By Patrick Hruby

When future talking-monkey archaeologists sift through the detritus of postapocalyptic America, they would do well to ignore the usual cultural Rosetta Stones – the Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore, seven seasons and counting of “The Real Housewives of Orange County.”

They should focus instead on a single artifact: the AeroShot caffeine inhaler.

Sleek and plastic, the size of a lip balm tube, the AeroShot is the brainchild of David Edwards, a Harvard professor of biomedical engineering who also invented breathable chocolate. (Don’t ask.) The AeroShot contains a puff of lime-flavored caffeine powder; one squeeze, and it dispenses about 40 mg of the drug in your mouth, like an asthma inhaler.

A startup product recently released in the Boston area, the AeroShot already has drawn the ire of Sen. Charles E. Schumer. In December, the New York Democrat expressed concern that the inhaler would be used as a “party enhancer” and asked the Food and Drug Administration to review the safety and legality of selling it to children.

In doing so, Mr. Schumer overlooked the obvious: When it comes to the nation’s predilection for energy-boosting enhancement – at parties, at the office or anywhere in between, for young and old alike – the horse has long since left the barn, if only to lap up a double espresso at the neighboring Starbucks. (Speaking of which, the coffee bar chain briefly pilot-tested its own caffeine inhaler in 2006, one with mint flavor instead of lime.)

“At the time we came up with the AeroShot, we were looking at breathable coffee, breathable vitamins, the most high-value ingredient the product could have,” Mr. Edwards said. “We came up with energy. There is a big demand for energy in the United States.”

One nation under a buzz

America, the land of the free. America, home of the amped. From the 24-ounce Cafe Americano to the 64-ounce Mountain Dew Double Gulp, from ubiquitous coffee shops to the widespread use of the prescription drug Ritalin (read: legal speed) as a campus study aid, we are one nation under a buzz, indivisible from our next fix, with 5-Hour Energy shots and caffeine-spiked chewing gum for all.

To understand the depths of our perked-up desire, consider:

• The average American ingests as much as 300 mg of caffeine a day, equal to three No-Doz pills;

• From June 2010 to June 2011, amid ongoing economic malaise, energy drink sales rose a whopping 31.6 percent.

• At an Army lab in Natick, Mass., military scientists reportedly have taken time out from developing Global Positioning System-guided helicopters to test and develop … caffeinated meat.

Or, just visit a Starbucks.

Once upon a time – say, the 1950s – there was the standard, 5-ounce cup o’ Joe, containing about 70 mg to 100 mg of caffeine. Quaint. In the here and now, the standard16-ounce cup of regular Starbucks coffee contains 330 mg of the same substance.

“There are two dark, black liquids that run this country,” said Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University. “Oil and coffee. Walk down the street in any major city at lunch hour. You just see coffee and cell phones.”

It has always been thus. The American Revolution began with the symbolic – and physical – dumping of English tea, which ultimately was usurped in the national diet by coffee, which means our Founding Fathers essentially traded one caffeinated drink for another, more strongly caffeinated drink.

According to historian David T. Courtwright, American per capita coffee consumption rose from three pounds per year in 1830 to eight pounds per year by 1859. Today, the National Coffee Association reports that the number of 18- to 39-year-olds who drink coffee daily jumped almost 10 percent year-over-year in 2011.

Remember, that’s in a country where about 90 percent of the adult population already ingests caffeine on a daily basis. A country where all of the coffee sold at our 10,000-plus Starbucks locations amounts to less than 4 percent of the domestic market for brewed coffee.

Is it any wonder that coffee is the world’s second-most valuable commodity, behind only oil?

Beyond java, we have caffeinated lip balm. Caffeinated sunflower seeds. Caffeinated soap. We have caffeine mixed with gobs of sugar – that tasty Frappuccino isn’t sweet on its own – and with all sorts of other chemicals, energy drink mystery ingredients like taurine, guarana and L-carnitine. We even have something called the “5150 Juice Syringe,” available online, which basically allows you to squirt an extra helping of liquid caffeine into whatever you’re already drinking.

The surest cultural signs our fair republic has become akin to a coffee-and-greenie-fueled Major League Baseball clubhouse, circa 1975?

(a) Vice-free, clean-living Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow endorses an energy drink.

(b) Elite Northwest Washington private school Sidwell Friends – where the Obama daughters go to school – has its own coffee bar.

(c) We don’t just drink vodka. We drink vodka mixed with the up-all-night energy drink Red Bull – because even our downers need uppers.

