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Searching for Jobs Online? 32

Posted by Cliff from the what's-the-best-way-to-go-about-it? dept.
Embedded Geek asks: "My wife, a VB/C/C++/SQL coder, was recently laid off from our mutual employer and is on the job hunt. I am also sending around feelers. We've posted both our resumes at our own site (here and here) and at Monster.Com. So far, we have gotten disappotinting results - several headhunters generating a lot of smoke but no heat. Some people have suggested dice.com and other techie oriented sites, but I wonder if we're going about this the wrong way. Are we better off using the Internet to directly find and reach companies (I really dislike headhunters)? Should we find a site affiliated with a major newspaper's want ads? Has anyone out there found other strategies to using the Internet in a job search?"

This related submission from kalanar asks a similar question, but questions whether exclusive online searches are the answer: "With the current economy state, and the increase in unemployment in the US, I'm curious if anyone has had luck with onlinejobsearchengines. I have applied to many job listing (80+) and have not received much of a reply. I'm curious if employers are worried about the relocation factor or if employers are more anxious to hire people that have applied in other ways. (Fax/Inperson)"

So if you are recently employed, especially in the US, what strategies did you use to land your current job?
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Searching for Jobs Online? More

Searching for Jobs Online?

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  • It's all about the network (Score:4, Interesting)

    by andy@petdance.com ( 114827 ) <andy@petdance.com> on Tuesday November 06, 2001 @05:00PM (#2529617) Homepage
    The most important network is your own network of huamn contacts. It's all about who you know and how you work your angles. Get the word out there. Let people know you're looking.

    Go thru your Rolodex and hit the phones. Past bosses and colleagues, regardless of how long ago they were, are prime sources for leads.

    Don't forget your family and the people they know. Chat people up. Talk talk talk. The best jobs aren't going to be found in the want ads.

    Last person I helped land a job was because I saw her reading Webmaster In a Nutshell on a commuter train, and I asked if she was lookin'. She was, and she was good, so we hired her.

    Find a headhunter you like, if that's possible. If you're great, they'll do the work for you, and get you in the doors. Just make sure that the job is the right fit.

    I'm not saying to ignore postings, whether online or in print, but they're nothing compared to talking to other humans.

  • What's the best way to get a list of local companies that do the kind of work you;d be interested in? Years ago, you'd go to the Chamber of Commerce. I was thinking the modern equivilant would be to look up an internet directory [dmoz.org] for regional businesses.

    Other suggestions?

    • Why do you think you wouldn't still go to the Chamber of Commerce? That's why they're there: To help businesses grow. What better way to help a business grow than to help them get good talent?

      Contacting, or better yet visiting, the CoC also has the advantage of letting you talk to a human and get those all-important contacts.

      While you're at it, run out and get copies of The Brand You 50 [amazon.com] by Tom Peters, and Ask The Headhunter [asktheheadhunter.com] by Nick Corcodilos. They're all about selling yourself as more than just a bunch of accomplishments and skills.

  • In the UK (and Europe) you want to look at Jobserve [jobserve.com]. Lots of/All agencies advertise their jobs there, and after the first contact things are done through them (such as suggesting other positions).

    It's where I found my current job, and where most people I know who have used the net to find work found theirs.
  • I suppose the best thing to do would be as many as possible out of those options. Search the net, mail resumes, look up in the paper, and let headhunters know you're available. Be a bit careful of them, though. I used one to get my current job and they tend to ignore me for months at a time, plus they can't write performance reviews or letters of recomendation after the contract expires. They never see you work, after all.
    Also, make sure you follow up on resumes you've sent. Just because you send them one doesn't mean they'll look at it. Often this can be as easy as an email to the HR staff. In addition, I've found that a lot of times when dealing with online listings its better to send the resume and then call the contact right away (or even before) to get more details on the job, if they're still hiring, and mayeb even to send them a nice printed copy of your resume. Don't be a pest, but don't let them forget about you either.
    All in all, if you need work, look everywhere. Chances are you don't have much else to do anyway. That, and follow up on everything you send and you should find your way to employment soon.
    • Unfortunately I don't have much advice on where to go to find jobs, but one thing to avoid may be the consulting agencies especially in the current economic environment. Some employers may just ignore the consultants when they call (although they won't admit it) because they don't feel like paying the extra money to hire someone through them, especially now when money is tight and there seems to be a surplus of people to hire.

