“In pretty much all ways, we’re belt-tightening just in case things get worse and also to eliminate the credit debt we’ve carried,” Bernstein says. “Despite all that, we’re very optimistic about a turnaround, perhaps still in time for us to pursue our previous plans - but we’re not counting on it.”

Ellen Naylor, 52, says she and her husband, 54, are also being squeezed by the recession. “Like many our portfolio took a beating this year since we did not see this coming,” she says. “We are pretty angry in a way since we have always been fiscally conservative and feel like we’re paying for others’ indulgences, not the least of which is the financial industry which lent people money who had no business ever assuming a mortgage.”

Naylor, who is based in Colorado, says they’re “belt-tightening like crazy” to cope, and that she and her husband are continuing to work, doing what they love - he is an artist, and she is writing a book on cooperative intelligence. “I have noticed that many who retire lose their minds and their spirit, so passionate working could well be a solution, and on lower speed as we get older,” she says.

Bernstein, Naylor and their spouses aren’t the only ones altering their retirement plans - but sources offer differing opinions as to why boomers and older Americans are doing so. Some say it’s due to the dismal economy, but others chalk it up to an innate drive to keep working, one that existed before the recession. (Baby boomers include approximately 78 million individuals born between 1946 and 1964.)

Retirement: “No, thanks” or “No can do”?

“There is no question that fewer boomers will be retiring. All research and studies point to this,” says Arthur Koff, CEO/founder of RetiredBrains.com, a web site that links boomers, seniors and retirees with employers.  “It is not only because of losses they’ve suffered in their retirement portfolios, but also because of the decreasing value of their homes and the huge unexepcted costs for health care even after they are eligible for Medicare.”

An October 2008 report by AARP shows that among workers 45 and older, nearly two-thirds say they’re likely to delay retirement and work longer if the economy doesn’t “improve significantly.” Older Americans are also concerned. Golden Gateway Financial recently conducted a survey of individuals 65 and older and found that in response to the fiscal crisis, 31 percent are delaying retirement, and 22 percent are returning to work.

“Speaking as a member of the boomer generation, the answer is - if you’re still working don’t give up your day job,” says Sally Haver, SVP of business development at The Ayers Group/Career Partners International in New York. “There isn’t anyone I know whose retirement portfolio hasn’t been adversely affected by the economic downturn - not to mention those who chose to invest with [Bernard] Madoff, who will be working for 10 years after they’re dead.”

But others say current financial woes won’t make much difference, because of a number of boomers weren’t planning to retire anyway. Phyllis Weiss Haserot, president of Practice Development Counsel, a consulting and coaching firm, says even before the recession, fewer boomers were planning to retire than in previous generations. “They want to continue to contribute and feel healthy, fit and intellectually stimulated to do so. The economic downturn and financial losses are making many boomers even more determined to keep working,” she explains.

Other evidence supports Haserot’s view. A 2005 survey by the MetLife Foundation and Civic Ventures found half of all adults 50 to 70 saying they were interested in taking jobs now or in the future to help improve the quality of life in their communities. Meanwhile, Harvard University recently launched a fellowship program to help students mostly in their 50s and early 60s with “a second-act career in a new stage in life,” according to the New York Times.

Whether it’s due to the recession or other motivations, some boomers and older Americans seem to be staying put or resurfacing in the job market. What might this mean for the workforce?

Labor-Market Impact

Experts offer different takes on what could happen.

Ira Wolfe, president of Success Performance Solutions, says the good news is that with fewer older workers leaving, the brain drain will slow down. “The very, very bad news is that management doesn’t have their pulse on what’s really happening in the workforce. The Gen Xers have been patiently waiting for 10 to 15 years for the boomers to get out of their way so they can move up. If the boomers stay longer, the Gen X frustration level will likely boil over as they are getting squeezed by the gray ceiling and Millennial surge,” Wolfe explains.

(Generation X is roughly the group born between 1965 and 1980, and the Millennials/Gen Y followed.*)

A mass exodus of Gen X could leave a gap in companies’ succession plans, he says, leading to an even larger brain drain and skills gap. “It is evident from the pattern of layoffs that workforce planning is completely off the radar. Many companies will come to regret those decisions - my guess beginning in 2010 and full force by 2012,” Wolfe says.

