When did welders, pipe fitters, and carpenters start to get such a bad rap?

At some point, getting a skilled trade went from being a smart idea to a stupid idea. Suddenly, it was all about getting a college degree…the only road to career bliss.

Well, it’s time we put the skilled trades back up on a pedestal. Why? There are jobs to be had!

There’s a great story in the Wall Street Journal today titled: “Skilled Trades Seek Workers.”

When’s the last last time you saw a headline that anyone was actually looking for workers?

From the article:

Even as the economy slumps and unemployment rises, strong demand for power plants, oil refineries and export goods has many manufacturers and construction contractors scrambling to find enough skilled workers to plug current and future holes.

With the shortage of welders, pipe fitters and other high-demand workers likely to get worse as more of them reach retirement age, unions, construction contractors and other businesses are trying to figure out how to attract more young people to those fields.

Their challenge: overcoming the perception that blue-collar trades offer less status, money and chance for advancement than white-collar jobs, and that college is the best investment for everyone.

The reality is not everyone goes to college. In fact, the majority of people in the United States never even get a four-year degree.

Jobs in the trades pay well and they can be very fulfilling.

Many years ago I wrote a story for the New York Times about a woman who decided to become a pipefitter after years of working as a hotel manager. She had always wanted to be a welder, even back when she was a teenager, but her teachers in high school actually discouraged her.

‘’When I asked to take the welding or shop classes, they said it wasn’t for girls,'’ Nannette Cooper told me back in 2000. So, she took courses like shorthand and typing. ‘’I hated it, but I figured you just have to follow the rules,'’ she said.

It may be time to break the rules. At least contractors and unions are banking on it. The shortage of skilled trades workers is expected to reach a fever pitch in the years to come as the Baby Boomers retire, and companies are doing what they can to get the word out about how a job getting your hands a little dirty isn’t all that bad.

Some firms, according to the Journal article, even enlisted the help of Mike Rowe, the hunk host of the Discovery Channel’s “Dirty Jobs”, a show that highlights jobs none of us want to do.

Not surprisingly, marketers for the skilled trades are focusing on the benefits of the trades, and there are many, including good pay and security. But the jobs, many of them, are dirty.

Knowing that, and if you feel you can handle a little dirt under your nails, this career avenue is a great one for career changers, or for kids who don’t want to take the college route.

Come on! Get dirty!

What if you got a chance to briefly live your career nirvana? Would you do it? Keep in mind, it may end up being painful. At the end of this dream you’d have to return to the job you do everyday just for a paycheck.

I came across a TLC show this weekend called “The Singing Office”. Yes, another reality show. Don’t tune out yet. It actually got me thinking.

Basically, the premise of the show is two hosts go into two different workplaces, they pick out five people that can hold a tune, and then send the five individuals to a singing boot camp where they will all work together on one song and perform it on stage. (Take note HR training folks out there, it’s a cool idea for team building.)

The hosts — Melanie Brown, a former Spice Girl and ‘N Sync’s Joey Fatone — are two second rate performers themselves, which seems to make the show even more endearing.

The episode I watched included a match up with workers from Aquarium of the Pacific and a mattress superstore called Sit ‘N Sleep.

Throughout the show the employees are interviewed about their experience being in boot camp, the interaction with coworkers — some of which they never even talked to — and their career aspirations.

The moving moment for me came when natural born performer Matt, the mattress store manager, talked about how incredible being chosen to perform on the show was:

“The worst part for me will be when this is over. I’m just eating this up. This is just awesome for me.”

“But I’ve got children so selling mattresses pays the bills.”

Matt was all smiles as he danced around the stage with a guitar, and suddenly I found myself getting a bit misty.

I felt bad for the guy, but understood where he was coming from. Sometimes we make sacrifices for our families. That’s just how it goes. But I hope Matt doesn’t give up after this one tiny taste of his dream.

More and more today, I meet people who’ve got their noses to an unpleasant or uninspiring grindstone during the day, but do what they love at night or on the weekends.

