Computer-Mediated Communication Magazine / Volume 2, Number 5 / May 1, 1995 / Page 13

Pomp and Circuit-stance

You've read the articles, you've bought the manuals, you even sat through a few Placement Office seminars hoping your efforts would earn job karma points. Yet here it is, three weeks before college graduation, and you still haven't found a job that doesn't require a hairnet and a nametag.

Before you consider answering those ads for a fishery canning job in Alaska, consider the opportunities the WWW offers for getting a job. You can solve your dilemma in a few simple steps:

First, reassure your anxious parents that you've moved your job search to a high tech field and have begun surfing the 'Net.

Second, visit the Keirsey Temperament Sorter. Find out exactly where you fall in the Meyers-Briggs' scheme, and use the career information to help narrow your search.

Third, fine tune your resume -- and get it online. If you have a home page, you may want to connect your resume to it and stop there, but you can also visit the following sites for advice on composing your resume and drawing maximum WWW exposure:

The EasyResume (tm) site is a resource designed to be "a publicly accessible, publicly available system for public benefit." The site offers job-hunting advice, resume composition advice, and sample resumes. When you send in your resume, EasyResume (tm) will send you EasyOffers, an interview advice packet.
C.E. Publications has a comprehensive resume writing site tailored to the online medium.
The Resume Publishing Company. It's a commercial service which will scan in or enter the resume you send them, and they don't cash your check until you approve the resume. A nice bonus: they include resume composition tips.

Once your resume is online, begin your job hunt in earnest. But don't sift through the hundreds of sites and listings available on the WWW -- I've done that for you, and in the usual Style and Substance tradition, picked sites which will deliver information and opportunities without wasting (too much) time. One page you'll want to keep on your hotlist is the National Career Search Career Magazine. This frequently-updated site offers classifieds, news articles from the Wall Street journal, and a career forum where you can network with many, many knowledgeable people. Be sure and check out the following online career centers:

The Interactive Employment Network includes an exhaustive job library. One of the best parts of this site is their Career Manager, which includes all the information you suspect you'll need but don't know how to get, like a salary guide, an occupational outlook handbook, and career planning advice from nationally known career expert Marilyn Moats Kennedy.
Another useful site is The Monster Board. Bonus entertainment points aside, Monster Board has up-to-date job listings for those who wish to work on the WWW, and job listings for those disaffected twentysomethings.
Elegantly formatted, chocked-full on information and job listings, and holding the honor of "the Internet's first and most frequently accessed career center," the Online Career Center is a user-friendly job searching tool. Hit the various categories, from "Search Jobs" to "Cultural Diversity" to "Professional Associations" and leave the site a few job opportunities richer.

Now that you're overwhelmed by all those job opportunities you never knew existed, stop and do two things. Call your parents, who have probably already resigned themselves to packing up their "study" for your anticipated return to the nest, and reassure them your job hunt has yielded many fruitful results. Then, focus. If you're just leaving college, you might not have the five-plus years of experience many of these positions require. In that case, the Entry Level Job Seeker is the place to start. Rather than subject you to the stomach-sinking experience of reading classifieds like

WANTED: Thermonuclear engineer. Must have 10+ yrs. experience, PhD, and own reactor. Salary $50K starting

you'll be able to find job opportunities with companies like IBM, Intel, and Adobe. There's also a resume bank where you can scan other people's resume for tips and ideas to apply to your own.

If you're a little skeptical of all the job postings you've run across, check out the Best Bets from the Net. Another good, scam-free site is Riley's Guide which breaks down job listings by discipline. Riley's Guide has the extra cachet of being one of the few to list jobs outside technologically-intensive fields; check out the Arts and Humanities site.

Finally, for those of you who are dedicated to finding meaningful work (don't laugh -- there are a few out there!), be sure to visit the Vista gopher site. Vista is an American analogue to the Peace Corps; its members work to improve community resources throughout the United States.

With WWW job resources like these, finding gainful employment shouldn't be terribly difficult. However, there are no sites available yet to tell you what to do once you're hired... ¤

Lisa Schmeiser, a Master's student in Technical Communication, is happy to report she obtained a D.C.-based writing internship. She will, however, continue to romp through the Web in search of truth, justice, and stylish and substantive sites, and report all her findings back to you.

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