Haver points to another upside: more knowledgeable workers will be available for part-time and consulting work in their areas of expertise. Or, as Haserot says, intergenerational tensions may flare up: Boomers might be reluctant to share their knowledge with younger workers, so as to protect their own job security.

But some say Generations X and Y shouldn’t despair.

“Even if fewer boomers retire than originally expected, I don’t believe this will leave the Gen Xers and Gen Yers struggling to get ahead. If you recalll, just a few years ago the concern was that there weren’t nearly enough younger workers to replace the ones projected to retire. Perhaps the recent shift in the economy will actually create more of a workforce balance in the years ahead,” says Barbara Safani, president of New York-based Career Solvers, a career-management firm.

*Parameters for defining generations vary.

Here are some links to explore this topic further:

• Retirement Security or Insecurity? The Experience of Workers Aged 45 and Older (AARP report)
• Madoff Scheme Kept Rippling Outward, Across Borders (The New York Times)
• New Face of Work Survey (MetLife/Civic Ventures)
• Starting Over, With a Second Career Goal of Changing Society (The New York Times)
• Aging in the Workplace: 2009 & Beyond (Workforce Learning)
• Six Management Ideas to Watch in ‘09 (The Wall Street Journal)

Kristina Cowan is a Chicago-based freelance writer who specializes in education and workforce issues, but she’s covered everything from Barcelona’s polyglot culture to teen pregnancy to senior citizens’ lifestyles.

Well, not really, I suppose I could have held out for an in-person meeting and then I would have been obliged to accept his location. That’s the thing about negotiations - you have to know when to press for what matters to you and be very selective about it. We agreed I would call him, but I’m no pushover.

A lack of good negotiation skills can hold back career advancement - and worse - says Hird who in addition to running his own firm also teaches an extension course at UC-Berkeley. “The most popular topics for [my students] are how to get a raise, and how to deal with a bad boss,” he says.

Pardon the generalization, but it turns out that two groups in particular are most in need of his instruction: women and immigrants. “Anyone who enters a negotiation with individuals from another culture needs to understand how they process information and come to decisions,” he says. “It has been quantified and proven that women are at a self-inflicted disadvantage when they negotiate for themselves. They [typically] don’t ask and don’t take care of themselves.”

This is an axiom shared by Deepika Bajaj, the force behind Invincibelle, a site that “empowers” women in the world. “In a corporate setting you need to be very clear about what you want,” says Bajaj. “If you get what you ask for you will be more productive in your job.”

Don’t Ask, Don’t Receive

“In this particular market most people would agree it’s a pretty good time to assert yourself - there’s pretty low unemployment,” says Hird. “You don’t ever threaten to walk because you have to be prepared for them to say ‘Don’t let the door hit you on the way out’. If you get a ‘no’ to a raise … ask ‘What do I need to do and by when?’ And you negotiate those terms so they’re aggressive - and make sure that you can clear the bar.”

And yes, he adds, “You have to be willing to walk. A lot of students look like deer in the headlights when you say that to them.”

Here are five bullet points about negotiations that Hird would like you to know:

• Be prepared. You have to do your homework. It doesn’t do any good to ask for raise if the company can’t pay it. If you’re going to go in and shoot from the hip and you haven’t armed yourself, you get caught up in the heat of the negotiation.
• You have to be willing to walk away.
• You’re trying to create value not divide it. Even if it’s 60-40 both sides should get more. A big mistake is people walk in and negotiate the interests of the asset. But before they divide it they should try to expand it.
• Rationality and fairness are relative. What’s rational and fair to you might be unfair to someone else.
• You have to practice asking for raises and promotions. By the third time Hird’s students get it down.

The book might also be called Get Your Act Together, Dude!

Marty, the father, is an executive coach and clinical psychologist, skills that must come in handy in many boardrooms. His son, Joshua, is an endurance athlete, champion cyclist, and trainer.  Together they offer practical insights about mind, body and career management that break little if any new ground yet usefully survey a lot of recent thinking in a wide range of areas - down to yoga in the office and stretching exercises.

