Dr. Dobb's Journal Spring 1998
While the Internet has earned a well-deserved "Hype of the Year" title for all its media coverage, job searching has become established as one of the truly viable activities taking place on the Internet. While the rest of the world has only recently become aware of its existence, most colleges have been wired into the Internet for more than two decades, and most college students use its resources regularly. If you truly want to find a level playing field for your job search, the Internet is your stadium.
College Grad Job Hunter (my web site, http://www.collegegrad.com/) is the only site covered here that is designed as a "hub" site. It includes a job search forum, recent articles from my syndicated "Job Hunter" column, and job postings from some of the nation's largest employers. Additional information on such topics as résumés, cover letters, networking, interviewing, and offer negotiation are provided.
Online Career Center (http://www.occ.com/) provides one of the most comprehensive and usable employer databases and career information services on the Internet. You can keyword search all ads, or view them by industry, state, or city. OCC is sponsored by a nonprofit association of employers who are paying thousands of dollars to be listed, and you get free access. You can also post your résumé for free. Send your résumé in either text format or HTML format to occ-resumes@occ.com with the subject line giving your one-line teaser about your background/summary/skills, and the text of your résumé in the body of the message. Your subject line is the first information that an employer will see, so make sure that it is enticing -- but you must keep the subject line to 45 characters or less, so be specific. Your résumé will stay active in the OCC database for 90 days, although you can update it (and thus restart the 90-day clock) at any time. Each e-mail account is permitted only one résumé at any given time, so if your roommate uploads his résumé via your account, your résumé is history.
E-Span (http://www.espan.com/) provides a fully searchable job database with an interesting twist: You can enter your personal profile (including your educational level, years of experience, current job level, salary requirements, geographic areas desired, and job keywords). ESpan will then keep you posted on all new job opportunities added to the database that match your profile. Participating employers are given basically the same function in reverse: They can conduct a search against the résumé database, then post a job which will "troll" for new résumés as they are submitted. In addition to the Web, E-Span can be found on CompuServe, America Online, and GEnie. Most of the online databases are updated once or twice per week, while the web site is updated continually. You can also upload your résumé for free directly to the E-Span ResumePro Database, where it can be viewed by interested employers. E-mail your résumé to resume@espan.com and use the subject line as the title for your résumé. You will be given a passcode (by return e-mail) that will allow you to view, edit, and delete your résumé so that you can keep it current.
CareerMosaic (http://www.careermosaic.com/), by Bernard Hodes Advertising, a leading employment advertising agency in the U.S., is a well-designed web site. The J.O.B.S. database is not as large as those of OCC and E-Span, but is certainly worth surfing through. CareerMosaic's Usenet Search allows you to search the multitude of national, regional, and local Usenet newsgroups for job postings. The front-end search engine, which allows for a combination of geographical and keyword searches, is the most intuitive front-end for Usenet search on the Web. CareerMosaic's International Gateway provides access to jobs in Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, Hong Kong, and France. Its online ResumeCM form allows you to cut and paste your ASCII résumé for upload to the database. CareerMosaic also serves as home to some of the best employer jobs pages on the Web.
Monster Board (http://www.monster.com/) provides a cool interface with over 50,000 jobs. Keyword searching includes full Boolean capabilities. You can also submit your electronic résumé to the Resume On-Line section and surf through over 300 different employer profiles.
Jobtrak (http://www.jobtrak.com/) is an excellent source of job listings for college students and new alumni. Access is limited to participating schools, but most major universities participate. Jobtrak will provide you with information on how to get your school online for free. JobWeb (http://www.jobweb.org/) is sponsored by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) and provides a variety of entry-level job and employer listings, which you can search by keyword and geography or simply view in their entirety.
CareerPath (http://www.careerpath.com/) allows you to search help-wanted ads from major newspapers. It includes search capability by newspaper, job category, and keyword.
CareerPro's site (http://www.flex.net/careerpro/) is a good place to go if you are interested in developing an HTML résumé but lack the technical expertise. CareerPro will develop your HTML résumé for free and post it at its site (again, for free) for 21 days. Obviously, the hope is that you will continue to post (at a fee) beyond the initial free time frame, but there is no obligation to do so. Once the HTML format is developed, you can save the file for post at other sites, further extending your résumé's reach on the Internet. Send your résumé to fsrock@firstsaga.com and CareerPro will respond with the URL of your new HTML résumé.
If you are going to compete in the world of cyberspace, take note: Students often unknowingly advertise their entry level job seeker status via their e-mail address. The ".edu" extension hanging off the end of an e-mail screams out entry level.