I know, who the heck has time for that? But some people make it work.

A colleague of mine, Marci Alboher, wrote about these types of people in her book “One Person/Multiple Careers” and she says many individuals that do this often have a “incredibly curious and restless nature.”

Hopefully Matt will continue to feed his curious and restless machine, and won’t let his experience fade into the black career hole of “if only.”

There are many people arguing that we need to beef up science and math education in this country or we’re going to be left out of the global market place.

Many corporate bigwigs, including Microsoft’s Bill Gates, argue they have to send work to China and India because the American school system isn’t churning out enough engineers.

Well, a new study blows some big holes in this theory.

A study released by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation found that the education system in China and India is also pretty lousy when it comes to creating competent individuals who can take on engineering work, but both countries are still becoming research and development hotspots. The main reason behind this, the researches found, was that these countries provided low-cost workers.

Here’s an excerpt about the findings from the Harvard International Review written by Vivek Wadhwa, one of the researchers on the study, conducting by Duke University’s global engineering and entrepreneurship project team:

Our interviews with the executives of technology and engineering companies engaged in outsourcing research and development (R&D) to India and China revealed that their primary motivation in moving operations abroad was not a shortage of engineers but rather lower cost and the proximity of growth markets. Furthermore, we found that there were serious issues with the quality of engineering education in China and India.

One of the interesting points the researchers uncover is that despite the lack of solid science and math training, many companies in India are able to grow their own engineers by providing them with intensive on-the-job training.

Again, Wadhwa:

In trying to understand how India is achieving this feat, we learned that the Indian private sector has found a way to overcome deficiencies in its education system through innovative programs of workforce training and development. These have transformed workers with a weak educational foundation into R&D specialists.

Our conclusion is that the United States needs to respond to globalization by learning from India and upgrading its workforce.

AHA! There in lies the problem. At a time when U.S. companies are slicing and dicing pay and benefits for so many workers, how do you convince Corporate America to put more money into “upgrading” workers here at home?

It’s a major workforce Catch 22. Spend big bucks on training U.S workers or get cut-rate labor overseas?

There I was taking a hot yoga class when our instructor starts talking about the benefits of yoga. It was 6 a.m., and the instructor probably wasn’t totally awake. He said, “the practice of yoga helps your e-ternal organs.” He quickly corrected himself, saying he meant, “internal organs,” but I found myself laughing out loud at his faux pas.

You see, I’ve been working on a story for Business Week’s SmallBiz magazine about virtual worlds, and one of the key parts to the story are avatars, those cartoon depictions people create of themselves when they want to go into one of these virtual worlds.

When the instructor said “e-ternal” I pictured myself as my own avatar doing yoga with my e-ternal organs glowing or something. I laughed so much the other students were looking at me funny, so I felt compelled to tell the instructor after the class what got me going.

When I mentioned an avatar he looked at me like I had six heads. “What’s that?” he asked.

I went on to explain, a bit shocked that this sort-of-hip yoga guru had no idea what an avatar was.

I realized right then that we’re at a technological cross roads, a big one. Things are happening so fast, no one can really keep up with it all.

Avatars, LinkedIn, YouTube. If you’re not up on all this stuff you really need to start educating yourself.

I’m telling you folks, the work world is being transformed over and over again by technology day in and day out.

Even my own world of journalism has been altered beyond recognition in just a decade. Almost all the newspapers in the United States are firing workers as ad revenues for paper newspapers plummet; and almost every publication has a web presence. I surely could never have predicted this when I was working for a newspaper in Tampa, Florida, less than ten years ago when a weird, young editorial assistant sitting next to me was spending all his time writing about his love life on this new thing called a blog. And, I can’t believe I had no iPhone, no laptop. I was a tech dope.

Recently, my intern Katherine became a tech tutor to her mother, who is reentering the Corporate workforce after years of staying home with her kids.