“In the 1960s, a lot of families, and mine was one of them, wouldn’t let their kids drink soft drinks before noon,” Mr. Thompson said. “I remember as a child being at a friend’s house for a sleepover. The next morning, he gets a Coke out of the fridge at 8:30 a.m. It seemed almost criminal. And now we have caffeine inhalers.”

The Big C

In the books “World of Caffeine” and “The Caffeine Advantage,” co-author Bennett Weinberg dubs the titular compound the “hallmark drug of our time.” Lauding caffeine’s ability to help us work harder, think more clearly and even feel a greater sense of well-being, he sounds a bit like pumped-up former baseball slugger Jose Canseco discussing anabolic steroids.

This is no coincidence.

Caffeine works in the body by blocking a chemical called adenosine, which signals tiredness to the brain. Less adenosine, less fatigue. Blocking adenosine also causes the body to release more adrenaline, producing the famed caffeine buzz.

In other words, the Big C is a performance-enhancing drug – albeit one that’s just as useful for office workers as professional athletes.

“Suppose you’re working in computer technology,” Mr. Weinberg said. “Caffeine ramps up spatial reasoning. It relieves boredom at repetitive tasks. It’s a mental booster, helping us accomplish the things that more and more are demanded of us in life.”

The history of caffeine consumption is more or less the history of the modern world, according to Mr. Weinberg and co-author Bonnie Bealer. Prior to the 1700s, Europeans drank copious amounts of beer – even for breakfast – because water was largely unsafe.

With the widespread adoption of coffee and tea, however, Western civilization swapped its daylong, semi-drunk alcoholic stupor for energy, alertness, attentiveness and sociability. One result? Intellectuals gathered in coffee shops, spawning (among other things) the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.

“Visit churches in Europe, and the tour guides will constantly point out that so-and-so fell off the rafters,” Mr. Weinberg said. “The reason they fell off is that they were drunk all the time.

“When caffeine swept over Europe, it changed the nature of society. It gave people a way to control and harness their energies, helped to initiate the industrial economy. That requires a different kind of discipline and mental focus than agrarian work.”

As for today? We’re stressed and squeezed by economic turmoil in a hypercompetitive global economy that places a premium on knowledge and mental-task completion. We’re surrounded by round-the-clock entertainment, stimulated at every turn. We’re a nation of working fathers and mothers, strapped for family time. We’re an older generation of baby boomers who refuse to dodder into our golden years and a younger cohort of millennials who keep our smart phones bedside.

In short, we need caffeine – and other energy boosters – more than ever. The rise of Starbucks corresponds with the rise of the Internet.

“What’s really boosted this up in the past 20 years is that now everybody is connected to a portable transmission and reception device, expected and available to be working all the time,” Mr. Thompson said. “It used to be you went home at 5:30, then got into the office the next morning and had messages. Now, you’re constantly checking email. Our lifestyles need stimulants to keep up with things.”

Without caffeine, Mr. Weinberg argues, modern life would be slower. Sluggish. Altogether drearier. Collectively, we would drag a lot more and accomplish a lot less. And that, in turn, raises a question.

Are we hopelessly hooked?

Consider an executive X who gets up at 5:30 a.m. every day, proposes Mr. Thompson. “Could she or he not do their job without a certain dosage of caffeine a day? If the answer to that is no, that’s an interesting thing to consider.”

Upper madness?

In 2009, a man who claimed to have found a mouse in his Mountain Dew can filed a lawsuit against PepsiCo, which owns the brand. As part of its defense, attorneys for the company recently argued that the soft drink – a favorite energy-booster among exam-cramming students and up-all-night video game players everywhere, a neon-green liquid countless Americans willingly and happily pour into their stomachs – would have dissolved the dead rodent’s carcass into a “jellylike substance.”

Yuck. Such is the downside of perking ourselves up.

A recent report from the White House Office of Drug Control expressed concern about college students illegally taking prescription stimulants such as Adderall and Ritalin to remain awake and ultra-focused while studying. News reports anecdotally suggest that similar drug abuse is taking place among young professionals.

Moreover, too much caffeine can be bad for you. While every individual has a different tolerance for the drug, experts agree that ingesting more than 500 mg a day can result in anxiety, irritability, headaches, sleeplessness, diarrhea and other health problems. In some cases, it can cause abnormal heart rhythms, which can be dangerous for people with cardiac conditions.

According to Dr. Mary Claire O’Brien, an associate professor at Wake Forest’s Baptist Medical Center, the medical community is concerned about increasing caffeine consumption among children and adolescents, particularly via energy drinks. A report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found that emergency room visits related to adverse reactions to energy drinks increased tenfold from 2005 to 2009. (A caveat: 44 percent of the visits involved patients combining energy drinks with drugs or alcohol.)

