New Job Listings!

Junior Portfolio Assistant (Investment Banking) $50,000+ DOE
You will work for one of the most prestigious private equity firms on the west side. We need someone familiar with capital call notices, maintenance of a data base for client statements and letters, able to post to interlink, special projects as assigned by partners, travel arrangements and heavy expense reporting, strong Excel and Word skills. Excellent opportunity for college grad with 1+ years of experience in a portfolio department.

Assistant to Marketing Partner (Private Equity) $60,000+sign on bonus + regular bonus + over the top benefits
Work for a great mentor and marketing guru. You will prepare complex presentations using PowerPoint (expert skill level required) for this ever expanding firm. You will also assist your executive with answering and rolling calls, scheduling meetings and all travel, both international and domestic. You will work with print and media publications, assist with and implement your new marketing ideas and layouts, work with other departments in company in their marketing planning too. You must have advanced PowerPoint skills, MSW, Excel and Outlook. We are interviewing this week for a June start.

Executive Assistant to Partner (Executive Search) $60 - $70,000+
Work for one of the most dynamic groups in the media and entertainment search fields. You will start each search as if it were your own - create job descriptions, candidate reports, reference reports, status reports, all client and candidate communications. You will schedule interviews and coordinate travel and serve as the point person for all interview processes. You must love doing client services and be an expert communicator, be poised and professional at all times, solid MSW and Outlook, heavy Internet research, multi-tasker, great organizational skills and really be a quick study. This is a real opportunity to see the inner workings of the global media and entertainment industries.

Executive Assistant to CEO (Aquisitions) $70 - 80,000+
This job is working for a dynamic CEO and one that never sits stills. You will do everything - manage calendars, travel, correspondence, emails, research, roll calls, personal and professional errands - no job is too big or too small for you. You must posses the energy, the superior judgement, the client servicing skills and the level of intelligence to make this work. You must have a 4-year college degree and 5+ years senior administrative assistant skills. You must be able to interface with all levels of clients and management. You must have MSW, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook, video conferencing, Skype, and GoToMeeting.

Staff Accountant ( Private Equity) $55 - 65,000 + bonus
You must have a degree in Accounting or Finance, 2 - 5 years experience, Big 4 is a plus, SEC filing knowledge, Microsoft Dynamics GP required. If you are a recent college grad with a year of accounting experience in the financial field and some great internships under your belt, this client will consider you as well. Excellent opportunity to get in the investment arena.

Entry Level Bookkeepers (Entertainment) $32 - 40,000
This client represents some of the top talent in the entertainment industry. You will learn all there is to know about the "business management" world. Start at the bottom and there is no where to go but up. You will be trained by a partner and a manager. You will be given several accounts and learn all there is to know about managing a client on tour, in a new film or television series, royalties and residuals. You will be trained on Datafaction. You must have a degree in Accounting or Finance, 1+ year experience (internships apply) and solid MSW and Excel skills.

Controller (Legal) $120,000+ bonus
You will manage the day-to-day operations of the accounting department including A/P, A/R, payroll, financial statements and reports, G/L maintenance, supervise monthly close and insure monthly, quarterly and annual statements are correct and timely, budget and planning, banking transactions, and coordination of everything with outside CPA firm. Must have CPA, 10+ years experience is similar role, advanced computer skills, and excellent management and problem solving abilities.

Assistant for Executive Director of Non-Profit Agency $40 - $42,000
Are you interested in the well being of children under the poverty level? Are you interested in assuring they have three meals a day, clothing for school, supplies for school and even the ability to get to school - this job is for you. You will assist the Executive Director with all her efforts to support these worthy causes. You will answer phones, direct sponsors, patrons, vendors and members to the right person or department, type correspondence, proposals, board minutes and itineraries. You will handle busy calendars, book meetings, luncheons, travel, help with special events - lots of interaction and learning. You must have solid MSW, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and 1 - 3 years administrative experience. Excellent opportunity for a recent college grad to enter the non-profit world.

Job Growth in L.A.?

Forecast Sees Pick Up in L.A. Job Growth

By Howard Fine Thursday, May 10, 2012

Job growth in Los Angeles County and the region should pick up this year and accelerate next year, according to a forecast released by California State University Long Beach.

Los Angeles County should add about 60,000 jobs this year for a growth rate of 1.6 percent, well above the 0.6 percent pace set last year, according to economists at the university. Next year should be even better, with 80,000 jobs added for a growth rate of about 2.1 percent.

