It may be a sign of the difficult times we’ve been through of late: a recent poll indicates that 23% of employers are seeing internship applications from mature, experienced workers, people who are pursuing the same positions as college students.  Internships obviously provide jobseekers with a way to “audition” for permanent roles, and give them a chance to pick up new experience and skills.  Other indications from the survey?

Regardless of applicants’ ages, more than one-quarter (27 percent) of employers said they plan to hire interns during the remainder of 2010 to help support workloads. Fourteen percent said they anticipate hiring paid interns, while 7 percent said they won’t be paying their interns. An additional 5 percent said they will hire both paid and unpaid interns. Fifty-three percent of employers said they plan to pay interns $10 or more per hour, while 5 percent said they will pay $25 or more per hour.

Let’s be clear about the considerable distinctions between internships and temporary or contingent hiring: the latter usually require specific, established skills that are put to the job immediately tackling very imminent challenges.  Internships can provide support for permanent staff, but almost always not in the kind of jobs that are critical to a company’s core success.  Often, as the survey goes on to indicate, they’re in maintenance or errand-heavy roles, where they’re peripheral to real responsibilities.

The economic recover may be struggling a bit as it tries to gain traction, but it doesn’t seem to deter “job hoppers” like those profiled in this RedEye article, predominantly young people who have come to believe that transient, temporary jobs are the desired norm, and that the old paradigm of lifetime employment may be obsolete.  As Lindsey Pollak, author of “Getting from College to Career” puts it:

“The whole paradigm of how we work is completely changing. That old model of get one job out of college till you retire with a gold watch is completely, utterly gone.”

This new workforce — educated, highly mobile, not just accepting of transitional or temporary employment but sometimes even enthusiastic in their adoption of it — makes for a dynamic and vibrant new labor pool for hiring firms and staffing departments to take into consideration.

In the past three months, more people quit their jobs than were laid off…and it’s a good sign for the economy that it’s happening. As recruitment and jobs experts who spoke with The Christian Science Monitor pointed out…

In general, that’s a sign of better economic times,” says Donald Siegel, dean of the school of business at the University at Albany, part of the State University of New York. “I interpret it as a sign of an improving job market … when people feel confident enough to quit their jobs.

The jobs market has improved, but it’s still no walk in the park for college graduates.   One survey found that slightly over 24% of grads had a job waiting for them – up from 19% the year before.

Much of that hiring is apparently not permanent, as firms are still treading carefully: temporary and contract hires make up a fair share of the new jobs grads are finding.

As one graduate put it, “The tendency that I’ve seen among my friends is for someone to get a job, but it’s a yearlong contract for a project.  Then they expect to lay off the people they hired for the project, so within the year they’re going to be looking again for another job.”

These grads may be in the vanguard of a new model for the job market, where “permalancing” and conditional employment is more the norm, rather than the exception.  The jobs market of tomorrow may demand more and more flexibility of this kind from employers and employees alike, which will make the expertise of recruiters and staffing professionals more crucial than ever, linking the best prospects, companies, screening processes and connective technologies together like never before.

This article from the Tribune points out how Illinois’ budgetary problems are discouraging one of our most important economic resources from looking for their future here in their home state: college graduates seeking a future in education.

Young, educated workers are critical to keeping growth and progress on the march in any region. Just ask employers and analysts in other cities throughout the “Rust Belt” about what happens when opportunities disappear.  It’s certainly happened over previous decades in Illinois, in towns and cities outside Chicago, as changes have forced young people to go looking elsewhere for good jobs.   Losing smart, capable workers does lasting damage to any region’s ability to rebound or even be fundamentally competitive when times get better.

Education grads are especially important. It’s their passion and enthusiasm that helps to keep the spark alive for students.  But when thousands of education jobs are being cut because of shortfalls, damage is done to everybody’s future…damage that’s very hard to overcome.

Nobody said it’s easy to cope with the current situation from a governance standpoint.  So here’s hoping the legislature and executive branch in Springfield can act wisely in dealing with the state’s fiscal crisis.  They’ve got very hard choices to make, and the sooner we can all come to grips with the consequences, the sooner we can move forward.