A 2011 report from the American Academy of Pediatrics said that energy drinks have “no place in the diet” of children.

“If you suggested putting an espresso machine in a middle school, people would think you are out of your mind,” said Dr. O’Brien, who is on the editorial board of the Journal of Caffeine Research. “But people don’t think twice about them consuming energy drinks and soft drinks.

“There is concern about caffeine being a stimulant, and that it’s not clear what the long-term effects of high levels of caffeine on the pediatric and adolescent brain will be. The human brain is not effectively hard-wired until the age of 25.”

Echoing Mr. Schumer’s concern about the AeroShot’s potential use as a party drug, the University of New Hampshire considered banning on-campus energy drink sales this year, fearing students were mixing the drinks with alcohol. In the face of student displeasure, however, school administrators backed down.

Mr. Weinberg said some things never change.

“There’s been a constant back and forth over this since the beginning, a moral panic,” he said. “It goes back to the beginning. When the first coffee shops opened in Yemen [in the early 1500s], they were banned. Right away. And then the Sultan of Cairo overturned that ban.”

Of course he did. Almost 500 years before the introduction of the caffeine inhaler, the sultan had something in common with contemporary Americans. He was a coffee drinker. He needed his fix.

By RUTH MANTELL
In 2012, creativity and adaptability will be key to landing and keeping a job for many workers, as staff levels remain lean and employees are expected to respond to a wide variety of demands, experts say.

Economists don’t expect loads of job growth, but there could be opportunities in areas such as health care, professional services, retail and some manufacturing, says Harry Holzer, a public-policy professor at Georgetown University. Also, continuing churn in the labor market means that even in areas with few new jobs, there will still be openings when workers move around.

Technical knowledge and experience will be required for certain spots. “For professional services you usually need a professional degree. In health you usually need some training,” Mr. Holzer says. “Manufacturing needs some occupational training. Retail is different. It doesn’t require specific occupational training, but it does often require some interpersonal skills.”

In addition to the standard prerequisites, employers will be looking for workers who are able to quickly adapt to new responsibilities as companies respond to changing economic and industry trends. So workers should highlight their creative skills to differentiate themselves, says Lawrence Katz, an economist at Harvard University.

“Firms have so many job seekers per opening. They are going to want candidates with clear credentials, but also a little extra shine in interactive skills and creativity,” Mr. Katz says. “They are less willing in a weak labor market to take chances.”

Here are other skills experts recommend workers should pick up and enhance.

Technical literacy. It’s important for workers at a variety of levels to be familiar with some of the technical, if mundane, processes that keep organizations running smoothly.

Take the health-care industry. Providers are bringing on more technology when it comes to record keeping and billing.

“A knowledge of electronic data handling is just a really big plus. That goes for receptionists to the doctors who are becoming employees of larger hospital systems,” says Warren Bobrow, president of All About Performance, a Los Angeles-based skills-assessment consultancy.

Workers also need to be good users of social media. There’s a fine line between letting interested parties know about the latest news and bombarding them with too much information. Still, individuals shouldn’t be afraid to use networking sites such as LinkedIn to make employment connections.

Business acumen. As companies remain concerned about demand for their products and services, a wide variety of employees need to think about sales, experts say. Even those outside of marketing should care about revenue, and making sure customers are happy.

Mr. Bobrow has clients in Colorado, an orthopedic practice with more than a dozen doctors, and those doctors don’t become partners until client-satisfaction surveys are reviewed and good results are found.

“They are in a competitive marketplace because so much of their work is based on referrals,” Mr. Bobrow says. “The doctors realize that their revenue depends on all of them bringing in more patients and having patients come back.”

Being savvy about pleasing customers isn’t about spin, says Ben Dattner, a New York-based organizational psychologist and author. Rather, workers need to illustrate the advantages of their products and services to please employers dealing with an ultra-competitive environment.

“Try to get to know your customer, the market and figure out how you can put things together in a package that adds value,” Mr. Dattner says. “Law firms are increasingly recruiting professionals who [bring clients with them]. The actual practice of law is becoming commoditized to some extent, but the ability to bring in customer relationships and be flexible is what companies are increasingly looking for.”

General proficiency. Companies are looking for workers who are flexible and can take on functions in various jobs as market demands change, says Greg Barnett, director of product development at Hogan Assessment Systems, a Tulsa, Okla.-based personality-assessment and consulting firm. That is, companies want workers who are “solid organizational citizens”—quick learners who are compliant, Mr. Barnett says.

“People are being asked to do more,” he says. “There are concerns when applicants are good workers, but not people who are able to learn and change direction and change their performance.”

