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By JOE LIGHT

Companies have long set aside resources to develop and market consumer brands. Now, some are finding that to attract the best job candidates, they need to put similar efforts into their so-called employer brands.

Unlike a company’s product brands—say Fritos or Dial—employer brands target potential employees to make a company seem like a desirable place to work.

The slow job market has brought the perception that job takers are plentiful, but already companies are finding that the most skilled candidates are in short supply, and are difficult to find, recruiters say. This has prompted some companies to launch employer-branding campaigns for the first time in several years.

Potentialpark AB, a market-research firm that specializes in employer branding, has seen the number of analyses it does for companies almost double in the past year, said Chief Executive Torgil Lenning, whose clients include Hewlett Packard Co.

and Credit Suisse Group.

“There’s a clear correlation with the economy. As companies realize they need to recruit, they’ll spend much more effort improving their [employer] brands,” Mr. Lenning said.

In the past, it came down to the logo outside the building. Now, marketing for job candidates involves intensive work and research, says Brian Kropp, a managing director with Corporate Executive Board Co., a business-consulting firm.

PepsiCo Inc.

launched its new employer-branding campaign last fall. The company felt its previous campaign, launched a decade earlier, placed too much emphasis on its consumer brands—which include Quaker and Frito-Lay—instead of the actual positions available.

Candidates such as chemists and businesspeople sometimes assumed that PepsiCo only had roles for individuals with experience in the food-and-beverage industry, said Paul Marchand, vice president of global talent acquisition. The new campaign aims to capture candidates from other areas, such as consulting or entertainment, Mr. Marchand said. “We want people coming right out of college to consider us just as they’d consider McKinsey or GE,” he said.

PepsiCo produced a series of short videos profiling employees. The videos can be seen on PepsiCo’s careers website and on its iPad app, which launched in February and has been downloaded more than 3,000 times, according to Mr. Marchand. PepsiCo’s brand logos are noticeably absent from the app, which lets jobseekers learn about work at the company and find openings. The company also revised its LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter accounts to reflect the new campaign.

PepsiCo spent tens of thousands of dollars on research and the campaign, dubbed “Possibilities,” Mr. Marchand estimates. He says the company’s recruiters have told him it is helping to attract candidates.

The success of employer-branding campaigns is hard to measure. Unlike marketing for a particular product, which can be reflected a few months later in sales, a successful employer-branding campaign doesn’t necessarily result in more job applications, Mr. Kropp said. “The purpose of an employment brand is to get the best applications, but for those who aren’t the best fit for you, to get them to say ‘that seems like a cool company but not the right place for me to work,’” he said.

Still, AT&T Corp.

says it saw the number of visitors to its careers site jump 20% after it positioned itself to appeal to the technology-savvy crowd at this year’s South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas.

At the conference in March, AT&T’s recruitment materials carried “quick response” codes—bar codes that are readable by camera phones and can take candidates quickly to a careers website without typing in a URL. They also handed out contact cards with “augmented reality” glyphs that when held up to a camera phone show candidates a Web video.

AT&T’s director of staffing, Jennifer Terry, said that the company hopes the new technologies would signal to the conference attendees that AT&T had moved beyond its telecommunications roots. The company has a particular need for engineers, application developers and hardware and software experts.

“[Before], candidates might picture someone climbing a telephone pole to install something,” Ms. Terry said. “If we focus on our digital presence, it helps recruit the right people and set the stage for the company we’ve become.” The number of candidates who came to their careers website from the SXSW conference rose five times over the prior year, Ms. Terry said, and the company has five highly desirable job candidates identified for hard-to-fill tech jobs who found the company via SXSW.

Henkel Corp., a consumer- and industrial-goods company, began to rebrand its careers website and employer-marketing materials in February.

While its brands—such as Dial soap and Right Guard deodorant—are well-known in the U.S., Germany-based Henkel doesn’t carry much name recognition in the U.S. as an employer, said Nicole Nelson, the company’s manager for talent acquisition.

Under the company’s old tag line—”Inventors and Pioneers, Welcome”— “we’d go out to career events and people would say, ‘Huh? What’s Henkel?’ ” said Ms. Nelson. So, the company eliminated its pioneers tag line, which didn’t seem to resonate with job seekers, and beefed up its careers website. The website now features large photographs of smiling employees with biographical sketches and Web videos of employee “ambassadors” who talk about their jobs.

Company officials are trying to promote job opportunities internally so that employees see potential for upward mobility and can refer friends to openings. At the company’s North America offices overhead monitors will cycle through available job openings.

Ms. Nelson says it is too early to gauge the efforts’ success.

