Sometimes a small change can mean big change for the employment market. That’s what analysts are saying about the January unemployment numbers released last Friday by the Department of Labor.

Is the news all good for jobseekers? No, but it’s much better than anyone expected. Consider this: After losing 150,000 jobs in December, the U.S. economy lost only 20,000 jobs last month, a small statistical change that could signal much bigger things—most notably, that after a string of brutal jobs reports, the worst may be over. After revising its numbers from the end of last year, the Labor Department determined that unemployment fell to 9.7 percent last month from 10 percent.

Job-market watchers have jumped all over the unexpected good news. On the White House blog, Council of Economic Advisers chair Christina Romer wrote that “while unemployment remains a severe problem, today’s employment report contains encouraging signs of gradual labor market healing.”

Employment did rise in a few areas, including retail trade and temporary help employment, as well as manufacturing. The results of the Labor Department’s survey of households showed that 541,000 more Americans had work in January. But Romer’s choice of words may be an even bigger indicator in itself, as it marks the first time anyone analyzing the labor market has really talked about “healing” for the jobs outlook. Could the jobless recovery finally be getting back its jobs?

There are several caveats, of course. First of all, as Romer herself notes, the DOL’s revised numbers revealed that more than a million more jobs than previously thought have been lost in this recession. The new numbers suggest 8.4 million jobs have been lost in this recession, and it will likely take several years for all of those jobs to be restored to the economy.

But let’s look at that in a different light. Economic analysts believe we could add as many as 1.5 million jobs to the U.S. economy this year. For proof that 2010 is beginning to show signs of an improved outlook, look no further than CNN/Fortune’s new list of the best companies to work for in 2010. Out of those, almost a quarter have at least 500 openings each, which equals almost 88,000 jobs. In other words, Fortune’s top companies are hiring.

The top rankings this year, by the way, went to:

1. SAS
2. Edward Jones
3. Wegmans
4. Google
5. Nugget Market
6. DreamWorks Animation
7. NetApp
8. Boston Consulting Group
9. Qualcomm
10. Camden Property Trust

To some degree, this year’s list of top companies is just a reshuffling of last year’s, but it’s interesting to consider who moved and who didn’t. North-Carolina-based software firm SAS jumped all the way from #20 to #1, while Edward Jones remained at #2 and Google held at #4. Camden Property Trust made the biggest upward move in the top 10, from #41 to #10. Meanwhile, Cisco Systems, Genentech and Goldman Sachs all fell out of the top 10.

Unlike 2009’s list, not all of the top 10 companies had positive job growth this year, and the upticks were generally small in any case.

However, judging from what the companies are saying about their hiring for this year — and all of those openings — expect that to change on next year’s list.

The impact of social media cannot be denied. The 2009 word of the year was “tweet,” and the word of the decade was “google,” according to the American Dialect Society. Social media such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, and YouTube—which are defined by their user-generated content—have wiggled their way into most people’s working hours, and thus onto many workplace computers.

In the field of Human Resources, most talk of social media has to do with pre-employment: talent sourcing, advertising job openings, and performing background checks. But social media is now integrated with each stage of the employee lifecycle: before, during, and after. HR practitioners should study their proper use (and possible misuse), and learn what steps to take now to maximize their benefit while heading off potential legal problems.

An excellent article on this topic was just published in The National Law Journal. In “Social media permeate the employment life cycle: Employers must address their use and misuse before, during and after an employee’s tenure,” labor and employment attorney Renee M. Jackson writes about the simultaneous opportunities and risk presented by social media. Here are some of her top thoughts, as well as those of HR pros, on points you should consider at each stage of the employee lifecycle.

PRE-EMPLOYMENT

The networking power of social media is undeniably helping people find jobs, and helping companies find talent. If you’re ready to take full advantage of it, check out an article like Fistful of HR’s “5 Must-Use Social Media Tools For HR & Recruiting Professionals In 2009.”

Know this, though: because people now publicly disclose much more information than they did in the past, organizations must take care, writes Jackson in The National Law Journal:

… Applicants may reveal more information about themselves through social media than they normally would during the hiring process. In making hiring decisions, employers can lawfully use information relating to an applicant’s illegal drug use, poor work ethic, poor writing or communications skills, feelings about previous employers and racist or other discriminatory tendencies. Employers may also lawfully consider an applicant’s general poor judgment in maintenance of his or her public online persona.

Employers, however, may face liability under federal, state and local law for using any information learned from social media about an applicant’s protected class status — race, age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, etc. — in a hiring decision. It may be hard for the employer to prove in later litigation that it only viewed, but didn’t actually use, the information obtained in a social medium when making its hiring decision.

