Hello Professor Hojo. Since you are an author on this subject, this
may be challenging coming up with ideas that you have not heard of,
but I will do my best. I did an extensive search for new tools,
software, companies and ideas and here is what I came up with:
Your Job Searcher - A software tool that metasearches sites like
Monster, Career Builder and hundreds of job boards.
http://www.yourjobsearcher.com/
InfoGist - Another meta-search engine for jobs.
http://www.infogist.com/CarInfo.htm
The Right Resume - Software that helps users to create a good resume,
personalized cover letters and has many more tools for the job seeker.
http://www.softlookup.com/preview/dis1220.html
eCVexpress - Allows job seekers who do not know how to make a web
page, create a resume in HTML format with a WYSIWYG editor.
http://www.logisol.com.au/ecvxpress/
RunResumeRun - Allows users to create a resume using a template and
auto submits their resume to thousands of recruitors and job boards.
http://www.runresumerun.com/resumedistribution/runresumerun.home
IT and Software Companies Directory - A searchable directory of IT
companies.
http://download.com.com/3000-2022-10148489.html
HeadHunter - A searchable directory of U.S. recruitment agencies.
http://download.com.com/3000-2077-10152425.html
Digital Resumes - Offers to create a multimedia resume that is burned
on a business card sized CD-ROM. These presentations include images,
music and the option to click on various parts of their resume
(experience etc) and view it over a nice background with animated text
etc. This seems like a good idea although it probably depends a lot on
the type of job being sought. Also, I thought that the sample given by
this company was poorly executed. It was very slow moving and I
wouldn't have been impressed with it.
http://cdmarketer.com
Digital CV's - This company goes a step further and offers a services
that will allow job seekers to put a video interview of themselves
onto business card sized CD Roms. The interview consists of 10 ofthe
most commonly asked questions and can be done remotely. Job seekers
with a digital camera or access to one could do this themselves with a
little know how. Better yet, they could develop the idea of a 'Flash'
style multimedia presentations like cdmarketer and incorporate a short
video interview into that.
http://www.users.bigpond.com/tabcom/Resume.html
There is also no reason to limit these multimedia resumes to CD Roms
when they can also be published on the Internet if they are developed
in a web friendly format (such as Flash available from Macromedia
(http://www.macromedia.com). If job hunters do put up a resume, either
in multimedia or plain old html, they should seriously consider
getting their own domain. While there are plenty of free places to put
up a web site, it is much more impressive if they have their own
domain name (e.g. www.johnharris.com) if possible. This is cheap these
days...you can register a domain for as low as $8.75 at and host for
as little as $4.95 a month.
CVBase - Offers a services for job seekers to create a resume in DCV,
a standardized digital format that allows potential employers to
easily search for potential matches.This is for the European
community. This is a great idea for both job seekers and employers and
simplifies searching and matching a great deal...especially in Europe
where there are many different cultures. As far as I could tell there
is not a U.S. equivalent for a standarized resume.
http://www.cvbase.ch/index.html
If a company asks for a resume in ASCII format make sure that the
resume is scannable.
http://www.jobjournal.com/article_full_text.asp?artid=45
For improving skills and developing new ones there are plenty of
opportunities on the Internet. For a good listing of distance learning
companies a good place to start would be to visit:
http://distancelearning.education.yahoo.com/dlearn/index.html and
http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Business_to_Business/Training_and_Development/Distance_Learning/
And now for a few thoughts of my own. A few weeks ago I answered a
question here at Google by a job seeker who was looking for recruitors
in his area (Washington DC) for a high tech position. I thought it was
interesting that here was a fellow who was an IT expert sitting in
front of the biggest database ever available (the Internet), and yet
he didn't know how to mine out this crucial contact information. In a
couple of hours I developed a lengthy list of contacts for him simply
by visiting Yahoo, typing in "employment agency washington DC" and
visiting their regional directory (and a few surrounding ones as
well). I visited each employment agencies web site and found contact
information for each one. I did visit a few other similar directories,
but really it was all very simple and he was delighted with the answer
and paid well for it.
So in a sense, I think that the most important tool available for the
job seeker is simply knowing *how* to use the Internet to find what
the information they need. Sites like Monster.com are of course
important, but it is also important to be able to track down contact
information for job recruitors and potential companies. If this IT
tech specialist can't do it, chances are most people can't either.
This is pretty basic, but perhaps overlooked because it is so basic so
you may want to develop a section on basic Internet search strategies
and how to find contact information.
Also, in the absence of a standard digital resume format in the U.S.
like CVbase, job seekers should make their digital resumes keyword
heavy as more companies are using bots to sift through thousands of
resumes looking for good matches. For example, somone in the IT
industry should list *every* piece of software and hardware that they
are familiar with. This will give them greater visibility to bots.
I think it's also important for job seekers using the Internet to
remember that ultimately it's going to be a person that makes the
decision on whether to bring them in for an interview or not. It's
easy to get caught up in the technology and send hundreds of carbon
copy resumes and cover letters to hundreds of potential employers very
quickly. It's more time consuming, but ultimately more rewarding to
figure out ways of personalizing and customizing each resume and cover
letter to match the particular job being applied for. This is learning
to *not* let technological tools do everything!
A few more miscellaneous things I found along the way:
Interesting article on the perils of resume posting:
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,57923,00.html
Lots more articles by Wired Magazine:
http://search.wired.com/wnews/default.asp?query=job%20seekers
Good article on online job seeking:
http://www.asktheheadhunter.com/hajobnetting2.htm
Well, I do hope this has been helpful to you. I'm sure that writing
books about this, a lot of this is familiar ground, but hopefully this
has provided you with some new ideas. If you are unsatisfied with this
answer, please use the 'clarify answer' option before you rate me.
Thanks and good luck with your next book!
-shiva777
search strategy:
"job seeker" tools
"job hunters" tools
"new tools" technology "job hunters"
"job seekers" software download
"job seekers" "latest technology" software
"digital resume"
standard "digital resume"
Search sites used: Google, Yahoo, Wired (http://www.wired.com) |
