ALA Chat: Using Social Media for the Most Effective Job Search

The ALA just posted for an online career chat, Using Social Media for the most Effective Job Search, on February 23, 2012.

Tactics for Library Job Hunting in a Tough Market from ALA Webinars

Despite a few technical difficulties, and ten minutes of sponsor introductions, the presentation was ok. It was pretty obvious she was reading from a script and though her reading had a nice rhythm, it lacked spontaneity, and I felt she did better with questions. In addition, most of this advice was pretty general: treat your job search as a full-time job, network, take a computer course and make a professional impression. This is the basic package. 

Labor Market Assessment

The presenter identified the following "hot" areas for jobs:

• More technical: As a library student, I would have greeted this comment with, why didn't I go to school for computer science? And this also neglects the very real trend for outsourcing programming to where the programmers are much cheaper (China, India, Eastern Europe). However, you can at least see if this area is for you by checking out some free resources, like Codeacademy, and by looking for coding events in your area, such indie game development or open government events, where you can work with coders on their projects. Don't be a watcher, be actively helpful: your coding skills may be lacking, but you might be able to supply music, write a Kickstarter proposal, voice a zombie, or be a tester.
• Archivists are hot (!)  which leads us to another area that is not always touched on in library schools, though you might go to a school that offers a specialization in archives, or at least one course. If you want to try this area out, see if you can get a summer job on your campus (larger campuses have at least one specialized museum that may include an archive) or if your state/provincial archive has paid internships in the summer, or can afford to give a recent grad an internship after graduation.
• Working with children: I have to disagree with this one, since there are many reports of teacher-librarians-- and many of these jobs were only open to certified teachers orginally--and public librarians, who offer many of the services for children outside of school, losing their jobs. However, if this is your area look for cities that have maintained a healthy regional economy, or try to find a job in a private or online school.

Personally, I would have suggested specialized libraries, especially health libraries, where more health professionals are looking for curatorial services or even assistance with evidence-based medicine. In addition, some researchers have funds to hire a librarian as a researcher and information organizer. Students that picked up a few science courses, or even an undergraduate degree in science or one of the health sciences, may want to go back and talk with their former colleagues and alumni to see if there are opportunities available.

Was she kidding?

She also really got my knickers in a twist when she called volunteer work and internships "resume padding" and suggested taking jobs that lasted less than a year off of the resume. And this was in the advice for new grads! Summer jobs do not last a year and most college students get their first, and very valid, experience in an internship. Every potential employer has treated my volunteer work with respect and it probably got me quite a few interviews when I lacked long term library experience. I also know for a fact that my volunteer work got me my first job in a library. However, my volunteer experience was long term and I was able to talk about it as highly transferrable to libraries. You can't spin handing out drinks at a race refreshment station into applicable volunteer work, so I would call that resume padding, but not all volunteer work is short term and non-professional, especially if you were a teacher or grant writer. She appeared to change her mind about this during the Q & A period, so maybe this was just a misstep in the original speech.

And the two page cover letter advice! She was so right to say that this is really unkind to an employer. The purpose of the resume and cover letter is to get an interview, where you will have time to talk about your experience fully. Thinking that if you can say everything you can do will get you an interview is actually a big mistake. Cover letters demonstrate your ability to communicate succinctly and on point, so brevity is a virtue. If you don't get an invitation to at least a screening interview with a one page cover letter, you definitely won't get one with a two page cover letter.

Basically, this was an introductory presentation and I give them credit for a good Q & A period, but it could have been made a bit smoother with some practice on the platform for all of the speakers.

The Unemployed Need Not Apply

Catherine Rampell's piece in the NYTs The Help-Wanted Sign Comes With a Frustrating Asterisk exposes how some employers are discriminating against applicants that are unemployed, while pointing out that "the average duration of unemployment today is nine months". However, discrimination on this point is not really discrimination since unemployment is not a "protected ground", though the article does list some states that are prohibiting this practice in job ads.

I really liked The Cynical Girl's response when she pointed out that HR should not participate in this practice and that there is probably a method that the major job boards could use to remove job postings with an "unemployed candidates need not apply" caveat.

World's Best Cities to Work and Live

PricewaterhouseCooper has released a report called "Cities of Opportunity" and BNET has summed it up in a promotional slide show. I liked that it was international, so there is lots of variation and some ideas for people who would like to spend some time abroad.

