NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — The number of Americans filing either continuing or first-time claims for unemployment benefits fell last week, a sign that the job market continues to slowly improve.

The number of Americans filing for ongoing claims dropped 80,000 to 3,706,000 in the week ended March 5, the most recent week available. That was the lowest number of continuing claims since September 2008, and below economists’ forecast for 3,750,000 continuing claims.

Although the decline is a welcome sign, Moody’s Capital Markets Group chief economist John Lonski warned that the figure may be skewed by the expiration of benefits for those Americans who have been jobless for long periods of time and are no longer eligible for unemployment insurance.

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We are pleased to note that our Seattle smartdept. office is the only creative staffing agency ranked in the top 10 list at www.bizvotes.com!

Click here to vote for us or leave a comment to keep us going strong!

Generic resumes don’t work. Virtually any career coach or HR professional will tell you that to stand out from the piles of applications, you need to customize your resume to the job you want. Most job hunters will protest that they don’t have an unlimited amount of time to spend crafting their resume. True, but customizing your resume doesn’t have to be an arduous, time-suck. What follows are eight simple steps to creating a resume that will stand out.

Read the full article here! (via www.bnet.com)

If you’ve been reading about careers and jobs over the past several years, you will no doubt have read that the best jobs never find their way to the newspaper want ads, or even online job boards. That’s because they are filled by people who are referred by friends and colleagues.

Put yourself in the place of the person looking for a job candidate. If you place an ad in the paper or online, you may get hundreds of replies, just a few of which might be a fit for the job. But to find those few, you have to wade through all the others and that can take up a lot of your time. And even when you do find a resume that looks promising, that person is still a stranger to you and you have no idea what kind of person or worker he or she might be.

Read the full article here! (via careerealism.com)

One of the best ways to have someone instantly notice a new product the creativity and ingenuity involved in how it is packaged and designed. Similar to other areas of design, product packaging uses many methods to achieve their goals including interesting shapes, vivid colors, strong typography, reusable packaging and unique textures to help draw initial attention.

Today lets take a look at 35 Creative and beautiful package designs for your design inspiration.

Read the full article here! (via designtutorials4u.com)

It’s not just you — most knowledge workers seem to have a low-level case of ADD these days. You come in ready to work, only to spend hours responding to emails and phone calls, and drifting between meetings where people check their Blackberries to respond to emails from people in other meetings. According to a late 2010 Workplace Options report, 42% of  workers say they come in early or stay late in order to avoid distractions (a practice which makes people think they’re working more hours than they are). After all, you have to do your actual job at some point.

Read the full article here! (via www.bnet.com)

Social media sites are handy for learning more about applicants than their resumes reveal, but beware the legal pitfalls.

Dear Annie: I read your recent post on using social media sites to find a job, and I wonder if you can answer a question from the hiring side. I’m staffing up a new brand-management team at my company. The HR department is doing most of the initial screening, but I’ve also been Googling candidates and looking them up on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn just to get a clearer sense of what they’re like before they come in for interviews.

My boss saw me doing this and suggested I speak with someone in our legal department about it. He didn’t say why, and I didn’t ask, but now I’m curious. Do I really have to get legal involved? As a rule I’d rather not, but what will I be missing if I don’t? —Wondering in Washington, D.C.

Dear Wondering: Your boss has a point. Although 77% of hiring managers now use social media sites to check out job candidates, according to a recent poll by executive career site ExecuNet, the practice comes with a few legal risks that you’d be smart to keep in mind.

One pitfall has to do with the concept of “disparate impact.” To avoid the appearance of racial discrimination, the pool of candidates who can apply for a job should be made up of a mix of ethnic groups that roughly reflects the workforce as a whole. Relying too heavily on social media sites makes this difficult.

Read the full article here! (via http://money.cnn.com)

2011 Kick-Off Event

Thrus. / 03.10.11

6:00 pm

A night of casual networking amongst the movers and shakers of the Chicago interactive industry, as we partner with , POPChips and Absolut Vodka to host our 2011 Kick-Off event. Spread the word, bring your friends, and come out to Chicago’s first social club dedicated to supporting all the glorious awesomeness that is the Chicago interactive scene. You must register to attend the event.

The interview process most large companies employ today begins with a first round “character” meeting conducted by a Human Resources representative, followed by in-depth interviews with multiple hiring managers in stages two and beyond. Most corporate HR departments are understaffed and lack an understanding of the technical positions they recruit for – two reasons why the recruitment agencies they partner with are such a key resource for them. Today’s question focuses on getting past the first round with HR:

Read the full article here! (via hollaforthatdolla.com)