It’s springtime. Term papers are due, Mom and Dad have booked flights for graduation, and seniors are frantically crowding career centers on campuses across the land. They’re looking for postgraduate jobs, of course, but many of them would be having an easier time of it if they’d paid an earlier visit to the office. Career centers are the central resource for finding part-time jobs and internships, completing work-study requirements, and getting career advice. But counselors say students often overlook other career center resources like business etiquette workshops, resume critiques, and mock interviews that might give them the edge in landing that competitive position while they are still in school. Read the rest of this entry »

Gail Pasterczyk, the principal of Indian Pines Elementary in Palm Beach County, Fla., has added two or three new teaching positions each of the past three years. She’s adding two more teachers next year as well as replacing those she’ll lose to maternity leave, transfers, and retirement. She doesn’t know where the new teachers will come from, if the new hires will be any good, and where she’ll find room for all of them. Indian Pines already has 27 portable classrooms and is waiting to break ground on a two-story, 25-classroom addition. “When you start reducing class size, you’ve got to find more teachers, and you run out of space,” she says. “That’s the reality.” Her school district, one of the nation’s largest, has sent recruiters across the country, and even to Mexico and the Philippines, to fill an expected 1,700 teaching vacancies before the fall. “We are in a race to keep the schools staffed,” says Robert Pinkos, a Palm Beach County recruiter who will travel to Baltimore and Madrid next month to troll for teachers. Read the rest of this entry »