Who said this is the last year that Ms. Foundation will produce Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day? The radio news reader must have made a mistake. There are arguments for not allowing our 9- to 15-year-old youth to go to a real, live, working office for one day each year. And the arguments run the gamut from a mere excuse for missing school, not sufficiently structured to give a real slice of business life, too many r...

There comes a time when you've done as much as is appropriate for gaining an education. Although the inner voice keeps saying you're not yet ready; that you need more education; there's more knowledge required in order to be considered qualified; that you won't be able to get the pay you desire because you don't yet have the credentials. That voice needs to be silenced. It is the inner voice called "Insecurity" (also known...

It was merely another bus stop maintenance crew that tumbled out of the van and collected brooms, trash bags, and shovels to attend to their duties. Except for gender and race, they initially appeared to be a homogeneous group. They worked together well, coordinating efforts in order to maximize outcome for effort. They were teams of workers.Initially, the differences were imperceptible, but the people became classes of wor...

Within the last month, Los Angeles has focused on no less than three race-based violence cases that involved minority youth as the perpetrators. As we approached the midpoint of February 2007, the City staged an unprecedented three-day international summit that included City legislators and law enforcement officials studying, discussing, and formulating plans on how to address the issue of gangs that encourage youth to drop...

Those of you who are parents (or aunts or uncles) have probably heard the question from a youngster on the order of, "Where do babies come from?" You look around the room, blink a bit, speculate about how far back in the process you should go or whether you should just gloss over the entire thing (a la stork story), and then seize on a direction and follow it. How many youngsters ask, "Where does money come from?" or...

There are times when we want to connect with someone. After observing the seeming success that others seem to have with simply gliding over to their desired contact and simply striking up a conversation about, let's say, the weather (or some other rather innocuous topic) and all participants appear to have a great time, the logical conclusion is that it's perfectly all right to waltz over to people and just strike up a conv...

Given the fact that we only recently began emerging from the New Millennium Depression, it's surprising how many people I see using employment development centers dressed as though they're going to the park or kicking around on a Saturday afternoon to do housework. This is not the most strategic thing to do for a serious job seeker.The people who are at these centers are active job seekers. They’re visiting the center to ac...

It's good that I didn't have time to finish the article I started two days ago. I was going to talk about incubator communities. I was also going to talk about getting into something other than an entry-level job as a sales associate in those communities. The trouble was trying to integrate the two themes and keep the piece under 500 words instead of the length of War and Peace. Maybe that writing didn't come together becau...

Was it yesterday or was it today? Probably the former. It was the day that I arrived at the Alvarado and Wilshire bus stop, peered across the street at the congested store front of the 99 Cents Store and determined that I should stop being angry about the nearly impossible to navigate thoroughfare and appreciate the cultural aspect of it.Wilshire and Alvarado is one example of this style of living and commerce, of doing bus...

Some of the CollegeRecruiter.com interns have read the career development exercises for this month on "Interests" but not yet done it. They may be wondering about the relevance. I'll explain. We have interests that drive our enjoyment of our work and keep us motivated; because the interest is keen, we're more likely to do our best work. This results in our becoming invaluable assets to wherever we are dedicating our en...