The search engine is easy to use and the jobs are often well paying.

Currently, in Michigan there are two mine-safety inspection jobs. They range from GS-7 to GS-12. At the GS-7 level, candidates with related experience doing health and safety inspections in construction, excavation or heavy industrial plant settings will be considered. “For example, performance of safety and health inspection work at a steel mill would qualify at this grade level,” the job description says.

The application process is complex and may require the job candidate to take initial training before he or she finally gets the job.

The benefits are great — Uncle Sam workers treats his workers well. And the pay range is attractive too — $38,790 to $74,628 per year.

Kilwin’s Chocolate Kitchens with 28 Michigan stores and a home office in Traverse City hires hundreds of people each summer to scoop ice cream, make chocolates, dip apples in caramel and sell fudge.

Jeff Hall, director of marketing, says the stores, which are all independently owned, have the biggest need for seasonal employees from July 4 through the middle of August. “It’s really, really busy then,” he says.

Most stores hire between 25 and 30 mostly high school and college students and pay them minimum wage the first year and slightly more each year they return to work. Every worker is scheduled for evenings and weekends, and it is important to be able to keep working through the Labor Day weekend. Seasonal employees who can stay through September and October are also valued in some locations. Good workers will be hired for the end-of-the year holiday season as well.

Workers are given a Kilwin’s T-shirt and hat to wear while they work. “It is a fun job,” Hall says, “Employees make sure the customers are happy. They learn business skills and life skills. It’s more than just scooping ice cream.”

Students can apply by going to local store, looking clean and neat, and filling out an application.

Kilwin’s celebrated the grand opening Wednesday of its new corporate offices, central kitchen and retail store in Traverse City. Currently, there are no jobs available there.

A study by Colleges Foundation says 90 percent of students who are natives of Michigan would remain here if businesses would help them find good-paying jobs, affordable housing, easy commutes and access to recreational amenities. As it is, more than 50 percent of the graduates of the state’s 15 public universities leave the state to take a job elsewhere.

Only 11 percent of students believe that Michigan has broad enough employment opportunities for them to find a job that will provide them with enough income and an attractive lifestyle. As a result, more than 50 percent said they will actively look elsewhere for a job and move there when they find it.

The company makes artificial joints. Claes Ekstrom, a partner with Altor, said in a statement: “With an increasingly active and aging population in the western markets and increasing public and private health care spend in the developing markets, there is a fundamentally solid long term demand growth outlook for orthopedic and dental implants.”

The new Michigan jobs will be executive, clerical and some manufacturing positions. Orchid is currently advertising these positions on its website at its plants in Holt, Chelsea and Bridgeport:

• Quality Engineer
• CNC Lathe Machinist (2nd or 3rd shift)
• Manufacturing Process Engineer
• CNC Lathe Machinist
• Project Manager
• Forging Die Designer
• 5-Axis Cutter Grind Machinist
• Process Technician
• Plastic Injection Molding Supervisor
• Mold Production Manager
• Quality Engineer

The company wouldn’t discuss pay or benefits, but according to the Industry Spotlight, machinists earn between $26 and $32 per hour on average.

A survey by recruitment website CareerBuilder.com says 84 percent of working dads who were laid off in the last 12 months have found full-time employment.

But working can have some downsides as well. Leaner staffs and heavy workloads that have resulted from the 2008 economic meltdown mean that 22 percent of working dads say they put in more than 50 hours a week on average, up from 19 percent of employed dads who said last year that they worked that much.

As a result of too many hours on the job, 39 percent of dads say they spend fewer than two hours a day with their children and 16 percent say they spend less than one hour a day. About 20 percent say they bring home work more than three days a week. More than 34 percent said they missed more than one significant event in their children’s lives because they had to work.

If you’re still job hunting, you may wish you had these problems.

Sean Heiney, director of new product initiatives for this software security company, is trying to fill a dozen open positions, and complaining that he can’t find people who are “geeky enough.”

He won’t say what the jobs pay, but the U.S. Department of Labor reports that the median income for software engineers is $90,000 a year or $42 an hour. For that, lots of people could learn to be geeky.

The three kinds of positions he’s trying to fill are software engineers, quality assurance engineers (who generally don’t write software and can be recent graduates) and high-tech sales and marketing people who typically have MBAs.

All of these salaries are “truly competitive,” Heiney says.