It’s an odd situation to have your child teach you something, so I’m proud of Katherine’s mom for putting aside her ego and taping into her kid’s brain to help her own career.

Here’s Katherine’s take on how it went:

It’s 2pm on a Wednesday, the day before my mother starts her new job, and I, the child, am trying to teach her, the parent, about computers.

It’s been at least eight years since she has stepped foot into the corporate world, so we just want to make sure she is familiar with a few basics before she goes to work.

It’s not that she has never used a computer before (quite the opposite actually, she uses one every day). However, she only uses the computer for two things: to access the internet and to write.

In fact, to her, the computer is “a fancy typewriter.” It’s just “one that doesn’t need whiteout,” she says.

Since she doesn’t really use programs other than Microsoft Word, we’re going over things like Excel and PowerPoint. I guess you could say that I’m broadening her horizons.

Instead of jumping into the programs first, we end up browsing the web and land on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn. I’m fairly certain she knew about these already, but now she has a more intimate knowledge of them.

After the social networking sites, we somehow end up on YouTube.com looking at a Gatorade ad. We also talk about hyperlinks and embedding things.

I feel that this is at least semi-relevant seeing as she is in the marketing and communications arena. Admittedly, the search for my brother on YouTube.com was not so relevant.

We finally get to Excel and PowerPoint, but have to get through them quickly.

First we go into Excel, where we make a table with bogus data and I demonstrate how to put formulas in place.

Surprisingly, we finish the tables, the formulas and the charts without a problem. We even put the charts on different sheets and give each a special name.

Just when I think it’s going well, she says “what about making the cells wider or narrower?” The word “seriously” may have escaped my lips.

I keep forgetting that she did not grow up with computers like I did.

After we go over the basic things I skipped, she seems less intimidated by Excel. I wouldn’t go as far as to say she is comfortable with it yet, but she’s getting there.

PowerPoint goes much quicker and simpler. We basically just discuss how to insert a new slide and format each one differently.

I know we are done when she says that she’ll figure out the rest if necessary.

Even though we didn’t get to touch on Publisher or other things, I think, or at least I hope, the poorly-taught tutoring session helped.

Now, if I can get her to stop calling a laptop a portable, then we’ll really be on the right track.

A portable. Remember calling it that? You know, I have no problem with her mom calling it a portable or an electronic box for that matter. At least she’s trying to learn what she can to keep up with it all.

Everyday we’ll learn new things. My column this week on MSNBC.com is about all these social networking sites and how the heck to figure out which one you need to be part of to further your career. I even learned a lot doing the piece. I learned a lot of this stuff is crap, but a lot of it isn’t.

That’s a scary proposition. What if you miss out on the important stuff and get mired in the crap?

But that’s sort of how life works. Every day we have to reassess what’s working for us and what’s not. That’s not a bad thing, right? Let’s look at it as an adventure, and also reach out for help to anyone we think can help — our daughters, our friends, our spouses, and me. Send me email anytime at telleve@gmail.com, and if I can’t answer your question I’ll find someone who can. You may even teach me something.

I’m sure, even in cyberspace, a digital Lewis and Clark expedition would still need a Sacagawea avatar.

There is a comfort that comes from a two-income household. While it isn’t easy when one spouse gets canned, at least the other is still bringing in a paycheck.

But what happens when both wife and husband hit career hell? And there are young children in the mix?

You have to rethink your job strategy pronto.

I got an email last week from a former newspaper colleague of mine from Tampa, Florida. It was a short note about how he was applying for a job as an emergency dispatcher with the Sheriff’s Office in town and wanted to know if he could add me to his list of personal references.

This was a bit surprising because this guy has been a journalist for years and was pretty set on this career.

He figured I would be perplexed so he added this line:

“Sounds strange, I know. I’ll fill you in on all the details soon. Right now I gotta rush this thing through.”

This morning I got the follow-up email explaining what was going on.

