students who will no longer be able to afford an education at their current colleges or universities. (more…)
Archive for the ‘Career Development’ Category
New Report Gives Reasons for College drop-outs
Statistics may build case for taking shorter, online certificate programmes
“With Their Whole Lives Ahead of Them: Myths and Realities About Why So Many Students Fail to Finish College”, a Public Agenda report, has recently been released. Underwritten by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the study looks at all the reasons behind two important statistics. According to the U.S. Department of Education: 1.) only 20 percent of young adults who begin their higher education at two-year institutions graduate within three years, and 2.) in the case of four-year institutions, only four out of 10 students receive a degree within six years. (more…)
More Languages in Demand as Organisations Try to Beat Recession
The following article posted on ResponseSource.com explains that companies all over the world are recruiting employees with the ability to speak multiple languages. In today’s economy, being multilingual is an important skill now more than ever especially for a career in finance, sales, IT, engineering, or as a certified global business professional.
As UK companies look to overseas markets to maximise on business during the downturn, there has been a boost in demand for more exotic language skills, especially within the finance and sales sectors. That’s according to a new hiring trends report from multilingual recruitment consultancy Euro London Appointments
Dutch, German, Japanese and Russian remain popular languages within finance, but more generally there has been increased demand for Arabic, Gujerati, Polish, Czech, Cantonese and Korean as companies look to develop in new and alternative markets.
Although finance and banking recruitment, particularly within hedge funds and trading, has been badly affected by the economic problems, the report shows that demand in areas such as risk and compliance and relationship management has grown as these aspects of finance become increasingly important.
Demand for experienced candidates in digital media has also increased, as has requests for multilingual sales staff, as organisations look for ways to boost sales both at home and abroad. The online gaming sector continues to boom and is seeing continuing demand for linguists too. In the North West of the UK particularly, companies are facing a lack of IT and engineering professionals with language ability, mostly driven by a drop in the number of foreign nationals coming here.
“With the economic picture and the recruitment market varying so much across the globe, organisations in the UK are realising the importance of maximising on relationships with their customers overseas” comments Steve Shacklock from Euro London. “This is not only in Europe but increasingly across Asia too, making language ability an even more valuable skill than ever. It’s reassuring to see that despite the doom and gloom that we hear about the jobs market, that there is still demand out there for skilled and experienced candidates.”
The report highlighted similar market trends across Europe, with France seeing an increased demand for sales professionals and the online sector also expanding in Germany. Although their financial markets have been substantially affected, Luxembourg and Switzerland are still seeing demand for finance professionals, with Luxembourg seeing growth in accountancy and Switzerland experiencing a continued demand for risk and tax specialists.
Euro London’s Spring 2009 hiring trends report covers the job markets in the UK, Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland and France.