Mary Ann Baik left her job as an office manager five years ago to follow her childhood dream of working with animals. Now she spends her nights tending sick and injured pets at the intensive care unit of an animal clinic in Los Altos, Calif.

Mary Ann Baik, center, an animal health care technician, at work at the Adobe Animal Hospital in Los Altos, Calif. Demand for the technicians is strong.

Ms. Baik helps with triage when animals arrive, monitors those in critical condition and assists with surgery. She also checks blood pressure and breathing rates and changes dressings on wounds. Rodents, reptiles and birds have all spent time in the unit, but a majority of the patients are dogs and cats.

Despite increases in the overall unemployment rate, animal health care technicians like Ms. Baik continue to be in demand. In 2006, there were about 145,000 such technicians, and the number is growing faster than in most other types of occupations, according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics.

An increase in new animal procedures and pet insurance is keeping demand high for those who take care of animals.  Earning a veterinary technician degree online will best prepare you for a career in this field.

The erosion of Michigan’s gold-plated health benefits, long the envy of workers across the U.S., is accelerating the state’s downward economic spiral. Years of auto-industry layoffs and benefit cuts to white-collar retirees have left hundreds of thousands of Michigan workers like Mr. Markel without employer-provided health coverage. To adapt, individuals are drawing down savings to fund their own insurance, going without treatments or tests, or leaning on an increasingly strained state. The share of Michigan residents under 65 using public insurance such as Medicaid rose to 22% last year, from 11% a decade earlier.

These cutbacks, in turn, are devastating the health-care sector. Now the state’s largest employer, health-care providers have swung from profit to loss. Hopes are fading that Michigan’s hospitals and clinics can offset the car industry’s decline: Even as waves of former auto workers are retraining as nurses, dental hygienists and X-ray technicians, the state’s hospitals are freezing expansion plans and laying off workers. Unpaid bills at the state’s hospitals hit $2 billion in 2007, twice the level in 2001, and continue to grow, according to the Michigan Health & Hospital Association.

Many other states however are still in need of qualified health care workers.  When earning your medical degree online, you should know what sectors are lacking workers, and how your local economy may affect your ability to get a job. On the national level, health care jobs are still on the rise.

Recruiting has slowed dramatically for many job titles as the financial crisis bears down, but not for top human resources executives.

“It may seem counterintuitive, but we’ve seen an increase in demand over the past 60 days,” says John Doyle, North American leader for Spencer Stuart’s HR executive recruitment practice, based in Chicago.

“Companies are moving forward with unprecedented change initiatives, and CEOs know that their HR executive, along with their CFO, are the keys for moving ahead through the crisis,” Doyle says. “If they’re not happy with who they’ve got, they’re looking around.”

When a company needs a new top executive, the CEO typically calls the head of HR to coordinate the search, but recruiting a new HR executive obviously requires a different approach.

“Instead, the CEO contacts a search firm’s industry consultant, who then brings in a functional HR consultant,” Doyle says. In Spencer Stuart’s HR practice, both the industry consultant and the functional HR consultant meet face-to-face with the CEO.

Earning a human resource management degree online will prepare you for a job at the executive level. As a human resource manager, you will be responsible for recruiting and placing key personnel within an organization, as well as practicing proper labor policies.   Continuing education and an advanced degree is necessary in this field to be the most successful.  Bottom line, more training, more money.

After nine weeks since starting its first class, Oklahoma Technical College has drawn nation wide attention.  Officials from the automotive career school, WyoTech, visited OTC to see what all the excitement was about. Danny Coon, WyoTech’s Oklahoma Admissions Representative, said “the (automotive) shop really looks great!”

Oklahoma Technical College is a Snap-on Regional Education Center of Excellence and has industry support and training recommendations from other national leaders such as Lincoln Electric, Delmar and Cengage Learning, American Welding Society and National Automotive Technicians Education Foundation.  In Oklahoma Technical College’s Automotive Technology program students will learn things such as four wheel infrared/laser alignment, brakes with emphasis on ABS diagnostics, automatic transmissions, engine performance focused heavily on OBD II computer aided diagnostics and much more.  Upon graduation, automotive technology students will earn a Snap-On tool box and tools valued at $4,000.

Going to trade school and earning an automotive technician degree is a great start to a hands on career.  Automotive technician training will teach you how to diagnose mechanical problems and come up with a solution how to fix them.

The thousands of wait-listed would-be MBAs who may not get the chance to go to their dream B-school might want to draw inspiration from the following group of CEOs. Not only did they not get graduate degrees, they didn’t get undergraduate degrees — and some never even attended college.

Of course, not having a degree didn’t stop them from being a big name on campus. You’ll find Alfred Taubman’s name at Brown, Harvard, the University of Michigan, and Lawrence Technological University; at least one building on each campus bears his name, although the retail magnate and philanthropist never finished college.