The newspaper he was freelancing for slashed its budget to the core and had little money for contractors like him; and his wife, a long-time employee in the mortgage sector, had been recently laid off after months of speculation that the pink slip was coming.

“So we’ve both been on the job hunt for quite some time,” he wrote. “After much drudgery and soul searching, not to mention financial hardship, here’s where we’re at now:”

His wife had just passed “her final state exam to become a certified nursing assistant, the first important (and employable) step to her eventually making RN or LPN. She’s sent out a barrage of resumes to local facilities. Fingers crossed.”

And he was pursuing the Sheriff’s dispatcher job.

Here’s some of the thought process that went into his decision to change careers:

Why do I want this kind of job? At first I was just as bemused. But I’m a good communicator if you boil me down, whether writing is involved or not. This job is mostly about talking to a wide range of people over the phone, getting the information I need out of them quickly, and recording it accurately. I’ve been doing that for the paper for over 15 years. That’s how I’ve been selling myself to the Sheriff so far, and it’s working (even though I had calm their early fears about my background in the news media. No, I’m not some deep cover reporter on special assignment, I told them.).
Besides, like most government jobs, this one has above average benefits and job security. Those are huge factors for young parents in a shaky economy.

This all makes sense. And it takes a lot of balls to totally embark on a new career path.

His choice and the choice of his wife may not be choices you would make. But I share this story because it’s a great example of how we have to all be ready to make changes and pursue new avenues in this economy. This couple was probably driven into action, in part, by the need to provide for their two young kid, both under 6.

But the bottom line is they looked at the world around them and figured out two gigs that would probably offer some job security.

Where they will end up is unclear, but they are both hard working individuals who won’t let economic hardships derail them.

It’s not easy folk, there is no way around it.

Here are some of my friends final thoughts:

“These past couple of years have been very trying to for us. We see some real light at the end of the tunnel, but we’re not quite there yet.”

Readers often ask me to help them figure out what type of job or profession they should pursue. Lately, this question has come up even more frequently as people lose their jobs, or feel the ax is near, and figure this is a good time to go into a career they can really love.

I wish I had a career crystal ball so I could tell all of you what path you should follow when you’re ready to change careers, or just out of school wondering what to do with the rest of your life.

I don’t.

While individuals have to do this career homework themselves, there are tools out there to help you narrow your search.

I’m not adverse to personality and career tests. There are pitfalls, and I’ve written about those in the past. But overall, they can give you a good starting off point.

Today, I decided to take a couple of tests myself to see what type of job may suit my personality. Don’t worry, I’m not giving up my day job. I was just curious and figured it might help all of you to see if my results are on target or not. I’ve also asked my intern, Katherine, to take both tests. This will give us a good gauge of what these tests come up with for two people at very different points in their careers, one established, the other trying to figure out what the heck she should do.

I decided to Google “career test”.

The first site I came up with was something called SimilarMinds.

The test was short and sweet and here’s what it came up with for me:

You are an Inspirer, possible professions include - conference planner, speech pathologist, HR development trainer, ombudsman, clergy, journalist, newscaster, career counselor, housing director, character actor, marketing consultant, musician/composer, artist, information-graphics designer, human resource manager, merchandise planner, advertising account manager, dietitian/nutritionist, speech pathologist, massage therapist, editor/art director.

You all probably noticed that “journalist” is included it the types of jobs that would work for my personality. But so are “speech pathologist” and “clergy.”

Here’s Katherine’s results:

Guardian, possible professions include - counseling, ministry, library work, nursing , secretarial, curators, bookkeepers, dental hygienists, computer operator, personnel administrator, paralegal, real estate agent, artist, interior decorator, retail owner, musician, elementary school teacher, physical therapist, nurse, social worker, personnel counselor, alcohol/drug counselor.

This tests seems to me to be a bit like what you’d get from a fortune teller at a carnival. They usually tell you things that a broad and far reaching, and hope you jump on one something they say that applies to your life.

I’m not sure what you really get out of something like this.

