This week Star Tribune reporter Matt McKinney wrote the holiday bonus may be a practice of the past:

If you’re going home empty-handed from the company Christmas party, you’re like most of us. The holiday bonus is a thing of the past, or maybe just a thing of an overworked imagination: It never existed at half of the 350 companies surveyed in a recent poll conducted by Hewitt Associates.

Read the full story here.

What was your holiday bonus? A diamond or a lump of coal? Should companies give out a holiday bonus to their employees?

Does your company offer telecommuting? Would you take a job over another job just because the position offered the availability to telecommute?

Kara McGuire, Star Tribune personal financial writer, talks about “career exploration” for recent grads in her column “what next?” She writes:

I can’t tell you how many parents have contacted me in the past year with concerns about their recent graduate, who left college with hefty debt and no job. Not wanting to meddle, but eager for Junior to leave the nest, they search for ways to help their kid on the sly, because their alma mater doesn’t seem to be doing much … some in the career counseling field think colleges are failing to teach students how to conduct an effective job search and sell themselves in a competitive marketplace.

Here are some of her tips on how to conduct a job hunt after college.

What are some of the difficulties of finding a job when you’re fresh from college? Did your alma mater help you find a job? Any good ideas on how to attack the hunt?

Today H.J. Cummins, who covers the employment beat for Star Tribune, opened her article with:

Minnesota’s job picture worsened Tuesday as new state data showed a double whammy of bad news during the past two months.

The state set a record in the wrong direction last month, as its 4.9 percent unemployment rate came in 0.2 percentage points over the national average, according to Tuesday’s monthly jobs report. In May, Minnesota’s jobless rate was worse than the nation’s for the first time in 30 years of record-keeping, then by 0.1 percentage points.

Read her full article here: Twin blows on the jobs front.

How is it going out there in the Minneapolis job market? Does this article feel accurate for what you experience? Do you struggle to find jobs?

In all probability, you’ve had a boss that you found odd or strange, somewhere in your career. Share your story. Individual names and companies must not be included.