Getting a college education is the fastest way to give your resume a boost and actually find the job of your dreams. But what if you already have the job of your dreams (or at least are working in your dream industry in an entry-level position)? Does going putting your career on hold to go back to school make sense?

First of all, going back to school doesn’t have to mean putting your career on hold. On the contrary, more and more online school options are popping up every day, giving you the chance to earn an advanced degree on your own time, without having to worry about fitting work around you class schedule. Many colleges also have night and weekend classes available to accommodate non-traditional students already working in their field.

With that settled, let’s talk about a few advantages to going back to school for your degree, even if you already have a job:

• You’ll typically advance faster within the company if you have a higher degree, since you’ll be more qualified for promotions.
• Even if you don’t get a promotion, you may get a raise just for going back to school.
• Your company might not be around forever. If it closes or you’re laid off, a higher degree will help you find a new job more quickly.
• Getting an advanced degree shows your employers that you have initiative, which means they’re more likely to give you more responsibilities and listen to your ideas.
• Education can open your eyes to new aspects of the same topics, and with a new perspective, you might enjoy your job even more.
• The more education you have, the easier your job is to complete.

In addition to these great benefits, many employers will actually pay for you to go back to school through a tuition reimbursement program. This is especially true for top corporations want to ensure – the best companies in any field want the best workers, and the more education you have, the better suited for their positions you’ll be.

Fairly often we all get caught up in our favorite pastime of complaining about work.  Maybe it’s the office itself, the boss, the company, the co-workers – doesn’t matter, it feels good to vent!  All of us unite under the one rule of work-related ranting: The grass in greener on other side.

So how do we know if our complaints are actually justified or not?  Is there greener grass out there for us to pasture?  If so how do we get ourselves a piece of that lush green grass?

Evaluate your current position

It’s hard not to slip into a sea of negativity and discontentment.  Take a moment to honestly evaluate your employer and your job by making a list of things you don’t like about your job, along with things that you feel are important.  For example, are working conditions good?  Do you feel like your boss listens to you or cares about you?

After, eliminate everything that you know is unreasonable to ask of a company.  Try putting yourself in the employer’s shoes, and determine what you would offer.  Also be conscious of what the company you work for can actually afford to give.  Once you go through this exercise, it should be easier to see if your expectations are too high, or there actually needs to be a change in your current employment.

Consider the Perks

When checking out companies and their various employee perks and benefits, you are not necessarily looking for the most popular companies with the most perks, but the one that matches up to your needs.  For example, for recent graduates looking to get hired, a lot of well known companies have decreased many of their entry level positions due to the economic slide.  Few companies will have every perk, so choose which is the most valuable, whether it’s salary, career training, health care benefits, or an onsite gym.

Search for greener pastures

If you’ve already established your jobs is less than great, then you are  probably wondering: Where do people find great jobs?  If you know a great company, contact their HR, and meet them personally.  Or, check out the JobMonkey’s newest section on the Best Employers to Work For. Also stay on top of employment trends, keep up with your social networks (facebook, twitter, blogs, etc.).

Know what you are looking for

How do you know you’ve found a really awesome job?  The best time to glean information is during the interview. Find out what kind investment companies make when hiring and training employees, so you know what to expect in terms of career development and promotions.  See if your voice and opinions would be heard, and contribute to the growth of the company, when you have a share in the company’s stock it really makes you a part of the business.

You also need to know that you will be able to balance life outside of work, that the company will be understanding and afford you days off when you really need it.  Make sure to weigh all the benefits the company offers with it’s salary, certain companies don’t offer a high salary until you weigh all the benefits, and it may actually be more than double the salary.

Whether it’s because of the economy or just because you are looking for new challenges, reentering the work force after several months or years at home with your children can present a lot of challenges.

How do you appeal to employers who want candidates with up-to-date skills and fresh experience? Can you compete with other candidates who just graduated from college and have all the latest research at their fingertips?

Believe it or not, the answer is Yes! Even after 10 years out of the workforce, you can jump back in as long as you know how to package yourself and your experiences. Here are some things to consider:

1. Networking is key. How often do we talk about networking on this blog? Constantly, right?! And we’re always saying how important it is and that something like 60 percent or more of the jobs out there aren’t even advertised. Well, as important as word of mouth is to the average job seeker, it’s even more important to stay-at-home parents looking to reenter the work force. These job networking connections may well make the difference for you between a first response of “too old, out of the loop” and a reaction of “you know what? let’s take a second look”. Dust off your rolodex and start calling people. Contact old employers and colleagues, but also take a look at the carpool pickup lane – who do you know now that might be of assistance to you as you build your future?