I decided to do another test that had a bit more meat behind it, so I asked Juliet Wehr Jones of career counseling website CareerKey what she suggested, and she sent me The Career Key test.

This test costs about $10 to take and it’s much more elaborate and includes many more questions.

I scored highest on in the “Artistic” category with “Social” right behind. And I was able to be a bit more proactive with this test picking the types of jobs I would like so “poet,” “editorial writer,” and “bartender” were all on my list. That works for me.

Katherine scored highest in the “Social” category and these are the jobs that were most suited for her, according to the test:

Clinical or Counseling Psychologist
Counselor
Social Worker
Licensed Practical Nurse
College Teacher
Fitness Worker

So, what did we get out of these tests. I pretty much figured out I’m doing what I should be doing. But if I ever decide to make a change, I may open up a bar.

Katherine says she got more out of the Career Key test. “That technically I should be some kind of counselor. I think there’s a little bit to it.”

But, she adds, “real estate agent. Never. Just no.”

And, “if I was a nurse I’d probably kill somebody or something. Like ‘oops, wrong medicine. Sorry.’”

The one thing I would caution is that a bad test could actually do more harm than good at a time when you might be vulnerable and trying to figure out what your next step should be.

Lawrence K. Jones and Juliet Wehr Jones, both of Career Key, offered these tips for people wondering how to choose the right test:

* Consider taking a high quality career interest inventory. The best valid interest inventory will do four things: help you understand yourself better, match you with careers that are likely to lead to satisfaction and success, suggest careers you had not thought of, and give you comprehensive information about each one. Through this process, you learn about yourself, the pros and cons of each job option, which helps you make a successful career decision.

* For a serious career decision, choose a serious, valid test. Quizzes, games, sorters, profilers, and finders that assess and match you with jobs are all career tests. To be helpful, they must be valid measures. But few of them are. For a test to be “valid,” there must be published, scientific evidence that it measures, in fact, what the author claims it measures. If you want accurate information about yourself and job options that fit you, take a valid test.

* Make sure the test website contains information about the test’s validity. It should mention specific studies or offer a professional manual you can see. A manual will describe validity studies. If no such information is available, avoid using it.

* Look beyond credentials, links, and endorsements. A Ph.D.’s endorsement or authorship does not make a test valid; anyone, with or without a Ph.D. can create an invalid career test. Links from schools, government and professional organizations are well-intentioned, but often unreliable.

* Seek the help of a professionally trained career counselor who recognizes the importance of test validity. They can help you choose the right test and help you interpret your results. The National Career Development Association, www.ncda.org, provides helpful consumer guidelines on selecting a counselor and CounselorFind of the National Board of Certified Counselors, www.nbcc.org, can help you find a certified counselor near you.

But the bottom line is, no test will ever tell you what you should be doing with your life.

If you rely on any one test, or any one person to make such decisions you might as well just invest in a crystal ball.

Since I wrote my book, “From the Sandbox to the Corner Office”, I’m often asked — What makes successful CEOs and entrepreneurs different from the rest of us?

I’ve already talked a lot about how many of these overachievers were spanked as children. That seemed to get those most interest from the mass media.

But Jennifer Remling wanted to get beyond that. She started a project called “Carve Your Own Road” and has been traveling around the country trying to understand the entrepreneurial spirit. Her book on her journey comes out next year.

She asked me recently to do a webinar for her website, and the main theme was what successful people seem to have in common when it comes to their career approach.

Risk. Risk. Risk. That’s basically the overriding theme I’ve found when interviewing top executives and heavy weight entrepreneurs.

They weren’t afraid to take risks, even though they often had butterflies in their stomachs when it came to making career leaps.

Here’s a link to the webinar

One of the key discussion points was about asking for help. Yes. Many of these successful men and women asked for a lot of help on their climb to the top. The majority talked about the mentors they were lucky enough to be mentored by along the way. And I’m not talking about formalized mentoring programs that are now so prevalent in Corporate America. These were organically grown relationships.