Federal employment data for April shows a net gain of 290,000 jobs, a heartening increase.  Unemployment rose slightly, though that was attributed to more people leaving the sidelines and re-entering the market now that there’s been improvement:

“It’s fantastic news; 290,000 jobs is a lot of jobs,” said Chicago-based Morningstar Inc. economist Robert Johnson. “I think we’re on the road to recovery here, and I think we’ll probably see 200,000 to 300,000 job growth [each month] for most of the rest of the year. We clearly have turned the corner.”

231,000 of these jobs were from private employers, and it was the single largest one-month gain since March 2006.

More and more indicators show that there’s a steady gain in hiring by U.S. companies.  A large share of that is in temps and temp-to-hire positions, which is the typical trend when a recovery is underway.

The one significant change from prior years may be that many of those positions are not only contingent, but will in all likelihood stay that way, according to many experts.  That’s because a new model is taking hold in the workplace, for better or worse, which is one where a larger share of a company’s labor force is strictly contingent.  As this article points out,

…many business groups and labor advocates believe the contingency work force is on the rise and will become a mainstay in the U.S. companies even after economic hard times are behind us.

There is, obviously, a lot of debate about the impact of this change, and its long-range impact on workers, consumers and the economy.  But it’s apparent to any businessperson that the flexibility and thrift of temp and temp-to-hire employment options help them stay competitive at a time when the pressures and costs of doing business don’t make that a simple task.

This interesting survey indicates that workforce loyalty is on the rise during this recession.  You might think this increase owed to simple gratitude during tough times, but there’s far more to it than that, according to the analysis:

The survey, conducted between early October 2009 and the end of January 2010, finds that 34 percent say the economic downturn has made them more loyal, while 14 percent say it has made them less loyal, and 52 percent say it’s made no difference.

Those workers who are more loyal to their employers attribute the shift to positive management, pay levels that have improved or remained steady, and active communication from senior executives. Those who are less loyal say it’s due to poor management, falling pay, and low company morale.

Companies that viewed the downturn as an opportunity prospered, in terms of solidifying loyalty and morale — through better communication, by attacking the hardships and challenges frankly and openly, and maintaining a positive and upbeat attitude with their workforce.

There’s every chance that more members of the post-recession workforce will be temps, it appears; the difficulties of the recession have made employers cautious, not just in the near term but probably over the long haul as well.  That will mean more temporary positions versus full-time hires, even after the economy improves for many businesses.

This Business Week cover story cites figures from the Iowa Policy Project, a nonpartisan think tank, has estimated that 26% of the U.S. workforce had jobs in 2005 that were in one way or another “nonstandard.”    The trend is, apparently, for that number to grow, because of economic pressures and because more and more businesses are becoming comfortable and experienced with utilizing contingent labor resources versus permanent.

This makes it more important than ever for staffing firms that specialize in temp and temp-to-hire services to stay on the hunt for the best-qualified personnel possible.  With a greater pool of prospective temps out there, it might seem simpler to find a solid candidate, but the cream still rises to the top in any market.  Staffing firms and their clients are still best served by thorough screening of prospects.  Regardless of the state of the overall market, firms are always better off bringing on the highest-caliber contributors available.

Here’s a relevant survey by CareerBuilder.com that puts numbers to something that nearly anyone in recruitment and staffing has observed or themselves instituted: the practice of using the social networking aspects of the Web to evaluate potential hires.

What that means for those firms, for staffing consultants and for jobseekers is that there may very well be reasons not to hire an individual, reasons that have nothing to do with his or her resume or stated experience – and everything to do with what they post or reveal via the Internet.

Here are some of the reasons cited in the survey for not making a hire, based on what surveyed employers discovered by checking prospects’ profiles and posts on social media sites:

• Candidate posted provocative or inappropriate photographs or information – 53 percent
• Candidate posted content about them drinking or using drugs – 44 percent
• Candidate bad-mouthed their previous employer, co-workers or clients – 35 percent
• Candidate showed poor communication skills – 29 percent
• Candidate made discriminatory comments – 26 percent
• Candidate lied about qualifications – 24 percent
• Candidate shared confidential information from previous employer – 20 percent

What a prospect posts on Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn or other sites is perfectly fair game for any staffing consultant or HR person who wants to make a comprehensive investigation of an applicant.

There’s also good advice here for jobseekers: the barrier between our “public” and “private” selves is pretty thin on the Web.  The offhand gripe about your last boss that you post today may very well come back to haunt you tomorrow.