Your organization must seriously consider whether you want to use social media in your talent searches at all. If you do, Jackson recommends that you follow these guidelines:

• Conduct uniform searches that are just and consistent
• Use a non-biased third party to perform social media research
• Do not “friend” applicants to gain access to non-public information
• And other important points

DURING EMPLOYMENT

One of the biggest issues caused by social media during an employee tenure is the simple theft of working time. There are also matters of privacy, nondisclosure, taboo topics and hostile work environment, brand protection, and many more. The good news is, this is the stage when you have the most control over the situation. Most organizations would benefit from a well-researched, clear, and fairly applied social media policy. To research the matter, I recommend  beginning with “10 Must-Haves for Your Social Media Policy” by Sharlyn Lauby, who you may know as The HR Bartender, or “How to Develop a Social Media Policy” from About.com. There are a wide range of policies, but one thing all the experts agree on is that a successful policy is not arbitrary, but is a genuine expression of the needs of an organization which has considered both the risks and rewards of this new media.

Some of Jackson’s top recommendations for points to include in a policy are:

• A prohibition on disclosure of the employer’s confidential, trade secret or proprietary information
• A request that employees keep company logos or trademarks off their blogs and profiles and not mention the company in commentary, unless for business purposes
• An instruction that employees not post or blog during business hours, unless for business purposes
• A request that employees bring work-related complaints to human resources before blogging or posting about such complaints
• And others

AFTER EMPLOYMENT

Then, there are the former employees. Some will be nice, and some will be not-so-nice.

The best defense against nightmare scenarios like this and like this is a having had a good social media policy in the first place—one that lasts beyond employment, if at all possible. But if you are dealing with a situation that falls outside of that, you might want to read an article such as “Dealing with Disgruntled Ex-employees via Social Media.”

Another huge issue is recommendations. Increasingly, people are asking former colleagues to write them recommendations on social media such as LinkedIn. Is that the same as an official post-employment recommendation? Jackson says yes—although it’s difficult to define when people are speaking for themselves, and when they are speaking on behalf of the organization. It’s a good reason to have a solid policy in place.

The warmest and fuzziest scenario is positive relations through social media in the form of corporate alumni networks. In Computer World’s article, “The new word for tech’s ex-employees is ‘alum’” large, successful sites catering to groups of ex-employees are examined. Microsoft’s alumni network, for example, has 10,000 members—what an incredible opportunity for networking and goodwill!

THE TAKEAWAY

What HR should take away from this, writes Jackson, is that the risks of social media are too great to be ignored any longer.

First, employers must understand the myriad issues surrounding social media in the workplace in order to strike the appropriate balance in the eyes of their employees and the law. Then, employers must craft appropriate policies and procedures regarding social media that are consistent with their industry and firm culture, and apply such policies in a consistent, objective and nondiscriminatory way.

Workers are tweeting, googling, and friending, and they’re doing it at all stages of employment. We need to acknowledge this, and craft good policies in response.

“Career transition” is on a lot of minds these days. The U.S. has more than 15 million unemployed — and if you count the discouraged and underemployed, the number is more like 27 million. You may be one of these people seeking a new job, or you may be one of millions of others who are employed, but trying to strategize a major career change in a tough market. No matter the specifics, the economic downturn is probably affecting your career.

As you craft your long-term plans, you’ll want to consider where the jobs are — and where they are going. Consumption drives these patterns, but so does technology. Don’t forget to account for older generations retiring and leaving needed jobs open, either. All of these elements affect which jobs are available.

Then, to maximize your future demand, think about adapting your strategy — be it higher education, government re-training, or developing a new area of expertise — to a field that is projected to grow.

To help you with your planning, we peeked into our “crystal ball” (actually, government projections) to share the latest statistics for the industries growing the most, and the occupations that will be adding the largest amount of workers, now through 2018.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently published its 2010-11 edition of  the Occupational Outlook Handbook, a report on occupations and employment growth trends that is updated every two years. This particular update covers 2008-2018 — meaning it has data through the end of 2008, and projects out to 2018. This is notable because it does cover one full year of the downturn (2008), which began in December 2007. Nationwide, employment is projected to increase by 15.3 million (approximately 10%) over the decade between 2008 and 2018, and the OOH describes exactly where the growth will be. Here is the OOH’s list of the 20 “fastest-growing” professions through 2018, as measured by percentage of growth.