A CEO for a major bank told me she used to pull up her chair to her manager’s desk and watch him work, asking him questions along the way. The CEO of a major retailer told me he stopped his retail idol in a fancy restaurant to introduce himself, and ended up in a long-term mentoring relationship with him.

It’s all about taking risks and learning from people that are smarter than you. Pretty simple.

There are lots of women studying to become doctors. And tons wanting to be lawyers. But, for some reason, women are not breaking down the doors of MBA programs dying to enroll.

Based on recent data, women made up nearly 50 percent of enrollment at law and medical schools, but only 27 percent of the pie in MBA programs.

Now, I want to preface this whole blog post by saying I’m not advocating women run out and get MBAs. I have written in the past about how an MBA isn’t always a guaranteed ticket to career success. But I think it is curious that more women are not pursuing this higher business degree, and in turn not ending up in the upper echelon of the business world, or the corporate world for that matter.

So what the heck is going on? Why aren’t more women pursuing an MBA?

I spoke with Elissa Ellis Sangster, executive director of the Forté Foundation, a group that promotes MBA and other forms of business education for women, and she had an earful to say about the matter.

“Young women really don’t understand what options there are in business,” she explains. It’s not all about Wall Street, she says, there are tons of options for savvy women who hold an MBA in their hands, everything from working for non profits to entrepreneurship.

The people in women’s “influencer set” - including family, friends, career counselors - tend not to steer females toward business, especially women who are initially all about liberal arts in college.

“For women,” she adds, “there’s a disconnect between the nurture idea and wanting to do something good, and the message they get from business. They see negative imagery out there. They see it as not contributing to society.”

HELLO GALS OUT THERE!!

Is anyone paying attention to the news? There’s a mortgage crisis going on in this country that was perpetuated by people in the business world, Wall Streeters and bankers, and, they were mainly men at the helm of this. I’m not bashing men here, it’s just the reality of who runs these organizations.

Tell me this mortgage mess has not impacted society profoundly.

OK, sorry, got off track a bit. Back to Ellis Sangster.

While she says an MBA or a career in business isn’t all about money, it is also all about money.

And what’s wrong with that? Money isn’t dirty. It can be used for great good if we want it to. But we won’t have any say in it being used for great good if we’re not in the business driver’s seat with men.

How come we think it’s odd for women to want money or to have control over money? This goes to the heart of why women are still making 75 cents on the dollar compared to men and why our numbers are dwindling in the corner office.

Look, an MBA is no guarantee that you’ll make it to the top, and Ellis Sangster agrees with that, but it will give you a boost of confidence in the workplace and it will shut up some of those lunkheads in the business world that already think you have a strike against you because you don’t have a penis.

I don’t want to sound cynical here, but there still is bias in the workplace and every female executive I’ve interviewed has experienced it. When you walk in the door of a new organization or a new division, an MBA will definitely give you that little boost of credibility because naysayers will at least know you committed yourself in some way to the business cause.

To help women think a bit harder about MBAs and business, the Forte Foundation holds forums with successful female MBA holders around the country, and they’ve also started going to campuses to talk to young girls about careers in business.

Parents also need to get involved and talk to their daughters about all types of careers without excluding the potential of a job in business, advises Ellis Sangster.

Interestingly enough, she often gets calls from dads wanting information on how their daughters can pursue an MBA. But the moms never call, she says.

Man, we have a long way to go.

“I was not going to stay at a job and be miserable. Everyone around me would have been miserable too.”

That statement came from Lorna Francis, a former colleague and good friend. Many moons ago we worked together in Manhattan at a fashion publication called Footwear News. (Yes, we all had to pay our dues folks.)

I recently asked her about her decision to get the hell out of journalism and pursue her passions — food and entertaining. I wanted to know how she was able to leave a long-time career and embark on something totally new with no guarantees she’d be able to ever make a living.