It was also interesting that the Doonstang blog also posted a piece on the importance of geography. It's a little neoclassical, as in it focuses almost entirely on the economic and career benefits of a move, as opposed to how people really make a decision about where to move, as in how close is the beach? or how many of sexual preference are single and available? and do they have a sports franchise?

Job Posting Tracking Form

I mess around with Google Forms a lot (A LOT) and so I decided to update the Job Diary for a Library Job Posting Tracking Form.

I think it is really important to keep track of your own personal job search so you know

• Where the good or relevant jobs are so you don't waste time
• So you can use methods that are effective
• So you can give presents to the people who helped you
• It helps with hyperbole. I do believe that you are working hard to find a job. Do I believe that you have sent out a thousand resumes? No, I do not. And you shouldn't overstate your efforts either, especially if you are not applying as much as you think you are.

This form is public, so if you want to use the form, as is, I recommend copying and saving it in your own private Google docs account. This means that all of your spreadsheet data is kept private. And it also means that you can make changes to the logic of the form.

In this form, I have made two different "logic" choices:

1. To keep track of the friends or professors that are good sources of job postings. You can turn off the logic for this question or you can add more options for your tracking.
2. I am trying to keep track of which vertical search engines are relevant. However, you may never use vertical search engines, or you only use one or two. You can make those into separate options in this question and keep track of which Twitter feeds or which state library boards have the best jobs. It really depends on your job search.

You can also turn off some of the required questions if you don't feel they are necessary to your record keeping.

This form only keeps track of your research habits, not the success of your applications. I would suggest making a different form for that process.

I love forms because I hate making spreadsheets. I like how Google forms fills in all of the spreadsheet data for me, so I don't introduce spelling errors or what-not, and then I can look at the results later, or share the information with others.

Tracking your own job posting spotting will help you save time when you are really concentrated on your job search or when a position or contract is about to end and you need to go full speed ahead.

Job-Hunter's Survival Guide by Richard N Bolles

Richard N. Bolles has produced a Coles Notes version of his famous What Color is Your Parachute? which could be read in an evening and provide the pertinent points from his more well-known work. This booklet includes the well-known "Flower Petal" exercise, as well as some of his basic charts for self-assessment and a discussion of the most effective methods for job search. Not included in this book is his explanation of information interviewing and how to do it.

Though I firmly agree with Bolles that a job search is more effective if the search is targeted and that multiple job search methods are essential to successfully finding a job, I have to disagree with his #4 most successful method for finding a job: going door to door. Now, this will work if you are looking for the kind of employment that does not include a heavily guarded HR office (and any library or academic institution I can think of has at least one HR person), this method will work. It will probably land you a survival job--and if you need one, try this method. However, using his most effective job search method--complete an inventory and know what you are looking for--will lead to a professional job, so it seems petty to quibble with one method. 

Bolles wrote this book to be a short version of What Color is Your Parachute, suited for the recession, for people who need to find a job NOW, and who don't have a lot of time, or money, to spend reading career books for advice. On those grounds, this book is successful and would be useful for a job seeker who needs to make a plan and get job hunting.

The Google Job Experiment

To get a job at a cool ad agency, Alec Brownstein, a copywriter, bought the Google ads that were associated with the names of the creative directors at the firms he was targeting in New York. Process: when they googled their names, an ad from Alec popped up suggesting that they hire him. Result: he got interviews and two job offers from the campaign.



Though I think this worked, first of all, because it was fresh and cheeky (imitators will probably not reap the same rewards), and because he was applying to an industry where the creative directors would google themselves or at least hear about the buzz, it was successful. I don't know if the experiment could be repeated successfully.

Are the niche boards eating Monster's lunch?

Not likely--would you eat a monster's lunch? Workforce Management* looks at the proliferation of niche job boards and how attractive they are to employers to find qualified or specialized candidates in a specific industry or sector.

"Today, some 100,000 Internet job boards vie for listings and résumés, double the number in 2000..."

Well, I knew there were a lot of job boards, but not that it was anywhere near that high a number.

Monster has opted to go with more accurate search tools for employers, rather than specializing their job boards. If you remember what happened in the contest between the Yahoo! directory and keyword search, perfected by Google, you'll remember how that battle turned out.

*You need a log on and password to access content on Workforce Management; sign up is currently free.