1. Biomedical engineers: Slated to add 11,600 jobs, a 72% increase
2. Network systems and data communication analysts: Will add 155,800 jobs, a 53% increase
3. Home health aides: Set to add 460,900 jobs, an increase of 50%
4. Personal and home care aides: Will grow by 375,800 openings, or 46%
5. Financial examiners: Slated to add 11,100 jobs, an increase of 41%
6. Medical scientists, except epidemiologists: 44,200 jobs will be added, a 40% growth rate
7. Physician assistants: This field will add 29,200 jobs, growing by 39%
8. Skin care specialists: Set to add 14,700 positions, growing by 38%
9. Biochemists and biophysicists: Will grow by 8,700 positions, or 37%
10. Athletic trainers: Set to add 6,000 jobs, a gain of 37%
11. Physical therapist aides: 16,700 jobs will be added, a gain of 36%
12. Dental hygienists: The workforce will add 62,900 jobs, an increase of 36%
13. Veterinary technologists and technicians:  Slated to add 28,500 jobs, a 36% increase
14. Dental assistants: Will be adding 105,600 jobs, growing by 36%
15. Computer software engineers, applications: Set to add 175,100 jobs, a growth rate of 34%
16. Medical assistants: Will grow by 163,900 personnel, an increase of 34%
17. Physical therapist assistants: 21,200 jobs will be added, growing by 33%
18. Veterinarians: Will add 19,700 jobs, an increase of 33%
19. Self-enrichment education teachers: Slated to add 81,300 positions, an increase of 32%
20. Compliance officers, except agriculture, construction, health and safety, and transportation: Will add 80,800 jobs, growing by 31%

The first thing to note about this list is that a smaller industry can show an explosive rate of growth, yet still add fewer jobs in total than a huge industry that is growing more slowly. This is shown by the top occupation, biomedical engineer, which is going up steeply (72%!), but in spite of this is still only adding one job for every 39 added of the #3 job, home health assistant.

Examining the above list, here are some big trends I observe in the fastest-growing industries:

Biological sciences: In the Top 20, we see a high demand for biomedical engineers (#1) and biochemists and biophysicists ( #9), which reflects medicine’s growing interest in genetic research and biologic drugs. If you are inclined toward the sciences, biology would be a strategic area to explore.

IT: Don’t overlook the second-fastest-growing job, network systems and data communication analysts, which is set to add more than 150,000 new jobs, while computer software engineers, applications, #15, is adding another 175,000. Together, this is 325,000 jobs, so people who can run networks and write software will definitely continue to be needed.

Health assistance: Home health aide is #3, while personal and home care aides are right behind at #4. It makes sense: our increasingly aging population has an independent spirit, values their health, and would like help with it at home rather than at an institution. Physician assistants (#7), dental hygienists (#12), dental assistants (#14) also reflect these demographics, plus increased access to and demand for medical and dental services. Could you grow a career around this?

Veterinary sciences: The pet is of ever-increasing importance in the U.S.: people devote more of their money to a pet’s needs than before, and rates of pet ownership are up. So it’s not surprising to see veterinarians at #18 and veterinary technologists and technicians at #13. If you love animals, veterinary medicine may be the path for you.

Those were the occupations with steep growth. If you’re more interested in which occupations will be adding the most jobs in terms of sheer numbers, the following list (also from the new edition of the Occupational Outlook Handbook) delivers that. Here are the 20 occupations that will be adding the most new jobs, in individual openings:

1. Registered nurses (581,500)
2. Home health aides (460,900)
3. Customer service representatives (399,500)
4. Combined food preparation and serving workers, including fast food (394,300)
5. Personal and home care aides (375,800)
6. Retail salespersons (374,700)
7. Office clerks, general (358,700)
8. Accountants and auditors (279,400)
9. Nursing aides, orderlies, and attendants (276,000)
10. Postsecondary teachers (256,900)
11. Construction laborers (255,900)
12. Elementary school teachers, except special education (244,200)
13. Truck drivers, heavy and tractor-trailer (232,900)
14. Landscaping and groundskeeping workers (217,100)
15. Bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks (212,400)
16. Executive secretaries and administrative assistants (204,400)
17. Management analysts (178,300)
18. Computer software engineers, applications (175,100)
19. Receptionists and information clerks (172,900)
20. Carpenters (165,400)

Observations on the list of occupations that are growing the most:

Healthcare: The need for registered nurses is #1. Although they didn’t make the Top 20, you should know that licensed practical and licensed vocational nurses came in at #24 on the list, and physicians and surgeons ranked #28. Being a doctor or nurse has always been an in-demand profession, and the demand will continue.