Dan Ryan, principal at a Nashville, Tenn.-based executive search firm, stresses the importance of project management and communication skills, which also happen to be transferrable. “The ability of people at all levels to clearly communicate is not what it used to be,” he says. People “who can do that very well can differentiate themselves.”

By JOSEPH WALKER
The application process for millions of job hunters will soon be simplified — as long as they’re on LinkedIn, that is.

Yesterday, the professional networking site announced a partnership with Taleo, the country’s largest job applicant tracking system provider, to allow job seekers to auto-fill basic biographical and professional history information from their LinkedIn profile into online job applications.

Taleo powers the careers pages of about 5,000 companies, including Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and United Airlines. Job seekers applying with those companies will soon see that they can use their LinkedIn information to fill out job applications. Applicants already have the option of auto-filling information from the Taleo “Universal Profile” service. Users will still be able to manually fill in their data, or upload their resumes on Taleo-powered sites.

The LinkedIn option will be available with the next updated version of Taleo’s enterprise software on September 23. Each company will have the option of displaying the LinkedIn tool and Taleo expects a high percentage of them to do so, said Karl Ederle, the company’s vice president of product strategy.

“We want to make it easier for candidates to apply for jobs and remove the friction in the process,” Ederle said. “We realize that now people are digitizing their profiles, and LinkedIn has critical mass.”

As of August 4th, LinkedIn says it has 120 million users.

Taleo currently has 26% of market share by revenue in the applicant tracking system sector, according to research from Bersin & Associates, a human resources consulting firm. The company’s software also analyzes the data it collects from applicants, and ranks the applicants based on their qualifications. Competitors Oracle and Kenexa have 11% and 7% of the market, respectively. According to LinkedIn’s site, Kenexa has a similar partnership with the professional networking company.

“This is going to change the way people apply for jobs,” said Katherine Jones, an analyst at Bersin. “It takes hours, in some cases, to go through these applications online and it’s usually pretty painful. This is much faster and more economical.”

LinkedIn launched a similar feature with its “Apply with LinkedIn” widget in July. Companies like Netflix and LivingSocial have adopted the widget, which is free. The button on Taleo career sites won’t be branded as “Apply with LinkedIn,” but will be effectively the same, Ederle said.

LinkedIn declined to describe the financial terms of the agreement.

By RUTH MANTELL

And you thought vandalizing your high school’s drama club room wouldn’t haunt you in adulthood.

As it turns out, your childhood misdeeds, along with whether you care about someone else’s bad day and how much you read, may have an impact on how a prospective employer views you.

To get a read on applicants, more employers are using pre-hire assessments, which can check personality, cognitive ability and competency, among other areas. About 56% of companies are using some sort of assessment tool as part of the hiring process this year, up from 48% in 2010, according to Aberdeen Group, a Boston-based research firm.

Proponents say assessments are a relatively low-cost tool to increase the odds of finding a good match. “Culture fit is an absolutely critical determinant of longer-term fit, and not easy to discern in an interview,” says Jay Gaines, chief executive of Jay Gaines & Co., a New York executive search firm. “There are some short psychological tests that might provide reinforcement and support to observations we might make on candidates.”

While senior-level workers may face in-depth assessments, workers at any level should be prepared to face an assessment. For instance, since August 2010, all applicants to Bethlehem, Pa.-based St. Luke’s Hospital & Health Network have been taking an assessment that aims to pinpoint, among other things, an applicant’s attitude about customer service.

Here’s what job seekers should know about personality assessments and other hiring screens.

Honesty is the best policy. It might be tempting to fudge assessment answers to sound perkier, more honest or more diligent than you really are. But some assessments contain scales to detect such misrepresentations.

“When people try to fake, they try to fake in very characteristic ways, and it’s really easy to tell when someone is trying to game the test,” says Robert Hogan, president of Hogan Assessment Systems, a Tulsa, Okla.-based personality assessment and consulting firm.

Job applicants taking assessments may try to predict what the company is looking for and develop a profile they think fits the bill for a good candidate. Others may check the box on the positive end of the scale for every question — a pattern that employers may look for.

“Sometimes companies will put in a kind of nonsense question to make sure people are paying attention,” says John Hausknecht, associate professor of human-resource studies at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.

Tests don’t have the final say. “Bombing” a personality assessment won’t necessarily lose you a job, experts say.

“For companies that manage their staffing system well, personality tests are going to be a small part of the process,” Mr. Hausknecht says. With assessments, “there is no one magic bullet that works for all people and all jobs. Personality tests might be combined with an interview, plus some kind of a work sample.”

