The market-research firm reports that December 2008 search-engine queries using the word "unemployment" tripled to 8.2 million from December 2007. “"Unemployment benefits" saw an even sharper spike - 748,000, up from 215,000 a year ago - while "bankruptcy" searches more than doubled to 2.6 million.

"Mortgage" and "foreclosure" queries grew 72% and 156%, respectively.

The poll, conducted by search firm TopGrading Solutions found that 38% of employees found their last job through word-of-mouth or referrals, 20% found their jobs online and 24% via recruiting firms. 7% found their last position by walking in and applying, and 2% found their job through a newspaper or print advertisement. TopGrading Solutions is part of MRINetwork, which recruits for retail and other industries,

TopGrading Solutions surveyed unemployed and employed adults over four months for the poll.

In today's job market, turning up missing on the Web may not be a fatal flaw, and it's probably better than having a search result in a photo of you in a hula skirt. But over time, the lack of a Web presence - particularly for IT professionals - may well turn from a neutral to a negative, says Tim Bray, director of Web technologies at Sun Microsystems Inc.

"Particularly because we're a core technology provider, if someone came looking for a senior-level job and had left no mark on the Internet, I'd see that as a big negative," he says.

And it's not just about technology, Bray says. "Most companies would rather have somebody who has demonstrated the propensity to contribute, and one [sign] of that is going out and getting involved, joining in the discussion."

And just as the way we surf the web changed, the way that corporate America does business has changed in this middle space. Case in point: the most radical dotcom 2.0 recruitment wave is happening in virtual reality thanks to Second Life. Instead of posting a resume on Monster.com that will hopefully net a flesh-and-blood job interview, your avatar can be interviewed and hired all within Second Life, often for jobs possible only in virtual reality.

"People who have been in SL since its inception might not be professional content developers, but they have become experts," says Brandon Berger, senior strategist at OgilvyInteractive's Digital Innovation unit. Hence, Ogilvy has hired a lot of people directly from Second Life to execute projects for the big name clients who have worked to be in Second Life. Cars of Second Life

The same goes for Electric Sheep Company, a 27-person operation that brought Starwood, Reuters, musician Ben Folds and Nissan Motors to SL. The core team was plucked from Second Life, not from a pool of PR applicants or professional computer programmers, says Gif Constable, head of business development. "We hired people we had never met in the real world because we'd spent a year looking at the work they produced within Second Life, and the way that they approached the community," says Constable. "To a certain extent we knew each other... We knew that in Second Life, they were the best."

"This is like the first dotcom boom, when the forward-looking companies were all building websites because they understood that people would someday shop and pay bills and interact online. Someday we'll shop in virtual bookstores...We'll all have avatars," says Berger.

Some parents are writing their college-age kids' resumes. Others are acting as their children's "representatives," hounding college career counselors, showing up at job fairs and sometimes going as far as calling employers to ask why their son or daughter didn't get a job.

It's the next phase in helicopter parenting, a term coined for those who have hovered over their children's lives from kindergarten to college. Now they are inserting themselves into their kids' job search -- and school officials and employers say it's a problem that may be hampering some young people's careers.

"It has now reached epidemic proportions," says Michael Ellis, director of career and life education at Delaware Valley College, a small, private school in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.

At the school's annual job fair last year, he says, one father accompanied his daughter, handed out her resume and answered most of the questions the recruiters were asking the young woman. Even more often, he receives calls from parents, only to find out later that their soon-to-be college grad was sitting next to the parent, quietly listening.

Jobs counselors at universities across the country say experiences like those are now commonplace.

ZoomInfo has devised a search engine to ferret out job candidate, even if they aren't looking for a job. Subscribers insert their requirements--need a vice president of marketing, experience in networking in California-- and the search engine comes up with a list of potentials and assembles a roster of their educational background, experience and email address. It's part of a wave of vertical search apps that venture capitalists are funding.

"The best people aren't necessarily on the hiring boards," said Russ Glass, vice president of marketing. "We look at SEC filings, corporate web sites...In general, if people are on the web, we will find them."