Services: The service sector is adding millions of jobs in the coming eight years. A large portion of them are adjacent to healthcare; home health aides are #2, while nursing aides, orderlies, and attendants is #9, and personal and home care aides is #5. Other growth areas in service are food preparation and landscaping.

Construction and carpentry: Good news! Building is projected to come back from its current slump, making construction laborer #11 on this list, and carpenter #20.

For more planning resources, be sure to visit the OOH website. There, you can read up on hundreds of jobs. For each job, you will find descriptions of the duties and working conditions, the skills and experience needed, projected earnings, and even information on the job in your region. It is a valuable resource for imagining, planning, and implementing your successful career transition.

Although the U.S. closed out 2009 with steep unemployment, some recently announced year-end data indicates that hiring is set to rebound in 2010. The encouraging news comes from this 2010 Job Forecast, which surveyed more than 2,700 hiring managers and human resource professionals about their staffing plans for the coming year.

While the forecast warns that employers are still keeping a cautious eye on the economy, their general reluctance to hire seems to be abating. Fully 20% of the employers surveyed said they plan to add permanent full-time employees in 2010 — up from 14% in 2009. Meanwhile, on the job-loss side, just 9% of the respondents said they plan to cut headcount, which is down from 16% in 2009.

These numbers, taken together, show plans for a 11% net gain in companies that are hiring full-time workers, which would bring welcome relief to our unemployment situation.

The sunny news is not confined to the U.S. According to The Wall Street Journal, a similar survey of our northern neighbor offered even better numbers: 29% of employers indicated that they plan to increase permanent full-time employment in 2010 — up from 18% in 2009. Only 9% plan to cut positions in 2010, making their “net hirers” number hit 20%.

Here are some other hiring practices the survey identified as growing trends for 2010:

• Rehiring laid-off workers
• Replacing low-performing employees
• Rehiring retirees / delaying retirement
• Continuing to hire contract workers to mitigate risk
• Increased need for bilingual workers

Not every field will see gains equally. Fields that the survey found were most likely to increase hiring were:

• 32%   Information technology
• 27%   Manufacturing
• 23%   Financial services
• 22%   Professional and business services
• 21%   Sales
• 21%   Healthcare
• 18%   Transportation
• 15%   Retail

In a related article, “The most secure jobs for 2010” describes careers likely to be in high demand in 2010 and beyond. While some made perfect sense — occupational therapist to our growing population of senior citizens is a needed specialty, and being a gas/electric/utilities strategic planning analyst in a time of energy crisis is surely secure — others came as an interesting surprise to me (for instance, I was not aware that there is a projected demand for more interior designers in spite of economic pressures, but the profession is on the rise). Check out the whole article to read their take on the most recession-proof jobs for the coming year.

What’s your sense of these numbers and trends? Will 2010 be the year we turn unemployment around? Do these “more companies hiring than firing” predictions seem feasible to you, based on what you’re seeing out in the field? Let us know in the comments, and please be sure to note your location, too. Not all regions are suffering unemployment equally, nor will they recover at the exact same pace. We’re interested in your eyewitness reports.

Unemployment is up, and job openings are down. But there is one sector where hiring is on the upswing — the hiring of interns. And within many companies, the roles and responsibilities of interns are expanding.

There are certainly pros for the interns and the companies alike: the interns get needed on-the-job experience, and the companies get eager (and often free) assistance. There are many strong and well-respected intern programs out there, and most professionals will tell you they couldn’t have gotten where they are today without a key internship.

But there are cons, too. The most worrying item is that the recent ubiquity and “upsizing” of the intern role means that regular, paid entry-level work is increasingly scarce, which can result in difficulties for younger workers.

In the recent The New York Times article, “Hiring Is Rising in One Area: Low-Paid Interns,”  business owners were very clear on how valuable interns are to them. The owner of one marketing firm says bringing on interns is “a brilliant, recession-proof way to double your work force,” and that he experiences a certain personal satisfaction when an intern succeeds and he knows that he gave them “that little boost.”   The Times went on to quote C. Mason Gates, the president and founder of Internships.com, as saying that with economic uncertainty, smaller businesses would continue to view interns as a source of growth, talent development and project-based work.

It’s clear that such internships are win-win. People are using them to get ahead, and companies are using them to stay strong in a tough economy. But is the upsizing of the internship coming at the expense of paid, entry-level positions? And what might be the consequences of this?

Among my job-seeking peers, I am more and more often hearing the complaint that “all” the entry-level openings have been re-tooled as internships where you are offered “experience” and “exposure” but very rarely pay. These people (most of whom have been laid off after 2-6 years of experience) consider themselves “past” seeking internships, and would prefer paid work. But these increasingly upsized internships, they claim, are eclipsing regular work.