Take for example their observation that every day your body replaces 1 percent of its cells. “That means in three to four months you have an opportunity to regenerate most of your body’s building blocks. Are you going to strengthen them or allow them to get weaker?” That’s a perfectly good question and like most people I tend to get stronger in the summer and weaker in the winter when as a knowledge worker I’m even more sedentary. I lack a fitness plan.

The authors outline fitness plans - not just for health but also for time, stress and career management among other topics. “Simply put, if you don’t have a plan for your time, someone else will,” they observe, correctly. The Seldmans offer productivity suggestions including, interestingly, advice to “never say yes quickly. Few of us can judge accurately how long an assignment or project will take based on someone else’s description of it. Even after close scrutiny, we underestimate the time required to complete a task.”

Ultimately the best thing in the book is practical advice about how to stay physically fit and achieve peak performance while working a busy, executive career.

For more information about the Seldman’s strategies - I should have given myself more time! - check out Executive Stamina.org.

In a recession jobs are last to get hit, yet are the slowest part of business spending to recover. This is the time to develop or revise an escape plan to insulate you from possible downturns or unforeseen changes at work.

“I don’t know if I would go so far as to call social networking a safety net,” says Kelly Krebs, Senior Account Executive at Horn Group, “but it can help if you if you are looking to move into a new career or if you are looking to expand your customer or partner base.”

Even though the economy is slumping that doesn’t mean you should stop expanding your web of contacts. While ultimately you will find & add contacts one at a time, the truth is you can better leverage your resources by joining social network-based communities.

Most social networks are the sum of many groups, specialized around regions, companies, alumni networks, plus personal and professional interests. How do you tap into these communities? It’s fairly easy on Facebook and LinkedIn (and now FastCompany.com too) - you can search by topic area; see network “newsfeeds” listing which groups your contacts have joined; often groups are listed in your contacts’ profiles too.

While identifying and joining a community is fairly easy, the reality is that one generally needs to invest a bit of time and energy building a community presence. In other words, before you tap a community (unless yours is a particularly touching story) the best strategy is to “pay it forward” - help others first.

We’re not talking about Karma - in the sense of what comes around goes around. Rather we’re talking about building your presence (also called your brand) in an online community. This requires an investment of time, usually two or three months, before your comments in discussion boards become familiar and respected by the group.

“For the network to be of value it needs to be cultivated through selfless acts of service and mutual benefit,” says Alan Farhi, Staffing Manager at Epiq Systems, whom I met on LinkedIn. “Trying to cultivate a network in order to find a career opportunity when you’re desperate or have lost your job is generally a little too late and a little too transparent.”

How will you know? Other members of the group will want to connect with you, even if you have never met offline and wouldn’t recognize them at the corner store.

“I often see new salespeople attend one or two networking events and say ‘networking doesn’t work’, says Cathy Jo Morris, Regional Sales Manager at AAA Washington. “Of course it doesn’t work after one or two handshakes - you need to give something to the group first before you can expect anything back. Networking is a marathon, not a sprint.”

Farhi agrees. “Social and Professional Networks work best when you don’t really need them,” he says. “A safety net seems like a last-resort measure.”  In other words, don’t wait until you need your social network, start deepening it now.

Have you ever asked yourself whether you have achieved good work/life-balance?  What criteria do you base your answers on?

Most people tend to connect work/life balance with time or hours spent at work.  While that can be part of it, I would like to challenge your thinking on a deeper level.  I believe it’s about the quality of how you spend your time, not just time itself.  I ask myself: “How rewarded do I feel by what I did today?”

Maintaining balance is an ideal that permeates our lives in multiple ways.  People go to chiropractors when they have a “misalignment” in their body and are looking to be “cracked” back into place.  Generally, when one area is out of alignment it can have a ripple effect upon other parts of the body.  The same thing happens in our lives.  When one area is out of balance, it usually can, and most often does, have an effect (whether we realize it or not) on other areas in our lives.