But errors are common. It says Intraware CEO Peter Jackson went to undergrad at Stanford (uhhh-Berkeley) and worked at Accenture and EDS (that would be Intraware's COO). It couldn't find my wife by job title, but it found her by name. My brother was a complete no-show, although on Google I found his office and a quote in an article about treating patients with incontinence. I popped up, although my current job and educational bio didn't despite the fact that it's posted in several articles.

On the list of dog-friendly employers gathered by Dogster and Simply Hired are over 400 companies, including notable Internet giants Amazon and Google. Small companies of less than 50 employees make up the majority of the list, with California being the state with the most dog-friendly companies. Autodesk, a San Rafael-based software company, recently made headlines for being dog-friendly and making it onto Fortune magazine's 2006 list of the nation's 100 Best Companies to Work For. Dog-friendly policies appear to come with the territory when it comes to most pet stores, humane societies, groomers and vet offices. Local branch offices of real estate and retail outlets also litter the list.

(1) Read Don't Send a Resume, and do what the book advises. Thousands of people have used the book as a blueprint to getting hired.

(2) The recent college graduate, and the folks in publishing, should look at opportunities in any industry. Don't lock into one industry, especially if that industry is soft. Skills are much more marketable then people think.

(3) Work hard to get a job. It is hard work. Never give up. Don't despair. There is an organization that needs the job seeker.

Mailing Unsolicited Resumes
Unsolicited Resumes are garbage, scrap paper, wasted effort and job-search (junk), according to Jack Chapman, author of "Negotiating your Salary: How to Make $1000 a Minute." Frank Traditi, Career Strategist and author of "Get Hired NOW!?" feels the same way. He says that people "treat their job search like a direct mail advertising campaign. They expect great response from blindly sending out hundreds of Resumes. They wait by the phone and it never rings. They sit at their computer and never get a response."

2. Looking for "Vacancies"
Many jobs are not advertised. Harvard's Mark Granovetter found that 43.4 percent of jobs are created for the applicant, often at the time of the interview. Traditi agrees. "It's no wonder that job seekers spend many months on their job search, or become so frustrated that they give up looking for work. They are looking in all the wrong places," he says.

7. Not Preparing for Interviews
Prospective job seekers always tell me that as long as I get them in front of the decision-maker they will take it from there. Most people think the purpose of an interview is to "interview." Wrong. The purpose is to eliminate your competition. If you don't know how to do this, then you will not be successful in securing the position or money that you want. You can never be over-practiced or over-prepared for an interview.

"The labor market picture remains a bit cloudy," said Ken Goldstein, labor economist with The Conference Board. "There are some bright spots where the job market may be picking up, but it's by no means a clear picture."

Online job ads declined in February in all nine census regions. The largest decline was in the East South Central region including the states Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee. This region saw a 9.1 percent dip in online job ads.

Adjusting job ads for the size of the local labor force, February's data shows San Diego leading with 3.17 jobs per 100 persons, while Detroit remains behind all the metropolitan areas at 0.68 online job ads per 100 persons.

The Conference Board Help-Wanted Online Data Series measures the number of new, first-time online job ads posted on more than 1,200 major Internet job boards and smaller job boards that serve niche market and smaller geographic areas.

Among workers who believe their Internet use is monitored by their bosses, one-quarter use their work computer for job-hunting, according to research conducted for professional staffing company Hudson Highland Group Inc.

"It's one of the ways employees deal with work-life balance issues," said Robert Morgan, chief operating officer at Hudson Talent Management, one of the company's divisions. "Because we're spending so much time at work, that's the only time we have to schedule some of those appointments."

One-third of workers who think their managers are unaware of their personal Web surfing use their work computer to find a new job, according to the study.

Half of the workers surveyed said their companies monitor their computer use, while three-quarters said they believe their bosses know how much they use the Internet for nonwork activities.

Here's the kicker: Sometimes bloggers mention job openings at their companies or others. Or they report they're changing jobs, which, to a careful reader, might indicate a position is opening up.

Also, companies are eager to recruit the people reading the blogs because they're likely to be the sort of folks they'd want to have on board.

Blogs find passive job seekers, said Jason Goldberg, CEO of Jobster, an online, Seattle-based job board with a built-in referral feature.

Maybe you should. But please base your decision on something other than their relative "hotness" at the moment. I mean, Jake Gyllenhaal is pretty hot at the moment, too, but that doesn't make him the boy for me. Same goes for you and these oh-so-fabulous careers that everyone is talking about.

