Career Center Blog Back Online -- and Tackling Layoffs

After taking a break in the late summer to reorganize a number of sections throughout our site network, the editors are resuming work on the blog.

This fall we'll be posting news about a number of new features, both new articles of interest and news about expanded tools in our featured jobs and jobs quicksearch sections.

Meanwhile, though, we are running a series of occasional readings with a particularly timely focus, as the economy continues to sag and the monthly employment reports do not look too good.

Through our partnership with the WSJ Career Journal, we're running a follow-up to this spring's feature, What to Do After a Layoff -- detailing "how to make the most of a devastating situation".

The piece offered a lot of good advice for how to organize your affairs when the worst happened. But as conomic conditions have continued to worsen since then, the new piece focuses on better advice still for this climate: Don't wait.

Layoff Rumors? Get Ready To Get Busy
What to do when the rumors start flying

Focusing on how to proactively prepare for the worst, the article's suggestions go beyond the basic, obvious checkboxes -- updating your resume, etc. The moment you get a whiff that things may not be 100% stable at work, it suggests, you'd do well to carefully start gathering the materials you would need to be accessible outside of the office, preparing a workspace and business line in your home, and other actions enabling you to "hit the ground running". When/if disaster strikes, you'll need to be ready on day one to "meet your new boss" (you) and have the resources to statr your new full-time job (finding one).

-- Finally, starting this fall, we'll be supplementing such features with occasional special focus reportage in our Career Center AP News Headlines section. Readings will focus on the big employment picture and trends, at both national and lcoal levels, as well as the areas and industries where there are continuing worker shortages.

So stop back soon.