#jobsearchTweet and #EntrylevelTweet

Happy About Books has experimented with creating Twitter-style books of career advice. The books are limited to 140 statements and each statement is limited to 140 characters, similar to Twitter.

#jobsearchTweet is for any-flavor of job seeker from the entry-level to the laid off. The author, Barbara Safani, is the owner of Career Solvers, and the author of another Happy About book, Happy About My Resume. On the whole, I found most of the advice to be highly relevant and actionable, but one suggestion--add a chart to your resume--I think is an absolute no-no. Not only would an Applicant Tracking System not know what to do with your pretty chart, I can easily see an employer laughing about a well-meaning, My Awesomeness chart. Charts like these are better suited to a portfolio, revealed at the interview, and in relation to a specific question. If you use a chart, make sure it is relevant, objective-as in not about personal information, but about a project or sales data--and uses no confidential information from a previous employer.

#entrylevelTweet is for beginning job seekers and though I really liked the structure and progression of the resume advice, I thought the author, owner of Come Recommended, opened the book on a weak note by suggesting that the reader write a bunch of lists, seemingly for the purpose of listing-stuff. Yes, I know you could use them on a resume or to answer interview questions, but I don't think the new job seeker is going to get it. College students respond to suggests to write lists about themselves with put-upon eye rolling: they hate it, everyone tells them to do it, they never do, or get frustrated over what this magic list was supposed to do. Despite the weak start, the resume tweets were well done and I could see college-age students eagerly eating those up.

For both these books, I think they would have been better as ebooks only; personally I feel their layout is a waste of paper, and they also probably look better on a cell phone screen. I would recommend them for career counsellors that have thought about tweeting out advice and were not sure how to do it, succinctly and with relevance. I also think that frustrated job seekers, tired of too much advice, would find the format refreshing.

SimplyHired Job Seeker Report

Last month, SimplyHired released their Today's Job Seeker Report, to explore and explain the behavior of job seekers--which will help HR professionals post jobs.

As far as the assistance for job seekers, the report breathlessly states that 86% of job seekers look for work on the Internet. Not a surprise--we look for everything, including TV, spouses and wart cream--on the Internet. But what most job seekers should get out of this report is that networking still works--with 37% reporting that they got their last job through networking--and so few job seekers do it, with only 32% using networking as a job search strategy. According to the report, more respondents used the newspapers (!) than networking.

But what was really sad about this report: 53% of respondents said that their college major was not relevant to their current career.

Voice of Careers Webinar

My bad news last week: Laurie Ruettiman will no longer be writing Punk Rock HR. And if you have no read Punk Rock HR, you will not know that that is really bad news. I could have cried--but I wouldn't since it only felt like someone had kicked a puppy but it wasn't my puppy.

She is, however, moving on to other stuff, which includes the Voice of HR and their upcoming webinar, Getting the Job You Want: Accelerate Your Career Search with a Sales and Marketing Strategy on August 18, 2010. Since this is the first one, anything could really happen--I'm hoping successful things, so we keep hearing more from Laurie.

Excelle releases The 10 Top-Ranked Cities for Women

Excelle, a career and networking site for women, has released a list of The 10 Top-Ranked Cities for Women. There isn't much info as to how they devised their ranking, but these lists can be fun for a person who decides they can really go anywhere once they graduate.

Try searching for opportunities in these cities by combining your keywords and the locale on the SimplyHired Special Searches.

Book Review: Seven-step job search by Michael Farr

In my library, books with perfect phrases, write a cover letter in an hour, and step-by-step resumes in the title are popular books, since the patrons have usually picked them up because they are pressed for time. Their interview is tomorrow or the deadline to submit the resume is at 4pm today, so they gravitate to the books that promise them a speedy solution. Seven-step job search may not promise a speedy solution, but it does provide a plan for getting a job search organized and on track.
Seven-step job search explains how

• to identify skills which you will need to display on your resume and while in an interview
• determine a job objective which you can use in your online job search
• employ effective job search methods: if networking works, work it
• resume writing which is basic and includes some sample resumes
• interviewing and salary negotiating skills
• following up

Getting organized for a job search is the hardest part, since some people don’t always recognize that it is a logical process. For example, they write a resume before conducting an inventory of their skills, so they are not quite sure what to put in their job descriptions or on their cover letter. You aren’t locked into an order—and you may have no choice about the order of the process if you get an interview before your resume is ready—but a basic book like this can help you get organized and may even reveal some of the weaknesses in your job search, such as your interview skills are superb but you always choke the minute money is mentioned.
Seven-step job search is a good overview of the job search process and how to put it in order. It is skimpy on how to use online resources to look for work, but there are other books and resources that can fill in this gap. Some of the steps may have to be filled in with other resources, such as occupation specific resume samples when writing a resume, but this book explains the process for a person who is not finding work and needs to fix their strategy or for a person who is gearing up for a job search and who wants to conduct one efficiently.