Allstate Insurance Co. says that next year, it plans to launch marketing and employment offerings that are customized to jobseekers, depending on their life stage, said Suzanne Sinclair, director of leadership talent acquisition.

Depending on the age and situation of the job candidate, the company might emphasize its stability, growth opportunities, or specific benefits, rather than have a one-size fits all marketing strategy, she said.

“When you look at different segments of the labor market, there are discernible differences in what [job candidates] want,” she said.

By ALEXANDRA LEVIT

A few years ago, experts would tell you that if you didn’t have a blog, your career would self-destruct. So, millions started them, even if writing a compelling post each day was their version of waterboarding.

Then, there was a backlash. The same experts said the blogosphere was too crowded and you should only be out there if you are a CEO or have already proven that thousands of people want to read your ideas.

So what’s the current story? To blog or not to blog to further your reinvention efforts?

Chris Brogan, the president of New Marketing Labs, has been blogging since 1998 — when it was still called journaling. Today, 25,000 people subscribe to ChrisBrogan.com to get his thoughts on everything from dynamic online communities to children’s books.

Become an Expert

Mr. Brogan began his career in telecommunications, and, over a period of several years, leveraged his blog to transform himself into an expert in online community building and business strategy. “I evolved my blog from writing about everything that was in my head to zeroing in on what my readers need,” he says. “I allow people to come in, pick up my material, and walk away and make it their own.”

The advantages of using a blog to jump-start your career, says Mr. Brogan, are many. “Blogging is flexible and gives you the freedom to set your own agenda and publishing schedule,” he says. “It’s also the Trojan horse into many large companies, because executive-level readers see my posts and get an immediate taste of the value I can bring to their businesses.”

Blogging isn’t for everyone, though. For some, the prospect of drafting original content two or more times a week is undesirable or impractical. And for those who excel at the spoken word rather than the written word, there are better avenues, such as YouTube.

Even people who love to write should understand what they want the blog to achieve in terms of their professional development. “Not having a focus will dilute your authority and distract people,” says Darren Rowse, who runs ProBlogger.net, a site that helps writers add income streams to their blogs.

Explore the Blogosphere

Before you begin the process of using a blog to establish yourself in a new industry, check out the community that already exists there. “Learn the culture and the etiquette,” says Mr. Rowse. “Look carefully at the other blogs and assess the holes. What are the topics that no one is currently covering? What niche can you fill by being yourself and sharing your expertise?”

When I started blogging in 2006, I networked with other bloggers by commenting on their posts and linking out to their sites. It helped me gain traction for my blog, and it also provided critical insights and information about my new career as a business-advice writer.

Over all, I think blogging forces reinventers to clarify their ideas, build a body of knowledge in a new area and carefully consider their long-term career goals. It’s also a valuable way to measure success.

“You can determine if you’re really engaging people by looking at traffic, subscribers and comments,” says Mr. Rowse.

Please send your career questions to reinvent@wsj.com. Alexandra Levit will answer some in the paper and online at WSJ.com/Careers.

By PATRICK G. LEE

Looking to attract employers’ attention, some law schools are throwing out decades of tradition by replacing textbook courses with classes that teach more practical skills.

Indiana University Maurer School of Law started teaching project management this year and also offers a course on so-called emotional intelligence. The class has no textbook and instead uses personality assessments and peer reviews to develop students’ interpersonal skills.

New York Law School hired 15 new faculty members over the past two years, many directly from the ranks of working lawyers, to teach skills in negotiation, counseling and fact investigation. The school says it normally hires one or two new faculty a year, and usually those focused on legal research.

And Washington and Lee University School of Law completely rebuilt its third-year curriculum in 2009, swapping out lectures and Socratic-style seminars for case-based simulations run by practicing lawyers.

A few elite players also are making adjustments. Harvard Law School last year launched a problem-solving class for first-year students, and Stanford Law School is considering making a full-time clinical course—which entails several 40-hour plus weeks of actual case work—a graduation requirement.

“Law firms are saying, ‘You’re sending us people who are not in a position to do anything useful for clients.’ This is a first effort to try and fix that,” says Larry Kramer, the law dean at Stanford.

The moves come amid a prolonged downturn in the legal job market. Only about one-quarter of last year’s graduating law-school classes—down from 33% in 2009—snagged positions with big law firms, according to the National Association for Law Placement, an organization that collects employment data.

In past years, a law firm could bill clients for a new lawyer’s work, even if that time were spent getting the novice up to speed. During the recession, corporate clients started limiting the number of hours a firm could charge and made it a policy not to pay for first-year associates, explains Don Liu, general counsel for Xerox Corp.

“This is a push from clients saying, ‘Why are we going to pay this kind of money? We don’t want to train the new lawyers,’” says Jennifer Queen, head of recruiting for McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP.

