rowyn

You're viewing

rowyn's journal
Create a Dreamwidth Account Learn More

Reload page in style: site light

A topic near and dear to all of us, I'm sure. :/ I haven't looked for a job in seven years, and am looking for some advice on how to go about it nowadays. (I never was all that good at it). There are a lot of Internet job search sources available, I know, and my local newspaper posts its classified section online. And I know networking is the best way to get a job (out of ... um ... the ten or so jobs I've gotten, seven of them were by networking -- and I'm pretty bad at networking to boot, which ought to show how useful it is.) Anyway, what I'm mainly wondering about is:

Are there any offline resources that you've found useful? (Or Internet ones that you particularly like, for whatever reason).
Are there any advantages to snail-mailing resumes over emailing them? Is there a point to "following up" on a resume if you don't get a response to it, or is it pointless to expect a response to most resume submissions nowadays?

General suggestions also welcome, naturally. Thanks!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

zaimoni.livejournal.com

I do not have advice on looking for jobs — only making them ;)

Assuming you actually have two years or so of savings (or equivalent non-active income stream) to play with, the strategy that worked (back in 2000, when the Internet was young) was:

Beware pyramid schemes in Internet advertising. Flee the third tier commission. Second-hand knowledge: pay-per-click is also fraud-ridden.
Internet advertising won't pay your bills unless you have enough page hits to justify a dedicated server. Dedicated servers cost.
Being paid to answer questions is fun, and good for pocket change. But it's a lousy marketing model — none I participated in lasted two years. And don't work from 8:30AM Eastern to 4:00PM Pacific. (This loses the hapless highschool student that wants the answer to his homework in one hour....)
A forum that matches service providers (you!) to service buyers (your clients) might be useful — if it is free to join as a service buyer. But most of these bomb — join a zoo. And rethink immediately should the terms of service go sour.

From:

zaimoni.livejournal.com

Have you read What Color is your Parachute?, by Dick Bolles?

Analog website: Job Hunter's Bible.

From:

octantis.livejournal.com

I can only offer my experiences, which may not be all that helpful. :/

I found a couple of my jobs, including the one I held the longest, in the classified ads... but since I'm an unskilled grunt and you're a trained bank pro, I don't think you'd be as well served by that method; still, they're worth a look, and it's cheap.

On snail-mail vs. e-mail submissions... I doubt it matters. If they specify a way to submit, go with that, if they offer both options, I'd say go with e-mail because it's convenient for everyone, instantaneous, and will reach the right people because they're asking for it, if they don't specify how they want it, then snail-mail seems like the conservative best choice, as you don't know whether their HR e-mail address will really shuffle your resume in the right direction.

I think it's a good idea to follow up on resumes. It's harmless, and potentially makes you look eager and earnest, and makes your app stick out in their mind. People won't get annoyed unless you're calling them up every day.

That's about all I can think of... I'm definately no authority. :/ I got my last job through an aquaintance, the two jobs before that in the classifieds, and before that by filling out an application. (Bleagh!) I imagine you have more experience and qualifications than I do.

Is everything all right? What happened? :/

From:

rowyn

Thanks for the suggestions! I appreciate it. :) Every now and again, I get to wondering if I'm underpaid at my current job. Right now, I suspect I'm not, given my level of responsibility. Only one way to find out if I'm worth more elsewhere, really. ;)

From:

minor-architect.livejournal.com

I'm going to ignore my "don't give advice" rule just this once, because, as you know, I'm also job-hunting and have found some things that might be of interest to you.

As Zaimoni suggests, reading What Color Is Your Parachute? is an excellent idea - it's one of the best job-hunting books around. I have also found another book to be a real lifesaver: The Unofficial Guide to Acing the Interview. It helped me to "correctly" answer a premature question about my salary expectations at my last interview, which saved both me and the prospective employer a lot of time. (In other words, I was able to figure out up-front that they would only be able to pay me three-quarters of what I was already earning.) That alone was worth the cover price. ;-)

From:

rowyn

I'm going to ignore my "don't give advice" rule just this once

Hey, when I ask for advice, it'd be mean of you to withhold it. :) Thanks for the reinforcement on What Color Is Your Parachute -- if only one person had recommended it, I dunno that I'd bother. But now I feel prodded at least to check a copy out from the library. :)

From:

telnar.livejournal.com

If I were you, I wouldn't limit the search to jobs very similar to the one you're doing today. Part of this exercise could well be to identify what types of jobs are worth considering.

From:

telnar.livejournal.com

Just to toss out a few random examples of areas where your skills might be helpful (in some cases, after getting a little on-the-job training):

Software Testing
Insurance Adjusting
Proposal Writing
Corporate Accounting

Of course, these have nothing to do with each other, and use very different subsets of your skills for good measure, but that gets back to my original point about avoiding tunnel vision. I think that I can defend the claim that you might be good at each of these (feel free to drop me a line if you want to call that). Besides, you're not nearly (well at least not quite) as old as geezers like myself. You'll be working for a while longer, so it's probably worth the effort to make changes if they will make you happier.