With the job market picking up, some people who had lost their jobs are beginning to return to the workplace. Yes, it was tremendously scary and upsetting to lose your job. And as happy as you are to see that paycheck again, it may be a little bit scary to go back to work. Skills may be rusty, and, if you've been used to be home alone, your social skills may also be a little rusty. This is particularly true for people who may not be landing in their old jobs with their old colleagues and familiar routines.

Here are some tips from Barbara Pachter, a business etiquette consultant in Cherry Hill:

Do more than is expected of you. Be helpful to your new colleagues.

Because I have two college-aged children myself, I often think about their future and their job prospects. Their lives have a way of stirring up past memories and emotions from my life and the way I've felt about my work. In short, I love my work and I always have -- since I began it in fourth grade. If you think of  that as the start, and I do, I've been in this business for more than .... well, never mind.

Yesterday, I spent the day with a high school junior named Adrianna, who told me she wants to spend every day, for the rest of her life, being a reporter. "Sweetheart," I thought, "I understand."  She is editor of her high school paper, which puts her ahead of me at that time. I was a mere page editor of my high school paper, although I had already worked on two elementary school newspapers, a junior high school newspaper and Girl Scout troop newspaper.

She said she knew from the moment she began high school. In fact, her questions to me were quite specific. Where should I go to college? Is it possible to have a family and a life as a reporter, or is it an either/or kind of thing? (My answer is that it is more than possible, as long as you cope with low-level, yet persistent guilt. One day you feel guilty about neglecting your children, the next day you are guilty about cutting short the job, the next day you are guilty about snapping at your husband and your messy newspaper-piled house is a constant source of distress!)

Yesterday I wrote about how much "fun" I had reading an SEC filing for CDI Corp., the Philadelphia-based staffing company that specializes in engineering. That was my Friday afternoon reading as I waited to hear about the state of negotiations between Temple University Hospital and the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses who have been out on strike since March 31. Yes, I need to get a life! Anyway, CDI Corp. did not have a great 2009 and so its chief executive, Roger Ballou, did not earn the compensation that he might have earned at another time.

And that's the point that Temple is making. The market realities of the hospital business are such that compensation just can't be what it used to be. (Although we'd have to see how that applies to its top officers.)

So here's how it went for Ballou: Ballou took a small pay cut, like most of CDI's top executives. That reduced his regular salary from $750,000 to $735,425.  He also has an opportunity to make a cash bonus depending on the state of the business. His maximum bonus could have been $600,000, but the company awarded him 6.25 percent of that or $37,500. His total compensation was $1,086,600. That's down from $1.6 million, his 2008 total compensation.

OK, it's not romance novel with a hot, hot, hot description of ..., or even a quirky English murder mystery (last one I read had the victim planted head first into a pot like a bizarre plant), but last week's SEC filing by CDI Corp. did manage to keep me interested Friday afternoon while I sat around waiting for reports from the unsuccessful negotiations between Temple University Hospital's management and the union, the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals. Oddly, there are connections between the issues raised in the SEC filing for CDI, a Philadelphia-based staffing firm specializing in engineering, and the 1,500 healthcare workers who have been out on strike since March 31.   

In the SEC document, what caught my attention was CDI's explanation of its compensation philosophy for top executives. Just over two years ago, CDI's top executive, Roger Ballou, got a 9 percent raise to $750,000 a year after  CDI hired Hay Group, a Philadelphia employment consulting organization, to analyze the compensation of CEOs at parallel companies. Ballou got the 9 percent raise, effective January 2008, a month of after the start of the recession, because his compensation had dropped below the median level of executives in similar companies by industry and revenue. As the SEC document explained, CDI's compensation committee likes to pay its top executives right in the middle, at 50 percent, plus or minus 20 percent.  

So what does that have to do with nurses at Temple? What struck me about the SEC document was the explanation of how CDI likes to pay at 50 percent of the going rate for executives. All companies make those same evaluations in creating their compensation policies. They use surveys and benchmark studies to determine the market range of any profession or job category, whether it is secretary, nurse, chief executive, janitor or ball player.  Then they decide where they want to fit in, weighing how much quality they can afford and how much supply of that profession is available on the market.

Hospital staffing levels and nurse-patient ratios are more complicated than I thought. Right now, all the people in health care are saying, "well, duh!" But I write for the rest of us. (And can I say that this is what I love, love, love about my job? The exposure to interesting ideas!)  About a week ago, I was covering a City Hall rally held by the healthcare professionals on strike at Temple University. It was a beautiful day and I was sort of avoiding going back to the office by doing more "reporting." 