2. Volunteer Your Time

Another great way to expand your work-free resume and develop more networking contacts (see #1) is to volunteer your time at a local or national non-profit organization. When you work for a nonprofit, you will be able to strengthen your leadership, organization, administrative, fundraising, management and other types of work-related skills within a professional environment.

3. Make a Functional Resume

Consider seven things you have accomplished in your adult life. Write a short paragraph about what you did in each scenario. Then translate each of these paragraph into a list of action verbs. From among those lists, you will sense a number of themes – leadership, organization, personnel management, interpersonal communication, etc. A functional resume uses those themes as the organizing principles. After your name and contact information, make a list of each of those qualities, with one line of description about how you define that quality. Under each quality, make a bulleted list of experiences through which you developed those skills.

For more information on how to develop your functional resume, read the quintessential career guide, What Color Is Your Parachute.

4. Consider Working From Home

Whether as a way to build up your resume for your “real job” or as the real job itself, working from home as a freelancer is a great way to transition back into the work force. If you have writing skills, you can work as a freelance writer or blogger. If you are crafty, you can sell your works on etsy. If you are a bargain shopper, you can leverage your good deals by reselling on eBay. If you have great typing skills, you can work in transcriptions or medical records. Find out more about work from home jobs here.

Have you made the transition from being a stay-at-home parent to working a full time job? What tips and advice do you have to share? Post in the comments section!

The New York Times Magazine featured a really interesting article this past weekend about careers and 20-somethings.

The gist is this: The decade of your 20s was once seen as the beginning of adulthood — job, marriage and all the things that came with being a grown up.

However, today’s 20-somethings, according to the article, aren’t exactly embracing this notion of growing up. Instead, they are lingering in transition, moving back home in record numbers, going back to school or pursuing unpaid internships rather than getting a full-time job.

There’s no doubt that the economic recession has played a part in these trends, but according to the article, there is something deeper going on. The five traditional milestones of adulthood, which according to the article, are completing school, leaving home, becoming financially independent, getting married and  having a child, are being met later and later, or not at all — irrespective of the economic downturn.

In 1960, 77 percent of women and 65 percent of men had, by the time they reached 30, passed all five milestones. Among 30-year-olds in 2000, according to data from the United States Census Bureau, fewer than half of the women and one-third of the men had done so.

Are you a 20-something struggling to get your foothold in the career world? Do you find yourself desiring adventure, opportunity and excitement over predictability, certainty and responsibility. Sure, 20 somethings in the 1950s were holding down full-time jobs by their early 20s — but they also worked in the same cubicle for 50 years just to get their pension and a gold watch.

If you want to see the world, experience different cultures, make a difference in someone else’s life today — while you are still young — the JobMonkey can be an excellent resource.

From Lauren’s blog posts about volunteering and studying abroad, to our website’s sections on overseas volunteerism and work abroad jobs, let us help you jump start a lifelong career that suits your interests and passions. Yes, even in your 20s!

I’ve been thinking about work ethic lately and what it means to different people. When I lead workshops on combating age bias, middle-aged workers almost invariably raise the subject of work ethic.

As in: We have it and younger workers don’t.

And yet, I sometimes hear young managers complain about duffers who sit around waiting for retirement. They tell me, These short-timers aren’t willing to put in the extra effort to get ahead because, frankly, they don’t care about getting ahead.

I’ve even heard work ethic described as a factor of geography. I once served a group of workers laid off from a tool manufacturer in Minnesota. Given the opportunity to work in the sister plant in the south, only one manager accepted. He returned a few weeks later, shaking his head. "I can’t manage those southerners," he said. "They have no work ethic."

Most people, when pressed, will tell me that work ethic means qualities such as reliability and going the extra mile. A person with a good work ethic will come in early or work through lunch, while someone just putting in their time will watch the clock like a hawk.

Last week I carried those thoughts into a movie theater with me, where what I saw on the screen blew away any earlier standards I might have had about what it means to work hard or go the extra mile.

You may have heard about the movie, which was titled "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work." This documentary has gotten most of its attention for the way the filmmakers captured the comedian’s rise to stardom and her well-publicized tiff with the late Johnny Carson. A lot of attention has also been paid to her plastic surgeries, which are always good for gossip.