Seven-Step Job Search: Cut Your Job Search Time in Half (Help in a Hurry)

Helping Job Seekers? Vertical Search Engines

The Points of Reference blog has a post on Helping Job Seekers and the one recommended resource is Indeed.com? That's it? That's the online job seeking source that Booklist could come up with for librarians that are helping job seekers? They could have at least linked to this article from the Searcher, The Info Pro's Survival Guide to Job Hunting, which even if it is a little dated, was thorough.

Not that I have any problem with Indeed. I actually like it and use it with our clients, but there are many other resources that might be better suited to this question. Maybe I just object to the title "Helping Job Seekers" as if this one resource will do it. Maybe I just need a cup of coffee. Anyway, there are more.

Vertical Search Engines

There are many vertical search engines, like Indeed, that scrape posting from major job boards or that accept feeds from employers. SimplyHired is another vertical search engine which has similar tools to Indeed, which includes the keyword and geographic descriptor mentioned in the blog post. They also have salary information, mapping tools and mashups with social networking software like Facebook and LinkedIn, so you can see if anyone in your network is currently working for the company.

These two vertical search engines also have a Trends feature that you can use to find out just how many of the jobs you are looking for are indexed in their engine.The Trends feature is meant to show you increases and decreases in job postings for a specific, title, region or keyword over time. If you take a look at the axis marked "Percentage of Matching Job Postings" you'll get an idea of how many jobs with that keyword are found in their database--or just how many jobs with that keyword there are available. Look at "librarian" compared to "engineer".

Librarian

librarian Job Trends

Librarian jobs

Engineer

engineer Job Trends

Engineer jobs

You can see just how many more jobs that mention "engineer" are available, as opposed to "librarian". That has to do with our economies, the types of professionals that are needed for each industry and sector, and just how many different flavors of engineer there are. (There are four distinct types of engineer civil, mechanical, electrical, chemical and more swirling sectors and specializations than what you could find at Baskins Robbins.) I just used it as an example to show that some vertical search engines will index more jobs of a certain type depending on where they scrape from and who's feeding them their feeds. This is something a librarian should consider when they recommend the search engine to patron: if you check the trends for "electrician" and compare by your state, one vertical search engine may have more postings than another and you may want to try another vertical search engine for your patron.

Other vertical search engines include Career Jet, Oodle, and JobCentral, which is a project of a consortium of employers to provide a place to post jobs for free.

SimplyHired is also messing around with a Local Search feature that is relevant to the job seekers that come into your library who need to find local work and who sometimes forget to add the limiting keyword of their homebase to their job search. Combine this search with a map and you can help someone who needs to relocate. This is the real power of a vertical search engine for job postings alone: it can look everywhere. At least everywhere or every sector it has indexed.

International Job Posting Vertical Search Engines

For Canadians, try Eluta. The result lists are smaller, since the board doesn't scrape but accepts employer supplied feeds only. I would also recommend WowJobs since it also includes Craigslist in its results, which is a great place for people to find a wide range of employment opportunities, especially work in the trades or short-term gigs. Yes, there may be job scams, but there were scams posted in the print classifieds; you need to educate your patrons about them.

Many of the vertical search engines mentioned have international channels of their search engine: Indeed, SimplyHired (click on the link marked USA below the location field to switch countries), CareerJet (click on Career Jet Worldwide for more information), Job Rapido and WowJobs.One of the reasons why I include the Career Jet widget on this blog is that is lets you search in different languages to get local results--I tested this on the Chinese version of the site to look for jobs in North America--which would be an asset to some library patrons that need a boost in English.

Indeed, though useful, is just the tip of the job posting vertical search engine iceberg. You should also make your decision for which vertical search engine is useful for your patron by asking them a bit about the type of work they are looking for, beyond I need a job. That's like responding to a patron's query of I need a book by just pulling the closest one off the shelf. Now, I know you're tempted to do that some days, but a little more questioning will help them find a vertical search engine that may lead them to some relevant jobs.

