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: Google Bomb: The Untold Story of the $11.3 M Verdict that Changed the Way We Use the Internet

I have been trying to get a copy of this book since I finished Wild West 2.0 because I was interested in the real life "google bombing" enacted against Sue Scheff. Sue Scheff is the founder of PURE, described as a "parenting advocacy association", and she responded via email to a request from a parent who needed to get her children from a facility in a foreign country. Scheff had a brief electronic advising relationship with this person, but when Scheff had to respond negatively to a request for information, the correspondent began a negative campaign against her, conducted online and using the "google bomb".

In a google bombing, the Google search results affiliated with that person or organization's name are hijacked by results that redirect to sites that are not flattering to the person or organization you just searched for. For example, in Scheff's case, a search for her name led to unflattering and sexually explicit comments about her, which drew users away from her own website and made it look as though she was no longer the upright and impartial advocate that she had portrayed. She lost clients. She lost referrals. She lost esteem in her community of counselors and parents. She also lost her privacy when another  legal deposition, which included private information of clients and her own personal information, such as her Social Security Number, was posted to the Internet. It was at this point that she decided to fight back and launch her court case that ultimately led to the enormous civil decision.

Throughout Scheff's recounting of her struggles, the co-author and lawyer John W. Dozier Jr explains some of the legal issues and decisions about online defamation and trademark law. He explains how online smear campaigns are run and uses personal examples from his own law firm to discuss how campaigns can affect businesses. He describes how there are current legal remedies for these issues if a person or organization comes under attack and how the courts can have real teeth when dealing with a person who attempts to google bomb another person or organization.

I found this book to be highly informative, though I wish there was more information about the steps you can take or how to gather evidence of the attack to take to a lawyer, the ISP that hosts the site or the police should you feel that the harassment may become RL violent.

The book is also part of the "cult of amateurs" camp, in the sense that the educated "grown-ups"--journalists, lawyers, business leaders--should be elevated to Internet authorities and regular people should follow the recommendations of the elite. I would have laughed out loud at Dozier's paternalistic assertion, "if you cannot use and understand that technology your kids are using, then don't allow them to use it" if most of the book had not been written in such a calm and authoritative manner, so that this seemed like a reasonable assertion. However, no more chemistry sets and wrenches, junior, because I just don't know a Philips head from a hammer, so you can't play with one either, is not a reasonable assertion.

The harassers that this book described are not the same as everyday people who have expertise in a field. I am also not advocating surgery by non-surgeons, but I think a mechanic can offer better opinions than a marketer on a automaker's blog, and a person who receives customer service can offer a different side to the story of the interaction than the person who gives customer service. It is also rather ridiculous to suggest that all college educated experts are non-biased. Some "citizen journalists" are civil, honest and knowledgeable--and they are not as obsessed and hostile as Scheff's tireless attackers. We can't make the Internet a better place by shutting it down or shutting people out. They will just find another back channel, just as this book describes.


I don't know what the solution is to this dilemma--make people nicer?--but having some knowledge of attacks and how to document them is a good first step.

Google Bomb: The Untold Story of the $11.3M Verdict That Changed the Way We Use the Internet

Business Beat, Episode 8: Friendly Competition

Streamlining the Federal (US) Hiring Process

The US President has mandated hiring reforms for the federal public service and all of the reforms must by in effect by November 1, 2010. This release from NACE explains some of the changes to the process and provides several links for people looking for work with the federal government or for people who assist in researching these career opportunities

TMZ of the recruitment industry?

This article from Workforce looks at some of the bloggers and blogging trends in the HR community. The post includes the obligatory, is the blog dead? questioning, while at the same time revealing how blogs can have a big impact on big industry within recruitment.

Recruitment blogs and HR blogs can be useful for librarians, 1) if they are engaged in HR in their library or 2) if they are teaching others how to search within databases or place their information within databases used by HR.

I have to admit, I loved that description of Cheezhead as the TMZ of the recruitment industry.

More job satisfaction in the private sector?

This 2010 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey examines government employees in relation to public sector employees and found that in several areas, private sector employees experienced more satisfaction than their public sector counterparts, though the race was very close and tied in some cases.

• Both sectors tied at 86% with I like the work that I do.
• For How satisfied are you with your involvement in decisions that affect your work?, 55% positive responses for Team Gov and 58% positive responses for Team Private
• And for Considering everything, how satisfied are you with your job? 72% of government respondents offered a positive response while 75% of private sector respondents replied positively.

Spotted on Government Executive.

Fallacies about promotions

HBR Magazine has an article about career development fallacies. The author looked at the CVs of approximately 1000 executives to determine how executives get ahead. She found there were four fallacies about career advancement:

• Job hoppers can hop their way into a promotion; instead stability with a company and internal promotion seem to lead up the ladder;
• Move up the ladder; instead lateral moves can offer more exposure to senior management and then into a promotion;
• A big company will lead to big moves. We have this problem in the career center: students are convinced they need to work for the Big 4 or the Big Ten or the Ivies, instead of thinking about how they will stand out better amongst a smaller pool;
• Switching industries will hold back your career; instead think how you can bring a fresh perspective. The example about salary is a little fishy, since it means some industries are bargain shopping for managers in other industries.

I have one quibble with this article: I do not know one career counsellor who advises flagrant job hopping, or even tentative bunny hopping, as a way to get ahead in a career. Most counsellors are talking risk takers away from frequent jumps based on brief infatuations with other companies or perceived slights that the job seeker takes as a sign to jump ship, instead of a sign to learn to work problems out.

However, the advice is good for career planners: stay steady, make your choices based on what you want to do and know that sometimes small can become big.

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

Best Canadian Cover Letters by Sharon Graham

Looking for a sample cover letter in French? Need a quick check for a word's Canadian spelling? Best Canadian Cover Letters, a companion book to Best Canadian Resumes which was just released in a second edition, has this and more.

The basics of cover letters is covered including how to write and format the cover letter. There are sample cover letters for new grads, mid-level workers and senior level from a wide range of industries. There is also good indexing in the book, and I especially liked the "Index of Obstacles", since job seekers sometimes have a career obstacle that will keep them from their goal, such as a career gap or a relocation is required.

I do have some concerns about the book. For example, on page 35 there is a sample letter for an animal control officer dispatcher and the comments at the bottom talk about how the cover letter writer showcased their interest in "animal rights". Now, I don't know about your animal control authority, but I don't think an "animal rights" political stance will attract a person to work in animal control. "Animal welfare" on the other hand is the accurate term. This made me concerned that there might be other letters in the book that incorrectly referred to or suggested terminology that might be inappropriate for the industry--I recognized this one because I do have an interest in animal welfare.

Despite that concern, which careful reading and a knowledge of the specific industry will overcome, I think this book is a good choice for Canadian libraries and will be an asset to Canadian job seekers, since there is a wide range of samples and it includes a few examples of the difficult to find French cover letter.


Best Canadian Cover Letters

Broke USA on Democracy Now!

Online Identity Calculator

I found out about the Online Identity Calculator from the Twitter Job Search Guide and I thought the tool was interesting. It would be especially useful if you are concerned about what a Google search would reveal about you and your professional history.

I'm not sure how accurate it is since I run four blogs, none of them under my personal name--my interests are really diverse--but I was still counted as "digitally distinct".

Amazing what a LinkedIn profile can do:)