      As said earlier, you'd be surprised how far networking can get you..Whether at a social gathering or through your friends, let everyone know that you are looking and keep contact information handy, you never know when something might come up. Get in contact with some previous co-workers who you go along with, alot of times they may know of an opening at their company or a past job. Hope that helps...
    • Another thing to keep in mind with headhunters is that they make their money on turnover. This can mean that they have a greater incentive to close a deal than to find what's best for you. Repeat business by individual applicants (as opposed to employers) isn't a big factor for them.

      My own most recent experience was of finding a good job on Monster at 30% better salary than the headhunters were turning up. But that was 18 months ago, when there were more options.

  • Nepotism (Score:2, Interesting)

    by EEEthan ( 41747 )
    I got my job through a friend who left it. I really don't think that any method compares to the person-to-person hookup, when the two people actually know each other.

    I know a lot of people who've used online job search engines, and very few of them have gotten good results. It's a very obvious place to start these days, and I don't think that an email application impresses anyone these days. Also it seems that a lot of online openings are stale--just left over from a position that might already be filled, or might never be filled.

    But good luck in your search!

    • As the friend that left the job that 3than now happily earns his bread from, I can happily say that I like my current job better and I earned it through spending way too much time fooling around with linux and computers during college. It was a rehire sort of thing. But the job that 3diggity is talking about, I got via some online job hunting deal... probably hotjobs, but I can't remember. I was really depressed at the time... because I didn't have a job.

      Anyway, this job stuff is funny. We're all overpaid wanks who should be in food service. Well maybe not, but whatever. Whatever and whatever.

  • I registered with a bunch of sites: dice, computerjobs, monster, probably a few others, as well as hit the job search engines. It is a royal pain to enter data for each one. (note to self: develop a resume XML DTD).

    It took from May 15th to the last week of June (about) to land a position. In that time, I got about 1/2 dozen calls, two interviews, and two offers, both sent my way by headhunters. None of my personal applications panned out. So, my "saturation" technique didn't result in what I'd consider excessive interest -- you just never know who uses what job engine or site.

    I ended up accepting a position near Dallas, TX, and moved from Chicago, IL. Employer payed a flat rate toward moving expenses and left me to deal with the logistics (the allowance was generous, but the headache of dealing with all the logistics was a pain -- apparently outsourcing that kind of stuff is expensive).

    Now, my case might be atypical, because in addition to all the other problems related to the downturn in the economy, I required visa sponsorship. Still, I found and got a job I liked using only on-line resources.

    • Re:I recently landed a job via online search (Score:4, Informative)

      by babbage ( 61057 ) <cdevers.cis@usouthal@edu> on Tuesday November 06, 2001 @06:21PM (#2530063) Homepage Journal
      Note to original poster: reinventing the wheel is overrated [sourceforge.net]. Search on Sourceforge & you'll find at least a couple of XML resume schemes, but Sean Kelly's seems to be the authoritative one.

      Otherwise, I'm on a similar track: I was laid off two weeks or so ago, and am temping now for a very interesting company & am hoping it'll become a permanent position. I submitted dozens & dozens of online applications, but the job I'm at was discovered by a *good* headhunter (Randstad -- nice folks, I like working with them because they actually seem to want to place you in a job where you & the employrer will be happy, rather than just filling seats so they can pocket the commission). I had an offer for freelance work & that was found by word of mouth. None of the online applications I tried amounted to anything, and yes I've been following up with emails & phone calls. I've had a handful of "no thanks" responses, but mostly I just get silence.

      Keep in mind also that if trying all avenues doesn't work out, now would be a great time to go back to school, consider a career change or reapplication of old IT skills to new non-IT jobs, or, if you're into that sort of thing, enlist in the military. It would of course be risky, but it would also be patriotic (in a *good* way, not a jingoistic one) and it would be a sure paycheck.

      Just try to keep all of your options in mind & try everything that seems like it'll help...

    • hmm..last time i got a job i had the same 6 week thing. got two interviews, got two offers, accepted one. and i got laid off 8 months later (2 weeks ago). *sigh*. of course mine was not thru a headhunter...just monsterboard and resume saturation. anyone looking for java programming, sysadmin work or project management up in toronto, canada ? :) ive had headhunters up the wazoo but no employers.
    • That was all before Sept. 11th. Now things are considerably tougher. I've been looking for a job here in Austin, and there is seemingly NOTHING available for someone with C++(11 years), C(16 years), Linux(7 years, some kernel internals), UNIX (all types, 15 years), and Java skills (5 years). Every position I have applied for has more than 100 applicants.

      So, I'm on a device driver crash course. I must convince *somebody* that I'm worthy. (If you're in Austin and you're reading this AND you are hiring, please send me an e-mail! I'm damn good at what I do.)

