Job Hunt Blog

Put Google Alerts to Work for Your Job Hunt

Google has a very handy tool called Google Alerts.  I've used them for years to track the job market, what's being said about me, Job-Hunt.org, and other things and issues that I want to track, and many other things.  Can be overwhelming, but usually they are just very useful.

They are easy to set up and easy to manage.  For information on how to set them up and use them, see the article I just completed about using Google Alerts on Job-Hunt.

Happy New Year!

The Truth About Privacy Policies

Question:

How do you know that a job search Website does not share personal information?

Answer:

Unfortunately, you can NEVER be sure that the site will not share your personal information.  However, within reason (!), making your information public is part of their job.

If a privacy policy is not present, don' t use the Website.  Just walk away immediately.  However, don't be reassured by the mere presence of a privacy policy either.

Privacy Policy Fine Print

Read the privacy policy to see what it says.  Yes, time consuming, but SO important!  Often, once you get past the flowerly language about how they value privacy, you may find out that they don't protect yours.  Look for what personal information about you that they may share, with whom they share it, and how you can control the sharing.

Privacy Seals

Seeing a privacy seal, like BBBOnline or TRUSTe, displayed on a site can give you a false sense of security.  It doesn't ensure that the privacy practices are good or that the site is "safe."  It just means that the site is disclosing their true privacy practices in the policy.  So, it means that they are "open" about their privacy practices, which may or may not be safe (and you won't know until you read it). 

Fake Privacy Seals?

Sometimes a site fraudulently displays a privacy seal.  How do you know?  The seal should be clickable and, when clicked, should take you to a page on the seal provider's Website that verifies that the seal is legitimate.

OOPS?

Often, a site may intend to keep your information private but they may mess up -

• Fake employers can pay to post fake jobs to gather information from applicants and/or to get access to the applicant resume database.  Good sites try to screen employers to make sure they are genuine, but not all sites try very hard.

• The site's employees may not be aware of the privacy practices - although they should be - and release information in violation of the privacy policy.

• The site or its employees may just be inept.  Stupid happens.

• Some sites may even be dishonest. I have found completely bogus job sites out there.  Completely.  All they were doing was collecting resumes.

• Some honest sites that are doing a good job may have a dishonest employee who violates the privacy policy on purpose - like selling resumes to anyone who has the money.

Even Monster apparently mislead people in their Privacy Policy, as discovered by author Pam Dixon in 2001 - read this report for the details.  Hopefully, they've cleaned up their act, but the lesson for all of us is that you really can't trust privacy policies or terms of use, even in the best-intentioned sites.

So, we can't depend on the sites to protect us.

Protect Yourself

1.) Show me the jobs - first!

Never post your resume or "register a profile" at a site before you see the jobs they have posted. The jobs and employers they have may not be the right ones for you. There may not be enough of them, or there may be none!

2.) Always protect your contact information.

Use a "cyber-safe" resume that eliminates or masks your contact information. See Job-Hunt.org's article on making your resume a cyber-safe resume.

For more information:

For more information see these articles on Job-Hunt.org -
* Protecting your privacy
* Choosing a job site
* Using a job site

And these other articles -
* Avoiding online job scams from the Privacy Rights Clearninghouse
* Scams & schemes in work and employment services from the RileyGuide.com

Good luck with your job search!

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Next Job After Teaching

Question:

I'm sick of teaching history in a public school.  What else can I do?

Answer:

A million other things! You can work in business, government, non-profits (even colleges and universities!) - whatever interests you most. and the good news, sadly, is that almost everything else will pay better.  On the other hand, you probably won't get the summer off any more.

My undergrad degree is in education, but I went into business instead. The great thing about being a teacher is that you should be pretty well educated, know grammar, be able to write, to add/subtract/multiply/divide, etc.  That's a big advantage in most businesses.

Help with deciding what you want to do next

The most difficult aspect of a career change from teaching will probably be deciding what you want to do other than teaching. Try NOT to focus on getting away from teaching. Try to focus on going on TO something you enjoy doing.

An excellent starting point is Dick Bolles' classic book, What Color Is Your Parachute. Get the 2006 version because Dick updates it annually to keep up with what's going on in the Internet, etc., so it's usually very helpful and fresh. Even old editions you may find at the library or in your own bookcase will help you figure out what you want to do rather than teaching, though.

http://www.jobhuntersbible.com - the Website that goes with Dick's Parachute book

Training - a "natural" option?