The trouble that he’s having filling the jobs is not a lack of people who look good on paper. The problem is that when they come in for the interview they don’t exude the kind of enthusiasm for high-tech fun and games that Barracuda expects.

“We look for people who are are passionate about geeking out,” Heiney says. “We want people who love software and are really into it. . . . Some people like to garden in their spare time. We look for software developers who like to write code in their day job and then go home and write some more. We’re a company of a lot of those people. That’s the foundation on which Barracuda has grown and those are the kind of people we want to hire.”

Previously, Barracuda has been casual about its hiring, advertising mostly on Craigslist, but that hasn’t gotten them the kind of tech lovers they want. So they’re ramping up the search, looking for people at universities other than the University of Michigan.

Barracuda’s not paying for relocation, but if you’re going to make $90,000 a year, you can probably afford to rent a U-Haul.

Most of the jobs were lost in three areas:

• Government jobs. More than 8,000 of them disappeared in May. Some of those were U.S. Census jobs that ended and some
  were local government jobs. Declining property tax rates have forced local governments to get leaner.
• Leisure and hospitality jobs. More than 5,000 of these disappeared as people tightened their budgets and spent less money on recreation.
• Education and health services. More than 3,000 jobs were lost in another example of belt-tightening in the public arena.

Overall, this doesn’t appear to be a terrible employment snapshot. Unemployment was up only .01 percent compared to April, and the state’s unemployment rate was just a little above the U.S. rate in May of 9.1 percent. Compared to May 2010, joblessness has declined 2.5 percentage points from a rate of 12.8 percent. Since the meltdown in September 2009, Michigan’s unemployment rate has fallen by nearly 4 percentage points.

In comparison to May 2010, private sector jobs in Michigan increased by 70,000 or 2.2 percent. Among the winners are construction and manufacturing production workers whose employment numbers, wages and hours are all up compared to May 2010. The construction news is particularly good with 4,000 jobs added this past month.

If you’re a Michigan job hunter, be grateful. This news could be a whole lot worse.

It’s looking for workers who are friendly, helpful and willing to work a four-day week. No one with a criminal record, history of drug abuse, or a lousy driving record will be considered. Pay ranges from $10.25 -$13.75 per hour..

Send your resume to hrgpc@griffinpest.com or check them out on Facebook.

To encourage businesses to expand, Chase is waiving the SBA guarantee fee through Aug. 31. This can save a borrower as much as $10,000 on new SBA business loans or lines of credit.

Chase also participates in the SBA Patriot Express program, which offers preferred rates and terms for veterans, active military in the transition process, or spouses of either.

“SBA loans provide the lifeblood for so many business owners who reinvest in our neighborhoods by hiring employees, improving their property and buying supplies and services,” said Michael Cleary, CEO of Business Banking at Chase, in a statement. “The SBA guarantee allows us to extend credit to a wider range of businesses that need capital to survive and grow.”

Details are available at Chase branches.

To participate and receive additional information, register here.

Participating employers include: Abbott, Archer Daniels Midland, Amazon, ATS, Black & Veatch, Boeing, Booz Allen Hamilton, CB Richard Ellis, Chase, CITI, Columbia College, Daiichi Sankyo, DaVita, U.S. Department of Education, U.S. Department of Treasury, Deutsche Bank, Dish Network, Dollar General, Dr. Pepper Snapple Group, EODT, Excelsior, FBI, FedEx Services, FedEx Office, Flextronics, GEICO, Graybar, Gulfstream Aerospace, Harris Corporation, Hewlett Packard, Home Depot, Humana, IBM, Ideal Innovations, Intel, Kaplan University, Medtronic, Military to Medicine, New York Life, Nike, Oakwood, Olympus, Panasonic, Progressive, Prudential, Raytheon, Realogy, Reynolds and Reynolds, Rockwell Collins, SCANA, Sears, Secret Service, SGS North America, Six Flags Theme Parks, Strayer University, TCF Bank, The Hartford, T-Mobile, Tobyhanna Army Depot, Travelers, Verizon, VetSuccess, VSE Corporation, Walgreens and Waste Management.

Supporting military organizations include: Military Officers Association of America (MOAA), Veterans Affairs – VetSuccess, Wounded Warrior Project, IAVA, Hire Heroes USA, Military Channel and the Student Veterans of America.