      Right now, stellar resumes and stellar references won't cut it. You've got to get a skill that nobody else is looking for.

      Or, you could just wait a few months for things to clear up. Everyone expects this economic dip to be brief.
  • Here's one idea: submit your resumes to Slashdot [slashdot.org].

  • It's gruesome right now.... (Score:3, Informative)

    by coyote-san ( 38515 ) on Tuesday November 06, 2001 @06:44PM (#2530194)
    It's gruesome right now - if you're in the wrong city you should be prepared for a *long* search because it's REVENGE OF THE INCOMPETENT HR MANAGER time. Don't have 10 years of Java experience? Then don't bother sending your resume... or pointing out that the language is less than 10 years old so anyone who claims this much experience is lying. Don't have 5+ years experience in both COBOL and the lastest EJB/J2EE technologies, then don't bother responding because the company insists on merging two (or more!) positions while cutting the salary by a third.

    That said, networking is usually best but it's worthless when everyone you know is unemployed in a mass corporate panic. You probably aren't looking for the same jobs, of course, but the usual information net is severely pruned since there's no water cooler gossip, etc.

    Second best is online sites, but you have to be very careful about sleazy body shops that will float your resume to everyone on the planet. They will *not* help you, and in fact will harm you since many companies will refuse to hire anyone with resumes from multiple sources to avoid any threat of confusion over "finder's fees" and the like.

    What I've found practical are only replying to 1) recruiters and companies I've worked with in the past, 2) or recruiters who give local addresses and meaningful contact information, and 3) ads that have provide some details. I never put my resume up on a web site (and not just because it's a phone book after almost 20 years), and I never send it to someone who uses a generic drop box email address.

    I've passed on some great ads... but I really can't take a one-line ad from a recruiter a thousand miles away from the job seriously. Yes, this can legitimately happen, but in those cases the recruiter has always willing to explain the circumstances in response to quick note. It's the ones who quietly ignore me and my hard-learned concerns that make me worry.

  • When I went to college [byu.edu] in fall of 2000, I decided to get a part-time job. I had worked for the previous year doing contract programming at a large chip company [intel.com], and I had started my own small online (and profitable) business. However, I had just moved to a different city [provo.org], and I didn't really know anyone who could get me a tech job.

    I decided that an online search just might do the trick. Monster.com yielded nothing interesting, nor did HotJobs. As I was walking home from class one day I saw a billboard ad for FlipDog, and decided to try it.

    After a quick and easy search focused down very specifically by city and job category, I found about four relevant jobs within three miles of my home. After a bit of resume touch-up, I e-mailed my resume to the interesting-looking employers. I received two e-mails back, one with an interview offer. I called the company [orangatango.com] and scheduled it for the next day.

    In short, I had a job three days after my search on FlipDog.

    As an aside to the story, FlipDog has some very cool technology [whizbang.com] developed at WhizBang! Labs. WhizBang! was headquartered in the same city that I attended school, and I got to go to a lecture about them. They have their web spiders crawl the web looking for job listings on companies' own sites. Then they use machine learning software to recognize and extract information (job title, location, description, etc.) from the free-form web page. That gets dumped into a database that FlipDog uses to help you find a job. Instead of making employers post available jobs on a special job site, FlipDog goes to the employers' own web sites and extracts job postings. Very cool. Check it out. [flipdog.com] (No, I'm not affiliated with them, except that they helped me find a job.)

  • Stupid Resume Tricks (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gnovos ( 447128 ) <gnovos@NoSpAM.chipped.net> on Tuesday November 06, 2001 @08:54PM (#2530733) Homepage Journal
    I know this will sound silly, but it works for some reason. If you are sending a resume to one of those "resumes@foo.com" or "jobs@bar.com", most likely you will see it filed away and never see a human response. A trick I learned (by accident) is to send an email to one of these addresses talking about your "attached" resume ("As you can see by my skills x and y in my resume blah blah..."), but *don't* actually attach it. 90% of the time you will get an email back from a *person* (i.e. not an autoresponder) asking if you could try and send it again. Now you have an actual email address of somone in H.R. that you can use to send polite emails concering the status of your application, etc.

    I know many people will scoff at this idea saying "No self respecting tech company will hire you if you show you're too stupid to be able to attach a resume!" But this isn;t the case. Most of the people who work in HR are the types who find it perfectly resonable to make a mistake and forget to press the "attach" button, or else they are the types that believe whole-heartedly that attachements can get "lost in the mail" even if it's email.