Consider that job stress doesn’t respect the boundaries of the workplace.  Stress at work can affect how “present” you are with your family at home, which could lead to poor communication and arguments with your significant other, or lead to a lack of sleep, which could affect your physical and mental health, leading to further unhappiness and loss of motivation… and on and on and on.  Do you see how easy it is for a misalignment in one area to affect the balance in the rest of our life?

You now may be wondering how do I know if my work/life balance is in-sync?   More importantly, how can I achieve maximum fulfillment in every area of my life?

Take a few minutes to answer the questions below.  They should provide some insight into how in-balance your whole life may or may not be right now.

1.    Do you go to sleep at night feeling rewarded by what you did that day?
2.    Do you look forward to getting up in the morning?
3.    Are you in control of your stress and anxiety at work? At home?
4.    Are you proud of what you do for a living?
5.    Are you happy with the amount of time you set aside to do the things you love?
6.    Are you spending enough quality time with loved ones?
7.    Are you proud of how you take care of yourself both physically and mentally?

What impact are your answers having on you right now?  What emotions and thoughts are coming up?  Become aware of what has just happened and reflect.  A routine self-check to see where we are at any given moment is important.

These questions are not meant to upset or de-motivate you.  Rather, if you say “no” to any of the above then look at is as a great window of opportunity for you to choose to create a positive change in your life.  These questions are designed to heighten your self-awareness and to help you understand your thinking.  What areas in your life are going really well?  What seems to be missing or off kilter and needs to be “cracked” back into place?  If you drift off course, then actively choose to get back on track.

Ask yourself, what could you start doing more – or less - of?  Which positive change or changes would make the biggest impact in your life?  A professional coach can work with you to help put your life back “in-balance” through awareness, action, accountability and results.

Stephanie Vora is a certified coach who works with motivated professionals to achieve their ideal work/life balance.  She has received a dual certification in Executive and Personal Coaching from New York University and is reachable at mail@stephanievora.com.

Most companies forget that last point or possibly they don’t know where to start.

Deutsche Bank delivered on all of the above when it created several Web-based videos of employees talking about why they work there.

And having checked it out, I can see why Deutsche Bank was proclaimed the best corporate careers site by a group of students, recent graduates and Swedish researchers.

Potentialpark Communications, a Swedish-based research and consulting firm, says that it surveyed 1,800 U.S. students and recent graduates in an effort to identify the leading corporate careers sites. The sites were evaluated for six criteria: Usability, Employer Branding, Talent Relationship Building, Application Management, Recruitment Process, and Assessment & Individual Feedback. The complete list of winners is here.

One of the researchers told me that the use of corporate videos is on the rise. “Already about one third of the rated companies uses videos, for example to present possible future colleagues, a walk through the office or the day-to-day work,” says Potentialpark’s Magdalena Knott. “The use of blogs, pod casts and web casts has not advanced too far until now, but the importance is rising.”

Here’s the Top 10 U.S. Corporate Career Websites

1. Deutsche Bank
2. Microsoft
3. BCG (Boston Consulting Group)
4. Merrill Lynch
5. Accenture
6. Charles Schwab
7. UBS
8. Booz Allen Hamilton
9. Intel
10. Bertelsmann

Source: Potentialpark Communications

Interestingly, in the European version of this annual study, Deutsche Bank, a German company, placed in seventh. Go figure. The European winner was Deutsche Post World Net, a logistics company.

Here’s the Top 10 European Corporate Career Websites

1. DPWN
2. ABB
3. IBM
4. Accenture
5. PwC
6. Vodafone
7. Deutsche Bank
8. BCG
9. UBS
10. Shell

Source: Potentialpark Communications

We asked Potentialpark to break down for us the winners in several vertical industries:

•         Investment Banking, Deutsche Bank
•         Consumer Goods, Procter & Gamble
•         High Tech, Intel
•         Audit & Accounting, Deloitte

Not only is climate-change management a relatively new course of study on campuses such as UC-Berkeley, it’s also a new career path, at least in the United Kingdom. A scan of several leading U.S. job boards shows a wide range of related environmental services jobs, drawn from diverse disciplines such as meteorology, geology and engineering.

Futurists, take note: Jobs that are today lumped into the environmental-services bucket may morph into something a bit more strategic.