I found myself curious about my own profession: has the role of intern shifted in the past few years? Just to check, I took a an unscientific, but well-informed, whirl through the want ads on craigslist.org, checking the openings in my own specialty. I’ve kept daily tabs on this website and this category for seven years or so, and I often contributed to posting and writing the ads myself for big-name local firms. I figured I could easily spot some differences in titles, duties, and pay, if they existed.

Some former employers jumped out immediately, and so did the terms of their ads. I can say with certainty that at one former employer — a medium-sized publishing company — entry-level jobs seem to no longer exist. What we would have once called an “assistant editor” is now an unpaid intern with a full load of responsibilities such as reviewing products, writing articles, proofing pages for publication, and more.

While I don’t begrudge the interns their chance to shine, I uneasily recalled that some of these activities come with a journalistic code of ethics and corporate exposure to liability. I wondered what kind of legal oversight a company has over unpaid workers. When I worked there (and the economy was good), unpaid interns were given mostly “grunt work” concerning mailing lists, data back-ups, contest administration, and organization, coupled with the chance of possibly writing one heavily-supervised article each issue. With training, good interns eventually made their way into paid entry-level positions — which are now, in turn, internships.

I have to say that something does seem wrong with this picture. I am a strong supporter of internships, but I am concerned that the poor economy is leading to a deficiency in paid entry-level work. Ironically, it seems that the solution to this is to — you guessed it — get a great internship, get your experience, and try to transition it into a paid position. It may simply be a reality that market forces have led to a shift, and we may all have to adjust expectations accordingly.

Do you have any observations about the changing role of the intern?

It seems counter-intuitive. Even as the unemployment rate soars and nearly 16 million Americans find themselves out of work, many HR professionals are having a hard time filling their open positions. It’s not a quantity issue –- any ad HR posts is sure to result in hundreds, if not thousands, of resumes — or even a quality issue. It’s a qualifications issue.

In times of change, industries morph more quickly than people do, resulting in a mismatch between available jobs and job candidates. We look to the Dow Jones Newswire for some analysis:

Economists say the main problem is a mismatch between available work and people qualified to do it. Millions of jobs with attractive pay and benefits that once drew legions of workers to the auto industry, construction, Wall Street and other sectors are gone, probably for good. And those who lost those jobs generally lack the right experience for new positions popping up in health care, energy and engineering. Many of these specialized jobs were hard to fill even before the recession. But during downturns, recruiters tend to become even choosier, less willing to take financial risks on untested workers.

The problem is definitely more pronounced in emerging industries:

With job openings largely concentrated in specialized industries like health care, green technology and energy, some employers say the problem is finding qualified workers, which are in short supply. Meanwhile, they are inundated with eager candidates from other industries who lack the skills and experience that the job requires.

In the above article, “Great job openings, no candidates: Hiring managers struggle to find employees, even as millions of jobs seekers are desperate for work,” CNN interviewed a Director of Human Resources who is in charge of hiring Registered Nurses and Home Health Aides. The positions pay between $30,000 and $45,000, but despite a  glut of applicants, many have been open for six months or more.

“We get tons of resumes,” says the HR Director. The problem, she says, is that they are bombarded by applications that lack the two years’ experience required. The result is that the positions stay unfilled, even as HR employees spend insupportable amounts of time searching through resumes to find appropriate candidates.

The problem is serious for people on both sides of the hiring desk, and it is not likely to go away anytime soon. New data just released by the Labor Department shows that as of September 2009, there were 6.1 unemployed persons competing for each job opening. At the beginning of the economic slowdown, not even two years ago, there were only 1.7 workers competing for each job opening. That means competition for jobs more than tripled since December 2007!

The article goes on to remind us that during the last three major recessions (in 1982, 1991 and 2001), it took more than a year for the unemployment rate to peak after the downturns officially ended. This is partially a reaction to economic forces, and partly because it takes time to transition laid-off workers to the industries that need them. Check out the Associated Press story “Even as layoffs persist, some good jobs go begging“:

It can take a year or more for a laid-off worker to gain the training and education to switch industries. That means health care jobs are going unfilled even as laid-off workers in the auto, construction or financial services industries seek work. “So we have this army of the unemployed,” without the necessary skills, [said the expert interviewed].

We are looking at a society-wide problem that is only going to be corrected with the passage of time and with resources devoted to re-training displaced workers. In the meantime, Human Resources is facing massive drains on its own resources.