The Round-Up

• CareerJet
• Eluta
• Indeed
• Job Central
• Job Rapido
• Oodle
• SimplyHired
• WowJobs

DOL Job Tool Challenge

The Department of Labor is running a Job Tool Challenge to find the best online tools for job seekers. The submission period has passed, but you can vote on the tools that were submitted. Tools include social media tools, blogs, vertical search and job or career matching services. You can use these tools as a current job seeker or integrate them into your media instruction classes in libraries.

• The Project
• The Job Tool Challenge, for voting on the tools.
  

Use TweetDeck to update Twitter Job Searches

I'm still skeptical about using Twitter to find work, mainly because I have not met anyone personally who has found work via Twitter. But I did configure a search on TweetDeck (which I think makes plain Twitter functional) that may be helpful for those determined to prove me wrong.

Basically, TweetDeck is an app for Twitter that helps you manage your tweets. You can also run searches on Twitter, via TweetDeck and get pop-up updates if your search terms appear in Twitter. (These pop-ups are slightly annoying, but if you are Twitter-obsessed, perhaps you love their cheerful appearance.) Anyway, once you are signed in to TweetDeck or have downloaded it onto your desktop or iPhone, you can stay updated on your Twitter feed and get refreshed searches.

You can just type in your keywords/search terms, you don't need the hashtags because the search will send you posts where the search terms appeared, whether they have hashtags or. Since supplying a hashtag is voluntary on the part of the tweeters, this means you will get posts both with and without hashtags. (This, of course, can be good and bad, but if you are determined to use Twitter, you are determined to try anything.)

I would recommend running a Boolean AND, of the keyword for the profession you are looking for AND jobs, so you don't get the librarian saved my life tweets, or something about weird fantasies from people hanging out in the reference section (amazing what glasses and some smarts do to some people's libidos).

You can run several different searches, four displays nicely, but just remember that you will need to scroll sideways to view them all.

Now let's see if running searches on Twitter can actually lead to a real person, who will post a real comment that they found a real job--not just a posting or an interview, the full meal deal--through Twitter. I would prefer to hear from librarians and their successes, but I'll take anyone who can prove that Twitter got them employed.

Federal Jobs (US)

There is a website for federal service jobs in the US, Making the Difference, which includes advice on writing a resume, the infamous KSAs, as well as a housing guide for the DC area.

There's more about finding a federal job on the NACE Bulletin for August 4th, 2009pt. 2.

Identity theft and job searching

Careersthatdontsuck.com has a post today about job seekers that have had their identities stolen. I didn't realize that the numbers were so high:

The Federal Trade Commission’s February 2009 report revealed that 46,950 were the victims of employment-related identity fraud.

The bottom of the post has 5 tips on how to avoid identity theft when responding to job posting that look good but aren't true.

Good economy for con artists

We get this question: are those make money at home offers good? Should I give them my banking information? Yikes! when we hear the last one.

There are some job boards for telework, like Virtual Vocations, that offer legitimate work--possibly the same rate for scams as a newspaper classifieds--but there are many, many scams. Six companies in Van Nuys (CA) were just charged for consumer fraud (story in LATimes), and yes, the scams they were running included job scams.

If you are running any training in Internet job searching or get asked questions about work at home jobs or even questions about repairing credit, you may want to stay up to date on Operation Short Change.

Looking for a job, into a job

ERE.net includes a post today about Daniel Seddiqui's project to work 50 jobs in 50 states, 50 job in 50 states in 50 weeks is his tagline on his Living the Map website. (You can see video and read more about the project in the ERE post.)

Now, of course, nothing would stop a librarian from taking a tour of library opportunities, or other jobs, to gather information and maybe spin it into a job. But it also means that at libraries, we will have an influx of career guides and manuals where people either do an immersive journalism piece, like Scratch Beginnings, or Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch, or more reflective, personal writing, like Diary of a Job Search, which was on the WSJ site before it was made into a book.

Lone bloggers, some funny, some mundane, may get picked up by major papers or websites, though it is more likely that a media outlet will get a recommendation for a writer with a track record as a regular blogger, and spin their blog into a feature. The trick is to post with only a mild amount of bitter--which might get harder and harder, the longer you look.

The Huffington Post currently has a call for people in the New York area who are on UI but are looking for work. It might not lead to a gig, but might let you get on a national soap box.