“We are approaching a more healthy pace of job formation for the first time in several years,” said Lisa Grobar, the forecast director and an economics department faculty member.

The report noted that job growth is being led by cyclical sectors, such as retail, professional and business services and leisure/hospitality. Even construction, decimated by the housing bust, is adding jobs for the first time in five years, particularly in the county.

The only major downside remains government employment as cities, counties and school districts continue to slash jobs to balance budgets. But the forecast said the sector should stabilize next year.

Culture Matters

When Choosing a Job, Culture Matters

4:08 PM Wednesday May 2, 2012
by Bill Barnett

Some organizations will excite you. They'll stimulate your success and growth. Others will be stressful. They may lead you to quit before you've accomplished much or learned what you hoped to. With the pressure (or excitement) of finding a new job, it's all too easy to pursue a job opportunity or to accept an offer with only a hazy view of how the institution really operates. The path to an institution you'll like is to investigate the culture you're thinking of joining before you accept the position.

Sean (name has been changed) is a master at this. He pursued a job offer at a Fortune 500 company to be the first Chief Administrative Officer (CAO). He was well-qualified, presented himself well, and got the offer. He'd been competing with capable people. He was proud he'd "won the contest."

The next step was a return visit, after which he'd decide to accept the offer. Sean had already learned a lot about the company's businesses and some things about the organization. His priority now was culture and how the new position might fit: "I asked people, 'What are you excited about? What are you proud of? Who are your close friends in the company? How does the group function together?'" Sean learned things like who the heroes were, what made them successful, and what his biggest challenges and opportunities would be in the job. The different people he met with were learning from his questions. It was almost like he already worked there, and they were jointly determining how to make the new role successful.

Surprisingly, Sean turned down the offer. The new role was a misfit in the company's culture.

As he learned more about the company, Sean questioned how he'd be viewed as the first CAO in a company where everyone else focused on bottom-line results. It was a highly performance-driven environment with lots of business units. Corporate staffs were secondary.

"I asked how they'd keep score on me, how they'd really know I was making a difference," he said. "We never got to satisfactory answers to that question. They weren't hiding anything. This CAO position was a new one, and they didn't really know."

Sean was concerned that this new position wouldn't fit in the company's culture, that he wouldn't really be accepted, and that it wouldn't be a springboard to the line job that he really wanted after two or three years as CAO. He might have made it work, but why take the risk?

It's not uncommon for job seekers to enter organizations without understanding the culture and come away disappointed. When considering a new job, be sure to investigate the institution's culture. Consider these questions to guide you:

1. What should I learn? Understand the organization's purpose — not just what they say they're doing, but also how their purpose leads to decisions and what makes them proud. Learn how the organization operates. For example, consider the importance of performance, how the organization gets things done, the level of teamwork, the quality of the people, how people communicate, and any ethical issues.

Except for ethical issues, there's no absolute standard of what's best in organizational culture. Different purposes and different organizational features can be more or less appealing to different people. When you understand how the potential employer operates, you'll need to consider how well that matches your goals. Your target organizational culture is an important part of your aspirations.

2. How should I learn? Read everything you can find about the institution, but read with a critical eye. Institutions have formal vision statements, and they often mention cultural topics in other public reports, but these documents are written with a purpose in mind. Independent writers take an independent perspective. They can be more critical, but they can miss details and get things wrong.

Discuss culture with people in the organization. You'll talk to people in the interviewing process, of course. But you may learn different things if you meet others there who aren't involved in your recruiting process. Also talk to people outside the organization who know it — customers, suppliers, partners, and ex-employees. Their different experiences with the institution will affect their views, so ask about situations where they've seen the culture in action.

3. When should I learn? It's hard to learn about culture at an early stage in your search. But your impressions can guide you to target some institutions and avoid others.

Culture may come up in job interviews, although it may be complicated to do much investigation when you're trying to sell yourself. People sometimes worry that discussing culture might make people uncomfortable and put a job offer at risk. The culture topic is certainly not off-base, and it is necessary to know for future growth in the company. Hiring managers should expect it. Whether it's in interviews or after you have an offer, you'll do best if your questions show you're learning rapidly about the organization, taking the employer's perspective, and beginning to figure out how to succeed there. Culture questions can cast you in a positive light. Sean's line of questioning confirmed the CEO's judgment to hire him, even if Sean didn't like the answers.

