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Recently, the World Wide Web has been increasingly acting as an intermediary between highly qualified specialists and potential employers. According to Internet World magazine, several hundred people in the United States find jobs through the web every day. And if we are to believe the creators of one of the most popular job search services – JobTrak, over a million students and young professionals have already used its services, while 150,000 employers and 300 universities post daily updated information on it.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Even a superficial acquaintance shows the phenomenal growth of job search resources. It's no wonder that creating websites is so popular today. At the same time, renting a server at an affordable price or even ordering a dedicated server in Ukraine is not a problem today. The "whales" in this field are commercial services that can be divided into two groups. The first specializes in maintaining databases of job offers, with services paid only by the advertiser, while the job seeker has free access to the database. The largest among them are CareerWeb (www.iworld.com/careerwb), America's Job Bank (www.ajb.dni.us/job), American Employment Weekly (www.branch.com/aew), Espan (www.techni-source.com), and the aforementioned JobTrak (www.jobtrack.com). Others specialize in posting resumes (some charge those who post them, but these are a minority). The most popular in this group include 123 Resume Distribution Service (www.webplaza.com/pages/Careers/123Careers/) – free posting; Resumes On-Line (www.crocker.com/resumes); HyperResume (www.occ.com/HyperResumes) – help with writing and posting resumes, providing a personal address; Resume'Net (www.resumenet.com) – posting resumes for all professions, tips on creating them.
There are two strategies for finding a job using the Internet: you search for an employer, or the employer searches for you. The first option is justified if you are persistent enough, as it involves browsing through thousands and thousands of records in various databases. Most of the offers you encounter will likely not suit you. You may lack the necessary experience, or conversely, you may be overqualified for the job offered; the place of work may simply not interest you, or the company's location may be inconvenient. But even in cases where the offer fully matches your request, you must consider that at least 40 million Internet users (including 500,000 from Ukraine) have access to this information.
Returning to our reader's letter, I note that "parking" a resume on the Internet is very different from posting information on a regular bulletin board. On most job sites, you first need to register: enter your name (login), password, personal data, and a secret question in case you forget your password. After registration, you need to enter the information of a standard resume into special fields: personal data, field of work, knowledge, skills, desired salary. After filling all fields, you can view and, if necessary, edit your resume (tips on writing a resume were published in "Zagranitsa" No. 37 (52), December 2000). Of course, the fact that you have posted your resume online does not guarantee that you will be flooded with job offers.
If you have the time and desire, you can "browse" the servers of companies that fall within your professional interests. Most large companies maintain a job offers section on their server.
And now – about some foreign job sites. The node www.careerpath.com allows quick search of classified ads published in 17 major daily newspapers. The node contains about 100,000 ads printed over the last two weeks. To search, you just need to specify the newspaper names and job categories of interest. Additionally, you can filter ads by keywords. Information is provided free of charge, but you must first register.
The sponsor of the site www.softwarepagesjobs.com is a specialized employment firm, Allen Davis & Associates. Among the site's advantages is its simple structure; among its disadvantages is that it mainly focuses on placing computer specialists. About 100 new job offers appear on the site per week: position, organization location, salary, required work experience, etc. Unfortunately, employer contact details are missing. Allen Davis & Associates acts as an intermediary to whom you must send information about yourself. If the submitted resume interests specialists at the employer company, they will contact you by phone.
The site name www.hitechcareer.com should not be taken literally. This commercial site was created as an advertisement for the specialist fair The Professional Exchange, which is held in several cities in the US and Canada. Unfortunately, it cannot be unconditionally recommended due to a lack of certain features, but if you define your interests in advance, it is quite possible that the site can provide useful and timely information. Among the 'visitors' to the fair are large corporations such as Booz Allen & Hamilton, Capital One Finincial, Citibank Credit Services, Federal Express, U.S. Healthcare, and others. The site has very limited search capabilities, but it does allow you to find where the necessary information is located. Unfortunately, you cannot send your resume interactively or by email, but based on the data obtained, you can assess your possibilities and compile a list of people it would be good to meet.
On the Irish job site www.fasjobs-ireland.com you can not only post your resume and browse lists of actual vacancies. You will also learn about the employment procedure in Ireland, visas, find practical job search tips, lists of in-demand specialties, salary information, and even about the tax refund procedure. Here are a few more job links to foreign job sites: www.careers.yahoo.com, www.ajb.dni.us, www.hotjobs.com, www.careermag.com, www.careerjournal.com, www.joboptions.com. (I think there is no need to add that all of the above sites are in English.)
In my personal opinion, the best Ukrainian job server is www.ukrjob.net. On it, you can not only post your resume, view job advertisements, but also get recommendations on writing a resume, behavior at an interview, subscribe to a news mailing list, and set up a personal virtual agent that will filter job offers and deliver those that best suit you. Another Ukrainian job site is at www.kiev-job.hypermart.net.
In addition to posting your resume on a job server, your own web page can help in the job search. Those who do not have web design skills can use a service for hosting personal HTML pages. The advantages of using such services are that, first, you do not need to delve into the details of Web design, and second, there is no need to open your own server. The disadvantages include cost (on average $25-100 for creation and a few dollars per month for hosting, but on some servers the price reaches $50-100 per month), as well as the limited extent of your involvement in page design: most such servers will not deal with complex graphic or multimedia additions that you might want to place on your virtual resume. A critical point when placing your page on the network is registering it with various search engines, which allows your page to be reached by a relevant query.
Separately, it is worth considering placing your information in the foreign press. Of course, newspapers do not have the ability to post a full resume; a typical free ad is limited to twenty-five words. Enter into any search engine (www.yahoo.com, www.altavista.com) the name of the desired country and the phrase 'free ads newspapers' – free ad newspapers. They will literally overwhelm you with links! Or you can directly enter www.fapia.com. FAPIA is an association of free ad newspapers, which includes hundreds of newspapers from countries in Europe, America, Asia, and Africa.
The strategy of job search using Internet resources should be determined based on specific requirements, but the most effective may be a combination of several methods: posting your resume on job sites and in newspapers, plus searching for the most interesting offers through relevant servers. At the same time, it is worth subscribing to weekly (or even daily) reviews of offers that match your query, so you won't have to review the same offers each time. Good connection to you and fruitful 'surfing' on the World Wide Web!