Saturday, January 31, 2004

Robert's Potential Linux Jobs Bookmarks

I haven't mentioned Robert's website lately.

BraveNewWorkWorld & NewWork News

Gary Johnson appears to have set up a great news portal with a dearth of information related to job searching. The tagline reads:"Life and work in the revolutionary new world economy. For business, education, government, and careers."

I found this website in the referrer logs.

Wednesday, January 28, 2004

CareerJournal | The Favorite Questions Of Executive Recruiters

Ohio Labor Market Information Home Page

"Your source for reports and data about employment levels, unemployment rates, wages and earnings, employment projections, jobs, training resources and careers."

America's Service Locator - Find a Service

Employers and jobseekers can find the services they need at a convenient Career One-Stop Center. Just enter your zip code and select the desired service(s). Or just pick up the phone and dial 1-877-US-2JOBS for direct assistance!

CareerVoyages.gov

Start exploring career options - whether you are in high school, have graduated, have a vocational certificate, have a 2-year or 4-year college degree, or have knowledge and skills acquired through training centers, on-the-job training, or work experience. Be in demand by knowing about high growth jobs with better wages and a brighter future.

Tuesday, January 27, 2004

WetFeet.com > How to Answer Resume-Based Questions

Recruiters love to ask all candidates, from undergraduates to mid-career, about their resume. These questions give an interviewer a chance to dig a little deeper into your background and at the same time test your critical thinking abilities. The questions also give you a chance to show the interviewer your confidence, competence, and enthusiasm about a project or job you really understand.

Because resume questions take the discussion to your home turf, there isn't really a secret recipe for pulling apart the question. The way to be successful here is to follow a few basic interview rules.

Saturday, January 24, 2004

Letters of Recommendation

Letters of recommendation are something that you could put in a professional portfolio, for example. They are often requested in academic settings. I found some links that hopefully will help

MSN Careers - Believe It or Not! - Career Advice Article

How far would you go to land your next job? For most, it depends on how badly they need a job. As a career counselor, I've had the opportunity to hear about many amazing and often outrageous stories involving people employing extreme strategies to find suitable work. Many of the stories may sound unbelievable to you, but they are all true...

...This is what happened to six people desperate for work and at their wits' end. These stories are about regular people just like you and me who took control of their destiny to achieve a goal.

Although these stories are intriguing and highly creative, I do not recommend following these examples as a means of finding employment. They provide the kind of "out-of-the-box" thinking required for becoming employed in a tough job market. I hope you will glean from them the inspiration to escape the anxiety of being in transition and instead devote your energies to a creative self-marketing that goes beyond the pages of a resume...


5 Things to do with all that extra time:


Being unemployed may suck financially, but it does have its advantages in terms of all of that extra free time it creates.

You could spend the next couple of months couch surfing, or here are some other things you can do with your free time:

1. Learn to Cook - there are cooking classes, cookbooks, and my personal favorite, the food network with all sorts of cooking shows like Iron Chef, 30 Minute Meals, Food 911, Date Plate , and the Naked Chef with Jamie Oliver(why is it they pick the hunkiest hosts for these shows? Cute men that can actually cook? Woohoo!), you're bound to find something that appeals to your "inner chef"!
2. Exercise Your Body: you don't have to join a gym to get out and get some exercise! Pick your favorite activity, or something that you've always wanted to learn, and get on a schedule, joing a group, or take a class to improve your skills.
3. Exercise Your Mind: Learn something new, take a class, read a book, get certified, write your memoirs, anything is good as longs as it exercises your mind!
4. Get Organized! Whether it's organizing your house, your life or your job search, it's never too late to make a fresh start at getting organized (and staying that way!)
5. Volunteer

If you have any other suggestions for this list, please add a comment!

(cross-posted on the Job Files)

Tip of the Day: Blog your way to Job Search success!

(Original post is located here.)

While there are many blogging tools out there, I find that I have become very fond of the free
BLOGGER service for most of my blogging needs, ever since Google acquired them and added the Blog button to the Google Toolbar. What this does is allow you to add web pages, with comments, directly to your blog from whatever site you are on with the push of a button.

For example, suppose you see a job listing in your local newsgroup.
The logical thing to do would be to go to the employer's site and see whether or not the job is listed there. Now here's where Blogging can come in handy. Say you are ready to apply for the job immediately - it's easy enough just to send in your resume and store all of the information in your Jobfiler job tracker. But suppose you aren't ready to apply - you need to revise your resume, or get your cover letter in order, or simply think about it. If you had a job search related Blog, you would simply blog that page, add whatever notes you want to associate with that job, and post it to your blog. Your blog would then become a running job search diary, which you can even add follow up comments to any single entry.