There are also fewer jobs to go around at a time when lawyers are in excess. In 2010, there were more than twice as many people—about 54,000—who passed the bar exam than there were legal job openings in the U.S., according to an analysis by consultants at Economic Modeling Specialists Inc.

Most law schools’ offerings cover a wide range of topics, but clinical placements—often students’ first chance for a taste of real law work—are usually optional and far fewer in number than theory-based courses.

“Medical students learn from real doctors in a real hospital during their education. In law, we’re learning from a bunch of academics who have deliberately elected not to pursue law as a profession…there’s such a disconnect,” says BeiBei Que, a 2007 graduate of the University of Illinois College of Law. Ms. Que, who runs a boutique law firm that helps tech start-ups navigate legal issues, says she had to pick up practical skills—networking, soliciting clients, forming a business plan—on her own.

Law schools have generally lagged behind other, more real-world oriented institutions like business schools in piloting practical improvements, as law professors tend to focus on scholarly work, says Bill Henderson, a professor at Maurer. And curriculum change tends to “move like a glacier,” he adds.

But many remain skeptical that new approaches to education will have a meaningful impact on the ability of lawyers to land jobs. “It could enhance the reputation of the law school…as places that will produce new lawyers who have practical skills,” says Timothy Lloyd, a partner at Hogan Lovells and chair of its recruiting committee. “As to the particular student when I’m interviewing them? It doesn’t make much of a difference.”

Other recruiters say schools that have overhauled programs need to do a better job of promoting the changes to employers in order to see an impact. Until then, law school prestige will remain a big factor, says Bruce MacEwen, a law firm consultant and blogger who tracks the legal industry.

“Firms are very obsessed with prestige,” he says. “That’s just a fact of life.”

By MELISSA KORN

Dow Jones Newswires reporter Melissa Korn checks in on Mean Street to highlight the growing number of Chinese students applying for enrollment at U.S. graduate schools.

More than ever, Chinese students have their sights set on U.S. graduate schools.

Application volume from that country rose 18% for U.S. master’s and doctoral programs starting this fall, according to a new report from the Council of Graduate Schools that provides a preliminary measure of application trends. Specific programs of interest include engineering, business and earth sciences.

That is on top of a 21% jump last year and a 20% rise in 2010—and is the seventh consecutive year of double-digit gains from China, according to the graduate-school industry group. Applications from China now comprise nearly half of all international applications to U.S. graduate programs.

China’s expanding middle class has fueled an interest in expensive U.S. schools, as has corporations’ interest in hiring local talent with Western exposure. As the quality of undergraduate institutions in China improves, more young people are also finding U.S. programs within reach. And as more Chinese students attend U.S. schools,burgeoning they encourage friends and colleagues to apply in what is called a “multiplier effect.”

Not only is China the largest country of origin for international graduate students in the U.S., but its rate of growth is far outpacing all other countries and regions in the survey, including South Korea and India. Overall, international application volume rose 9% this year, according to preliminary results.

Based on data provided by 242 respondents, a total of 514,298 applications were sent to U.S. graduate schools by prospective international students for fall 2012, according to the report. Final application figures will be released this summer.

The outsized rate of growth in China is due in part to a concerted effort by some U.S. schools to attract Chinese students. The thinking, say school administrators, is that international students who stay in academia will connect U.S. schools with new research partners, while those entering the corporate world may become clients of business schools’ lucrative executive education programs.

Ohio State University, with more than 10,000 graduate students, opened a “gateway” office in Shanghai in 2010 to coordinate recruiting, alumni activities and fundraising efforts in those markets. While international applications rose 18% for all the school’s graduate programs this year, they jumped 29% from China specifically. That compares with a 3% increase in applications from India; the school opened a similar gateway office in Mumbai last month.

International students comprise about 14% of students at U.S. graduate schools, says the Council of Graduate Schools.

U.S. schools say they cannot become complacent just because interest now is strong. Other countries are increasing investments in higher education, specifically in graduate programs, and viable competitors are emerging as they gain internationally recognized accreditation.

According to the Institute of International Education, the U.S. enrolled 20% of all international students—undergraduate and graduate—in higher education in 2010, down from 28% in 2001.

Corrections & Amplifications

An earlier version of this story referred to the Institute of International Education as the Institute for International Education.

Write to Melissa Korn at melissa.korn@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared April 3, 2012, on page B1 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Chinese Applicants Flood U.S. Graduate Schools.

By DENNIS NISHI

Tamara Guion-Yagy was disappointed when Tetra Tech, an environmental engineering firm in Pasadena, Calif., hired somebody else for the job that she wanted. The 40-year-old graphic designer thought she was being tried out when the firm hired her as a temporary worker.

