Creating Career Opportunities For Yourself - YAHOO!

To: BUSINESS AND STATE EDITORS

INDIANAPOLIS, March 19, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Young Entrepreneur Seminar (YES) is designed by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) to support the efforts of young people looking for different career opportunities. YES provides young entrepreneurs with new techniques to start a business or expand their ideas. It is an opportunity to hear and speak with established young entrepreneurs who are successfully operating businesses. SBA business counselors will be available to meet one-to-one to discuss business ideas. For more information or to register go to http://events.sba.gov select "IN" on map.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110909/DC65875LOGO )

The young entrepreneur panel will consist of:

A.G. Maas Company - Laura Sniadecki - Maintenance & Facility Supply

AIT Laboratories - Dr. Michael Evans - Toxicology Laboratory Services Indy Photo Booths - Beth Johnson - Mobile Photo Booth and Manufacturer Intergalactic Toys - Michael Schott - Retail Toy Store & Toy Designer MRA Media Group - Andrew Machota - Social Media and Marketing

You do not have to be a student to attend this event. Individuals of all ages are encouraged to attend.

The YES event is free and registration is required, visit http://events.sba.gov or call the SBA Indiana District Office at 317-226-7272. YES begins at 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 28, 2012 at the Herron Art School - IUPUI campus.

The U.S. Small Business Administration is an agency of the Federal government. Reasonable arrangements for persons with disabilities will be made if a written request and contact information is received in advance. Contact the U.S. Small Business Administration, Indiana District Office, 8500 Keystone Crossing, Suite 400 Indianapolis, Indiana 46240 or (317) 226-7272. All of the SBA's programs and services are provided to the public on a nondiscriminatory basis.

Contact: Sharon Murff (317) 226-7272 x123

Internet Address: http://www.sba.gov/news Follow us on Twitter, Facebook & Blogs

SOURCE U.S. Small Business Administration

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Big data creating big career opportunities for IT pros - Infoworld

New job opportunities are emerging for IT professionals in the field of "big data," the term used to describe how corporations gather vast amounts of real-time data about their customers and analyze that data to drive decision making and increase profitability.

A new job title -- data scientist -- is all the rage. A data scientist typically has a background in computer science or mathematics as well as the analytical skills necessary to find the proverbial needle in a haystack of data gathered by the corporation.

[ Also check out the Top 20 metro areas for tech jobs. | Keep up on the day's tech news headlines with InfoWorld's Today's Headlines: Wrap Up newsletter. ]

"A data scientist is somebody who is inquisitive, who can stare at data and spot trends," says Anjul Bhambhri, vice president of Big Data Products at IBM. "It's almost like a Renaissance individual who really wants to learn and bring change to an organization."

Unheard of 18 months ago, "data scientist" has exploded in popularity as a Google search term. The number of Google searches of "data scientist" hit peaks 20 times higher than normal in the last quarter of 2011 and the first quarter of 2012. It's a popular search term in high-tech hotspots such as San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and New York.

Among the U.S. companies looking to hire data scientists are PayPal, Amazon, and HP. Indeed, the term "data scientist" is mentioned in 195 job listings on the Dice.com website for IT professionals.

IT departments also are adding data-centric developers and system administrators who specialize in tools such as the open source Apache Hadoop software. Hadoop is designed for data-intensive, distributed applications and used by such popular websites as Yahoo, Facebook, LinkedIn and eBay.

MORE: Hadoop wins over enterprises, spawns talent crunch

Hadoop is mentioned in 612 of 83,122 job listings on Dice.com. Among the companies looking to hire Hadoop software engineers and developers are AT&T Interactive, Sears, PayPal, AOL and Deloitte.

Hadoop "is an emerging skill," says Alice Hill, managing director of Dice.com. "Companies need to manage large-scale data operations, and the whole idea of Hadoop is that you can do it inexpensively. That works really well with what we're seeing in terms of the movement to the cloud."

Hill sees opportunities related to Hadoop for both entry-level and experienced IT staff, as well as for hardware and software specialists.

"Traditional hardware people need to figure out how to cluster in different environments. It's not just about buying a database and hooking it up to a hard drive. Now you have distributed databases that are hooked up to multiple servers and multiple hard drives," Hill says. Hadoop "is inexpensive, but it require somebody who really knows how to scale hardware."

Hill says Hadoop is also a good skill for IT professionals with relational database management experience to pursue. "If you really understand data structure and queries, there's going to be a lot of job opportunities," she adds.

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Creating Opportunities for Youth, This Summer and Beyond - Whitehouse.gov (press release)

Michael Kempner, a member of the White House Council for Community Solutions, recently blogged about Summer Jobs+, the President’s push to partner with the private sector to create summer employment opportunities for more than 250,000 young Americans.  Michael rightly points out that a summer job means so much more than simply a paycheck – it provides “hope, [a] future, respect, and better lives for the nearly 7 million young people who…don’t attend school or have a job.”  His message challenges other business owners to consider the impact they could have in the life of a young person right now by offering them a chance at employment.

"Last week, President Obama kicked off of Summer Jobs+, the administration’s partnership with the private sector with the goal of creating 250,000 employment opportunities by this summer for our nation’s youth.

I was there with fellow member of the White House Council for Community Solutions, musician Jon Bon Jovi, to do a tweet-up about the importance of connecting young people with mentorship, teaching soft and hard skills, and providing employment this summer and beyond.

A summer job means hope, future, respect, and better lives for the nearly 7 million young people who, right now in the United States, don’t attend school or have a job.  Several of these young people were on hand at the event to share their stories, and what they said was exactly in line with what Jon Bon Jovi and I heard on our listening tour this past summer. Young people want jobs…they want opportunity. They are optimistic, they want to be seen as the hope for the future, not a burden to be dealt with.  But they don’t often know how to find the programs and help they need, or they have a past that gets in the way of their future.

Think back on your own summer jobs when you were young  – whether it was mowing lawns, caring for neighbor’s children, interning in local government, or flipping burgers – those jobs taught us discipline, work ethic, time management, budgeting – life skills that made us better employees and in some cases, eventually, employers.

But the recession has driven youth unemployment up to unprecedented levels. Only 25 percent of teens were employed this summer.  Where are young people learning these important skills?

The answer is, they aren’t. And it’s a dangerous trend for the future prosperity of our country. A “disconnected” youth will make about $400,000 less than their working, educated peers over a lifetime, along with other implications.

There are things we can do to put all young people on the right track. It might be difficult to think about summer jobs in the middle of winter, but those of us who run our own companies should be thinking about it now and planning ahead. If all the small and medium businesses provided just one internship or opportunity to one disadvantaged youth this summer we could change millions of lives.

Why wait? Provide one or two opportunities this winter. Something to think about…

To learn more visit www.dol.gov/summerjobs."

 Paul Monteiro is an Associate Director at the White House Office of Public Engagement.

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