So many readers tell me about what their dream jobs would be, but few have the guts to go for it.

Lorna’s “miserable” comment goes to the very heart of this.

I believe she would have made her co-workers and bosses miserable if she stayed in a gig she didn’t love. Lorna has always worn her heart on her sleeve. She’s brutally honest and will tell you to your face what’s wrong with you. That’s what I love about her.

Maybe this attitude is what gave her the strength to make a major change mid career.

Is there a personality type of someone that can successfully shift career gears?

There are two top types, says Marci Alboher, author of One Person/Multiple Careers: A New Model for Work/Life Success.

There are the “I-do-what-I want” career changer and the “I-have-no-other-choice” career changer, she explains.

Alboher, who also writes the Shifting Careers blog at the New York Times, says Lorna sounds like the kind of person who doesn’t care what other people think, and that makes her a prime candidate for someone who can shift careers easily. Most people are worried what their spouses, parents, friends will think and have difficulty following their work bliss.

The other big category of career changers, she says, are those who are pushed into making a change.

“It doesn’t feel like a choice,” she adds, “but these people make a change because they are laid off, scared or just tired and they’re pushed to a place where they say, ‘what do I have to lose?’”

Lorna left the shoe publication to go into television in the 1990s. I thought she was nuts back then but she saw herself as a TV producer. Well, she took a cut in pay and went off to become a successful producer in cities from Florida to Alabama, and ended up producing for a Houston station.

One day, in 2003, she realized she was numb to the world of news because of all the rapes and murders she was writing about, and on that day began her quest for a new career.

She enrolled in culinary school in Houston for an 18-month program and quit her job at the TV station. To make ends meet she took jobs at retailers like Ann Taylor and Pier One, and the jobs were anything but easy.

“At one point I felt embarrassed working in retail because people treat you differently. They act like they’re better than you,” she explains.

But she persevered even as she struggled financially.

When she graduated she landed a job as catering coordinator for Perry’s Restaurant Group in Houston, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard her sound happier.

I just recently received an email from her that shows how proud she is of her new career.

During a recent high-end party she helped organize, she did such an incredible job that the D.J. who was also hired for the gig sent a letter to her manager about what a great job she and her team did.

While it was normal to get a letter from the people that hire Perry’s it was unusual for a vendor to praise the staff:

Special kudos go to Lorna! She is a wonderful asset to your catering team! Everything ran smoothly due in large part to her leadership and direction! She is a wonderful person!

Lorna was so proud of this letter she wanted to share it with her friends, and it proves that you can survive and thrive when you finally decide to make a major career change.

“I am a firm believer that if you are passionate about something, you should take the leap of faith,” she says. “There’s nothing wrong with taking it, and failing, but there’s something wrong with not taking it at all, and regretting it later.”

See how happy she looks:

I know, it seems pretty bad out there right now.

The jobless rate has hit the highest level in more than two decades. And everyone is wondering what will be the next shoe to drop.

But folks, let’s get our heads together. There are lots of opportunities out there in growth industries, and many companies are going to great lengths to recruit workers these days.

My column this week on MSNBC.com looks at how some firms are using employee testimonials to convince people to consider working for them. Some of the employee videos are corny but a few give you a peak at what it might be like to work for one of these employers, employers that are actually in hiring mode.

OK, I’ve gone over this list before. The job opportunities are a plenty in healthcare; education; consulting; the trades like plumbing and HVAC; all things related to the aging of the population; and a host of green sector jobs, everything from solar energy to bike shops. What about entrepreneurship?

Also, make sure to do what you can to keep your job. Start letting your managers know what you do, and take on some assignments just to let everyone know you’re on the ball and willing to work. Don’t be a loner either. Go out to lunch with coworkers and any manager that will have you. The more everyone feels comfortable with you the harder it will be to add you to the pink-slip list.

If you’ve already lost your job and need advice, please post your questions here. I’ll try to offer you any help I can.

Good luck everyone!