What's your view of how culture affects the job search? Has culture played a part in how you choose your future employer?

New Job Listings

Human Resources Generalist $70K - $75K

This is not your "sexy" HR spot - this is your paper pushing, lots of reports, lots of ads, lots of background checks, lots of compliance, vacation, sick days, termination, benefits paperwork.  This position is ideal for someone sick of people and lovin' the paper process.  Recruiting will be handled by departments - you will run ads for them and select solid candidates for them to meet.  You will set-up each new hire in the system. You will make sure all their paperwork is complete and compliant.  You will assist new hires and old with questions regarding benefits, vacation, PTO, etc. You need solid HR generalist experience and like the fact that it is going to be you, a computer, a screen, files and lots of reporting to do.  Excellent benefits, great office, and really interesting field of medicine and science.

 

Private Equity Assistants (2 needed) $65K - $72K

Westside private equity firm is looking for two Executive Assistants to handle heavy travel (domestic and international), scheduling appointments, rolling calls, expense reports, correspondence and presentations.  This firm offers a great work/life balance, "blue chip" benefits, 401(k) with matching funds, nice hefty bonuses and free lunches.  This firm is unique and values each new hire.  You must have heavy Outlook, MSW, Excel and PowerPoint.  A thorough background check will be conducted.

Baby Boomers in the Marketplace

Are baby boomers taking all the jobs?

Commentary: People in 60s more likely to be working than teens are

By Rex Nutting, MarketWatch

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) – The U.S. economy is finally creating jobs again, but most of them seem to be going to aging baby boomers, not to young adults just starting out on their careers.

But as we shall see, appearances can be deceiving.

What we do know, however, is that for the first time in our history, people in their late 60s are more likely to have a job than teenagers are.

Job growth has been very uneven since the end of 2009, with the largest growth in the 55-70 age group and among men.

The raw (but ultimately meaningless) figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics are jarring: Between December 2009 (when employment began to rise again following the Great Recession) and March 2012, employment increased by 4.1 million, according to the BLS survey of households. Employment among older folk — 55 and over — grew by 2.9 million. This group has about a third of the adult population, but accounted for roughly 70% of the employment growth over the past 27 months. Read the BLS data here.

At the same time, the number of employed young adults under 25 grew by just 815,000. Teenage employment actually declined. And employment in the prime working-age population grew by just 437,000.

What’s going on here? Why are the people who should be thinking about retirement clinging to their jobs instead?

Part of this story is a real phenomenon: More baby boomers are staying on the job because they are healthy enough to keep working. They like working. Further, many of them desperately need the money: They lost their retirement nest egg when the housing market collapsed and the stock market stalled. Fewer of them can rely on a defined benefit pension, and more of them must rely on their own savings to fund their retirement.

For the first time in our history, people in their late 60s (gold line) are more likely to be working than teenagers are. People nearing retirement age (purple line) are also staying on the job longer, now that their retirement savings have been washed away by the Great Recession.

Researchers Eric French and David Benson at the Chicago Federal Reserve figured a year ago that the loss of wealth suffered by those nearing retirement increased their participation in the labor force by about 2.9 percentage points. That would mean that an extra half-million people are still punching the time clock every day instead of enjoying their retirement. That’s a half-million or so jobs that younger people could have, but don’t.

Statistics taken out of context

There’s also something else going on with this story: Statistical mirages that exaggerate the extent of the real-world trend. Baby boomers are taking a disproportionate share of the jobs, but it’s not nearly as dramatic as the raw numbers portray. The lesson is to not take statistics out of context.

The first thing to realize about the data is that we can’t really know how many people have gotten a job since 2009, at least not from this BLS survey, which is the government report that tells us who is working and who isn’t.

Because of the way the BLS updated its data to synchronize them with the latest population figures from the 2010 Census, we can’t directly compare January 2012 levels with December 2011 levels. When BLS did the population update a few months ago, it didn’t go back and change any of the old data, even though it was apparent that the Census in 2000 had missed millions of people, particularly teenagers, blacks, Asians, Hispanics and older women.

What's next in labor markets?

Paul Vigna and John Shipman on Markets Hub discuss the state of the labor markets after jobless claims jump. Photo: Getty Images

Those people suddenly showed up in the January 2012 BLS data. This update confused a lot of people, such as Tyler Durden, Rush Limbaugh, Rick Santelli, and Matt Drudge, who broadcast screaming headlines about a record 1.2 million increase in the number of people who were not in the labor force. If you know how the BLS works, you know that number wasn’t meaningful. Read this and shake your head.

