The ASA’s staffing index measures demand for temporary workers among their members on a 100 point scale. Over the course of the past six weeks, demand increased from 71 to 75, indicating that the employment market may be rebounding from its low of 69 at the end of 2008.

Temporary staffing is generally recognized as a leading indicator of overall employment strength since many companies bring new hires in on a temporary or contract basis before converting them to full-time direct employees.

Although selecting the right business casual look can be confusing, we tell you how to dress appropriately for any business casual interview.

Bottom line: its’s better to be overdressed than underdressed.

The top 5 starting salaries, in order:

1. Petroleum engineering = $83,121
2. Chemical engineering = $64,902
3. Mining engineering = $64,404
4. Computer engineering = $61,738
5. Computer science = $61,407

The law of supply and demand dictates the earning potential of these technical disciplines, since there were only 450 petroleum engineering degrees and fewer than 4500 chemical engineering degrees earned in the entire country last year .

The global internet audience now totals 625 million people, with almost 100 million of those users located in the United States. Nearly two-thirds of these users are active in one or more social networks.

What’s also revealed is how these users spend their time on the social networks. The most popular activity was watching video, followed by listening to streaming audio, blogging and connecting with friends.

What does this mean for you or your industry?

First of all, the place to connect with people – whether personally or professionally – is on one of the social networks. They’ve made their choice how they want to interact with others, and it’s not through email. For professionals, this typically means LinkedIn, though Facebook is being used more and more by professionals who have learned to adjust their privacy settings so as not to share overly personal information with other professional contacts.

These trends also mean that you need to generate content that is interesting, engaging and compelling enough to generate views and inspire your connections to share your content with their own network of friends and colleagues. The dominant format for this content: video. If you’re not creating videos to put on your site, your blog, your LinkedIn page, your Facebook Fan Page, then it’s time to start.

But don’t stop with video. Over 70% of social networkers also post photos to their pages. People want to see who they’re connecting with, and a thoughtfully designed series of photos can generate a powerful impression. For the professional, these can include images of your office, your personal workspace, your coworkers and even photos from events that you participate in. Sharing some personal visual insights will increase your familiarity, strengthening your connections with your networks.

Finally, if your company really wants to engage online, you need to create a community that’s worth joining. That means frequently updated, compelling content. The promise of interaction with other, like-minded people.  A thoughtful, meaningful – even delightful – user experience. And the ability to listen to your community members and adjust your activities to satisfy their needs, not yours.

As Simply Hired reports:

New York, NY – Over 110,000 jobs and a positive employment trend since the beginning of 2009

Los Angeles, CA – Over 60,000 jobs and a downward employment trend since 2009

Chicago, IL – Over 60,000 jobs and an upward trend since the beginning of the year

Houston, TX – Over 35,000 jobs and an employment trend with little change

Phoenix, AZ – Over 25,000 jobs and an employment trend with little change

Philadelphia, PA – Over 45,000 jobs and an employment trend with a slight increase

San Antonio, TX – Over 10,000 jobs and an increasing employment trend

San Diego, CA – Over 20,000 jobs and an increasing employment trend

Dallas, TX – Over 45,000 jobs and a slightly increasing employment trend

San Jose, CA – Over 35,000 jobs and a downward employment trend

Make thoughtful wardrobe choices. There are plenty of articles dealing with what to wear to an interview, but they all boil down to just a few points: dress conservatively, dress up not down, and avoid cologne or perfume. The interview is not the appropriate venue to display your keen sense of style or your contemporary fashion sense. You have no idea who will be conducting the interview, how old they are, how familiar they are with fashion or what their own fashion preferences are. Take no chances that you might alienate the interviewer and simply wear a conservative, sensible outfit that will not detract from your personal message.

Arrive 10-15 minutes before your scheduled interview time. Even though you may pull up to the building 40 minutes before your interview, it is entirely inappropriate to enter the building and wait in their reception area. Stay in your car until 10-15 minutes before the interview reviewing your resume, revisiting your anticipated interview responses and checking your teeth one last time to make sure there’s no lettuce trapped between your incisors.

Schedule enough time for the interview. If your interview is scheduled for 9 am, you’d better leave your whole morning open. Don’t schedule another interview at 10:30 or you risk alienating your interviewer just as things are going well. If the interview goes long, it’s likely because the interview is going well. Your interviewer may want to run you by two or three others in the department to get their impressions. Each of these visits may last 20-30 minutes, and if you’ve got to dash to another interview you’re going to alienate someone. Don’t risk it.

Exude confidence. The most difficult task facing most managers today is finding, hiring and retaining talent. Your job is to demonstrate that you possess the talent, technical proficiency and interpersonal skills that will make their life easier. You’ll be a lot more confident if you took the time before the interview to prepare thoroughly, to learn about the company and the interviewer and to think carefully how you can add value to their organization.