Consider spending a few extra bucks and getting hooked up with a local ISP for the duration of your job search. If you are going to do any serious searching online, it is best done with a ".com" or ".net" account. And you can usually have all your mail forwarded to one central account, thus avoiding the need to check multiple accounts.
Internet résumés are different from paper résumés. Most paper résumés are verb oriented. But Internet résumés need to accomplish a different purpose; they need to function well in a search. Employers do not search for verbs, they search for nouns. Nouns are the keywords or "buzzwords" that employers look for in prequalifying potential candidates.
In preparing your résumé for posting on the Internet, be sure to examine your résumé from the perspective of searchability. Even if the résumé is not initially keyword searched, it may find its way into a database beyond its initial posting location. In constructing your Internet résumé, consider the view from the other side of the desk and what you would look for in searching for a candidate such as yourself. If the proper keywords are not already included, revamp your résumé and include a keyword section. If you initially formatted your résumé with a word processor, save it as ASCII text, then double-check all formatting.
Also, use an informative subject line. State your objective succinctly in 80 characters or less; use as many keywords as possible. But do not put the words "Entry Level" in the subject line. Few employers search the Internet looking specifically for entry-level applicants.
The standard for posting your résumé is ASCII text format, which generally allows for greater searchability. However, HTML is also growing in acceptance. The benefit of HTML is the flexibility with regard to graphics and overall presentation. When you create your own web site, you can post your fully formatted résumé, as well as a downloadable text version.
To understand Internet postings, it is important to note that there is more to posting your résumé than just placing it on a Usenet Newsgroup, then sitting back and waiting for the phone calls (or e-mails) inviting you to the interview. Although most "passive postings" such as this take little time to generate, they are also less likely to produce positive results. The best results are achieved through both passive and active posting.
When posting your résumé passively, you will have no idea who has viewed your résumé, when, where, how, or why. For all you know, your résumé was never viewed by anyone; or if it was, it may have been printed, reviewed, and entered into a database, while still producing no direct contact.
Active posting involves finding individual employer postings or job postings and responding directly with an e-mail résumé. This is actually a much more productive method, since it is more direct and personal. It also provides you with the opportunity to add additional comments that relate to a specific employer, and a contact point for later follow-up.
When sending your résumé via e-mail, use one of these three formats:
One of the most effective components on the Web is the proliferation of search engines that track the multitude of sites.
Using one of the search engines, gather information about a potential employer you have already identified (I like Yahoo! because the listings are submitted rather than robot detected, producing smaller, more-manageable search results). You can start with a search by company name. You will usually find the home page for the company you are searching for, as well as associated sites of suppliers or customers. Many companies maintain a listing of jobs at their site, so this is an excellent way to find out about current opportunities. Some companies also maintain an entry-level jobs page.
After you have gleaned the information you are seeking at the company site, back up to your search engine to expand your search. For example, if you are using Yahoo!, click on the category line under which the company name appears. This will expand out to a full listing of other companies in similar industries or touting a similar product line. Minimally, it will provide you with a great deal of competitive information. Maximally, it may direct you to the up-and-comer in the industry, a company you may not have been aware of otherwise.
Back at the Yahoo! search-results page, click through to Alta Vista at the bottom of the page. This will greatly expand your listings based on your original search keywords. Alta Vista (maintained by Digital Equipment Corp.) is generally regarded as the best and cleanest of the robot sites. The results can sometimes be rather daunting (for example, you probably do not want to search Alta Vista for "IBM"), but you will often find a wealth of information about the company, and commentary (both good and bad) about its reputation, product line, position within the industry, and so on.
After you have completed your employer name searches, return to Alta Vista (http://www.altavista.digital.com/) and perform a keyword search, just as you would at any job posting site. Why? Because this search will tap into all of the companies that maintain pages containing those keywords. Many of these pages will be job postings.
Keep in mind that you will likely come up with scores of personal résumé pages in the results of your search. Don't be discouraged by the number of others out there. In fact, use it as your inspiration to create your own HTML résumé. Remember, there are plenty of hiring managers (myself included) who are doing the exact same keyword search from the other side of the desk. I sift past the company sites to get to the personal résumé sites.
The Usenet Newsgroups have been around much longer than the Web and continue to provide a forum for focused discussion and postings. Here are some of the best:
Then again, who says you have to look for jobs where the online services want you to look for jobs? The best place to look for work is often directly where most of the online service action is -- in the SIG (Special Interest Group) or Forum areas. While there are some very unique SIGs, there are also some that will tie in directly with your future career.
DDJ