So Ms. Guion-Yagy worked even harder at the same temp job, often staying late to finish work. Her manager responded by creating another full-time position for Ms. Guion-Yagy. “I knew I’d be good at the job and liked the work,” she says. “I just needed to show them how much.”

Dennis Nishi

When times are prosperous, companies are more likely to use temporary jobs as a low-risk way to vet full-time candidates. But the conversion rate from temporary to permanent worker has been low over the past few years as more companies lean on temps as a hedge against a double-dip recession, says Jonas Prising, president of Manpower North, a temporary-staffing company in Milwaukee, Wis.

“That’s why temps should do what they can to stand out in some way to improve their chances of getting hired full time or at least having their contracts renewed,” he says.

Become a source of ideas by really understanding the needs of your company and figure ways to apply your talents to this end. If you have logistics experience, for example, and know that consolidating shipping through a single supplier can save money, why not present your ideas in writing to the boss?

Be punctual and friendly, replace the office coffee with a gourmet blend or do anything else to increase your visibility in the office. Small gestures can make a lasting impression.

Work your way into the everyday office culture so co-workers will think of you as a colleague and somebody they can rely on. Laurie Ruettimann, a human-resources professional from Raleigh, N.C., recommends participating in workplace functions like office parties, picnics and lunch outings.

Volunteer for company-supported activities like charity work. It helped Sailor Brown get a full-time job at financial-services firm E*Trade Financial in New York. A weekend March of Dimes event gave the 40-year-old executive assistant the opportunity to interact with her boss and co-workers in a casual setting. And it allowed them to connect the hard-working temp from the office with a real human being who’s easy to get along with. Ms. Brown says she was hired full time soon after the event.

But don’t pester everyone about becoming a full-time employee. Put out your best work and let your actions sell you. Keep note of your accomplishments and bring them up when it’s time to renew your temporary contract.

Just being on the inside gives you an advantage over external candidates when applying for full-time jobs, says Mr. Prising. But don’t get complacent. Ready some options for when your contract is up.

—Email: sjdnishi@gmail.com

By CHERYL BUXTON

The upside to a down market is perhaps the push it gives organizations to make an inventory of their assets – not the least of which is their human capital. To do this they employ a wide range of sophisticated assessment tools that can highlight strengths and identify areas for professional development in their managers. However, research has told us that the typical interview – even when conducted by a well-trained professional – can only reveal a person’s leadership style (what he or she uses when trying to influence others). Simulation based assessments, on the other hand, can go a little deeper and determine a person’s thinking style, in other words how he or she makes decisions “when the door is closed and when someone isn’t trying to impress someone else.”

However, when confronted with “we would like you to take an assessment,” many executives face the prospect with a degree of trepidation. After all, many people dislike taking tests – especially when they are designed in part to identify and highlight personal strengths and weaknesses. An algebra test only tells you how much algebra you know (or don’t know), but an assessment must identify and expose the insecurities and flaws that you’ve tried to conceal your whole career, right? Not exactly. Following are some recommendations from experienced executive recruiters who have helped thousands of professionals “ace” assessment tests:

First, relax. Even chief executives can feel intimidated by the assessment process if they are in the final stages of being considered for a prestigious role. To alleviate this anxiety, remember that there are, in fact, no right or wrong answers. Advanced assessment methodologies use business case studies that are very hard to game so what is most important is to be yourself and respond candidly and authentically.

Courtesy Korn/Ferry International

Cheryl Buxton

To prepare, set aside ample time to take the assessment, which typically lasts 45 to 60 minutes and is conducted via an online survey, paper questionnaire or, for some organizations, over the phone. Remember that ultimately the purpose of the assessment is to raise or clarify questions, rather than provide 100% foolproof answers about your ability.

Once you have done your part and completed the assessment exercise, the administrator may walk you through the results, asking more questions to create a clearer picture of your true strengths and areas for development, such as: Does this sound familiar? When are you more likely to use this style? How has it helped you? Does it ever get in your way?

Be open to receiving the feedback by seeing it as a chance to not only learn more about yourself but also to put your behavioral patterns into perspective and demonstrate a high degree of self-knowledge.

Help the assessor understand as much about your own interpretation of the results as possible, using it to shed more light on what you bring to the table and how you apply your unique style to a variety of situations. This is especially important if your assessment scores look different from what the executive recruiter or hiring organization would have expected. In such cases, another interview might be arranged to address those areas of concern, or more targeted referencing might be conducted to deduce whether there is an underlying issue that may not have emerged initially. If everything checks out, they will continue to move you forward in the process, and may even recommend specific coaching once you are hired to fill any gaps.

