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Attention bosses: Today is Administrative Professionals Day. Do we have to spell out what that means?

It means today is the day that bosses — and office workers supported by an admin — say thank you to the hard working administrative assistants, clerks, receptionists, support staff, and other administrative professionals for the countless tasks they handle day in and day out. Read the rest of this entry »

Temporary and contract employment has been rising steadily since the beginning of the year, pushing the Staffing Index to 91 for the week ending April 15. That’s a 6.6% rise since the same week last year. Then, the Index stood at 85. The Index is a measure of staffing activity, and is published weekly by the American Staffing Association. The ASA says, “staffing industry employment serves as a coincident economic indicator and a leading indicator of total U.S. nonfarm employment.” American Staffing Association

Making its biggest acquisition in five years, AstraZeneca says it will buy Ardea Biosciences Inc. for $32 a share, a 54% premium over Ardea’s closing price Friday. Ardea is in the third phase of clinical testing lesinurad, its urea reducing drug for the treatment of gout. The San Diego-based Ardea also has cancer treatment drugs in mid-stage testing. For AstraZeneca, the acquisition, valued at $1.26 billion, may be the first of more this year. BusinessWeek

Here’s an unexpected finding about job interviews that makes sense once it’s explained. Narcissists do better in interviews than the rest of us.

How can it be that a trait most of us consider obnoxious can actually improve the chances of someone acing an interview?

Simple, says Peter Harms, assistant professor of management at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a co-author of a study being published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology. Read the rest of this entry »

Based on how frequently the job turns up in online ads, physical therapists are the most in-demand job of any posted anywhere online. Wanted Technologies, an online data analysis firm, says employers posted more than 11,600 jobs online for physical therapists in March. It’s the highest number of ads seen in any single month since October 2009, and represents a 19% increase over March 2011. The biggest demand is in the Washington, DC area where 916 jobs for physical therapists were posted in March, a 205% increase from a year before. Wanted says the average time these jobs remained online was seven weeks, a sign of how hard they are to fill. Wanted Analytics

You would never think of fiddling with your papers or phone during an interview, yet countless opportunities have been lost because candidates did just that during a phone interview.

From how quickly you answer the phone, to how you end the conversation, the recruiter or hiring manager on the other end of the line is making a judgment about whether or not you’re going to be invited for an in-person meeting.

“The phone interview will make or break your chances with a company. Take it seriously,” says Paul J. Bailo, author of The Essential Phone Interview Handbook, the only book of its kind.

Read the rest of this entry »

Salaries for administrative professionals, stagnant during the worst of the Great Recession, have begun inching up. The 2011BenchmarkPro survey results from Compdata Surveys found executive assistants earn an average base rate of $51,600 per year. That’s up from $50,200 in 2010. Administrative assistants are earning $36,400 per year, reflecting a 2% increase since 2010. The salary for executive secretaries has increased from $45,000 in 2010 to $46,100 in 2011, a 2.4% increase. Those are national averages. Salaries differ significantly by geography and industry. For instance, executive assistants in utilities earn an average $57,200, while those in hospitality earn the least at $45,500. Comdata Surveys

Image: graur codrin / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

“The average cost to a company for the health care of an employee is $12,000,” says futurist and business adviser David Houle. That high cost, the result of American healthcare’s focus on cures, not prevention, is handicapping business in the global marketplace.

With 70% of healthcare costs going to treat just 10% of the population, Houle maintains that a change in approach to medical care is both necessary and about to occur.

Today, insurers pay for procedures and not prevention; there are 18,000 billing codes for treatment, he says, and “not a single code for payment on keeping a patient healthy.” “That is about to change. Primary care physicians, the ones who know the patient best, will become central to the new health care delivery system and will actually get paid for doing what they are supposed to do, keep their patients healthy.” Read the rest of this entry »

You walk into the office kitchen or break room with cup in hand only to find that someone took the last drop and didn’t make a new pot. Annoying, isn’t it? Or how about that mysterious supply cabinet that seems to swallow pens the way a dryer does socks? They go someone, but there’s never a note telling you to order more. We could go on; everyone has their own story to tell. Admins, though, bear the brunt of inconsiderate office mates, since they’re the ones who do the ordering, make the copies, answer the phone, sort the mail, and a million other things. Here are some tips to promote office harmony from an office etiquette pro. AEAP

“Companies are using flexible talent more – creating opportunities,” says Dice.com, the IT specialty job board. More than 70,000 new tech consulting jobs were created in 2011, and the pace this year is just about the same, with 16,000 new consulting positions coming on-line in the first quarter. While demand for IT professionals in nearly all areas of specialty is strong, pushing up salaries, software developers are doing especially well. Dice says their paychecks are getting fatter at about twice the rate for other specialists. And consultants average about $20,000 more than their full-time, permanent counterparts. New York / New Jersey, and the Washington DC / Baltimore metro areas, and Silicon Valley have the most jobs posted online. Dice.com