How is your department handling screening large amounts of applicants? Is your organization offering any training, or working with any re-training agencies? Is it difficult to explain to co-workers outside of HR why it may be taking extra time to find the right match? We’re interested in hearing your strategies and your success stories.

Last week, we saw the Department of Labor reveal the worst unemployment statistics the U.S. has faced since 1983, with a total of 15.7 million Americans officially out of work and looking. The new national average of 10.2% is an important psychological threshold — but what’s even more shocking to think about is that it is an average. Many locations and demographics are experiencing much scarier numbers. Who is most and least affected by this plague of joblessness? What is the demographic makeup of the unemployment line?

The numbers vary from state to state, of course. For instance, RiseSmart’s home state of California has experienced 12.2% unemployment recently. Michigan, Nevada, and Rhode Island are also suffering. However, states such as the Dakotas, Utah, Iowa, and Nebraska are all doing comparatively well.

But regional differences are to be expected as local economies go through boom and bust times. It’s the demographic numbers that will really make you look twice. The New York Times has published a thought-provoking interactive chart that graphs out unemployment rates for different groups of Americans, called “The Jobless Rate for People Like You.” You can adjust the chart for race, gender, age, and education levels and get 12-month averages for that demographic, current as of September 2009 (they don’t reflect our latest awful reality of 10+%, but still show a sobering truth).

The variations are shocking. Truly, not all groups have felt the recession equally. Make up an imaginary unemployed person; give them an age, a gender, a race, and an education. See what their chances are; then change an element or two.

Take away that college degree, or change the race, and you’ll quickly find that some groups have unemployment rates much higher than the 10% we’re all worrying over. The highest unemployment rate –- a staggering 48.5% –- is suffered by black males under age 24 without a high school diploma. Their female counterparts (same race, age, and education) also faced discouraging odds at 36.8%, but the change of gender alone makes a difference of 11.7%.

Education helps, because these same groups, had they finished high school, would be facing just 25.8% unemployment. Before you pin it all on dropping out of school, though, consider a schoolmate of theirs: a white male of the same age who didn’t complete high school. The white dropout, statistically, faces just 25.6% unemployment (virtually the same as the black male who completes his diploma). If the white student finishes high school, it drops to 15.5%.

There are many more dismaying inequities to be found by experimenting with the chart. The unemployment line of America, according to these numbers, contains more men than women; more youth than elders; a vastly unequal representation of races; and an inordinate amount of the less-educated. In fact, education is the factor that affects these rates the most. There are definitely trends based on age, race, and gender, but possession of a high school or college degree seems to do the most, across the board, to increase one’s chances of getting and keeping a job.

For more unemployment statistics, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Unemployment Statistics is an excellent place to start. You can examine national, state, and local statistics through the lens of various demographics, and research mass layoffs, too. If you are interested in how the unemployment crisis is affecting older workers, the Urban Institute has produced comprehensive “Unemployment Statistics on Older Americans.”

Whether you are a job-seeker or a Human Resource professional (or both –- it’s known to happen from time to time), it is important to know the real face of joblessness. Our country is facing the worst unemployment crisis in decades: probably the worst any of us will see in our careers. We owe it to ourselves and to the people we meet and consider working with to understand what is really going on in our offices, our unemployment system, and our society.

My worst interview ever, as a hiring manager in an editorial group, went perfectly… on the surface.

I didn’t know it had actually been a complete disaster until the candidate called me up two hours later. Was he calling to thank me, or had he possibly left something behind?

No. The candidate suavely asked me to dinner that evening. I stammered, “You do understand that I am the supervisor of the position you interviewed for, right?” “Oh, yes,” he replied, “but I had so much fun speaking with you that I thought you would like to go on a date with me as well as consider me for the job.”

His inappropriate actions did not win him the job — or the girl. And more importantly, it was an unmistakable wake-up call for me that I needed to adjust my interviewing skills into something more structured, and less like a friendly chat. I worked hard over the next two years to learn how to convey authority better.

A lot of hiring managers interview poorly, truth be told. For one thing, “hiring manager” isn’t a job title, it’s a role all managers have to play from time to time. They’re usually not trained to do it, and it’s a drain on what they consider their primary responsibilities.

Their interviewing offenses range from asking illegal questions about protected status, to stretching the decision out interminably, to being notoriously unstructured in their interviewing style.  Recruiting blogger Kiran Gali offers some hands-on advice on this last point in “Interview Tips for the Hiring Manager.” He writes:

Often Hiring Managers do not have a structure around their interviews. When I say structure I don’t mean the sequence of questions, but I am referring to more about the logic. For instance, not many hiring managers know about the concept of using CAR (context, action, result) or STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result ) models which are really helpful. If the candidate says that he has been able to hit a revenue of X Rs (or $) in the very first quarter of his last job, asking context related questions such as what was the target, how well established the product is, what was the most sales done by anybody in team.