As a stand-alone, assessments are not sufficient for making hiring or career-altering decisions. However, when combined with all the information that is available about you, the data they provide are an excellent supplement and can add an important dimension toward understanding who you are. They can also offer another level of confidence that you will thrive in a new position. This process not only helps to maximize the hiring organization’s investment in top talent, but also helps you to maximize your talent to perform at your highest, even when the markets are performing at their lowest.

Read the full article.  

By KRISTEN MCNAMARA

After three rounds of interviews for a sales position with Prudential Insurance Co. of America, Patricia Rosa received a letter in February saying her job application was denied based on information from a background check she authorized the company to conduct. The only blemish on her record, she says: Poor credit that built up since she lost her job two years ago.

Unemployed and in debt, Ms. Rosa is among a growing number of job hunters who find their financial past interfering with their professional futures.

Concerned about rising rates of employee theft and fiduciary issues, more employers are conducting credit background checks on applicants for some positions. Companies say the financial information can offer insight into a candidate’s level of responsibility. But people whose previously solid credit has been damaged by the economic downturn say they are victims of circumstances beyond their control.

Ms. Rosa believes her credit woes lost her the opportunity at Prudential. A company spokeswoman said Prudential doesn’t comment on specific job applicants but that each candidate authorizes the company to conduct a background check, which may or may not include a credit check.

A 49-year-old single mother of three, Ms. Rosa fell behind on her mortgage and other bills a handful of months after losing her job as a New York City office manager for a mortgage company in early 2008. “My house is in foreclosure,” the Nyack, N.Y., resident says. Ms. Rosa is now searching for positions outside financial services, believing other industries will be more tolerant of her debt.

The federal Fair Credit Reporting Act gives employers the right to conduct background checks on current and potential employees through third-party companies, with the individual’s approval. Some 47% of employers say they check the credit history of applicants for certain positions, according to a survey by the Society for Human Resource Management of more than 430 organizations in late 2009. That’s up from 42% of employers in 2006. Just 25% of employers in 1998 said they regularly or sometimes checked applicants’ credit histories.

Companies typically look back over a period of years for patterns in applicants’ behavior, says Mike Aitken, the professional group’s director of government affairs. “It’s a longer-term snapshot to see if that’s indicative of fiscal responsibility,” he says.

The vast majority of employers who conduct credit background checks do so for jobs with fiduciary or financial responsibility, such as accounting, budgeting or those involving cash or sensitive credit-card information. Nearly half the respondents also consider the credit of candidates for senior executive positions.

Lawsuits or other judgments outstanding, or multiple accounts in debt collection, were the types of credit information most likely to keep an organization from extending a job offer, according to the survey.

Legend Financial Advisors Inc., which has about 20 full-time employees, conducts a background check that includes credit for all new job finalists, says Diane Pearson, a financial adviser at the firm.

The Pittsburgh wealth-management firm had its first encounter with a candidate’s poor credit last year, she says. A college student applying for a summer internship had a history of unpaid bills and bounced checks. The firm decided to bypass the candidate. If he had been a candidate for a full-time position, “we may have spent more time and energy” examining the circumstances, Ms. Pearson says.

Knowing what is on your credit report and offering an explanation for debt caused by a specific event could keep negative information from derailing your employment chances.

First, be sure you understand what employers can see on a credit check and make sure you understand your report so you can explain any problem areas. Employers receive a credit report, not credit score, from consumer reporting companies. A report includes debt, bill-paying history, number and types of accounts, how long you’ve had them, and whether you’ve been sued or have filed for bankruptcy, among other factors. Information can go back seven years—or 10 for bankruptcies. Credit scores, on the other hand, are used by lenders to help determine if you are financially worthy of a loan.

Certain factors that could hurt your credit score, such as a recently reduced credit-card limit, would be unlikely to hurt your job prospects. Employers focus on issues like collections and defaults, says John Ulzheimer, president of consumer education for Credit.com Inc.

You might be tempted not to sign a waiver allowing for a potential employer to conduct a background and credit check. But refusing is likely a deal breaker, career counselors say. Employers will assume you are hiding a serious problem, and in today’s job market, they won’t have trouble finding a more forthcoming candidate. Most employers don’t seek permission for a background check until they’ve narrowed down the pool of candidates to a group of finalists, or have made an offer contingent on such a check, the SHRM data show.

“You really need to explain your circumstances,” says Tammy Kabell, of Career Resume Consulting, based outside Kansas City, Mo.

Sandy Gross, founder of Pinetum Partners, an executive search firm in Greenwich, Conn., focused on financial services, also suggests explaining the circumstances surrounding the negative information that will turn up and the steps you took to address the situation before employers run a check. “No one likes a surprise,” Ms. Gross says.

