About This Particular Web Site
Jobs Web Sites
This can be a very stressful time of year. April 15th is just over the horizon, we’re paying the price for spending too much during Christmas, and the unseasonably warm weather is a constant invitation to play hooky. And college students who’ll be graduating this spring have another reason to be stressed—getting a job.
Making the transition from college into the work force can be a terrifying and overwhelming process. You’ve had all the schooling but don’t know how to make yourself stand out from the crowd. Even worse, you don’t know how to get your name out to the right employers.
Getting a good job is a full-time job in itself. It takes time, planning, research, and selling yourself. The good news is that there are a number of Web sites dedicated to helping you make the perfect resumé. They will also post your resumé for employers to see. The bad news is that many of these sites pass off bad advice. Many people have set up shop on the Internet, offering resumé building services, but they give poor tips or don’t give you the proper exposure, leaving you with fewer job opportunities.
Treat building your resumé using tips on the Internet with caution. There is a lot of great advice, but you have to know where to find it. Search for tips that are as specific to your job as possible. A banker’s resumé should look very different from a graphic artist’s resumé.
Posting your resumé on Web sites that prospective employers can browse is a great tool. But don’t make the mistake of just posting your resumé out there in one location, expecting hordes of employers swamping you with phone calls and e-mails. Put your resumé out on several sites. Many professional organizations (specific to your job) have Web sites that let you post with them. Employers in your field check these sites out and could give you the exposure that you need to get that all-important interview.
The sites listed should be used as a jumping off point for your particular career interests. They’re a good reference for the fresh-out-of-college student as well as anybody looking to make a career change. Happy job hunting!
careers.wsj.com
A Complete Suite of Tools for Job Seekers
From the publishers of The Wall Street Journal comes a Web site dedicated exclusively to job hunting. Everything you’ll need to get started with finding your new career is here. You can search the job database by career and further focus your search by state or city. There’s a wealth of advice from recognized experts on job seeking. You’ll also find feature columns by big name employers—what they look for in resumés and employees. A tool that I found particularly interesting is the “Job Alert” feature. Whenever new employers come to careers.wsj.com, you can be notified by e-mail about them. You’ll find some big name companies working with careers.wsj.com already—including United, Dell, Blockbuster, and AT&T. Students getting ready to enter the job market will appreciate a section devoted entirely to them. Expert advice is given to the new graduate who is looking to make his first step into a new career. Not sure what the average salary is for your job? Check out the “Salary Data” area, where you can find how much you can expect to earn. It’s even broken down into various cities around the nation. I looked up my job and became very depressed. A Television Producer in Dallas makes over $15,000 more than I do! Very, very depressing.
CareerPath.com
Web: http://new.careerpath.com
Thorough Searches and Career Management
One of the great strengths of CareerPath is its job searching feature. Not only does it search Web postings of jobs from many companies, but it can also search newspaper job listings. You can select from a large number of newspapers from all across the country. Many non-professional jobs are found only in the classifieds. This tool leaves nobody out—helping a wide variety of people that are looking for jobs. You can post your resumé on the site and place it in a specific category that fits your job. Before you go into that interview it helps to do some research on your career and the company you’re interested in. Here you can get to know more about many different companies, trends in your career, advice on relocating across the country, and salaries. You can even take a skills assessment to determine whether you’re a leader or a follower.
Bakos Group
Web: http://www.bakosgroup.com
Resumé Service for a Price
When it comes to paying someone else to prepare my resumé, I tend to be wary. Bakos promotes just such a service. It claims that professionals will prepare your resumé and all but guarantees that you’ll get a job. If you don’t see immediate success, Bakos will rework your resumé. Personally, I cannot in good conscience recommend using this kind of service, especially since this company is Internet-based. But there are some other helpful tools on the site that you might be interested in. Bakos will perform a free resumé critique—all you have to do is fill out a submission form and send your resumé to them. Experts will pore over your work and return it with their own assessment. I tried this service and had mixed results. Some of their suggestions were legitimate, others were not. They’re strong in passing along general tips, but when it comes to your specialized field, they can miss the mark.
JobSearch
Power Search for the Perfect Job
Searching for the perfect job? Look no further than JobSearch. What makes JobSearch really shine are its search tools—you can find a job by industry, geographical location, and part-time or full-time positions. You can even filter the results by what your salary requirements are. Also included is a place to post your resumé. As with most sites, the service is free, and it leads you to believe that posting your resumé will guarantee a great job. As with all the other job posting sites, it doesn’t hurt to use the service, but you probably won’t get as many replies as you would by sending your resumé directly to employers.
The Square
Web: http://www.thesquare.com/career
An Assortment of Helpful Links and Tools for Getting a Job
The Square has many of the same services that other sites have—resumé posting, searching, etc. What makes The Square unique are all its great links to other sites dedicated to almost any information about getting a job. You’ll find information for college graduates who are thinking about going to graduate school and a site dedicated to people already in the workforce who want to change jobs or beef-up their skills. One very interesting section that I found was an interactive interview game. In this role- playing game, you play an applicant during the all-important interview stage of hiring.
Career Builder
Web: http://www.careerbuilder.com
Getting a Job and Keeping It
Getting a job is hard enough, and keeping it is a job in itself! In addition to the usual staples of these kinds of sites—like job searches—there’s an area dedicated to keeping your job. Here, you’ll find proven suggestions that will help you get that promotion without becoming a complete workaholic or getting a reputation for being the company brown-noser. CareerBuilder does have one distinctive job search feature. It has a meta-search engine that scans the Web’s 40 largest career sites. You can create a complete job profile and have it stored on the database. Whenever something pops up that fits your requirements, you’ll get an e-mail notification.
Copyright © 2000 David Spencer. David Spencer has been a Mac advocate since 1991, when he traded in his IBM PC Jr. for a Mac Classic. He can be reached at
dspencer@atpm.com. The Web sites mentioned here are not endorsed by ATPM, they are simply suggestions for your own browsing endeavors.
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