Dana Landis, vice president for global search assessment with executive search firm Korn/Ferry International, says the firm has assessed almost 700,000 applicants over about 10 years. Rather than taking negative assessment results at face value, Korn/Ferry uses results to dig deeper, she says.

“We don’t want to ignore the results, but we also take them in context,” Ms. Landis says. “We often try to circle back to the candidate to ask follow-up questions.”

Assessment results generally don’t come into play until there is a short list of candidates. “When you get down to the last three, they tend to be really impressive, present well, have excellent track records,” Ms. Landis says. “But one of those people is a better fit than the others, and it’s at that point that we need the extra information.”

Charles Wardell, chief executive of Oak Brook, Ill.-based Witt/Kieffer, which specializes in executive searches for health education and nonprofits, says he treats assessments as another reference. “If you do very well on tests, I consider it a very good reference,” he says. “And if you don’t do well, I look at it as OK, not everybody gets 10 great references.”

They help applicants, too. While companies pay for assessment tests, applicants can reap some benefits.

“A personality assessment is like a two-way interview for the individual,” says Michael Anderson, senior research scientist at CPP, a Mountain View, Calif.-based provider of assessment tools. “If you feel you have to stretch your answers on an assessment, then maybe it’s not the position that’s best suited for you.” For example, while being conscientious might be helpful for most jobs, being extroverted may be predictive of success only for certain positions, he says.

Michael McDaniel, a human-resources and organizational-behavior professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, says applicants see certain tests as “fair” if they include questions that clearly relate to the job. He says these tests have “pretty good acceptance by applicants and are easier to explain to management.”

But Mr. McDaniel adds that “for those who have been out of school for a while, the thought of taking a test can make one anxious. No one likes the idea of being evaluated and being found not to be good enough.”

By JOE LIGHT

More companies are trying to tap Facebook Inc.’s 750-million-plus user base to find new employees, threatening traditional job boards and competing with LinkedIn Corp., which has dominated the online professional networking arena.

Facebook’s use as a job-recruitment tool remains small, but its appeal may be growing. Some recruiters say they have all but eliminated their spending on job boards, which can charge a few hundred dollars per job posting, depending on volume. Others note that while LinkedIn contains a more comprehensive résumé database, candidates tend to value referrals from their connections on Facebook more.

The majority of social-media traffic to Waste Management Inc.’s careers website comes from Facebook, beating out LinkedIn, said Jenny DeVaughn, manager of social media and employment branding. The Houston-based environmental services company is currently trying to fill 1,500 positions—from software developers to garbage truck drivers.

In addition to posting jobs and videos of current employees on its Facebook page, the company has recruiters and other employees find user groups and join discussions.

When asked for comment, LinkedIn referred to its chief executive’s remarks from last week’s conference call to discuss earnings. During the call , CEO Jeff Weiner said users tell the company they want to keep their personal and professional networks separate.

Indeed, Jeff Vijungco, vice president of world-wide talent acquisition for Adobe Systems Inc., said that in focus groups, prospective job candidates were sharply averse to being contacted through Facebook for jobs.

“The antibodies kicked in pretty quickly. They thought it was very invasive,” he said. The company posts job openings on its Facebook page, but Mr. Vijungco said they have had more success finding employees through LinkedIn.

Facebook hires account for less than 1% of the total hires companies are making, according to Jobs2Web, which helps companies track the sources of candidates and hires.

But if current growth trends continue, Facebook could rival traditional job boards in 2012, said Jobs2Web analytics manager Phil Schrader.

Matt Mund, Monster.com’s vice president of product management, acknowledged that Facebook as a recruiting platform is growing rapidly. The company, which hosts a job board and other recruiter services, launched its own Facebook app, dubbed BeKnown, in June, and the application now has nearly 800,000 monthly users, according to AppData.com, a market research group. Over the next couple of weeks, the company plans to launch a program where companies can offer employees cash rewards for making referrals through the app.

“While I wish every company used Monster, social is a solution that many people are using,” he said.

As the number of job postings overall has bounced back from the depths of the recession, Monster’s core job postings businesses have benefited. Revenue in the second quarter at Monster Worldwide Inc. rose 25% to $270 million from the prior year.

LinkedIn’s revenue from company recruiters is also growing rapidly. In the second quarter, the company’s hiring solutions segment—which among other things helps recruiters search through their profile database for candidates—grew 170% to $58.6 million from the same quarter a year earlier.

Still, Facebook is making a dent. VMware Inc., a Palo Alto, Calif., cloud-computing company, hired its first full-time recruiter dedicated to working on social networks in November and is building a team of recruiters who will focus on social platforms. The company, which is hiring for about 1,200 positions, has cut back on the number of jobs it posts to job boards, said Will Staney, talent acquisition Web strategy manager.

