Finding a hot job in a cool economy

Olga Vityak has a prescription for landing a recession-proof job: Go back to school and get trained in a fast-growing healthcare field. ¶ Two years ago, the Ukrainian immigrant and single mother quit her job as a production manager at an Oregon electronics plant and moved to Los Angeles. Vityak enrolled in a trade school and graduated 11 months later as a pharmacy technician. Last month, she started her new job preparing medications at Los Angeles County's largest hospital, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. ¶ "I always wanted to work in the medical field," she said recently. "It's a more secure job, and the pay and benefits are good." ¶ With California's unemployment rate at its highest level in more than a decade, job seekers are poring over help-wanted ads and Internet job sites. Employment offices and job fairs are drawing crowds. And buzz words such as "headhunter," "skill set" and "networking" take on new urgency.

By Marc Lifsher

August 31, 2008