Heather S. Hughes has a great post at the Black Star Rising photographers’ blog where she discusses making the career change from newspaper staffer to wedding photographer. It looks like her career transition should go well — and the reason is how well she’s planned for it. As she puts it:

I chose wedding photography because it is stable (people will always get married), requires advanced planning (most are booked at least six months out), and will still allow me to work as a freelance photojournalist on stories I care about. I am taking the plunge now because wedding season starts soon…

To my credit, or not, I am an obsessive planner and enjoy organizing and making lists … I read a lot of books to help me with my lists, and things were added to it each week, which is why it is important to start this process before you leave your job, so you aren’t rushed into making mistakes. Lists also help you figure out what will make you happy and what you really want. They can reassure you that you’re making the right decision.

We know what many of you might say in response: I’m too busy — too engaged — in my current job to start planning for what I’ll do next.

Believe me, we understand. And that’s one of the main reasons we created RiseSmart. We know that $100k+ managers and executives often don’t have 30 to 40 hours per month to devote to searching for their next job online. And so we do it for you.

Now what’s your excuse for not planning ahead?

ABP. Always Be Planning. It’s about the best career advice we can give.

Here’s a funny take on both the state of the U.S. job market and the ongoing immigration debate, courtesy of Jonathan Browning:

If you’re looking for management jobs, we’re the better way to find them!

We’re proud of how fast RiseSmart is growing — and of the wonderful reception our service has received from the media and bloggers.

Here are a few excerpts from stories and posts on us to date:

Jeff Altman, the Big Game Hunter –

I wish I had thought of this service for senior level professionals. RiseSmart came up with an idea that I think is simple AND terrific. Their idea is that searching the job boards is horrible. You have to search a lot of them, scroll though useless job spec after useless job spec, and waste a lot of time.

RiseSmart has a simple idea with two prongs–the first is to select the kind of job you are looking for based upon a number of criteria. They search the boards and then have a human being review results and refer them to you. You have responses within 48 hours and then at least weekly after that! Yeah, you have to pay for the service but not a lot.

alarm:clock –

Would we use RiseSmart? Sure. $44 isn’t much if it gives you an edge … If you are at the VP level, you are used to having underlings do the work for you. So you probably are not very comfortable searching for jobs on your own.

Gautam Ghosh –

So would there be takers for RiseSmart’s services? I think so. Senior executives, in my personal experiences, are really not very technology savvy and while jobs have moved to the jobsites, CXO level folks are chary about doing a job hunt through job sites. One CEO I was talking to was so concerned about his privacy that he hadn’t even opened a Linkedin profile.

About.com –

If your time is in short supply and you can afford to spend money on your job search, you might want to consider giving RiseSmart a try…If you think RiseSmart may work for you, but you are not sure, you can find out more about how it works and view a demo video or sign up for a free 3 day trial.

KillerStartups –

RiseSmart is part job board and part career coach. Each member is assigned a “Job Concierge” who takes care of matching member profiles to the most suitable jobs by using an automated search of the job database. With over 1 million jobs in its database, RiseSmart has a lot to offer to C-Level executives looking for that next perfect job.

Job Search Guy Blog –

Risesmart aims for the executive and upper employment demographic by employing a “concierge” to match available $100K+ jobs with your submitted profile … They already claim paying customers and their site page appears to be getting significant traffic with an Alexa ranking of around 495K [now 247K]. If you’re looking for a $100K+ job and don’t want to spend time looking, then check them out.

BORN (Broadcasting Online Recruitment News) –

The rise of smart recruiting … The interesting thing about RiseSmart is the fact that its search engine is human-powered … It has the quality advantages that come with putting humans into the loop … RiseSmart is certainly a company to watch.

Bloggers: If you want to try out RiseSmart’s service for free for purposes of a review of the service (good, bad or indifferent), please e-mail me at sanjaysathe@risesmart.com and we’ll make it happen. Or, if you’d like access to a sample account so you can see exactly what subscribers receive, we can do that do. Just contact us.

Here’s an embedded version of that WPVI-TV report highlighting RiseSmart so everyone can view it:

Reporter Erin O’Hearn of WPVI-TV in Philadelphia provides an overview of niche job sites in this report. We’re pleased, of course, that Erin chose to highlight RiseSmart in her coverage!