But relatively little has been said about this one amazing fact: Joan Rivers works her tail end off. She keeps floor-to-ceiling files documenting every joke she has ever used. At 77, she plays every gig she can get, even if it means getting up at 3 a.m. to get on the plane, and she still tests new material every month at seedy New York nightclubs. She simply does not stop working, although she certainly could afford to.

Is she virtuous? Driven? Imbalanced? Your answer depends on your values, but this I know: She’s raised the bar for me when I think about work ethic.

If you are getting ready for the start of your senior year of college, this is an exciting and empowering time.

You have just one year left of college, and while the “real world” is right around the corner, you can still enjoy the cushy protection of your academic home for two more semesters. In the meantime, however, there is no small amount of work to be done to prepare yourself for graduation — and I’m not even talking about your senior thesis. I’m referring to making final decisions about graduate school or career choices.

We all hope that by next May the economy will be in a full recovery, but today those odds are looking rather long. If you wan to be sure you’re ready for life after graduation, check out these three back to school tips for college seniors:

It’s never to early to network.

Whether you are going for your dream job in engineering, or you haven’t gotten the faintest idea what you want to be when you grow up, networking is a great way to figure it out! Start by making a list of everyone you know who might be able to be helpful in your career exploration — from professors and past colleagues to job supervisors and even friends of the family! Draft an email to send to each one of these people, asking for face-to-face meeting or ‘virual’ help in figuring out your next steps. Before you know it, you may have networked your way into a job!

Review your resume.

Writing a resume can be a daunting task — especially since the job is never really done. A good resume is formatted well, written in active voice, focused on measurable success stories, and free of errors. A great resume is all those things, plus constantly tweaked each time it’s submitted speak so that it speaks to the specific needs of the job. If the thought of writing your resume freaks you out, come check out our advice on the JobMonkey, and seek out the competent, professional advice of your on-campus Career Planning Center. You might even find workshops or individual counseling sessions to help you perfect your resume.

Jump in with both feet.

I know that your senior year is a busy — and fun — time of your life, but here’s one more thing to put on your to do list: Finding an internship or volunteer placement that rounds out your academic know-how. If you really want to get a leg up on your competition, interning is a great way to build skills, make connections and discover what truly makes you tick.

How are you planning to make the most of your senior year?

Hey! Fourth of July! Fireworks, hot dogs, picnics, parades…who called this great party, anyway? Oh, right – the other name for this national hooray is Independence Day.

For the United States in 1776, that meant independence from an overbearing parent nation that wanted us to do all the work and let them keep all the money.

Gosh, does that sound a little like being employed?

Har, har. Gotta go for the easy joke. The thing is, I see an awful lot of clients in my work as a career counselor who want to break from their lives as wage slaves. They want to work on their own, or at least, they don’t want to feel as if their years of working for someone else were never going to end.

If this sounds like you, I have a challenge for you: Are you serious? Do you really want independence, or do you just want to grouse about not having it? You can cue up the patriotic music here, because I’m about to go all corny on you: I don’t think our American spirit of independence, courage and innovation is very well honored by a population of people growing chubby in front of the television. who wish they were doing something else with their lives.

I remember teaching a workshop for older job seekers a few years back. We had just finished a segment on goal setting, with the idea that your personal and professional goals should be leveraged in setting your job search goals. Comes break time and one older fellow walks up to me and my co-instructor and says, "You know, I always wanted to start my own business…" To which I said, without even thinking, "Evidently not."

Ouch. My co-instructor couldn’t believe I’d been that blunt, and neither could the hapless workshop participant. But you know, I meant it and I still do. How can you always want something without getting it? If you want it badly enough, you do get it. If you don’t want it enough, you should stop thinking about it and move on, so your head can hold space for other dreams.

This Independence Day, ask yourself: What do I want independence from: Debt? Having a boss? Commuting an hour to work? Whatever it is, acknowledge it and make a plan. Enough is enough; it’s time to throw off the shackles and live your life.

If you’ve been looking for work for a while, you might be experiencing a touch of burnout. That’s the stage where you feel exhausted, overwhelmed by the routine or lack of results, or hopeless about reaching an end.

You keep trudging because you must, but the hope of achieving a goal has all but disappeared.

Cheery, huh? Well, no, burnout is anything but cheery. To add insult to injury, every task in job search is improved by having a chipper demeanor – which is very difficult to sustain when you’re feeling haggard and haunted.

What’s a person to do? Well, for starters, you need to deal with the burnout issue, so you can move forward in your job search again. Following are three steps that I have found to be helpful.