At the relatively low end of the salary spectrum, spending a complete eight hours on interview preparation can yield an annual salary of $40,000. That’s $5000 for every hour spent reviewing your resume, researching the company, gathering information about the individual conducting the interview, practicing your interview answers and formulating relevant questions to ask yourself.

Yet a recent survey revealed that more than half of the job seekers queried spent less than two hours preparing for their interview. Pretty shocking, considering the potential reward for the well prepared candidate.

At a minimum, we suggest that interview candidates do the following:

1. Review your own resume. Make sure that you are intimately familiar with every date, title and responsibility. You’d think this step would go without saying, but candidates frequently go weeks or months without rereading their own resume and trip up on specifics that can raise flags with the interviewer.
2. Go through the company’s entire website. Read their press releases to learn about their latest initiatives, new hires and any potential legal issues they might be facing. If they’re a public company, read their annual report. Go through their entire product section to familiarize yourself with their entire line of products and/or services. If they sell online, go through the entire buying process until you have to actually submit payment. Understand completely what kind of user experience they deliver.
3. Find out who their competitors are. Visit and read their websites to understand how each company positions itself and to determine what cultural elements are clearly communicated.
4. Locate an industry trade publication online and read several issues. These publications typically provide in-depth analysis of issues confronting the entire industry, industry trends and they frequently reveal which companies are regarded as the most influential.
5. If the industry is large enough to attract public companies, try to find analyst reports that detail financial trends and outlooks.
6. Find a list of the 50 most frequently asked interview questions. Read them all. Practice your responses so you don’t have to stop and ponder why this company should hire you. Know the value that you bring to the company.
7. Practice your interview responses some more. In front of a camera. In front of other people. Ask for feedback, incorporate it into your answers and practice again.
8. Create a portfolio of your work. Examples of writing, analysis and creative production that can support your claims of personal excellence. Do you know how many other applicants will bring samples of their work? Typically, none. Do you want to stand apart from the crowd of engineers/analysts/accountants? Show your work.
9. Drive to the interview site a day or two ahead of the interview. I can’t count the number of candidates who were certain they knew where the building was until they drove to their imagined site and discovered that the interview address was actually miles away.
10. Create a list of topical, insightful and revealing questions. Once again, too many candidates leave the interview without asking any in-depth questions and reveal themselves to be unprepared or shallow. If you need help, Google Questions to Ask at a Job Interview.

Now you’re ready to handle any question, respond with an insightful and measured response, display your personal mastery and land that job. That was worth eight hours of work, wasn’t it?

Surprisingly to many, the fastest growing segments are not the young users, but the  35-54 year old demographic segment which accelerated to a 276.4% growth rate over the past 6 months. Which means this is where many job seekers will interact.

Top insights from the survey:

Top Insights:

1)  The 35-54 year old demo is growing fastest, with a 276.4% growth rate in over the approximate 6 months since we last produced this report

2) The 55+ demo is not far behind with a 194.3% growth rate

3) The 25-34 year population on Facebook is doubling every 6 months

Of Facebook’s 250 million users, more than 120 million log in every single day, indicating that much of their online social interaction now revolves around Facebook. If this is where they are, this is where you belong also.

Indeed.com released a survey ranking the top 50 cities in the US according to their job listings.

The underlying assumption of the survey is that cities that list a large number of job openings per 1000 residents are in better financial condition than those cities with fewer job openings per 1000 residents.

This assumption appears to be true. Take a look at the numbers from metropolitan Washington DC (#1) and Detroit (#50). Washington DC is flush with federal spending and reliant upon government growth, so it is understandable that jobs there are more plentiful. Detroit, by contrast, is suffering along with the rest of the state’s auto industry, has a 12% unemployment rate, and only posts 15 job openings per 1000 residents.

Cleveland is right in the middle, posting 32 job openings per 1000 residents.

One factor that leaps out from the survey is that cities whose economies depend upon technology and services are faring much better than cities whose economy is historically manufacturing based.

That’s why it’s so surprising to see so few candidates prepare thoroughly for each job interview and take the time to understand what’s really important to the hiring manager.

Too many job seekers focus exclusively on their specific skill set. Their accounting skills. Their programming expertise. Their writing ability. Although these skills are essential to any hire, they are the minimum required for anyone invited to interview. How will you separate yourself from every other candidate with the same professional skills?

Focus on your personal skills. In an excellent post in the Detroit Examiner, Christine Wodke outlines the seven personal skills that employers are looking for in any hire. These include:

1. Leadership
2. Team Player
3. Motivation
4. Communication Skills
5. Time Management
6. Flexibility
7. Sense of Humor

Your job in the interview is to find a way to weave these personal skills into stories relating to your previous positions.

Don’t just describe the technical complexity of your last programming project, detail how you assembled a team, kept them motivated, managed the project to ensure you met the deadline, and how you stepped in to help when one of your team members needed support. These are the truly valuable skills that separate you from every other candidate whose answers focus solely on their professional proficiency.