    Once you have an actual person (sometimes including a phone number!) you have the chance to add a little "human touch". As long as you are polite and don't make yourself look bad, this extra little boost can be what seperates you from the rest of teh stack of resumes.
    • This way lies madness...I used to do this for schoolwork in 9th grade. Trust me, after a while, you start feeling really guilty, not to mention suspicious that your (teachers/bosses) are catching on to your tricks.

  • A brief history

    "Laid off [fuckedcompany.com]" from Ihigh.com [ihigh.com]
    Graduated in may from UK [uky.edu]
    Spent the summer both online and off in the job hunt
    My Current Employer [bluegrasscellular.com] found me in late September through Monster [monster.com], I'm now their Jr. Webmonkey and Rookie Solaris Admin who breaks^?^?^?^?^?^? stress-tests machines.

    When all is said and done, in this market, be prepared to wait. If you have the time and cash, get training, be ready when things hit the upswing

  • job seeking in Australia (Score:4, Informative)

    by Technodummy ( 204943 ) on Tuesday November 06, 2001 @10:57PM (#2530998)
    If you're in Australia, check out seek.com.au [seek.com.au]. I've just moved cities, and every job I have gotten since I moved was from this site. (I found a few jobs for friends there as well)

    Also:
    • *do* call a contact number in the ad if there is one, let them know you have sent in your resume, and ask them a few questions about the job.
      this means it's more likely your resume will actually be *looked at*
    • *do* include important information in your resume cover sheet. eg - if typing speed is something they are likely to filter applications with, then include it on the cover sheet.
      it saves them the time to read through the resume
    • *do* include when you are available for work on your cover sheet.
      same as above.
    • *do* send your email applications in plain text. offer to send it in another format if this is preferred.
      not all the people who filter job applications are good with computers, no matter what the industry.
    • *do* include special skills you have that may not be specifically job relevant.
      I am fluent in the Phonetic Alphabet, and put it on my resume. I had a lot of companies and recruiters call me to ask what it was.
    • *do* email a company if they send you a virus in an email.
      I received one from a company I had emailed my resume to. they offered me a job after I sent them an email detailing what virus they were infected with and how to remove it and prevent it in the future. I didn't accept their job offer, but I think they'll remember me if I contact them in the future.
  • ...or something like that: www.asktheheadhunter.com [asktheheadhunter.com]

    nick (the guy who made that site) says that putting your resume on sites like monster is as good as flushing them down the toilet. like someone said (approx.) in another post, you find jobs through people. go out and get to know some.
  • In this economy, any resume submitted through a headhunter goes directly to the trash, unread.

    Think about it. If you are an employer and are getting thousands of applicants for every position you have open, why would you want to pay a headhunter's fee?
  • The major myth about down markets is that there are no jobs out there. Everyone's getting laid off and no one's getting hired, right? Actually, there are MANY jobs out there, but it's usually the privately held companies that are in need of people more than the publicly held companies.

    Just think about it. When the market is up, everyone wants a job at a publicly traded company so they can get in on the stock options. But in the down economy, those same publicly traded companies are trying to save their stock prices by cutting costs, which includes cutting personnel.

    So, we know the jobs are out there, but how can we get them?

    1) Don't ever rely on your own personal website. No one looks at it except your friends.

    2) Online job sites are really only used by headhunters. Only once in a blue moon is there an individual company that posts a job offer there. So, if you want to use a headhunter, use an online job site. But, be forewarned: in a down economy, companies are not going to want to pay the extra headhunter's fees when they already have applications being sent directly to them.

    3) Ads in the newspaper are better than online job searches. It's amazing, its preposterous, but still the large majority of HR people will use the local newspaper to find applicants, rather than going online. The thinking is that they're more likely to find someone local to their company, plus most HR people just aren't as interested in computers as we are.

    4) To really, really get a job in the down economy, your best bet is your friends, your family, your schoolmates, your past coworkers - your network. Networking is going to be your lifesaver in finding a job nowadays. Most companies who are hiring now are looking for trusted people. They can't afford to take on unkowns who may leave in 3-4 months, wasting their time and money. So, they'll turn to their employees, their friends and their families to find people. And because of that, your best bet for finding a job is seeking out everyone you know on earth and checking in to see if they know anything about any openings. It's the one true way to really get yourself noticed and in the position you need. So, brush up the resume, but really brush up the people skills and work on your contacts. Good luck!
  • If you are looking for a contract work in UK. Then make sure you always quote your rate in higher range. Agencies are stupid, if due to frustration you quote low rates agencies will assume that you are not good. So remember always ask for more money and you are most likely to get an interview...

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