Action related questions would be something like, what did the individual do get that sales, was it any different from anyone else, what specific actions he has taken to cross sell or up sell the product. Questions related to Results center around, what percentage of total sales he contribute, was there any dip in costs related to their sales or did it cost more, did he end up exhausting the sales pipeline, has success allowed good references and hence a perennial pipeline. To put it simply, what was the context, which actions the individual took that made the difference, and how did it impact the top or bottom line.

This seems to me like a very helpful methodology that many hiring managers may not be familiar with. The same post also gives advice on hiring managers’ tendency to keep candidates on hold, the need for hiring managers to take notes throughout the interview, and on training your hiring managers to engage in company branding. Recommended reading!

“Hiring Managers Don’t Know Interview Questions,” from the Cube Rules blog, focuses on reassuring candidates that their impressions are correct: many hiring managers really don’t know what they’re doing. Don’t worry too much  about the occasional weird question, awkward silence, or meandering conversation, they say. The key, they stress, is that there are really only 3 basic interview questions that you have to answer. They all boil down to: Can you do the job? Will you love the job? And, what people do you like to work with? If you can bring anything the hiring manager asks back to this, they say, you’ll be golden. (Still, it couldn’t hurt to start training hiring managers to be more talented as interviewers!)

To help your people move toward success, check out this amazing article from CIO magazine. It’s called “The Hiring Manager Interviews,” and it is a collection of 16 interviews with high-ranking tech execs from such well-known organizations as the American Diabetes Association, Pacific Gas & Electric, Northern Trust, US Airways, Kohl’s, and many more. Highlights: exactly how Facebook’s head of technology grills applicants; how the CIO of Harvard Business School gets team buy-in by involving his whole staff; and how the CIO of Jack in the Box learned from her own hiring mistakes. It’s high-quality material that is sure to enrich the interviewing practices of anyone who takes the time to read it.

With a bit of effort and training of your management team, you can help them become great interviewers who make wise choices. As a plus to you, you’ll soon have a team of excellent interviewers available to help you make the right decisions for your organization’s staffing.

When a new hire walks in the door, they know what the job requirements are, and HR has determined that they’re a skill match. They’ve probably been screened as to personality type, too. But just as they get comfortable at the new desk, and start to settle into their workplace behavior, they’re likely to find that there is a mass of unwritten expectations that come from the people sitting around them. These expectations are the “role” that each person is expected to play — and it’s a lot more than just a job description.

Getting good people who are happy in their jobs long-term means knowing (1) their personality, (2) their workplace behavior style, and (3) the unwritten rules and roles of the position. That last one is often the kicker.

Let’s take a look at all three:

1) Your personality type: WHO YOU ARE

Personalities are inherent and ingrained. No one can help bringing their personality to the table.

Personality typing has many different methodologies, from the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator to the Enneagram to the Keirsey Temperament Sorter and beyond. These measure your degree of introversion or extroversion, your propensity to think in an abstract or concrete way, and many other qualities. They may differentiate between types such as “Artisan, Guardian, Idealist, Rationalist” or “Achiever, Helper, Individualist, Peacemaker,” and more.

These are very helpful for developing the talent pipeline, as HR can match individuals to certain teams or managers with personality in mind. For others in the organization, it’s great to have a working knowledge of personality psychology to understand coworkers and their motivations.

2) Your workplace behavior style: HOW YOU CHOOSE TO ACT

We start with raw personality, but we move into workplace behavior styles. These are not inherent personality types, but rather adaptive behaviors within the work ecosystem.

You’re probably familiar with some common archetypes of office behavior: the backstabber, the mother hen, the gossip, or the kiss-up. Serious study is devoted to this topic, with much management literature devoted to classifying these different workplace behavior styles. Francie Dalton writes in “The Seven Classic Types of Workplace Behavior” about Commanders, Drifters, Attackers, Pleasers, Performers, Avoiders, and Analyticals. The book “The Purpose Linked Organization” covers “ten passion archetypes.” This list covers The Mother Hen, The Joker, The Dude, The Cheerleader, The Realist, The Link, The Geek, and The Innovator.

The terms get even funnier as we slide into the realm of pundits: the writers over at Details magazine came up with this hilarious slideshow covering such workplace styles as The Untouchable, Switzerland, Kryptonite, and others.

You’ll see yourself, and many of your coworkers, in these descriptions. The best takeaway is reading about what motivates them and what they need to have validated about their approach.