When it comes to environmental planning or strategies, corporations hire specialists as needed but turn to consultants for strategic advice or project management. Yet driven by successes in creating “green” energy use strategies, many corporations that consume natural resources or have business operations in climate-sensitive locations are hiring environmentally-savvy managers.

Typical entry-level academic qualifications include a B.S. or B.A. in engineering or environmental fields or a science-related graduate degree with a business emphasis, too. That last part is a key. If you can mix environmental management with a business degree, you can write your own ticket. Climate problems won’t be cleared up any time soon.

While there’s no formal pedigree-setting standards body for climate-change management, as graduate schools begin to produce candidates adept in these technical areas employers - particularly environmental consultancies - will swoop in with job offers.

Companies are looking at hiring talent to set and implement strategies in these areas:

• energy (including fuel, electricity) efficiency best practices
• low carbon emissions, aka carbon management (managing and trading credits)
• smart buildings/infrastructure
• sustainable business practices

If you’re prospecting for work, bear in mind that there’s no environmental job gold rush yet. “You have to realize the way this works is where is the money coming from to do these projects?” says Dan Eastman, principal, The Eastman Group, LLP, an environmental engineering recruiting firm in Baton Rouge, La. “Since Bush went to G-8 you may start to see more stuff coming out of it. But as for industry, I don’t see those kinds of jobs yet.” At least, not in the States.

Some companies will for competitive or PR reasons get out in front of this macro-trend. A Fast Company article in February called “Degree of Difficulty,” profiled Auden Schendler, director of environmental affairs at Aspen ski resort. He came to the resort from the Rocky Mountain Institute, a renowned environmental think tank.

In America, most of the climate-change management investment is found in government-funded research, alongside corporate or academic Research & Development. This investment could be characterized as more of a lava flow than a backwater. The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) has invested almost $20 billion in the areas of climate change and global change research.

If you are the type to plan ahead, this is a career path destined for important things.

Take that bromide, plus two Advil, and let us know how it goes. Despite a slow and imperceptible payback, few question whether mentoring programs benefit employers, managers and their protégés. Yet, these programs are easier to mandate than do successfully.

Mentoring is relatively frictionless when you and your mentor can meet for lunch, coffee or a beer. But in a global enterprise, the mentoring program is most likely a virtual one, with mentors and mentees located in distant cities, different cultures, and remote time zones, too.

“The last few mentees [of mine] have been in California, Maryland, Mexico City and now Arizona,” says Artie Lynnworth, General Manager, Occidental Chemical Corp. in Santiago, Chile. In a Human Capital Institute webcast in ‘07 he spoke about mentoring a Maryland-based employee via a webcam. Sounds a bit dicey, but he says, “It’s great, it works, and virtual should not be any obstacle at all.”

Lynnworth’s bigger challenges concern dispensing advice that is cross-cultural in nature. “Those are things to be sensitive to,” Lynnworth says. “Guidance that might work in a USA environment might not work in another culture.”

Sue Stanek, consulting partner at Menttium, which provides corporations with mentoring programs, says these relationships can increase a mentee’s national or global perspective. Given that mentoring often works best when there is proximity, Stanek offers advice for bridging the virtual divide. “How can we know each other’s work environment without being there physically?” she asks. She suggests that mentors and mentees exchange photos both of themselves and their workplace - even photos of personal interests too.

Stanek cautions that not all mentoring prospects are able to flourish in virtual relationships. “Some mentors are not as open - we find mentees are open,” she says. To manage the challenges of time-zone differences and building relationships, Stanek recommends:

• A “lock-in” for meetings (which translates to establishing a regular time)
• Preparing and reviewing notes ahead of time
• Sharing pertinent, non-confidential documents and voice mail as “grist” for discussions
• Following-up on action items via e-mail.

Typically, says Stanek, it takes about three to four months to gain a sufficient “level of trust and rapport.” She prefers to see mentoring relationships last about one year: “so you have a length of time to move from tactical to strategic.”

Have you experienced a mentoring program in a virtual, global context? If not, what’s holding you back? In upcoming posts we will look at mentoring in the context of social networking and foreign assignments.