And you also know that it isn’t meaningful to say the economy has created 4.1 million jobs since 2009, including 2.9 million older people, as I did in the fourth paragraph of this column.

To get around this discontinuity (avoiding comparing apes and orangutans), the best we can do is to compare December 2009 with December 2011 (and even that comparison can run afoul of annual population revisions). During those 24 months, employment increased by 2.82 million, with 1.85 million added in the 55-70 age group (or 66% of the total).

Employment among young adults increased by 691,000, while employment in the prime working-age population of 25 to 54 increased by just 52,000.

The second thing to realize about these data is that our population is aging. The civilian noninstitutional population (basically, everyone who isn’t in the service or locked up) of people between 55 and 70 grew by more than 6% between 2009 and 2001, while the population from 25 to 54 was actually declining. There’s every reason to believe that most of the employment growth in this age group was simply people who had a job on their 55th birthday and who moved from one category to another. They didn’t get a job, but someone somewhere did.

The good news is that employment has been growing faster than the population in every major demographic group. In other words, the employment-population ratios have been rising since the depths of the recession. But, except for the oldest age group, the employment-population ratio is far below pre-recession levels.

The recession and its aftermath have hurt almost every demographic group. It destroyed the wealth of retirees and those about to retire, forcing them to work longer or to downsize their expectations.

Many young people aren’t getting the opportunities they need to find a place in this world and to begin building their lives. While many of them may be getting valuable skills in school, they aren’t starting families, or buying homes, or getting the work experience they need to move into more responsible jobs that pay more.

The same thing happened to the generation that came of age in the 1930s. They put their lives on hold for years, and we are still living with their legacy: the baby boomers who are now clinging to their jobs.

Rex Nutting is a columnist and MarketWatch's international commentary editor, based in Washington.

5 Ways to Improve a Bad Day

5 Ways to Improve a Bad Day in 15 Minutes or Less

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by Vault Careers
Published: Tuesday, April 03, 2012

Maybe you're just having a case of the Mondays a la Office Space, or you're having a full scale meltdown. Either way, you can turn it around. Just stop, breathe, and read this. We'll get you through it.

1. Go for a walk

If you're far gone enough that you're in danger of throwing a hissy fit or bursting into tears, do no collect $200, do not pass go—remove yourself from the situation immediately and take a walk.

Physically leaving the scene of office turmoil can work wonders for your state of mind. You'll be amazed how relieved you'll feel just remembering there's a world outside your office. And don't doubt the combined powers of sunshine and exercise: together, they're the mood boosting equivalent of the Captain Planet rings uniting. And for even better results…

2. Listen to music

Though it's probably best to avoid the really mopey Radiohead tracks, the cheering effects of music don't really depend on genre. Whether you prefer boppy or introspective songs, studies have shown that music of any kind can help remove you from an irritable, angry frame of mind to a more palatable happy-elated or soothed-contented emotional state.

3. Connect with friends or family

Studies have shown that holding a spouses hand reduces stress, and hearing your mom's voice releases the same amount of feel-good hormones as a hug. So reach out; whether it's scheduling a coffee break with your SO or ducking into the hall to call to mom, do it. Connecting with loved ones can make you feel better on a chemical level, and, perhaps more importantly, remind you that you have support outside of work.

4. Take a coffee break

Getting away from your desk is a great way to perk up anyway, but the caffeine from a trip to the coffee shop can be instantly uplifting as well. Studies have shown that a cup can immediately boost alertness and energy, beating back the blahs, and that long term, people who drink caffeinated coffee are less likely to suffer from depression.

5. Look at this post on Buzzfeed

No headphones, coffee machine, or time to take a walk? Look at this.

Feel better!

--Cathy Vandewater, Vault.com

EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT - $60-$65K + BONUS

Expanding real estate management firm looking for an executive assistant to work for two partners. Will follow through on multi-family listings from start to finish - from putting packages together when the partners go out to meet clients, to researching potential clients and targeting their needs.  In addition, you will run the entire administrative component of each sales transaction - paperwork, agreements, leases, escrow, etc., and liaison with buyer, seller, escrow, banks, and inspectors.

Bonus based on company sales.  Bonuses in 2011 totaled $15,000.

MSW, Excel, PP, Outlook, real estate experience is very helpful. College degree preferred.