While VMware still relies on LinkedIn to recruit higher-level executive talent, Mr. Staney said that Facebook users tend to spend more time on the service and are easier to reach than LinkedIn users. Since February, the number of monthly active users on its Facebook page more than tripled to 11,000, he said.

Beginning next week, the company also plans to pilot a new Facebook application that will allow them to search for candidates on BranchOut Inc.’s Facebook app which, similar to BeKnown, builds a professional networking layer on top of Facebook and has more than 2.6 million monthly users, according to AppData.com.

Candidates have been 50% more likely to apply to positions they found through Facebook than through other means, said Mr. Staney. “[Job boards] just blast it out. This is much more efficient and targeted,” he said.

While Silicon Valley start-ups race to outdo each other with increasingly generous and creative perks, more established companies in less popular locales are finding it tough to attract tech talent. High salaries and increased bonuses aren’t enough. The pressure is on to compete on fringe benefits.

“Hiring developers is the bane of my existence; it’s a tight market,” says Christa Foley, recruiting manager for Henderson, Nev.-based Zappos.com. “Vegas just doesn’t compete.” When recruiting, Ms. Foley’s team plays up the monthly computer programming events, themed mini-parades at product launches, an on-site free life coach and lack of dress code.

No longer a start-up—the shoe retailer was founded 10 years ago and employs 1,300 people—Zappos feels threatened by the latest tech hiring wave in the Bay Area and Seattle. “We’ve started targeting more Midwest [and] East Coast to try to attract folks just because there is so much opportunity” on the West Coast, says Ms. Foley.

The company has about 100 open technical positions ranging from IT to project management to mobile development and three full-time “technical recruiters,” Ms. Foley says. Last year it took up to six months to fill a technical opening whereas now it takes up to eight months, she says.

While unemployment remains high in the U.S. and most companies remain reluctant to hire, it’s a different world for tech professionals, including software developers, engineers and telecommunications specialists. According to a recent report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics “demand for these workers will increase as organizations continue to upgrade their information technology capacity and incorporate the newest technologies.” Employers competing for these in-demand workers must figure out ways to stay appealing.

In Cary, N.C., SAS Institute Inc. offers a full roster of perks: racquetball courts, car detailing, even a subsidized summer camp for employees’ children. “The bottom line is we have under 4% turnover in an industry that’s seen closer to 20%,” says Jenn Man, vice president of human resources at the 35-year-old software maker. The company is less interested in offering employees the kinds of “cool” extras making headlines at a lot of start-ups and banking more on making its pitch as a family-friendly place to work.

A June survey at IT job site Dice.com found that 65% of nearly 900 hiring managers and recruiters anticipate hiring more technology professionals in the second half of 2011 than in the preceding six months. And according to a July study by human resources consulting firm Mercer LLC, 82% of IT companies increased spot cash bonuses, up from 77% in 2010 and 42% offered “aggressive” pay increases, up from 39%.

Perks can be less of a hit to a company’s bottom line. Many high-profile perks, like sponsored group sporting events, are “actually not expensive,” says Dave Van De Voort, a partner in Mercer’s human capital consulting business. “In total, if it’s 1% of payroll, it would be surprising—the reason is that not everybody participates.”

Later this month, Chesapeake Energy Corp., an Oklahoma City-based natural gas and oil producer, plans on opening an on-site child-care facility. This is added to a list of employee perks including its fitness center and health clinic and subsidized restaurants. On Wednesdays, employees can also head to the on-site farmer’s market.

The company, which has more than 11,700 employees, increasingly finds itself touting perks to nab hires.

One challenge is getting candidates to move to Oklahoma City—not a first choice for many in-demand engineers these days. “The thought of living [in Oklahoma City] at any point in the future never crossed my mind,” says Brian Donovan, who moved from New Jersey to be an engineer at Chesapeake Energy about a year ago. “But what they offer here is heads and tails above the other companies I was looking at.”

Unlike some start-ups, which push a 24-7 work lifestyle and offer perks like on-site meals, more established companies aim to attract more family-oriented employees. Recruiters play up seemingly less appealing locales by selling their cost of living.

“We have hired people from California, and it’s been a big plus for them to come here, no doubt,” says Brad Ramsey, vice president of engineering at 10-year-old NuStar Energy LP in San Antonio. “The cost of living is so much better here than it is there and in other places.”

