As a result of the recession, college seniors and grads are not only vying with their classmates for employment, but also with career-changers who possess much more professional experience. The difficulty of today’s job hunt is further compounded by hiring freezes and slashed budgets. Even in light of President-Elect Barack Obama’s proposed stimulus plan, the outplacement consultant firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas forecasts another one million layoffs in 2009, and some economists expect unemployment to soar as high as nine percent before the job market begins to rebound. Now more than ever, it’s essential for job-seekers to distinguish themselves from the crowd.

In light of this, Gradspot.com has launched “30 in 30,” a series that will feature one insider job-hunting tip (developed with the help of career experts and people who have successfully found employment) each day, for the next 30 days. We know that finding a job can be an aggravating process—by providing hunters with these essential tips and tricks over the next 30 days, we plan to get hunters started on the right foot, and to save them from the humiliation of sitting alone in their underwear uploading resumes to Monster.com for six months. Topics include: “Five Recession Proof Industries,” “Online Career Networking,” “Informational Interviews,” “What’s Your Greatest Weakness?”, and more…

In addition to all of this great stuff, once the 30 days are over there will be additional links added to the site from users and previous contributors. I’ve arranged to have a brief entry added to the collection which will focus on the language you want to use in your resume. I’m looking forward to writing it and I think that you’ll enjoy reading it…plus, as a JerseySmarts.com reader you’ll get a first look at my entry as it’ll posted here first!

Enjoy the Insider’s Guide to Job-Hunting in ’09!

The Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University says that historically, charitable giving has been recession-proof.

Contributions to American charities have increased during 39 of the past 40 years in today’s dollars, and a change in the tax laws – not the stock market crash – can be blamed for the drop in 1987, said Melissa Brown, associate director of research for the center. Between 69 and 72 percent of people give routinely, she said.

The article goes on to talk about how some nonprofit organizations are cautiously optimistic about the potential donations for this year’s Christmas season. Believe it or not – we may be hearing about all of the horrible things going on in the auto industry and the banking sector, but Americans are prepared to give to charitable causes nonetheless. This will be an interesting phenomenon to watch – will Americans continue to give their scarce dollars to charitable causes even as the biased media runs around talking about the “horrendous” market conditions? I guess we’ll see.

There are only a few places that I donate my scarce dollars. The first place is my national fraternity’s foundation, which is (of course) helped by the fact that I am a Board member for the foundation. I began donating to some other causes like child cancer research and feeding the homeless, but I felt like my meager dollars were lost in a mess of bigger donations from bigger donors.

I’d like to find a small, locally-based nonprofit organization which is really helping to make a change in society – even if the geographic boundary of that “society” is defined as a single township or a single county in New Jersey, etc. I really think that a small nonprofit like that would be the perfect “project” for a donor to take on in terms of giving away money to help a specific cause. Unfortunately, those types of organizations really don’t exist in Monmouth County or my hometown up in Morris County, so there isn’t any opportunity like that – for now.

As we go out and purchase gifts for our loved ones this year, please remember to give a few dollars to a charitable cause if you can.