Job
hunting? Don’t you just
hate it? Looking for
prospective employers, searching the help wanted columns, asking
friends if they know someone who knows someone, scraping together a CV
and wondering if there’s enough of the right stuff to impress an
employer.
That’s
only the beginning! There’s the cover letter for the resume.
Then the interminable wait for an answer in the post or a phone
call. With some luck, and
perhaps a good word from the right quarter, invitations to the mind
taxing and nerve rattling interviews follow.
More
waiting. Maybe a second
interview to raise hopes that can be dashed easily.
There’s nothing about the process of getting a job that’s
easy. Every step is
difficult. To make matters worse, unless the first steps get handled
correctly, the later events never happen.
To
find a prospective employer, obviously one needs to be employable.
Perhaps less obvious: this requires some career planning and
preparation so that the resume will clearly reveal the background and
qualifications required by an employer.
Assuming
that one has employable skills and training, the next step involves
finding the right employers. This brings us to one of the joys
of the Internet.
The
numbers of Web sites and the
tools for locating them have been growing by the proverbial leaps and
bounds. Literally hundreds of sites exist where employers list job
openings. Career
exchanges feature employers and job seekers finding employment
matches. Web sites abound for the posting of resumes on personal home
pages. Some of these sites are free, while others charge a monthly or
annual fee.
Some
of the sites offer advice on how to look for a job on the Internet.
One site will forward resumes to 2500 recruiter inboxes. Other sites
are for women. The Net
even has forums for discussing job problems, unemployment and job
searches.
According
to ZDNet, “Of all the online employment databases, the Monster
Board is the most fun and painless way to attack the scary
prospect of hunting for a job. Pinpoint
who’s hiring by selecting a location, choosing a category (anything
from Accounting to Transportation) and entering a key word or two.
"Alternatively,
you might read a few articles from the career advice department,
deposit your electronic CV in the resume bank, and wait for employers
to bombard you with offers. The service, which boasts more than 50,000
job listings, is free for job seekers.”
Jobs
have been listed on Internet sites devoted to specific cities or countries.
Other sites list job opportunities by category. The categories include
plastics, banking, Information Technology, energy, engineering,
services, education, manufacturing, medicine, retailing, management
and law, to mention only a few. I
have yet to find a category that hasn’t been included.
A
bakery chef came by a few weeks ago wondering about whether he should
have a web page designed to help in his hunt for a better job.
I suggested that he wait until I checked to see if anyone was
looking for bakery chefs on the Internet.
To my surprise there were quite a few.
As I recall, I came up with a list of 149 sites looking for
bakers.
Finding
job openings has become easier and much faster, with the developments
taking place on the World Wide Web, than it was when we had to search
the want ads of many newspapers, magazines or journals, write
unsolicited letters to companies, or simply pound the pavement looking
for an opening.
For
those who aren’t sure what employment they’re best suited for,
several sites offer career
testing, while others offer books on careers. Those who want to go
into business for themselves can find sites that advise on how to
evaluate franchise and licensed business opportunities. At least one
Web site is devoted to home employment
opportunities.
As
the numbers of sites and listings increase, and as search tools become
faster, the old ways of finding a job will become as obsolete as
horses and carriages for transportation.
Having
found job openings, the job seeker must
have a professional resume or CV to send to the prospective
employers. I’ve seen some resumes that most employers would trash
without even reading.
A
really well done resume will get
employers to pick up the phone and
call you for a job interview!
Here
again, the Internet comes to the rescue, at least for those who have
the time to work on their own CV’s.
Many sites are devoted to resume
preparation, often with a bit of advice along with a rather hefty
charge for the resume preparation service.
However, when looking for well-paying jobs, it’s worth the
outlay to get a winning resume and the right job.
