Job Search Links

I'm collecting helpful jobsearch links and sharing them as a "stack" using the delicious social bookmarking facility.

You can find it here:  http://bit.ly/neojobsearchlinks

I haven't found a way to suppress some of the distracting web site snapshots, so you may want to select the list view as shown below.  If you have a Delicious account, you can "follow" the stack to be notified of updates, or you can just check back with the above link.

Send any suggestions to me here.

Local Job Search Groups

Click here for a list of local Job Clubs.

As I mentioned elsewhere, check Chagrin Valley Job Seekers and The Career Center as two highly recommended starting points.

Organizing your job search

At today's CCPL Job Club meeting Jim brought up the topic of organizing your job search.

Web Sites

Jim mentioned an interesting online link that can help you called Jibber Jobber, that organizes your information in a spreadsheet like table. Click here to see videos explaining the service and here to read the FAQ. As with many web sites, there is a free portion and a priced portion. Click here for an explanation of their premium service.

Jibber Jobber Update: Its interesting to see the CEO noticed this post several hours after it was made (sounds like Google Alert) and commented here. Such personal involvement is rare. Click on his Blogger name to see his profile and the blogs he's involved in. Want to see what the press is saying about Jibber Jobber, take a look at the bottom of their home page and click on the trade press logos.

I am intrigued by this new web service, stay tuned for updates to this post and an upcoming post with more details. Thanks to Jim for taking the time to find this site and tell us about it. I'd like to point out the value of our LinkedIn discussion group as a means for sharing this information with members who missed the meeting.

Another web site Resume Spider was mentioned in a recent CVJS post. Stay tuned to that message thread for other people's experiences. If you aren't a member of CVJS, you should look into becoming one. CVJS (Chagrin Valley Job Seekers) is one of the oldest, largest, most organized job seeker groups in the area. After attending a meeting and filing out a registration you can be granted access to their very active discussion group and many informative files on their Yahoo Group site. Click here for meeting information.

Here's a few of my ideas, I'd love to hear yours too, as a comment here, at the CCPL Job Club LinkedIn discussion or as a discussion on the companion group page.

PC files

Build a directory structure to hold your files, rather than have them intermingled in My Documents. Under the top level JOBSEARCH directory you may want to include the following subdirectories.

• Communication - resumes/letters sent
• Companies - info on target companies
• Contact/Network - info on people related to job search
• Jobs - job leads
• News - affecting the job search or target companies
  
• Resources - info on how to conduct a jobsearch, articles, etc.
• Skills - skills inventory, Success stories, info to draw on for cover letters and customized resumes
  

Word

Obviously you use word for your resume and cover letters. But you can use it for more things too.

Rather than print job descriptions from the web, I create a word document to hold the information. I copy and paste from the web site into a word document. I add an outline structure (using Heading n styles) so that I can expand, collapse or drill down. I indent, highlight, make bullet lists, change font size, so that the description is more readable than one large block of text. I add sections on company research, contact, and interview preparation. Rather than lots of different printouts that are hard to read, I have one comprehensive document to refer to before or during an interview.

Excel

Excel is a convent way to make a simple flat data base. If you define it as a data table, you can have auto filter headings that allow you to filter or sort the data.

Applications

I use an outliner application that runs on my PC and syncs with my smartphone/PDA. For any Palm users, the software I use is Shadow by Codejedi Inc.. This software allows me to easily make a hierarchical checklist with start/target/completion dates and easily filter the outline to see items I would like too. Updates and filters can be done on a PC or the PDA.

PDA/Cell

Today's phones are becoming smarter, many have calendar, todo lists, address books, etc. I set up a separate jobsearch category for my job search in my calendar, to do list and address books for quick and easy access. I also setup a Callback category in my address book to park contacts that need a callback.

Usability

The important thing is that it has to be your system, easy, convenient, low maintenance, and accessible.

Well that's a few of my ideas, lets hear yours.... Please!!!

Any experiences on those two web sites Jibber Jobber or Resume Spider would be very helpful.

Status: First Draft - Last update 01/09/09 10:30 PM

Free Job Search Makeover Ideas

Here is an interesting article. Follow the link for the original article that suggests the following three makeovers.

Attitude

No surprise, attitude is everything. Are you depressed, burnt out, angry? Any negative attitude will sink your efforts.

Resume

Your resume is your key to getting the interview. Any flaws will slam the door shut and stop you before you can get started.

Networking

Networking is key, but it has to be effective, it has to develop leads and contacts with hiring managers.

So make your jobsearch over for the new year. Read the whole article here.

File Viewers

Many people know you should have the Adobe Reader to read PDF files. Maybe it was pre-installed on your PC. If it is old you can visit that web site to get a new version.

One of the difficult transitional issues is MS Office 2003 vs 2007. If you have an older version of MS Office you may not be able to read files created in the newer version. This is why I recommend that you save files in the previous MS Office 97-2003 format. But you don't necessarily have control of what file format you receive. And if you receive a 2007 file from a perspective employer it may be embarrassing to tell them you can't read it (not even at the resource centers).

If you have MS Office XP or 2003 you can update your product to be able to understand the 2007 formats by following the directions here. A less intrusive solution is to install the MS Office viewers - Word, Excel, Powerpoint.

These viewers are very large and can not be efficiently downloaded over dialup. If you don't have a high speed link then goto a resource center or library, download these to a flash drive and then install them on your home PC.

Another thing you may want to do is a search on each viewer to see if their are functional or security updates for any of them. You can do this search from the top of the pages I have linked above. The very top search box is for the web, use the second search box under the heading "Download Center" after the "Search All Downloads" box. Click on release date to sort, new security fixes won't be high on the default popularity post.

Side note: I got this post idea from a page at the Ohio LMI site, but before I posted it, I saw that two of the links were backlevel to 2003, so I looked up the newer file viewers.

State Job Matching

Ohio has just transitioned from its older SCOTI system (Sharing Career Opportunities ---) to the new Ohio Means Jobs system.

SCOTI is no longer available. It used to be at this site https://scoti.ohio.gov/scoti_lexs/. If you go there you will receive this message and be redirected to the new site.

Ohio's statewide job matching system has been developed into a more comprehensive tool found at OhioMeansJobs.com. If you are not automatically forwarded to the new site in the next few moments, click on the following link https://ohiomeansjobs.com, or copy and paste it in the address box of your web browser.

I mention SCOTI because you may hear it referred to and I want to let you know what its about.

The SCOTI replacement is https://ohiomeansjobs.com/omj/. Some Career Counselors will tell you to ignore SCOTI, this isn't good advice, if you hear a reference to SCOTI, just know that it has been replaced by OMJ and go there.

I have a newer post that delves into OMJ in detail.

Labor Info

There are two web sites used by Employment Connection in their career planning.

http://www.lmi.state.oh.us/
http://online.onetcenter.org/

Information on this is used by your Career Coach. I have incomplete info on this and I'll update this post as I figure it out.

Status: Rough Draft

Help

Here are some important links for the newly unemployed...

First Call for help here.  Need new Link

The Career Center Survival Guide here.

A west side web page has a handy list here.

The first day of the Career Workshop contains very good info. This may be available online under the Employment Connection Tools (first square, see previous post).

Do you know of others? Please comment here and share them.