Every time one of those lists of the hottest careers or industries comes out, usually based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, I receive a steady stream of questions from readers asking me whether they should pursue one or more of these fields.

Perhaps the most disturbing came from a young man who wanted to know if he should study to be a nurse or an electrical engineer. I told him I didn't know what unnerved me more: the thought of being cared for by a nurse who should have been an electrical engineer or vice versa.

Employers expect to hire 14.5 percent more new college graduates in 2005-06 than they hired in 2004-05, according to the Job Outlook 2006 Fall Preview Survey, conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). Overall, 66.5 percent of employers responding to the survey reported that they expect to hire more new college graduates in 2005-06 than they hired in 2004-05. Approximately 15 percent indicated that their college hiring will remain even with last year's levels, and about 18 percent said they will cut back on the number of new college graduates they hire in 2005-06.

Although most hiring managers expect to receive a thank you note, format preferences differ. One-in-four hiring managers prefer to receive a thank-you note in e-mail form only; 19 percent want the e-mail followed up with a hard copy; 21 percent want a typed hard copy only and 23 percent prefer just a handwritten note.

"No matter which format you choose, it’s crucial to act quickly when sending a thank-you letter to your interviewer," says Rosemary Haefner, Vice President of Human Resources at CareerBuilder.com. "Twenty-six percent of hiring managers expect to have the letter in-hand two days after the interview, and 36 percent expect to have it within three to five days. Sending the letter quickly reinforces your enthusiasm for the job, and helps keep you top-of-mind for the interviewer."

Stick to three paragraphs. In the first paragraph, thank the interviewer for the opportunity. Use the second to sell yourself by reminding the hiring manager of your qualifications. In the third paragraph, reiterate your interest in the position.

Fill in the blanks. Thank-you notes are a great way to add in key information you forgot in the interview, clarify any points or try to ease any reservations the interviewer might have expressed.

Proofread carefully. Double-check to be sure your note is free from typos and grammatical errors. Don't rely solely on your spell-checker.

Be specific. Don't send out a generic correspondence. Instead, tailor your note to the specific job and the relationship you have established with the hiring manager.

A lot of people want to work for Google. I’m one of them. In order to increase my chances of ever getting noticed (let alone hired) by them I have to stand out. This website is my attempt to do so.

I've wanted to work for Google for a long time but until now I've been busy with my studies. However, I'm now only one year away from completing my Master's Degree in Computer Science at the Technical University of Munich. Upon my graduation I'll be needing a job and for me this seems the perfect time for me to start working for Google.

Recruitment in a variety of industries and occupations has pushed an online index of hiring to its highest level ever.

An official at Monster Worldwide says his company's Monster Employment Index indicates businesses are "more confident about the strength of the economy." He says companies are hiring based on the prediction of continued growth.

The company says hiring in the retail and wholesale trade industries for the year-end holiday season played a major role in job growth.

The number of jobs advertised these days demanding the knowledge of a second language is also a good indication of just how pervasive the need for language education has become. Companies with global aspirations are beginning to realize the significance of having employees who are multilingual and able to communicate with international clients. Simply put, while multilingualism may not yet be considered an essential job skill, in the business community, it is fast becoming an additional skill employers are seeking for. "If you're in competition with somebody else for a job, and you have only the essential skills, the person who has capability and experience in another language gets the edge," claims Zekulin.

Laid off two years ago at age 62 from a bank vice president's job, he took the $7.50-an-hour job because his health insurance was running out. He felt lucky to find it.

"I'm getting good benefits," he said.

Spolec is one of hundreds of thousands of professionals who lost their jobs during the 2001 recession and its aftermath, a long jobless recovery.

They were caught in an unusual economic downdraft, a period marked less by the sheer number of people thrown out of work - 2.7 million in all, or about 2 percent of the workforce - as by unrelentingly high rates of long-term unemployment, economists say.

These are the stories of Spolec and other professionals for whom weeks of unemployment stretched into months, then years.

They are largely overlooked in an economy where unemployment is trending down and things are looking up for many job seekers.

Like others in their predicament, they are no longer unemployed. They work "survival" jobs while trying to climb back into their fields.