Some things to consider... if you are blogging your job search for your own records, it's important to set up the blog as PRIVATE (not publically available). Of course, there are folks who blog their search publically, but that's really a judgement call on your part. Anything you post in the public domain could come back to bite you. Read this article on Blogger about the guy that got fired over his blog.

How-To's (skip this if you're not trying to set your blog to Private)When you create your account on Blogger , you can specify whether the blog is public or private. If you mark it as "Private" and want to keep it that way, you should also add the robots meta tag in the header of your template (and if you FTP to your own directory, placing the robots.txt file in the root is also a good idea). And of course, set your options on Blogger to Ping Weblogs = No.

Here are some sample jobsearch blogs which I have found on the web:
Trey's Job Search
All About Jen
Mike McBride: Life of a one-man IT Department

On a related note, here are some jobsearch information blogs, offering advice, articles, etc.
The Job Files
http://bostonworks.boston.com/blog/
Not Working for a Living
The Monster Blog
Being Bold

And for those of you who would like an alternative solution to Blogger, here are some other ways to get your blog up and running in a short amount of time:
BBlog
Square Space
eBloggy

Good luck, and happy hunting!

Friday, January 23, 2004

BW Online | December 2, 2003 | U.S. Programmers at Overseas Salaries

He could have used subcontractors in India, but he decided to keep the work at home but at the same price. Jon Carson's cMarket

has solved its immediate challenge, the implications of Jon's approach are potentially mind-bending. What if other companies begin taking the same approach -- offering Indian-style wages to American workers? On the positive site, we could begin to solve our job-creation problems. But on the negative side, America's standard of living would inevitably decline. There's only one way to find out for sure how it all might shake out, and that is for other executives to replicate Jon's experiment. The results could be quite interesting.

Chasing Elk Part of Airport Manager's Job

PIKEVILLE, Ky. - Gary Cox jumps into his pickup and rushes along the runway, honking his horn to scare the elk out of the path of incoming planes.

Cox is manager of the Big Sandy Regional Airport, and scaring away the animals is part of his job. Read more...
via Strange News - AP

Thursday, January 22, 2004

Wednesday, January 21, 2004

Welcome!

A hearty welcome to visitors taking the job hunting seminar at Sinclair Community College. I signed up for the seminar because I'm wanting to better my own job situation, and I originally started this weblog once I found the abundance of information available online.

Here we post a job- or market-related topic, question, anecdote, quote, tip, etc. You read the topics, decide if any of them are of interest to you, and use them as you see fit.

I especially want to encourage you to share your job hunting success stories. We've had a few in the 1.5 years this blog has been around. Nothing more encouraging to others searching for employment than to hear how someone else got their job!

Now go Get That Job!

Firm Offers Service to Catch Job Fibbers

BANGKOK, Thailand - Suspect that a job applicant's resume looks too good to be true? Have a gnawing feeling that your accountant may be cooking the books and pocketing cash?

Well, if you're in Bangkok, you can call on a new company that uses lie detectors, or polygraphs, to confirm the claims of potential employees or insure that workers are being honest.
I believe this is illegal in the United States, however.

Reminder: Upcoming Tech Thursday Casual Networking Event in Dayton, Ohio USA

Just a reminder to those in and around the Dayton, Ohio area pursuing jobs in IT. Walk-in attendees are welcome to join the fun at Talegators on Thursday, 1/22/2004 from 5-7 PM.

From the weekly email I get from the Dayton IT Alliance:

Our special guest at this event will be the new MIS Chair at Wright State University, Dr. Vikram Sethi. Please come and say hello to him.

This month's location

Talegators

6270 Far Hills Avenue
Talegators is about 1/4 mile north of Interstate 675 and State Route 48 (Far Hills Avenue). Check out the GDITA page for more information.

Happy Networking!

Tuesday, January 20, 2004

JobsPage/ask the recruiter

Answers to newspaper job-hunters' questions by Joe Grimm, Detroit Free Press recruiter. The questions come from the JobsPage's "Ask the Recruiter" feature.

spotted on Weblogs.Com: Recently Updated Weblogs

Getting an advantage on job interviews - Close Encounters with the Brainteaser Job Interview - HIRING - Magazine - Darwin Magazine

Information Technology Consulting IT Career Web Development Project Staffing and Direct Hire Consulting. Job postings in So-Cal and back east.

Monday, January 19, 2004

Mad Magazine Is Hiring

They are looking for a Senior Editor for the Editorial department. Thanks to Kat for the info!

Right Job, Wrong Job - Personality test to find the right career for you

Tickle, by eMode, is a social networking web site that is chock full of personality tests (like what kind of dog you would be if you were a dog, of course), including this one on finding the career that's right for you.