Anyway, I was chatting with Patricia Eakin, the head of the union, the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, and she explained how complicated these staffing issues can be. I know you are now thinking that of course she would say this because she leads a union that's on strike. But this conversation didn't have that feel to it -- it was more about the kinds of issues nurses routinely face at hospitals.

Eakin works in the emergency room at Temple. Part of the emergency room area is devoted to critical care. These are the real serious cases that come in. I'm not sure precisely how critical care relates to the trauma area, but it is certainly not the part of the ER where people come with sprained ankles or flu symptoms. If someone ends up in the ER's critical care area, they are in the hospital because they need medical help badly.

Richard, I'll call him, lives in Chester, is 59 and unemployed, so when the U.S. Census Bureau started advertising for census takers, he applied for the job. After all $17.75 an hour is decent pay, even for temporary work. But the Census has made it all but impossible for him to get a job, Richard said. You can read my article about this problem and about a lawsuit that has been filed against the bureau in Wednesday's Philadelphia Inquirer.

Here's Richard's story: In 2001 and 2002, (or maybe it was 2000 and 2001), he was arrested twice for driving under the influence. Something must have made an impact on him because, "I haven't had a drink in seven and a half years." 

When Richard applied to the Census, the bureau scanned a national FBI database and kicked up his arrest record. They sent him a letter asking for all sorts of court documents relating to his arrest. Richard said that getting copies of these documents represents a real burden to him, because he is unemployed and the trip to Media to get the documents would be hard for him to afford.   

Towers Watson's findings on Consumer-Directed Health Plans published in Human Resource Executive Online come as no surprise to me.  The findings show, the online publication said, that these plans are no more effective than any others in driving down costs over time, despite the theory that if consumers had to pay for their care, they'd be more frugal.

Why is this a surprise? I've always hated the name of these plans -- talk about putting lipstick on a pig. These are high-deductible plans, period, and the gloss about consumers saving money because they make budget-conscious decisions on health care choices just isn't practical. Call these plans high-deductible plans. That's what they are. Maybe some employers kick in to help with deductible, maybe some don't. Maybe some do now, but won't in the future. 

Doctors and nurses spend years in specialized education, yet someone who drives a truck, or teaches high school students or processes paperwork in a bank is supposed to be able to make informed medical decisions in all their spare time. Somehow, they are supposed to know which tests to accept and reject, all in the interest of keeping costs down. That is a consumer driven health plan. Ridiculous. The idea defies common sense.    

If there's any group that knows better than most how pathetic the job market remains, it is the Greater Valley Forge Human Resource Association, a professional group for human resource people. As companies downsized, many of these people lost their jobs. Many had the tough job of laying others off and the. Whole recruiting departments were wiped out and have yet to be replaced. 

However, this is the same organization that should, more than most, have an understanding of how to land a job and that's why it is sponsoring a free event. Ford R. Meyers, author of the book "Get the Job You Want Even When No One's Hiring" will be the main speaker at the event, which takes place from 2:30 to 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 15 at Villanova University's Connelly Center. It is open to the public.  

Frank Powell, from the outplacement company Lee Hecht Harrison, will moderate a panel. Panel members are Sally Stetson, of Salveson, Stetson, a retained executive search firm; Tom Sciorilli, vice president of human resources at De Lage Landen; Sean McManus, chief human resource office at ModSpace, and Jodi Kaelin, human resource business partner at Merck.

As usual, Philadelphia finds itself right in the middle when it comes to job availability, according to a recent study by Juju.com, an online aggregator of job postings. According to its calculations, there are four unemployed people for every job opening advertised online that Juju was able to catch in its net. Best place is Washington D.C. and San Jose, California where there are fewer than two unemployed people for each open job. Baltimore is just a little over two people per job. Not surprisingly, Detroit ranks the worst with more than 14 unemployed people for each job. 

Just to give you a city-wide view, New York has 2.5 unemployed people for each job opening, while the situation in Boston is 3.5 people. Pittsburgh has 3.87 people, edging Philly out slightly, while Philadelphia noses ahead of Seattle, San Francisco, Milwaukee and Richmond.

Juju did its calculations by dividing the number of unemployed in a metropolitan region (as supplied by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics) by the number of local online job postings.