3) Your role: HOW YOU ARE EXPECTED TO ACT

Personality and workplace style involve what people do, but their “role” is what they are ASKED TO DO. You may have thought you were just looking for a marketing associate with certain software skills and a good phone manner, but what do her coworkers expect her to do, in her “role”? Are they interested in having an innovative go-getter around, or will it alienate them? Is the role secretly only going to work out for a yes-man type? Perhaps they just want someone to sit down and shut up. It’s hard (but crucial) to know if you’re going to make a match.

The “role” of a certain job is probably the least understood, and most ignored, aspect of hiring. I’m not sure why it’s so hard to talk about – perhaps it’s because it delves deeply into team psychology. Also, it can be hard to acknowledge that employees expect emotional, intangible things from their teammates.The stickiest part is that the “role” is usually an unwritten requirement, which no one expresses directly, and yet the incoming worker is made aware of it through indirect (often uncomfortable) means. Sometimes, they may feel they are being asked to take on personal qualities of their predecessor.

The best place that I have seen this written about is in the blog post The Life Cycle of Roles — Not All Roles Are Created Equal, written by HR change expert Charles Van Heerden. Van Heerden really understands that each job has its own “role” that is unrelated to job duties — the new team may need someone to listen, or to lead, to continue something, or to end it decisively. Worst of all, HR may have no idea that the team feels this way.

So go on and learn if you’ve stepped into the role of the Rower, the Slave, the Diplomat, the Player, the Actor, or the Explorer. The writing is humorous, but dead-on, and it will make you think.

The Rower. This is an on-going role. The seat was still warm and everyone expects you to simply pick up where the last person left off. Works best if you share the same name as the previous incumbent, saves on working to create an impression, as well as email – charles@.

Far from just being joke material, you can use these concepts when you are chatting with your own hiring managers about what they seek in a candidate. If you get a clear picture of the role that exists, you will have greater success in matching your skilled candidates to the position.

Let’s face it. In most of life we really are interdependent. We need each other. Staunch independence is an illusion, but heavy dependence isn’t healthy, either. The only position of long-term strength is interdependence: win/win.

– Greg Anderson, the American Wellness Project

Let’s face it.  Along with the interview, the polished resume, the firm handshake and the kudos from all your Facebook friends and Twitter followers, what the HR person really wishes she knew is . . . what did Mrs. Baker write on your third-grade report card? 

Was it the prophetic “Works well with others” — or the problematic “Needs his own space”?

Yes, the pressure is on for HR to step up, embrace technology and integrate social networks into their recruiting processes.  But ultimately, the greatest pressure is to use all the tools at hand to put the right person in the right spot — and avoid forcing co-workers to welcome a square peg to fill the vacant round hole. 

The hope for a win/win falls on the HR professional.  We want a happy employee, a happy boss, and we definitely want a happy workplace.  Kumbaya is always on the success checklist.

Thomas Otter at Vendorprisey indicates it’s a tightrope on which HR professionals tiptoe.  Drowning in ever-updated databases, they still must remember that they work with people.

Writes Otter:

To be a top HR professional, you do need to have empathy for people. It is probably what attracted you to the job in the first place. But if you are going to succeed you need to be analytical, too. HR professionals that can see patterns beyond the incident, abstract the problems from the personal, and make the best move given the constraints they have been dealt with, will have a real impact on shaping the business and their careers.

Is a potential employee too dependent on others, always waiting for an assignment and needing overly specific directions?  Too independent, liable to shirk the team?  Co-dependent, only able to move at a pace equal to those around him? 

Or is she interdependent, comfortable with give-and-take and credit-sharing? 

In the absence of crystal balls and Mrs. Baker’s report card, the HR professional becomes part intuitive seer and part just-the-facts detective.  With the Internet creating personal archives of the good, the bad and the ugly for all to see, this process takes more sorting than ever.  The resume is just a starting point.

According to Mary Ellen Slater on Smartblog on Workforce, many HR professionals still place pretty high value in their intuition and training — but perhaps not enough on the candidate’s often-revealing online footprint.

She notes:

Employers’ feelings about using social media for recruiting are mixed. Nearly half of you report that you’re simply not even interested in trying it, which I find surprising. Used effectively, social media tools can be an effective way to source candidates and build your brand as an attractive employer.

Clearly this is a period of transition, with some HR professionals mainly trusting their old-school record and others tweeting to a new tune.  As Susan Strayer notes, the list of companies that recruit via Twitter is growing.

Who knows, maybe Mrs. Baker is still around . . . and tweets.