The career test does return your personality type, although it wasn't as specific as I expected it to be. For example, it told me that I should get a job that allows me to be Analytical and Creative (no surprise there), but didn't tell me specifically which jobs fit that bill. Apparently, to get a list of jobs, I would have to request (purchase) their Personalized Career Report for $14.95. So, while the site can be a kick (and a break from the day-to-day of your job search), I don't recommend giving them a dime. Unless of course, you're just looking to squander some money on the web (then, boy, do I have some web sites for you!) ;-p

CAREERS NOW: ORGANIZE HUNT WITH NEW FREE SERVICE

Jobfiler was mentioned today by syndicated columnist, Joyce Lain Kennedy in her "Careers Now" column. Kennedy has been an authority on employment for the last three decades. Her Q&A column provides advice on jobs and career development, addressing common work-related problems: demotion, layoffs, discrimination, specialization, keeping up with technology and networking at trade conventions. Here is an excerpt from what Joyce had to say about Jobfiler.com:


    NEW FREE ORGANIZER.
    A hard-charging job search generates scores of contacts each week. Effective follow-up depends upon keeping your records straight - contacts, names, dates, pitches, interviews, thank-you notes, previous follow-up and so forth. Accessible records help you maintain memory of resources where you've had better than average success - somewhat like finding a store that carries clothing you like and where you want to return to shop.
    Until now, books with blank worksheets to photocopy were the norm. No more. I've been keeping an eye peeled for a free online and public tool (not a tool restricted to clients of outsourcing consultants or for-fee Web sites). Happily, such a tool has materialized: Jobfiler.com.

WetFeet.com > How to Handle Unusual Interview Situations

You think just because you're interviewing with some high-powered firm that your interviewer is going to act as professionally as you're dressed? Guess again. Interviewers are people, and people can be weird. Here are some examples and suggested responses:Read more...

Sunday, January 18, 2004

Google Job Opportunites: Google India is Hiring

"Google is opening an office in Bangalore, India - our first full engineering facility outside the United States. The office will operate in an identical manner to our other engineering groups, with the same scope of work, hiring standards and unique Google culture. Our goal is to conceive, research, implement and deploy the next generation search engine - a goal that requires talented software engineers, top coders and visionary computer scientists. Those who join us in this worldwide effort can expect an outstanding work environment and the satisfaction of tackling some of the most interesting challenges in computing today." Read more...

Thanks to Ingrid for the link!

How to get the job you want in 2004 ! - Job Search at BellaOnline

Bella Online is a hidden jewel - ostensibly an ezine targeted to women, they cover topics ranging from health & beauty to careers, computers, policts and religion. Their career section is fairly deep, featuring both articles and links to additional resources.

[cross posted on the Job Files]

Friday, January 16, 2004

Off the Clock JobMarket! Events

This page contains information on Career Fairs and other related events in the Dayton, Ohio area.

Fast Company Now - Passion for work

[An executive coach] recently asked me if I closed my eyes and scanned my calendar, what events, projects, etc. would I say I looked forward to. (Hmmm, good question.)... I think many people know what gives them energy, but don't do much about building it into their schedule, into their work, or into their lives.

Yahoo! News - Consumer Sentiment Highest Since Nov 2000

I think I understand it now. Evidence shows that the tax cuts passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush have been good for the economy and job seekers.

As consumer sentiment gets better, the demand for goods and services grows. The higher demand for goods and services means that companies work to provide for those demands. This means investing money into hiring new workers, for one thing.

From the article (emphasis added):

The confidence data helped ease worries that the labor market's slow recovery might undermine consumer spending, which makes up two-thirds of economic activity in the United States.

Consumers' hearty spending over the past few years, helped by tax cuts and low interest rates, has helped keep the economy from suffering a sharper downturn.

Economists said a variety of factors likely boosted confidence: the holidays passing without any attacks, the rise in stock indexes to nearly two-year highs, coming tax refunds and an end to big layoffs.

Thursday, January 15, 2004

"I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up."

I made that statement yesterday at a gathering of other job seekers at Sinclair Community College. A brief history of my education and experience:

  • I have a Bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering
  • I was an Environmental Engineer doing environmental management for a manufacturing company
  • I was a programmer/consultant
  • I am a bartender for a hotel and conference center
I remember when I met with the guidance counselor in high school, he told me that he could see me doing a number of different kinds of jobs, based on the talents and aptitude he'd seen in me. I had dreamed of becoming a Renaissance Man back then. I don't know if I've found something that fits just yet. To quote U2, "I still haven't found what I'm looking for."