The following executives who have no degree are: Bill Gates, David Oreck, Ty Warner, John Paul DeJoria, and Richard Branson.  This is just a few of our worlds top CEO’s who don’t have a degree.  Even thought these guys have made millions, it doesn’t negate the importance of having a degree.  Earning a business degree online will help you to launch your career, with a solid education.

If you’re in a job, even though the paycheck feels great but you don’t see how this is ever going to take you anywhere, or for whatever reason you find yourself in an environment that’s unhealthy, you find yourself in an industry that’s like topsy-turvy, going somewhere not positive — for a lot of those people to get off, full-time study is the right way to do it.

I also think full-time study is right for people who want to go into some traditional Wall Street firms, where the way that they bring people into the fold is via the formal, structured, internship recruiting process. And then from that internship, they pick off the people they want to give full-time offers. It’s still relatively common in certain sectors of I-banking.

Mackey suggests that students ask themselves if they’re truly happy in their current position. If they want to get an MBA in order to advance through their current employer, then a pert-time program is probably a better option. On the other hand, if they think that they can find a better, higher-paying position after they have their MBA, they might be better off in a full-time MBA program.

A medical transcriptionist transcribes dictated recordings from healthcare specialists and physicians and makes reports, correspondence, or other materials regarding administration. This process is done by using a headset to hear the recordings and a foot pedal for any necessary pauses. As they listen, the medical transcriptionist types the information on a computer or word processor while editing and clarifying any grammatical errors. Some documents that are done include: release summaries, reports of medical history and physical examination, reports of operations, reports of consultations, reports of autopsies, studies of diagnosing images, notes of progress, and letters of referrals. These documents are then returned to the physician or specialist by the medical transcriptionist for further approval and correcting. All of this is necessary for permanent keeping of these documents.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics ranks medical transcription as one of the 20 fastest-growing occupations. With a degree or certificate in medical transcription, you will have the freedom of working in any aspect of health care.

The practicality and convenience of online learning has helped it become a popular choice among busy adults. Currently, there are hundreds of thousands enrolled in online degree programs. University of Phoenix, the largest accredited university in the United States – and leading online university — helps more than 180,000 working adults achieve their academic and career goals every year. Online learning offers many benefits. Most programs have rolling admissions and courses begin frequently so students can get started quickly. Going to school online means no hurried commute to make it to class in time. Students can log on to their course any time of day. And online programs typically cater to adult learners, so courses focus on material that’s important and practical.

There are many exciting degree programs available online. Most online schools have courses beginning year round, so you don’t have to wait until spring or fall to enroll. These courses can also be taken at your convenience – right in your own home. You can learn more about this program by visiting Phoenix University Online. For more information about all top online colleges related to retail management, visit us online.

Twenty-eight percent of the 14,000 employers polled in the quarterly Manpower Employment Outlook Survey expect to add employees to their payrolls during the fourth quarter this year. Eight percent said they expect to cut staff and 58 percent expect no change.

The survey also revealed that most sectors – seven of 10 – will keep their hiring consistent with the previous quarter. In the mining sector, more jobs are expected, and employers in the education and finance/insurance/real estate sectors expect less hiring.

Overall, hiring patterns do not show any significant signs of a slowdown, despite concerns about an upcoming slackening in the economy.

“Eleven quarters of consistent survey results show that the U.S. job market is not prone to radical swings at this stage,” said Jeffrey Joerres, CEO of Manpower (Charts), a recruiting firm, in a statement. “Even the economic pressures of 2006, such as rising interest rates, energy costs and inflation, were not enough to rattle employer confidence.

Employers are having difficulty finding qualified people to fill jobs, which makes now – a good time to have a college degree. If you are thinking about going back to school, there are many online degree programs available. Earning specialized, marketable skills with online degree programs can help you find jobs in today’s market place.

Get an MBA and a tan at the same time? Why not? Mixing business with pleasure is nothing new in the corporate world, where what happens on the golf course can be as crucial as what happens in the boardroom and executive retreats are as much an escape from the corporate world as they are an extension of it. With more and more firms stressing the importance of a good life-work balance, it was only a matter of time before the idea started trickling down to MBA programs as well.

Now, several schools are making part-time MBA programs more attractive for busy executives who are wary of sacrificing precious family and leisure time for class work. John Fernandes, president of accrediting board AACSB International, says it’s all part of an overarching trend in the B-school world—flexible delivery—that began about 20 years ago with the first Executive MBA programs and exploded about seven years ago with the development of online learning. “It’s no longer one-size-fits all,” he says. “Now, just about anyone can find an MBA program that suits their lifestyle.”

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