If you still enjoy helping people learn, going into the training department of a large organization or working for a training company can be a natural entry point.  Are you comfortable with technology?  Writing?  Math?  Another language?  All of those skills - and more - are needed every day, particularly by large banks and insurance companies, technology companies, and federal, state, and local governments.

Food for thought:

Think about the kind of employer you want.  As much as you may want to, don't just "jump ship" to a new career quickly without spending some time figuring out what you want to do and where you want to do it.  What Color Is Your Parachute will help you figure out WHAT.  Do some research to figure out WHERE.

• Small companies tend to have a more personal hiring process (someone in the company knows and recommends you, so they hire you), and they may be the best entry point for you, if you want to go into business.  You will get more varied experience more quickly, usually, because fewer people must do a large number of things.  Your experience will tend to be "wide" (exposure to several functions and task families) but "shallow" (not a great depth of experience in any one function, usually) in a small company. 
  
  You'll often find smaller employers advertising their openings on Craig's List (see tips on "using Craigslist to find a job" for help) or your local newspaper's help wanted ads (which may be online, too).

• Large companies, on the other hand, tend to have a more impersonal hiring process - if you don't meet the requirements, you don't make it through the screening process far enough to get an interview, but "networking" is often the best way into a large company, too.  Opportunities in a large company tend to be more specialized because they have greater numbers of people doing a function, so the function is sliced into several phases or levels of difficulty.  So, your experience will be "deep" (lots of experience) but "narrow" (one function at a time) in comparison with a small company.
  
  You'll often find larger companies advertising their openings on the employment super sites and on their own Websites.  Indeed.com and SimplyHired "harvest" job openings from many sources, including employer Websites, so they can be very helpful, too.

Help making choices:

See Job-Hunt's Pick Your Next Employer section for many different lists of employers and sources

http://www.job-hunt.org - Web employment "portal" with links to over 6,000 resources where you'll find jobs posted and advice.l

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Searching for a Job

Question:

Where can I find a good Administrative Assistance job?  I tried HotJobs, CareerBuilder, and Monster.  Where else can I look?

Answer:

The problem is probably not be with the job boards you are using.  A major part of the problem is with the way you are doing your searches when you are at the job board.  Be careful of the term you use - the job board can't (fortuntately) read our minds.  They work only with what we give them, although each does have its own idiosyncracies.

You need to change your search term:

• "administrative assistance," which you have been searching on, is a job function - helping with administrative tasks.  Those words might appear in the "other duties as required" section of a job description, but not in the job title which is what is often searched first by the job boards.

• "administrative assistant" is the a job title that you are really probably looking for.

So, change your search to use the job title "administrative assistant" as your search term.

A few job searches demonstrate the situation:

INDEED:  Curently, Indeed finds 31,532 results for a search on the term "administrative assistance" and 77,642 results for the search "administrative assistant" -- more than twice as many jobs!  However if you searched on the plural - "administrative assistants" - the results were smaller because they were limited to job descriptions with multiple openings (20,666).

CAREERBUILDER: Currently, 4,368 jobs are found searching on the term "administrative assistance" and 24,232 results on the term "administrative assistant" - more than 5 times as many jobs.

HOTJOBS:  There are - currently - 3,390 jobs listed in the search results for the term "administrative assistance," but there are 10,120 jobs listed in the search results for the term "administrative assistant."  That's almost 3 times better!

MONSTER: Indicatd that it has "more than 1,000" jobs for each kind of search, but no details, so I can't really compare the terms on Monster.  My expectation is that it would be very similar to the other search results.  Monster was the most annoying though - it seemed to be trying to force me to register on an advertisement for an online education before it would show me the actual search results.

So, be sure to search using the terms found in the job title of the job you want.

If you don't know the  job title of the job you want, check out job titles (with  the associated descriptions) at http://www.stepfour.com/jobs/titlesa.htm

Good luck!

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Bogus Job Sites

There are completely bogus "job sites" collecting resume information from unsuspecting job seekers.  Don't get caught by one

There are thousands of legitimate job sites, so don't worry about running out of them.  Evaluate every site you are considering using using these criteria:

1. Have you heard of the site?
   
   If you haven't heard of a site you're tempted to use, and no one you know has used it, do a Google search to see what is being said about it.
   
