Trading Places

from Shop Talk:

Free resumes from FedEx Office

Need we say more?

On March 10, the company that bought copy shop Kinko's will print 25 free resumes on high-quality paper when customers stop in at any of the 1,600-plus FedEx Office Print and Ship Centers in the United States.

"We understand that the economy has affected many people in a very profound way, and we want to help," Brian Philips, president and CEO of FedEx Office, told Reuters. "In January, nearly 600,000 people found themselves out of work. I understand that in February, by the time they add up the numbers, it could be worse."

Philips, who said hard copy resumes have not fallen out of favor despite the growth of online job search sites, admitted that there is nothing to stop a job hunter from getting free resumes at more than one of its stores.

"We weren't worried so much about people going to multiple stores and gaming the system. We just want to make sure people have access to this service in a time of need."

Some FedEx employees may be in line for the free printing services.

FedEx Freight, a unit of FedEx Corp, last month announced it was cutting 900 jobs at 130 locations. In December, the corporation said it was suspending its 401(k) match and forcing its salaried workers to take at least a 5 percent pay cut.

Looking for a job? A Wall Street recruiter tells it like it is

Richelle Konian knows a thing or two about life on Wall Street, both from her experience working on it and now for it. After leaving a career in management consulting, she cofounded Manhattan-based recruiting firm Careers on the Move, which helps hundreds of job seekers find work in a seemingly impossible market. Her most recent success story? Finding a job for the poster boy of unemployment, the “Sandwich Board Guy” (aka: Joshua Persky, pictured above.)

Konian doesn’t paint any rosy pictures for 2009, but insists that jobs exist for those eager to do their homework and embrace change. “In this type of market, you have to figure out ways to set yourself apart, and you have to work that much harder to get to the place you were previously,” she says.

Here, Konian offers her tips for finding your way back into the job market.

Know what you’re up against:

“One of the things people should be aware of, particularly in financial services, is shrinkage. Sometimes I don’t think people understand the big picture. We’re now in a second wave of job losses; 9/11 was the first wave, and we’ve never recovered from it – we had some good years, but some jobs just haven’t resurfaced. Take asset management: there are far fewer jobs now than there were a few years ago. There are people who worked in equity research who have never got their jobs back, and they had excellent resumes, excellent backgrounds, and they were considered to be the upper echelon of candidates. Some of them have taken positions in other areas using the same skills. But there’s a lot of people with specific expertise who have been unemployed for years.”

Be Flexible: