When Mardi Walton moved from San Diego to Orinda, Calif., she figured it would take her at least a couple of months to line up a job.
She found one in less than a week.
Thanks to her brother, who hooked her up with the Internet, Walton cruised job postings on the Career Mosaic board. An opening as an administrative assistant at Doremus and Co., a San Francisco-based advertising firm, caught her attention. She faxed her resume on a Thursday, interviewed the next Monday and landed the job four days later.
“I was really surprised at how quickly I got the job,” said Walton, 27. “I liked looking for a job this way much better (than traditional methods). I just faxed in the resume. It’s really simple.”
The rapid development of technology has touched almost every aspect of life. Searching for a job is no exception. Employment listings that used to be the exclusive domain of newspapers, trade magazines and other print publications now can be posted on the World Wide Web, via job boards and company Web sites. And resumes that once came through the mail pop up electronically on employers’ computer screens.
Nationwide, more than 600,000 job openings are posted on the Internet, up from 15,000 two years ago, said Fred Jandt, co-author of “Using the Internet and the World Wide Web in your Job Search.
Receiving resumes and job applications electronically gets hot job prospects in front of hiring managers faster.
“If your resume comes in at 8 a.m., it can be in front of a hiring manager at 9:01 a.m.,” said Bruce Hatz, corporate staffing manager at Hewlett-Packard Co. (http://www.jobs.hp.com) in Palo Alto, Calif., compared toe five or six days it takes for a mail-in resume to reach a hiring manager.
Employers say they don’t give preference to people who submit their resumes electronically. But applicants who do so are sending a clear message: that they are computer-literate.
If you don’t want to miss the wave, learn how to surf the Net by first becoming familiar with at least two search engines. Using Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com) or Alta Vista (http://www.altavista.com), try searching under the industry you’re interested in by plugging in, for example, “careers and accountant” or “jobs and Webmaster.” Both will pull up links to career sites containing those types of jobs.
Once you’ve learned how to search, you can check out the numerous job boards. The biggies include Career Mosaic (http://www.careermosaic.com), Monster Board (http://www.monster.com), IntelliMatch (http://www.intellimatch.com), the U.S. Department of Labor’s America’s Job Bank (http://www.ajb.dni.us) and E-span (http://www.espan.com).
Some other general purpose resources are JobSmart (http://jobsmart.org), Online Career Center (http://www.occ.com) and JobWeb (http://www.jobweb.org). Two sites that are organized by career fields are Your Personal Network (http://www.ypn.com/topics/881.html) and A Handy Guide (http://www.ahandyguide.com/cat1/employ.htm).
So now you just sit back and wait for the job offers to roll in, right?
Wrong, says Clara Horvath, president of CareerWorks, an Internet job-search consulting firm in Foster City, Calif., who urges job hunters not to rely on what she calls “passive” methods.
“(The success of job boards) is hype. By the time something gets posted (on a job board), it’s desperation time. If it were a truly desirable position, you would have filled it by word-of-mouth long ago. Either there was an incredible shortage of applicants or it’s a horrible job.”
She suggests job seekers use the Internet more pro-actively by taking advantage of its capabilities as a research tool. By looking at a corporate home page, you can find out about the company’s products, competitors and needs. Your research can lead to the latest industry buzz words, which you can include in your resume. Or you can get clued in on what skills are required for which jobs.
Horvath isn’t completely down on job boards, noting they are good places to size up your competition by looking at other people’s resumes. Many boards also provide valuable information, such as advice on how to write a resume, how to prepare for an interview and how to dress for the interview.
The Net is also good for networking, career counselors say. Joining newsgroups, part of the widely available Internet service called Usenet, is a great way to connect with people of similar interests and find out about jobs worldwide.
But people who like to do things the old-fashioned way shouldn’t give up. Hiring managers, mindful that not everyone has access to a computer, are still banking on tradition, attending job fairs, conducting on-campus college interviews and taking out newspaper ads.
“People predicted that movie theaters would disappear when VCRs came about” said Rick Ludeman, a staffing communications for Intel Corp. (http://www.intel.com). “But we still have movie theaters. There will always be print ads.”
WHAT WEB JOB APPLICANTS SHOULD KNOW
– Send your resume out judiciously. Remember that when you post your resume on a job board, anyone can see it, including your current employer.
– Avoid fancy formatting, such as italic, bold and bullets. Send your resume as an ASCII text file. Ship this text version of your resume as an e-mail, rather than as an attached file.
– Decide whether to include your address. If you post your resume onto job boards, use your e-mail address, not your residential address.
– One expert suggests that you e-mail yourself a copy of your resume before sending it out to employers. By doing so, you’ll be able to catch any formatting problems.
– Don’t send multiple copies of your resume. Employers’ biggest pet peeve is receiving faxed, mailed and e-mailed versions of your resume.
– Mind your P’s and Q’s. You should be just as formal in your e-mail as you would be when writing a cover letter on paper.
– Having your own Web page is a good way to showcase your work and additional information about yourself. But if you lead an employer to your page, don’t include links to your career center or your professional organization, where the employer could be led to other–perhaps, more qualified–job candidates.
