Career Planning and Job Searching in the Information Age answers key questions for today?s providers of career-planning and job-searching information. Librarians and career development professionals’concerns--such as cost-effective use of the Internet, the reliability and integrity of electronic resources, and successful search strategies--are addressed in this comprehensive collection. In this follow-up to Library Services for Career Planning, Job Searching and Employment Opportunities (1992), real-life methods used by information providers to reduce costs and improve quality of service through a better understanding of today?s technology and audience needs and expectations are shown. Readers learn about: issues and ethics in the electronic environment job searches conducted on the World Wide Web a university placement office?s gopher site for 24-hour access to job information a university library and career service department?s collaboration on job search seminars how a public library fit electronic job searching into its mission an alumnae network?s evolution into a national career development organizationCareer Planning and Job Searching in the Information Age presents a broad base of knowledge from which readers are launched into tightly focused case studies offering details on how to deal with the issues of technology and service. This book makes it clear that in the ever-changing world of information technology, there is little room for the status quo. Professionals who don’t learn about electronic resources risk missing out on a wealth of up-to-the-minute information that is infinitely useful to patrons planning a career or searching for a job. Library professionals just beginning to address these issues, professionals already possessing a general knowledge of these issues, and students of library science and career development will all benefit from this collection.

Using unique personnel data from nine large firms in three industries, we document five consistent facts about hiring through employee referral networks. First, referred applicants have similar skill characteristics to non-referred applicants, both observable-to-the-firm (e.g., schooling) and unobservable-to-the-firm (e.g., cognitive and non-cognitive ability), but are more likely to be hired, more likely to accept job offers, and have higher pre-job assessment scores. Second, referred workers have similar skill characteristics to non-referred workers. Third, referred workers are less likely to quit and are more productive, but only on rare high-impact performance metrics; on most standard non-rare performance metrics, referred and non-referred workers perform similarly. Fourth, referred workers have slightly higher wages, but yield substantially higher profits per worker. Fifth, workers who make referrals have higher productivity than others, are less likely to quit after making a referral, and refer those like themselves on particular productivity metrics. Differences between referred and non-referred workers tend to be larger at low-tenure levels; for young, Black, and Hispanic workers; and in strong labor markets. No leading class of theories can alone account for all or most of these results, leading us to suggest several theoretical extensions.

Continues to serve as one-stop resource for librarians, counselors, educators, and other job information providers for more than 20 years. Provides most current information available on nearly 700 careers to people at all stages of career development, including 320 detailed profiles of new and emerging jobs that are not included in competitor titles. New: Most job profiles contain MLA-style citations of books, audio/visual materials, and organizations that serve as additional job-specific resources