Critics of the credit checks say they create a vicious cycle that prevents those who most need jobs from getting them. Lawmakers are pushing for change. U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D., Tenn.) has proposed a bill to prohibit the use of credit checks during the hiring or firing process, with certain exceptions. And some states have passed or proposed laws to restrict employers’ use of credit checks.

Consumers can request one free credit report each year from each of the three nationwide credit-reporting companies—Equifax,

Experian

and TransUnion—through AnnualCreditReport.com. You are also entitled to a free report in certain situations, including if you are unemployed and plan to look for a job within 60 days, or if a company says it didn’t hire you because of your credit history.

If you find mistakes, alert the credit-reporting bureaus and creditors in writing. The process takes time, so review your history at least a month or two before you expect employers, or lenders, to request it, says Experian vice president, Michele Bodda.

Write to Kristen McNamara at kristen.mcnamara@dowjones.com

By DANA MATTIOLI

Multinational companies are taking extra measures to secure qualified employees in Brazil’s booming economy. To cope with a talent shortage, many are beefing up internship programs, spending more on training and salaries and relocating workers from flat or declining markets.

Particularly in demand: English-speaking managers and engineers, as well as those with experience in business development.

Brazil’s economy has soared in recent years as its oil, gas and ethanol sectors thrived. In 2010, U.S. foreign direct investment in Brazil totaled $6.2 billion, up from $2.4 billion in 2003, according to the Banco Central do Brasil. From January through April this year, U.S. investment reached $3.1 billion.

Similar to the situation in other emerging markets, such as China, foreign companies looking to expand in Brazil are competing with flourishing local firms for new hires. Also, local colleges and universities in Brazil were caught off guard by the economic boom. For-profit schools are attempting to fill the gap, but for now many multinational companies say they are having to educate their own employees.

Audio-equipment maker Harman International Industries Inc.

trains its Brazilian engineers at company research centers in California and Indiana for three to six months at a time, according to Chief Executive Dinesh Paliwal.

Brazilians trained by multinational corporations are widely sought after, Mr. Paliwal says: “You train them for six or nine months your way and then all of a sudden, their market value doubles.”

Poaching is an issue. “The market is trying to steal my people,” says Luis Maurette, president of Liberty Seguros Brazil, Liberty Mutual Insurance Co.’s Brazilian company.

In the past eight months, Mr. Maurette says competitors, both foreign companies and Brazilian firms, have tried to recruit 70 of his 1,500 employees, including underwriters, field sales managers and affinity specialists. Twenty actually made the move, he says.

In November, a key manager in Liberty’s affinity business approached Mr. Maurette, saying a competitor had offered her a better-paying job. Mr. Maurette gave her a promotion and a raise. She stayed.

Related Video

At Le Petit Paradis, preschoolers are learning their ABCs in both English and French. Aside from bilingualism’s practical benefits, parents and experts alike say speaking multiple languages offer other advantages. WSJ’s Christina Tsuei reports.

Companies also say they are having to rely more heavily on interns to feed the pipeline.

Siemens AG

has 10,000 employees in Brazil and expects to add around 800 in 2011, says Marcos Cunha, Siemens’s Director of Human Resources in Brazil. To fill the spots, the company plans to hire about 90% of its interns, he says. Many of them will fill engineering and finance positions.

Mr. Cunha says it is increasingly difficult to find people with five to 10 years of experience, so the company prefers to develop talent from universities instead. For more technical jobs, Siemens is relocating employees from flat or declining markets like Spain, Portugal and the U.S, he says.

Otis Elevator Co. is adding over 100 new employees in Brazil, targeting mechanics before they finish school. Otis partners up with technical schools across Brazil and recruits upcoming graduates as interns for a six month program. It hires around 60% of the interns who complete the program.

Hiring also came into play when choosing the location of a new 200,000 square foot factory that will open in 2012. Rather than a location where costs would be lower, the company decided to build the plant just a few miles from its existing facility in São Bernardo so that it could keep its existing workers rather than hire new, says Randy Wilcox, President of Otis’s North and South American Operations. “We knew it would be a challenge to get new employees,” he says.

Write to Dana Mattioli at dana.mattioli@wsj.com

By ALINA DIZIK

Selcuk Demirel

Even after spending hours behind a computer screen, we’re often surprised by how little we get done during a workday.

Indeed, frittering time away is epidemic in the office: A 2007 survey of 2,000 workers from
Salary.com
Inc.,

a Web site that provides compensation data, found that Americans waste about 20% of their time at work; with 34.7% of those surveyed saying surfing the Internet is the biggest distraction.