At the same time, I realize that no job is going to be a perfect fit. There are always going to be times when the passion wanes, when there is other "non-fun" work to be done, too. I guess it's a matter of seeing whether the benefits outweigh the costs, evaluating the trade-offs. For example, I have a friend who designs cars for a major automobile company. He loves that part of his job so much that he is able to live with the long hours and the long drive to and from work.

I guess I want to find something in-between, too.

crossposted to Journey Inside My Mind

Wednesday, January 14, 2004

LinkedIn: Home

"Through the real-world business successes of its users, LinkedIn has demonstrated that even established executives increase their business effectiveness and career success by using a referral-based professional networking tool. LinkedIn not only enables professionals to discover inside connections they never knew they had, but also allows them to receive referrals to deal makers, hiring managers and other highly sought-after executives through the people they already know and trust."

"While online job boards have become popular, they rarely work for job seekers, and hiring managers are overwhelmed with resumes and “cold” emails from strangers. LinkedIn is the only tool that mirrors the most successful process for finding a job and hiring employees and contractors: it allows both job seekers and hiring managers to find each other through referrals from their real-world connections."

Check it out, and if you do decide to sign up, please feel free to add me to your personal network, by sending me your contact information.

Tuesday, January 13, 2004

What Your Body Language Tells Interviewers

"What you are shouts so loudly that I cannot hear what you say." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, via QuotesBlog

During a job interview, your body language can say even more than your words. Many interviewers can read the subtleties of body language, and even those who can’t will experience subconscious reactions to the clues you give off with your gestures and facial expressions. Let’s follow two job seekers through their interviews to see the difference body language can make. Read more...
Interviewing is drama; therefore, plan accordingly: More fromWetFeet.com > Interviewing

Upcoming Tech Thursday Casual Networking Event in Dayton, Ohio USA

Walk-in attendees are welcome to join in the fun at Tailgators on Thursday, 1/22/2004 from 5-7 PM:

6270 Far Hills Avenue
Centerville, Ohio 45459

It's about 1/4 mile north of I-675 and State Route 48.

Monday, January 12, 2004

Advice from a Homemaker Returning to the Workplace

... Don't leave your career behind. Use the time off you're off work to develop new skills that you can use in another job. Read what else Carla Ross has to say...

Women 40 And Over Calling Off Careers in Favor of `Callings'

Learn about these women who are turning their passions into professions.

Six-figure jobs that aren't on the list of usual suspects

CNN/Money plans to regularly profile occupations that may offer six-figure incomes that are not on the list of usual suspects such as doctors, lawyers, corporate executives, and high-powered salespeople.

Read more...

Careers in Information Technology, new 2004 edition!

Over the past year and despite economic uncertainty, businesses have gradually expanded their use of information technology. The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that the economy will add more than one million new software engineering, computer support, and system administrators to the work force by 2010.
For more information, check out WetFeet.com

Thursday, January 08, 2004

50 Tough Answers to 50 Tough Interviewing Questions

Thanks to Curt for the Contingent Workforce.org link!

Wednesday, January 07, 2004

Tuesday, January 06, 2004

Yahoo Groups is an excellent source for networking and job leads. Here are just a few of the available resources on Yahoo Groups:



Monday, January 05, 2004

Welcome to JobFinder.com One stop shopping for your internet job search. This web site consolidates search results from a number of major search engines, and best of all, it's free!

JobMarket! Your #1 Local Job Source for the Dayton and Miami Valley Area

I've seen printed ads for this all over the Dayton area, and I guess it's about time I posted the link here!

Sunday, January 04, 2004

2004 in (p)review

It's the time of year when we focus on New Year's resolutions. I came across an approach that Mel at Mystic Musings takes that I really like. Rather than list all the things she needs to do better in the coming year, she projects herself to the end of the year and makes a list of all the great things she did. The year in review...or maybe that should be the year in preview.

I gave it a try myself on my blog. It was an interesting experience, and definitely feels more positive than "I'm going to do this, this, and this better this year." In a way, stating each of the things in the past tense went a long way towards making them more real.

The Occupational Adventure (sm) Blog

Friday, January 02, 2004

Gratitude

I've been sending off some emails here at the library (home PC is broken) to some of my networking contacts for their help this past year.

Virtual Networking in the New Year. Here are some resources where you can network with other job seekers, online.


TheSquare.com: Smart Networking.


Yahoo! Groups : jobsearchsupport


Monster: Vent


Monster Networking


Quintessential Careers: Key Career Networking Resources


Quintessential Careers: Networking Do's and Don'ts


Other excellent sources for networking include professional organizations, your college's alumni association, and of course, anyone you have ever worked with or met in a professional context. If you know of any other networking resources online, please add them in the comments sections.


Thursday, January 01, 2004

Happy New Year to All Readers of Get That Job!

And best wishes for success in the upcoming year!