1. Seek support. In job search, it’s important to differentiate between your job search network and your support network. They are not the same! If you bring your emotional issues to a professional meeting, you will alienate people rather than attract them. Instead, think about your personal circle of friends, or about therapists or religious staff who can listen to you and provide perspective. Sharing the problem will lighten the load.

2. Change the process. Obviously, something isn’t going well in your search. Are you spending too much time on Internet job boards? Revising your resume without sending it out? Perhaps you’ve been applying for jobs that you’re over- or under-qualified for. Whatever is happening, it’s time to change the plan. Meet with a career counselor or job search strategist if you need fresh ideas, but don’t keep doing the same things if you’re not getting results.

3. Control the timeline. When a project seems both hopeless and endless, burnout is inevitable. It’s time to take charge of the situation by assigning an end date to your unemployment. Deciding when to be re-employed provides the project-planning impetus you need to set a pace for your contacts and other outreach. Just remember to identify a Plan B strategy, such as part-time work or retraining, that you will revert to if an offer hasn’t come through by your goal date.

Remember: Knowing that there will be an end to the process can help you pour the steam on for the job you want, while also preparing you mentally and emotionally for the next step if your primary job search doesn’t work.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday that the month of March saw the biggest boost in new job creation in over three years. 162,000 new positions were created, with just under one-quarter of them coming from temporary government jobs, such as working for the Census Bureau.

So where are the rest of these jobs — and the hundreds of thousands more that analysts are predicting to be created over the coming months? Here’s a look at some of the hottest up-and-coming career fields:

1) Green Jobs
Did you know that the green industries currently account for 8.5 million American jobs? According to the United States Conference of Mayors, green jobs are one of the fastest growing segments in the U.S. They predict the creation of 4.2 million new green jobs by the end of the decade, with as many as 12 new green occupations being created. To learn more, check out the JobMonkey section on Green Careers.

2) Health Care
Half of the thirty fastest growing careers will be in health care, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nationwide nursing shortages and the rapidly aging “Baby Boomer” population have put major pressure on U.S. cities to recruit and hire trained nurses, physician’s assistants, physical and occupational therapists, home health aides and medical record technicians. To learn more, check out the JobMonkey section on Jobs for RNs.

3) Education
2.8 million new teachers will be needed over the next eight years, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. An aging teaching population, coupled with population booms in certain urban areas, has led to an increasing shortage in school districts around the country. Key subject areas include science, math, foreign languages, and Teaching English as a Second Language. To learn more, check out the JobMonkey section on School Teacher & Education Jobs.

While these three fields are especially hot, a changing economy will produce openings in nearly every sector. If you have you heart set on becoming a radio DJ, designing video games, or fighting forest fires, this is a good time to follow your dreams (and to visit the JobMonkey for information on each of these areas — and more)!

Man, it was a long winter. In some parts of the country, the snow fell like something out of a disaster movie, and people got plain tired of the struggle.

When you add the endless economic woes and the stalemates over political actions, it can seem like things will never lighten up.

If the weather, the recession and the politicians aren’t putting you in the doldrums, your own job situation might be doing it. In these circumstances, it seems like no one feels more trapped than those who are seeking work or wish they could change jobs. It can feel impossible to make the changes you need to break out of the situation you’re in.

Energy is the key. When you have energy, you build hope and momentum. Action begets action and pretty soon things start to happen. Ah, but how do you get that energy and then sustain it until it can perpetuate itself?

Energy is a tricky thing. Once you lose it, it’s hard to regain. I was reminded of this recently while dragging myself through a tenacious head cold. After weeks of sneezing and hacking and keeping myself up at night with the symptoms, I’m finally around the corner. I’m getting my sleep, losing the drugs, and feeling my energy return. Now things seem possible, but a couple of weeks ago? Even taking out the trash was overwhelming.

If you have job search or career goals that aren’t being realized, maybe an energy drain is the culprit for you as well. Just in case, here are five tips to plug you back in.

1. Check all the usual stuff: Sleep, diet and exercise. Are you taking care of yourself? It’s easy to fall into sloppy patterns when you don’t have a work schedule, so the unemployed need to be especially aware of these factors.

2. Check your physical health. Get yourself a physical and make sure you’re not missing vitamins or something simple.

3. Check your mental health. Do you think depression could be playing a role? Find a counselor to talk to; you need to stay on top of this.

4. Check your support system. Are you talking every day with people who believe in you?

5. Check your job search plan. Remember that a good plan will be a source of energy all by itself, since it creates and builds momentum.