An emerging crop of software now aims to make individuals more conscious of how they spend their screen time. Previously meant for free-lancers looking to keep track of billable hours, software developers are realizing that time-management applications are useful for anyone who wants to track which Web sites they visit and how much of their day is spent on certain work tasks or computer applications.

Some services record and categorize users’ computer activities—often allowing workers to classify chunks of time as either productive or unproductive. Other services operate by having users set goals for how much they’ll get done in a set period of time.

While it is easy to see how hours spent on YouTube or Facebook can crush your productivity, time-management experts say one of the biggest culprits is the constant transitioning from one computer-based task to another.

“Multi-tasking is a complete myth,” says Peter Bregman, a time-management expert and chief executive of Bregman Partners Inc., a management-consulting company. “We lose time in the switch from one task to another,” since it takes time for the brain to adjust to each project.

Tony Wright co-founder of Seattle-based RescueTime Inc., a time-tracking software company, agrees. In an October data audit, Mr. Wright found that RescueTime users switch to an instant message window 71 times per day, which means every 5.2 minutes or 11.5 times per hour. Users to the site visit an average of 57 Web sites or applications per day, he says.

To track our productivity, we tested four online services for a week each: RescueTime, Slife, Klok and ManicTime. Each site provided an eye-opening look at our workday without too much of a hassle. We also found that just knowing our activities were being watched made us a bit less likely to dawdle on non-work-related sites. But the services themselves required some upkeep—which, ironically, took time away from our work.

After signing up for a free two-week trial of RescueTime Pro (usually $5.30 per month), the software downloaded quickly and showed up on our task bar. The site recorded our activities accurately, assigned them to categories and put them into graphs. Some of the findings were surprising: When looking at the day’s graph on a random Friday, for example, we realized we spent about 10 minutes of every hour reading the news.

But we thought some of the category titles—such as “Business”—were a bit vague. “We’re still chipping away to distill this stuff into something actionable,” says RescueTime’s Mr. Wright. We liked the feature that let us designate individual sites and applications as productive or unproductive. Additionally, each time our computer was idle and we returned to our desk we were prompted to say whether our task away from the computer was work related, like a phone call, or something that shouldn’t be recorded, like a trip to the fridge for a snack.

Klok doesn’t automatically track what you do on the computer (so no Internet connection is required). Instead, it asks users to set tasks for themselves throughout the day to help manage projects. Then users note when they start and stop each project, making it easy to compare your goals to reality. One morning, for example, we saw that a writing assignment took 3½-hours instead of the two we thought it should. We also realized we did far fewer tasks than anticipated each day.

Overall, the service helped us get more tasks done because setting goals required us to think through how we would build our days’ work. Tasks can be broken up into subcategories, making larger projects seem more manageable. But it was a bit of a pain to remember to notify the service every time we stopped and started a task. And even when we did make sure to mark our stop time, the service sometimes didn’t register it, making our data inaccurate. Rob McKeown, co-founder of Mcgraphix Inc., which developed Klok, says this issue will be resolved in the next version.

Next up was Slife. The service costs $5 per month, but a 30-day trial is free. To sign up for the trial, however, we had to provide a credit-card number. (A redesign will soon enable users to log on without one, says Edison Thomaz founder of Atlanta-based Slife Labs LLC.) After a quick download, we could see an icon on our task bar. Clicking on the icon took us to various time-management graphs, which were easy to read. The software lets users customize their own categories, such as news or research. You can also add labels to specify your activity even further, such as detailing what kind of research is being done.

During one particularly unproductive day, the service showed us that we spent 22 minutes on Twitter, 40 minutes on Facebook and almost three hours on email. There was also a “private” mode that turned the tracking function off, allowing us to browse frivolous stuff guilt-free.

One big headache was that we were often randomly bounced off the Slife service, causing it to miss some of our activities and requiring us to repeatedly log in. (Mr. Thomaz says Slife is working on fixing the problem.)

ManicTime, a desktop program that only runs on Windows systems, was next. Our computer usage was tracked with line and bar graphs; we could color code activities and tags to better understand how we spent our time. That made it clear that email was our biggest time waster. (Though the service doesn’t distinguish between work and non-work related emails.)

One nice feature: The service spit out a summary showing what percentage of our total time was spent with each application (like a Microsoft Word document) or Web site. The graphs also showed when our computer was idle, which helped us see how many little breaks we tend to take throughout the day.

All in all, the services really helped us get a handle on how we spend our work time. And having a written account of where our minutes went pushed us to modify our work habits—and get more done. The guilt element was motivating, too: Just knowing that the length of our Facebook session was going to be recorded made us think twice about lingering

Write to Alina Dizik at alina.dizik@dowjones.com

By JAVIER ESPINOZA

In a crowded job market, having work experience in China on your résumé can make a big difference.