NuStar’s benefits are generous even within the well-paying energy sector: The petroleum and asphalt transportation and storage company has a no-layoff policy, has an all-or-none bonus policy and offers use of the corporate jet for emergencies.

“It is a competitive marketplace for sure, and as a result [technical workers] are paid very well,” says Curt Anastasio, NuStar’s chief executive and president. “We have to pay them what the market demands to get them to come here—and we do. … You can have a really good quality of life here. …San Antonio is not a backwater.”

By DENNIS NISHI

After working for more than six years as manager of digital licensing for Warner Music Group in Burbank, Calif., Michael Locke, 34, felt like he wanted more. But there wasn’t much latitude for change within his job and department.

So Mr. Locke formulated a unique way to expand his role. He offered to represent unsigned and independent-label bands through Warner and promote them as a cheaper music licensing option for film, television and commercial deals.

His boss allowed Mr. Locke to work on the venture alongside his regular job and the new business grew quickly. A year later in 2007, he submitted a written plan to create a new division called Rhino Independent and was made director. He left Warner Music Group to start his own business three years later.

Everyone can relate to hitting a wall at work. Whether it’s feeling unchallenged or underappreciated, most of the reasons people get stuck in their role can be resolved with planning. But you must understand the nature of the problem and determine whether it’s a workplace issue, such as being topped out in the company, or a psychological impasse.

Shelly Curt, 41, got stuck while managing a casino restaurant in Reno, Nev. The trained sommelier was very good at her job so she was kept in a role that she felt underutilized her talents. So Ms. Curt volunteered for extra projects that went beyond her job description, including choosing wine and dessert pairings at events. Her managers were impressed by her knowledge and created a new job for her that involves developing the menu for seven restaurants and working at special events.

Start to formalize your personal-discovery process by writing an action plan that details how you are going to make a change. The idea is to acknowledge your problems, including those that may have become too painful to address like losing confidence in your abilities, says Timothy Butler, senior fellow at the Harvard Business School in Cambridge, Mass., and author of “Getting Unstuck: How Dead Ends Become New Paths.”

Also have a discussion with your boss and let him or her know that you are ready for more challenges. Be ready to answer some tough questions about why you’ve been stuck. “You’re going to have to change people’s opinions about you, which isn’t an easy thing to do if you have a bad or blah reputation,” says Stephen Xavier, CEO of Cornerstone Executive Development Group, an executive coaching firm in Chapel Hill, N.C. “It may require time and persistence so stick with it. Make it a long-term plan if you have to.”

Employees that get pigeonholed may find it difficult to move out of specific roles, which is why it helps to have a prepared transition plan — with replacement suggestions — when proposing job changes to management.

By DENNIS NISHI
If you’ve been marking time at work and hoping to get a new job, you’ve got company. Employment experts caution, though, that moving too quickly could land you in a new job that you dislike even more. Here are some ways to improve the odds of finding the right one.

• Re-evaluate the situation. Think about why you’re dissatisfied at your current job. If you aren’t challenged enough, there might be a way to make a change without leaving. “There may be ways that your job can be changed for the better or your role in the company expanded to offer more challenges,” says Tony Mulkern, a management consultant in Los Angeles. Scout job openings in other departments or at higher levels that you may qualify for with some additional extended education or skills and ask your manager to support your effort to get the training you need.

• Reach out. If the opportunities just aren’t there or you’re simply dissatisfied and aching to move, tap your personal and professional network for information on who is hiring. Many job postings go up with a candidate in mind already, if you know someone at the companies you are targeting—or someone in your network does—work to get personal referrals.

But be discreet with your inquiries. Keep requests off social-networking websites like Facebook and Linkedin—they can be indexed by search engines and discovered by anyone, including your current boss.

• Do your homework. When you land an interview, use the opportunity to learn about the company. You should get as much from them as they will try to get from you, says Sharon Armstrong, a human-resources consultant in Washington. Salary and benefits are important, but so is fit. It’s difficult to tell what the workplace culture is like from casual visits. Don’t be shy about calling for more information and contact current and former employees, if possible, to get a feel for the company and opportunities.

If you get an offer, before you accept, consider doing more in-depth financial research on the company. Try The Securities and Exchange Commission’s EDGAR Public Dissemination Service (edgarcompany.sec.gov). For private firms and startups, Gail Rosen, an accountant in Martinsville N.J., says to look for a profit-and-loss statement, a balance sheet, references, a business plan and a list of where the company is getting funding.

“You may not get that all but it doesn’t hurt to ask, and they might at least give you something else you can use,” she says. Some information also can be found on fee services like Hoovers or on business blogs.

