This week, we are very pleased to welcome author, syndicated columnist, and former HR executive Nan S. Russell, to the roster of accomplished job search and career professionals contributing their expert advice to help Job-Hunt’s visitors. 

As Job-Hunt’s Job Loss Recovery Expert, Nan will  help Job-Hunt’s visitors bounce back after job loss through her articles in Job-Hunt’s new Job Loss Recovery section.  To get started, read Nan’s first article, 3 Tracks to Accelerate Your Job Loss Recovery.

Nan has a B.A. from Stanford University in Psychology and a M.A. from the University of Michigan in Educational Psychology.  Leader of the popular Rebooting After Job Loss seminars, Nan will help those Job-Hunt visitors who have lost their jobs, or who have friends or family members who have lost jobs, to recover from this often-traumatic experience. 

Nan has experienced the trauma of being fired - from her first professional job after college, no less.  So, although she moved on to a very successful career as both an HR executive and line manager, even heading a subsidiary, she has personal knowledge of how painful and difficult recovering from a job loss can be. 

Since 2006, Nan has been President of MountainWorks Communications LLC, a company she founded to support her passion for helping organizations build winning work cultures, and helping people bring the best of who they are to the world, realize their dreams, and live their life’s potential. 

Nan’s first book, Nibble Your Way to Success: 56 Winning Tips for Taking Charge of Your Career, debuted in March, 2007.  Her second book, Hitting Your Stride: Your Work, Your Way, released in January, 2008 by Capital Books, won a 2009 Axiom Business Book Award.  Currently, Nan is working on book three: NEXT! Rebooting After Job Loss.  Her work insights column, Winning at Working appears in over ninety publications.

Nan’s education, experience as an HR executive, plus her personal experience with job loss, will provide Job-Hunt’s visitors with helpful and very well-informed articles on this often-difficult transition from job loss to re-employment.  Yes, it does happen!  Even in this economy!

For more from Nan, follow her on Twitter at @Nan_Russell, visit her NanRussell.com Website, and read her Winning at Working column.

Meet all of Job-Hunt’s  Job Search Experts.

Related Articles : Online Reputation Management: Unlock Your Job Search Monitor Your Reputation with Google Alerts

Employers are Googling you.  Do you know what they are finding?

Recently a colleague shared a very scary story about one of her clients that many job seekers should know about because recent research has shown that this is very likely not an uncommon event.

My colleague prepared a very professional resume for her client which he used in several months of job hunting.

After absolutely NO response to resume submissions in 4 months, they decided to Google him to see if something there might be causing a problem.  BINGO!  

Someone with the same name was involved in a US Supreme Court obscenity case!  This job seeker had a serious reputation management problem, and he’s NOT alone!

He was not the person named in the obscentiy case, but it didn’t matter.  Someone who didn’t know him wouldn’t know the difference.

However, his reputation management issue was managed successfully.  Here’s how:

This is the “hot” field right now, no pun intended!

New “green” job sites are sprouting up everywhere.  Colleges are rushing to add these curricula to their offerings as soon as they can identify – and retain – qualified faculty members.

Businesses are rushing to fill the need caused by higher fuel prices with everything from new, more energy-efficient products to natural gas-powered taxi cabs, like the one I recently used to get from SEATAC to downtown Seattle.

The current cost of oil, gasoline, etc. may be hurting our pocket books right now, but science and industry are rushing to solve the problems for us – higher mileage cars, solar panels generating electricity,  alternate fuels for transportation, heating/air conditioning, and power.

This could be the biggest mistake made by the oil industry and the oil-producing countries -  these higher prices have finally made alternative energy sources more economically sound.  In the long run, assuming we survive, this could be a really good thing for the economy and the environment.

All this turmoil and change are going to generate real economic growth and new job opportunites for everyone from the solar panel installer to the biochemist developing new biofuels!  I’m not happy about the price I pay to put gas in my car or to heat my home this winter, but the “silver lining” is visible.

For more on all ”green industry jobs,” check out Job-Hunt’s Green Industry Job Search Guide which includes a glossary of terms, articles about green industry careers by Green Careers for Dummies author Carole McClelland, and over 270 links to green industry associations, green job boards, and employers. 

If you are interested in finding a “green collar” job, check out EcoEmploy, a site which is focused on “environmental jobs and careers.”