05/30
2011

J Money Genius!

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J Money, the creator of BudgetsAreSexy.com and the inspiration for this here site just inspired me even further with something so creative and simple.  When he thought he was going to lose his job, he posted about it online, so proactive!  In that post was this pic:

This little Doodle is so simple but so helpful.  It gives an easily viewable layout of everything he would do, and we should do to find a new job.  Some of them are quite creative.  Let’s check it out.

LinkedIn: “Looking for…” Headline Status Update
I too have come to find LinkedIn.com far more useful than I ever thought it would be.  It seems my latest LinkedIn headline was about my book being published.  Tsk Tsk, need to keep those updates context friendly.  I have now changed it to say what careers I’m looking for and what I can do for a prospective company.

Emurse is an online resume builder.  I have my own resume in a format I think looks nice, but I might try it out anyway.  Here are some top reasons to use it.

BusinessWeek:“Simple, intuitive resume creation… The easiest way to get your up-to-date work history on the first page of a Google search… 4.5 out of 5 stars”

USA Today:“Creating a good-looking, useful resume can be difficult. Emurse (www.emurse.com) helps you create resumes that can be shared online or printed.”

C|Net:“Using a tool such as Emurse to help you focus your energy on the content of your resume, instead of wrestling with your word processor to get it to display right, is smart”

15secondpitch.com.  This is a very cool site that helps you tighten your pitch to potential employers and customers.  This is particularly useful for someone like me who might be rather long winded.  Go to their site right now.  It might even better help YOU figure out what it is you do.

Meetup. I love meetup.com.  I use it for everything I am interested in: from book writing to wilderness survival skills, it gets me up and out of the house talking with like minded people.  I have used it for networking in the past with good results and will continue to do so.  My only problem is that I’m hardly ever in town to participate in most events.  Hence the new job finding.

Social Media Club. I think he meant socialmediaclub.ORG.  It’s literally what it says, a club centered around social media and educating the world about it.  They have many events and meetups around the US and abroad.  If you can make it to a convention, you definitely should, it’s on my list.

Business Cards. I’ve found the personal touch adds a lot to an interaction with someone in the art world.  When I’m promoting my fiction novel, I like to write my information on a scrap of paper, this promotes even more conversation and I find the person is more likely to buy.  If I simply give them a business card, I seem to think that’s the end of it and my work is done.  It’s largely psychological.  Now, in the business world, contact cards are essential.  Even if its a creative setting, it is good to have business cards to fall back on if the situation requires it, such as a networking meeting.  Moo and VistaPrint are both very good sites.  Moo is helpful if your a designer or photographer since you can put multiple images on the front of different cards while keeping the same template on the back.  VistaPrint is more traditional but still offers a wide variety of graphic options and is cheaper.

 

Once again, thanks to BudgetsAreSexy, go check him out, he’s my inspiration.  :)

05/25
2011

Looking for a new job? Don’t use the big boys

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I’m in the process of finding a new job.  I want to be more local instead of flying all over the place all the time.  So of course I signed up for and have been looking on monster.com and careerbuilder.com.  Thinking back, I can’t remember these sites ever actually working for me in the past, but they always seem like the logical first step.  Over the weeks, what have I gotten?  Not much in legitimate employer responses, but a good amount of emails to be an insurance salesman and texts to join other job sites.  What does this tell me?  This tells me that either these jobsites troll monster and careerbuilder for potential customers, or Monster and CareerBuilder actually sell my information to other sites.  Either way, very bad.

I began looking up reviews to these other sites which came up as scammers.  For Monster and Careerbuilder themselves, people had these things to say:

As an employer, now I know why it is difficult to find good employees or for good employees to find you! We know NOT TO go to Monster.com
We decided to try Monster.com for the exposure that we thought it offers and hoping to attract qualified candidates.
They advertised a 25% “sale” on the 60-day listing, so we took the bate. As you go deeper and deeper into the posting and setting up the listing, you realize that there are a lot of “ifs and buts”. For example after the purchase and completion of the transaction, we come to find out that while we are in Tysons Corner, Virginia, a mere 9 miles from Washington, DC. Monster considers Washington DC a different territory and they wanted to double the $288 fee (to $576). The only criterias we specified is proximity and experience. So they limited our exposure to candidates in McLean/Arlington, VA

As we were advertising for a “travel agent” and in this market, we were expecting multiple qualified candidates, but were shocked to receive only 6 resumes in 7 days from places such as Kenya (in Africa), and candidates that were totally unqualified.

In searching the “Posted resumes” which we understood required an additional charge of several hundred dollars, (we were given a free 2-day peak), there obviously were not any qualified cadidates (who were willing to pay the exorbitant charges) of Monster. So after one week, I requested a pro-rated refund, and the response was a terse: “Our policy is: no refunds”.

The bottom line is this: if you can’t find people on the self proclaimed #1 website for hiring after you pay a nice sum of money with unemployment being around 10% and people in all industry clamoring for jobs, then when?
We wrote off the $288, and will never ever do business with Monster.com again (we have 3 more hires by year end)

This alarmed me!  I hadn’t seen the employer side of it before.  I want it to be easy for both of us to find each other, otherwise this process will take forever.  Another employer had similar opinions:

I’m an employer and was looking to hire 3 people fast. Monster took my $400 and gave me a bunch of excuses about “employer validation”. They dragged their feet with lies and excuses about technical issues while I went elsewhere to do my hiring. They took forever to give me access to the resumes that they said had matched my criteria. That’s unfortunate for the prospective employees that paid their money to monster but who’s resumes will never be viewed by a legitimate employer.

They allow tons of spam and junk but make it brutally difficult for legitimate employers to find employees.

All of the positive reviews below are most definitely from monster.

Of those “positive reviews” most sounded cookie cutter and were repetitive, there was one that said this:

Monster.com is an all right website if you’re looking for employment, but I’ve certainly encountered better. I definitely prefer using employmentcrossing.com over monster, because it gives you a wider variety of jobs to choose from. Monster only shows you job listings that employers pay to post, whereas a few other websites (such as the one previously mentioned) show you job postings from any website, including the employer’s website. So as far as variety goes, Monster.com was not a winner.

I searched employmentcrossing.com reviews and came up with scam again so you just can’t trust anyone these days.

A light at the end of the tunnel

First of all, in this digital age, ALWAYS search a company’s name with the word “reviews” in Google before doing business with them.  It’ll take you a minute and you’ll instantly know if you should even trust them with your email address.

Secondly, I did find one site that is looking promising: simplyhired.com.  They have a more localized view of job openings and far fewer ads.  A Google review search revealed only good things to say.

Lastly, don’t rely on the digital.  Once you get into a job, it’s all about the people, so why should searching for a job involve no people?  A successful friend of mine gave me some great advice this week, “go in for an information interview.”  I wasn’t even aware you could ask for this.  Instead of sending a resume cold to an employer, ask them if you can come in for a half hour, discuss your skills and what opportunities there might be in their company.  There’s less pressure and the employer gets to know you.  People are always more likely to hire someone they know over someone they’ve interviewed once or twice.

I did a search on my local city on wikipedia and came up with so much information on the industries in my city.  Call some of these companies up and arrange informational interviews with employers you would like to work for.  Good luck and God’s speed.