• Leap carefully. Whatever you do, don’t quit your job until you’re certain you’re hired, says Ms. Armstrong. “Even if a job offer seems imminent, there are a lot of things that can happen at the last minute.”

If your current company wants to keep you and replies with a counteroffer, keep in mind why you’re leaving. “People seldom move just for money, so don’t be swayed by a bigger paycheck if everything else stays the same,” says Ms. Armstrong. “Job satisfaction comes from a lot of different places. If the boss offers to help change the other things that are making you unhappy, that might be worth at least discussing.”

By DENNIS NISHI

As vice president of a Los Angeles film-production company in the 1980s, Ronald Kaufman had nearly everything that he’d ever wanted in a job — great pay, friendly co-workers and interesting work coordinating product placements in films. Unfortunately, he hated the job.

“The owner of the company was a master at intimidation and would scream at everybody. An hour later, he would be a great guy. It made everybody unhappy to be there,” says Mr. Kaufman, now an executive coach.

But he knew he wouldn’t earn the same salary elsewhere, so Mr. Kaufman committed himself to making his situation work. “You can’t really change people’s nature, so I changed how I responded to him. I learned to align with his demands, instead of questioning them, and that made my 8½ years at the company so much easier.”

Toxic workplace relationships, failing company fortunes and limited advancement opportunities are just a few compelling reasons to quit a job. But career experts say many workplace problems that employees may think are irreconcilable can be improved or even resolved with some action and a change of attitude.

First, find out if your problems are unique. Reach out to co-workers in other departments, peers through industry associations or even call colleagues at other companies to compare notes.

“It’s a very individual perception that leads to people believing that others are receiving better treatment,” says Christopher McCarthy, professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, who researches workplace stress.

Separate the demands of work from your own expectations of yourself. If you’re unhappy about falling short of your own personal career goals, try breaking your big goals into smaller, more realistically achievable ones. This can improve your morale by reinforcing small successes.

Pitch your boss on a less formal and more goal-oriented workplace. And offer improved results in exchange for more autonomy. “Most people are generally happier at work when given more creative freedom to do their jobs,” says Mr. McCarthy.

If the operational processes of your job are leading to failure, alter your approach, if you can. Spencer Belkofer was an account representative for a telecom firm in Montgomery, Ala., and he didn’t like the way the company trained him to sell phone services. Unhappy customers frequently complained about bad contracts. So Mr. Belkofer decided to go off script and spell out every detail of the services offered, and he frequently sided with customers to resolve problems.

The extra effort didn’t improve his sales, but Mr. Belkofer felt better about the work and customers thanked him for being forthright.

By JOE LIGHT

LinkedIn Corp.’s splashy initial public offering of stock earlier this month underscored the company’s status as a major professional network. But several start-ups are banking that the future of career networking is actually on Facebook Inc.

These start-ups point to Facebook’s much broader user base: With 500 million users, Facebook is five times larger than LinkedIn.

But changing users’ mindsets might be a challenge. Some Facebook users are loathe to mix their personal and professional networks, fearing some private information might damage their work reputation.

Recruiters, meanwhile, say that LinkedIn has already established itself as the most robust source for job-candidate information.

This month, BranchOut Inc., which makes a professional-networking Facebook application, said it raised $18 million in venture capital, bringing its total to $24 million. On the day of LinkedIn’s IPO, Jibe Inc., which lets people use Facebook connections to bolster job applications, announced that it had raised $6 million.

Since January, BranchOut has gained more than 500,000 active users, Chief Executive Rick Marini said. The app helps users find Facebook friends at companies where they want to work.

Jibe CEO Joe Essenfeld said that its 200,000 active users have landed hundreds of jobs by sending applications through its service.

Mr. Essenfeld added that 26 large employers, including Amazon.com Inc. and MTV Networks, as well as 20 small businesses, accept résumés sent through the application, which lets users import connections from both Facebook and LinkedIn.

“Most people do not want to mix their professional lives with their personal lives,” said a LinkedIn spokesman, Hani Durzy, in an email.

Even though the apps are gaining in popularity among Facebook users, right now LinkedIn is still the go-to site for recruiters trying to find suitable candidates, said Debra Feldman, a job-search consultant.

“They’re using it over and above any other résumé databases, including their own,” she said. That means that if someone isn’t looking for a job but wants to field offers from headhunters, he needs a LinkedIn profile, she said.

Other job-related Facebook apps have been slow to catch on. Talentag, which lets users earn job-related “badges” and recommendations from Facebook users, had a strong debut last August, but its average number of monthly users has dwindled to 189 after peaking at 1,502, according to AppData, a market-research group.

Talentag couldn’t be immediately reached for comment on Friday.