Press Releases
New Professionals Face Tough Competition
Audio Program Helps Twenty-somethings Navigate the Corporate World
October 2, 2008(Boston, MA)
When recent graduates entered the job market this spring, finding a job was hard enough with an unemployment rate of 5.3%. The U.S. Department of Labor report released September 5 indicated August unemployment was up to 6.1%, tightening the market as new professionals compete with more experienced, and sophisticated, job-seekers.
Technical skills can be trained on the job, but soft skills that no one talks about provide the winning advantage when landing the perfect position or client. "Members of Gen Y really want to do well at their first job, but they're often unprepared for life in the corporate world. New professionals learn the hard way that by behaving too casually, the message they're sending says 'comfort' instead of 'committed,'" says workplace expert and President of Neels & Company, Gretchen Neels.
Neels & Company is releasing The New Professional's Guide to Success, a downloadable 90-minute audio program and 18-page User's Guide, that provides ground rules for communication, protocol and other basics to prevent embarrassing lessons for employees and costly mistakes for their employers. Presenting The New Professional's Guide to Success in a downloadable format allows flexibility and privacy, and corporate and individual licenses make the program accessible to human resources and hiring managers, parents and mentors, as well as to professionals taking the initiative to improve their own performance and image.
Neels & Company also conducts workshops for new professionals and the Baby Boomers and Gen Xers who supervise them, consulting to organizations on the importance of generational integration, and impressing upon law students and those finishing MBA programs that the way to get noticed at work is to put the iPod away and develop a good attitude, pay attention to the culture, and of course, produce excellent work.
Neels's no-nonsense manner is both old school and innovative. Having little tolerance for the deep decline in standards of dress, she advises new attorneys at top law firms to not only adhere to a more formal dress code, but to "Dress up in a Big Bird costume every day if that's what the firm wants. For $160K a year, who wouldn't?"
About Neels & Company
Headquartered in Boston, Neels & Company, Inc. - Strategic Business Communication, is the leading provider of soft skills training to professional services firms, covering all areas of business communication. Neels & Company is a content provider to Thomson Reuters' continuing legal education division (WestLegalEdcenter), and clients include Cisco Systems, Liberty Insurance Group, Winston & Strawn, LLP, Harvard Business School, The Fuqua Business School at Duke University, Babson College and Northeastern University.
Gretchen Neels, President, has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Forbes.com, FoxBusiness and PINK Magazine.
Contact: Christel Shea, Director of Communications
Email: info@neelscompany.com
Phone: 800-975-7031 ext. 704
Website: www.neelscompany.com