Recent graduates in industries from engineering to finance in both Europe and the U.S. are making their way to the country, hoping to land their first jobs faster and more easily than their competitors.

Lesmes Gutiérrez, a 23-year-old engineering graduate of Loughborough University in the U.K., who had a two-week placement with Baoshang Bank in Beijing late last year, says potential employers are more impressed with those who can demonstrate a willingness to move out of their comfort zone. “It’s quite a big step to go somewhere not knowing what to expect. The idea of going to China calls for awareness and the willingness to relocate,” which could be appealing to employers, he says.

And he’s not the only one to have spotted the competitive advantage work experience in China may bring. Applications for internships there have more than tripled over the past couple of years, according to figures released by CRCC Asia, a London-based recruitment consultancy.

In 2009, the company received about 250 applications, compared with more than 1,000 so far this year, says CRCC Asia Director Daniel Nivern. “The Chinese economy is booming and it’s very appealing for graduates to get an insight as to why that’s happening by visiting [the country]. With the job market depressed in the U.K. and the U.S., China offers a great opportunity to get a long-term career,” he says.

He says China has also come into focus for Western companies looking to grow. “A lot of businesses realize that if they want to be part of the global economy, they need to be going into China,” adds Mr. Nivern, whose company has mostly placed recent graduates from the U.K. and the U.S., but also from other European countries like Spain, in finance, marketing and legal firms in China.

“I have been told repeatedly that my work in China looks great on my résumé,” says Alexander Lesher, who recently finished a master’s degree in Environmental Engineering at the Indiana-based Purdue University and subsequently undertook a two-month internship at environmental company Nanjing Zhuangxun Tech Co. in Beijing.

He says his experience there gave him a greater awareness of cultural differences. He says he was surprised by the way business people interacted during lunches. During a working meal with a group of about eight people, a single person would buy enough food to completely fill the table and would go out of his or her way to make sure everyone ate as much as possible. “Then they would act humbly, as if they have done nothing,” he says. “That wouldn’t happen in the U.S.”

Others visiting China for the first time found the first few days disconcerting. Sophie Corcut, a former unpaid marketing intern at fair-trade company Shangrila Farms, says: “Living in Beijing and dealing with a totally foreign language was challenging. Things like crossing the road or buying things in the supermarket or counting the numbers were suddenly difficult.” But it was precisely that challenge that Ms. Corcut, who borrowed from her parents to fund her trip, was looking for. “It was brilliant. I was looking for that stimulation.”

Ms. Corcut, who now has a full-time job with management consultancy Accenture in London, says her two months’ work experience in China was more rewarding than previous internships she had done in her native England. “I have done a lot of work experience in the U.K., and they actually don’t need you. You are just there, and they are constantly trying to find you work. You are given something very menial,” she says. “But in China they were actually using me. I was lucky to be interning for a young company that needed a lot of help.”

She says initially after graduation she wasn’t sure what to do professionally with a degree in history and French, but in China she learned how to use Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop and started designing promotional leaflets for the company. “I tried to get a big sales push and tried to get new clients,” she says.

But some recruiters are swift to point out that China isn’t the only place that will help students stand out. Chris McCarthy, of London-based recruiter Hays PLC, says it isn’t China experience per se that employers are looking for but evidence that potential employees are willing to challenge themselves.

“If Europe and the U.S. are going to maintain their place in global business people need to be prepared to put on a back pack” and head for less familiar places, says Mr. McCarthy. “It is evidence that people are willing to challenge themselves, not specifically China, that employers are looking for. They want to see a bit of ambition and entrepreneurship,” he says.

He adds, however, that China can be of particular relevance to employers looking for people with experience in emerging markets.

But while experience in China may be invaluable, some obstacles can seem formidable. Mr. Gutiérrez, working at a microlender, struggled with Chinese. “The problem with a rural bank is that Chinese is its first language and English is not used at all. When it came to producing reports on the fluctuation of gold prices, there were no previous templates I could use so I had to rely on an intuitive process and then improve the subsequent reports based on feedback.”

Despite some barriers, the benefits run in both directions, and companies in China are profiting from the surge in interest from potential interns in the West. Thomas Cao, chief executive of Beijing-based Broad Global Venture Capital Co., says he finds real value in the work done by interns.

“We look for graduates to come and do real work. We have asked our interns, for example, to help us analyze the chances of companies going public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange,” he says.

Ultimately, says Mr. Lesher, going to China was about turning a personal fascination into a tangible benefit for his career. “The country was just a point of personal fascination. I wasn’t sure how it would work out.”

Write to Javier Espinoza at javier.espinoza@wsj.com