   Look for contact information on the site. Not just a form for visitors to complete to ask a question, but a name, address, and phone numbers. Then, Google the address and phone numbers. Are they real? Call one of the phone numbers to see if someone answers from the organization running the site. Be very cautious if no concrete contact information is available.  Who would you contact (or sue) if you had a serious problem.

2. Do you have to "register" before you can search through the jobs?
   
   Why should you waste your time registering before you can see if they have jobs for you? In most cases, this should be a BIG red flag that the site is not seriously interested in helping you find a job, particularly if the site does not have a Privacy Policy posted telling you what they do with your registration information.

3. Does the site have a comprehensive Privacy Policy?
   
   Look for a Privacy Policy, and READ IT before your register at a job site!! The privacy policy should disclose to you the information that the site collects and what they do with it (i.e., sell or rent your e-mail address, etc.). They should also provide contact information for "opting out" of their database. Some will claim complete ownership of your resume, including the copyright.  That would mean that you couldn't use it anywhere else. Preposterous!

4. Privacy seals

   They can be helpful, but there are a couple of very important caveats about privacy seals!
   
   A privacy seal is NOT assuring you that the Website is safe or a good one for you to use.  It is only telling you that the site has agreed to be audited for compliance with the policy they have posted, but the policy itself may be terrible.
   
   If the site displays a "privacy seal," the seal must be clickable, and the link must take you to a specific page on the seal organization's Website that describes the site claiming the seal.

   In other words: -

• If the seal cannot be clicked on, don't trust it.
• If the seal's link goes to the seal organization's home page, it cannot be trusted
• If the link goes to another page of the site claiming it, it cannot be trusted
• Only trust the seal if you can click on it, and it takes you to the specific page on the seal organization's Website where you will find a confirmation that the Website you came from actually has the seal.

See Job-Hunt.org's articles about Protecting Your Privacy, Choosing a Job Site, and Using a Job Site for more information.  An online job hunt is not as safe nor as easy as it might appear.

And, be careful out there!

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Search Engines

Search Engines You May Not Have Tried

Everyone knows about Google MSN and Yahoo, but here are some others worth trying:

Ask - used to be Ask Jeeves - is very good with special searches for news, maps, weather, and blogs.

Exalead (beta) - a powerful search engine that allows you to set your own preferences, e.g. country, number of results per page, optional "word stemming" (including "internship" and "interns" in a search on the term "intern"), and more.

Kartoo - an unusual site, it "maps" the relationships between the sites in the search results and categorizes and labels them, keeping track of your "Preferred sites."

Personally, I find the Google Toolbar a necessity of life.  It's like always having a Google browser window open, but not taking up space on the desktop.  And, it's got a lot of handy functions, like:

• The highlighter (which highlights the search terms in the search results)
• The "Search in this Site" function, and
• The pop-up blocker

Set up those additional functions by clicking on the "Options" link in the toolbar.

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The Key to Keywords

Finding What You Want

Whether you are searching jobs at a Web job site or using a search engine, put yourself in the shoes of the person who created the document you want to find.  How would they describe what you are looking for?  What words would they use?

When posting jobs, most recruiters are in a hurry, so they are apt to use abbreviations or the first words that pop into their minds.  That's how "telecommunications" becomes "telecom" or "internship" becomes "intern" or "Massachusetts" becomes "Mass" and "MA." Think about the other possible words or phrases that might have been used in addition to the first words that popped into your head.

Scan the pages that appear in the results to see what other similar terms are also used.  Occasionally it can be as simple as the difference between plural and singular - search on "interns" and "intern" - see the difference?

If you are using Google, it will sometimes suggest alternatives to you - "Did you mean..." Sometimes Google is offering you a better choice.

Before you give up on a search, try as many options as you can think of.

Being Found

It works the other way, too, when you have a document (like your résumé) that you want to have potential employers find.  Think of that busy recruiter searching for the perfect résumé.  What words are they apt to search on? "Resume" will probably be one of the words.  Note, not résumé - just plain old "resume" (as in continue) because most people don't take the time to find the special HTML character that produces the "é" required by the proper form of the word.

Note, put the word "resume" (as in continue) in your online résumé and in your résumé's file name, with your own name, so that your résumé shows up in the search results.  For more tips, see Job-Hunt's Keyword Resumes article.

More Search Help

For more tips on searching, see the Web Search Wizard, Deb Flanagan's Using Search Engines Tutorial,  and Job-Hunt's "Google-izing Your Job Search" and "Google Toolbar Tricks."

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