Here are some suggestions for “training” indecisive clients and weeding out the bloodsuckers:

Cap getting-to-know-me meetings. Bloodsuckers are fans of meetings with agendas like “let’s spend the next four hours talking about how you’d execute our project were we to actually offer it to you.” For this reason, I have a rule about complimentary getting-to-know-me meetings: One hour max is all you get - by bat phone, webcam, or in the flesh - and then I’m billing you for it. Likewise, I don’t dress, drive, and give up my morning for just anyone. Unless there’s big money, repeat business, or real PIE potential, I phone it in.

Use templates. Although I have a bio and work samples on my website, I still need to email interested clients my references, additional samples, and a more detailed bio or resume from time to time. The materials I send vary wildly, depending on whether I’m talking to an arts organization that wants me to teach, a potential copywriting client, or a news website that wants an article written. Rather than reinvent the wheel each time, I have a nice collection of templates I emply: ShamlessInstructorPromo.doc, Fortune500Bait.doc, and MediaWhore.doc.

Create a FAQ. Rather than answering the same questions over and over, email a “How I Work” doc to interested clients. Or post a FAQ page on your website. “Before I do any illustrations, I send clients a detailed breakdown of how I work, how many sketches I do, what sorts of changes they can ask for, and when payment is due,” says freelance illustrator Molly Crabapple. “So many headaches averted!”

Send a questionnaire. Besides having a helpful FAQ and Design Process page on her company’s site, Emily Carlin of Swank Web Style cuts to the chase by sending a design brief for interested clients to fill out. We’re talking twenty-plus questions about everything from the site’s purpose and number of pages to preferred colors, graphics and layout. Considering how many people will call a web designer before they have any idea what they want, this saves her a load of time.

Make a video. For Erin Blaskie, who runs Business Services, ETC, a virtual assistance company based in Ontario, Canada, creating a ten-minute video called “How to Work With a Virtual Assistant” was “the smartest thing I’ve ever done.” Not only has it greatly reduced the time she spends answering potential clients’ questions about how she works, it adds a personal touch. “What’s nice about the video is instead of it being written, they get to see who I am,” she says. “It’s a great way to get that trust built.”

Do have a business-savvy pal in your industry weigh in on any FAQs, web pages, or videos you make before you send them to potential clients, especially if you’re new at this. You don’t want to be so demanding - “Only green M&Ms in my dressing room!” - that no one wants to hire you.

(C) Michelle Goodman. Excerpted from My So-Called Freelance Life: How to Survive and Thrive as a Creative Professional for Hire (Seal Press, 2008).

In her recent book, Escape from Corporate America, Pamela Skillings, a career coach and blogger, says that moving back and forth between solo ventures or startups and corporate jobs is “really the only way to develop, learn and grow.”

Why not take a break from corporate life? Skillings reasons: “So what if you fail? Or what if you discover that solopreneurship isn’t your calling after all?  Sure, it would suck. But you can probably always get a job similar to the one you’re thinking about quitting.”

Besides, she says, corporate jobs often lead to burnout.  One reason is that two out of five workers spend more than 50 hours per week on the job.

And there’s little chance to recuperate. American workers are allotted significantly fewer vacation days on average (8 for the first three years; 10 thereafter) than their peers in France (25), Germany (30) and Japan (18).

Those are good reasons to seek better work/life balance. However, what if you are your own worst boss? Some people don’t give themselves a break!  (No, that doesn’t apply to me; I love a spontaneous break.) You know when you’re slacking off - but then again you also know how to make it up to yourself by taking a longer lunch or taking some time off when necessary.

Skillings profiles a number of “escape artists” who have wandered off the corporate reservation - many of these stories are brief but well reported. One theme is doing more with less; individualists who shine when they’re no longer under the iron thumb of corporate hierarchy.  For every success story there are untold numbers of workers who return to the corporate fold. But there is no shame in that and as Skillings argues, these former soloists may return to become even stronger corporate contributors.

Incidentally, while checking out Skillings’ book, I learned that there’s a blog by the same name, created by Laurel Delaney, who authored a 2003 report for the Conference Board about the rising tide of female entrepreneurs. Her blog is also worth checking out.