Job Search: General Search Sites and Using Online Resumes

I have still been searching for jobs and have not had many or really any responses for interviews yet. I'm really not sure if there's something wrong with my resume / qualifications or that the job market is not good / competition is high with all the layoffs.

When I first started, I used a nifty trick to find more job search sites that I liked. At first, I tried searching for any "new graduate job search" sites using Google - that worked out well but a lot of the sites that came up were based in the U.S. That wasn't a problem, neither was registering, but a lot of the sites ask you where you got your degree from and UBC isn't exactly known by all sites for some reason.

As I said in my last post, I had heard about t-net from many people giving me advice on the tech job search and in order to find eluta I used the "Similar Pages" function on Google to help me find related sites. It's a really cool tool to use because any time you hear about a new job search site that you really enjoy, the internet's bound to have similar sites and resources that you may also like.

General Tech Search Sites:

I also have another cool strategy to use to search for job search sites. Often times when you apply for jobs, there is an online application form. The form often asks you about where you heard about this job (and those are the times you should always have some sort of connection, either through friends, family, facebook or linkedin, etc.) and a lot of forms have a drop down menu showing a bunch of sites where they might have posted their job. This drop down menu in job application forms is a great way to learn about new job search sites that you may not have found in Google Searches or using the "Similar Pages" function on Google. I am pretty sure that's how I found out about Indeed.ca and SimplyHired.com. What I like about indeed is that they are like a meta search engine - it searches through different job search sites and aggregates all the data on their page, which means that you could search through multiple job search sites at once using their search engine.

As an aside, I think a very important thing to figure out early in your job search is what you would like to do for work. For me, I figured I wanted to do something in the software or web development side (and I would not mind doing testing either because I think that's how a lot of companies hire entry level employees; they then move testers up into the roles of development after they've gained experience). I always knew that I wanted to do my MBA at some point because I do have a passion for the business side of things and did not want to stay on the technical side forever - which is when I saw the Associate Product Manager position at Google. I think that really is the dream job for me (yes, a job at Google but eventually a Product Manager that manages products for a technical company would be awesome too) - using my technical skills and working on managing the direction of products, eliciting requirements, the opportunity sometimes makes me giddy with enthusiasm. With that in mind, I can now do a focused search in the job search engines using keywords like "product manager" and "associate".

SimplyHired is the job search engine that LinkedIn uses and I think I can cover a bit here and a bit later when I talk about social networking to your job. It works a lot like other job search engines but the features I like about SimplyHired is that you can specify what industry you'd like to work in as well as the years of experience that you have (very useful when you're trying to sift and sort through thousands of job postings). I can't tell you how tedious it is to search through job postings, find awesome jobs with incredible responsibilities and then find out that it requires way more experience than I actually have.

Online Resumes

I have not used a lot of online resumes, mostly because updating one requires update of the others in order to maintain consistent information across the board but I do have one in particular on linkedin that I keep fairly up to date and consistent with my resumes. If you do not have an account on linkedin, I would suggest registering an account on there because it's a great way to use social networking to your advantage to find a job. Firstly, you have to find friends, family and colleagues that you may have worked with. During the time you wait for them to accept their invitations, you should start building your profile like your resume: put in your work history, education and specialties (linkedin has a useful 'scoring' function that takes you through all the steps of building your profile).

Once some of your invitations get accepted, start to ask for recommendations on your work. The recommendations are a lot like referrals and are a great way for you to stand out from already great accomplishments in your work history. Be nice and recommend others on their work if you find that you're not getting very many recommendations.

Another thing I would highly suggest is joining groups (for example, if you've just graduated, you could join your University's Alumni Group or suppose you worked at specific companies for a while, you can join the company's alumni group as well ie. Telus Alumni Group). The groups are a great way of increasing your visibility to others that may be working at companies you'd like to work for. I joined my university's faculty alumni group for computer science and started a discussion telling everyone about how I was looking for entry-level work. A few weeks passed and honestly no-one responded in any way but I finally got a private message from an alumni working at Google who said that he could refer me to their company! I was disappointed that I didn't get any more responses but a referral to Google from my university's alumni? That was incredible. I guess this is just a testimony that social networking can help you out even if it's only to give you a boost to your job search confidence.

You may think that posting up a resume on linkedin will do all your work for you and I actually thought like that too but I realized that you get what you put in. This means that the more work you do to actively build connections, update your profile and follow discussions (and post to them!), the more visibility you'll have in the group and the more job opportunities will start to appear to you. Sure, you could post up a linkedin profile and passively look for jobs, but you'll learn a lot more about yourself (and get more out of it) if you actively seek out people that can help you. As an example, I got great job search advice from a Toastmaster that randomly added me. I did not know her and she did not know me, but because she and I were both toastmasters, we connected. She sent me a message and a big discussion followed about how she did her job search and strategies she used and I really learned a lot (in fact, I am incorporating some of her advice now). I could have been really shy and just thanked her for the add but I decided to actively seek her opinion on job search and ask her if she knew anyone that was hiring. It just goes to show that positive results come to those that actively pursue it.

Job Search: Online Sites and Resources I use (University, Tech Job Search Sites)

Lately, I was inspired by Cindy Burn's blog, located here. To be honest, I noticed some comments on her twitter feed and many commented on how good of an idea it was to have a blog chronicling her search because it can not only increase her visibility online (and thus increase the number of potential recruiters seeing her) but also give some helpful advice to those also on the job search (and let them know that they're not alone). I certainly felt that way when I was reading her blog - that I was not alone in this bad economic situation right now.

I had planned to post on my blog after my job search was over but as of yet, it isn't (yes, a subtle hint I am still unemployed). Before I go into my post, let me give you some background and some context - it may help you figure out the resources that are helpful for you.

I graduated this past May 2008 with Computer Science and Mathematics at the University of British Columbia. I figured that with all my work experience both in coop and at UBC (if you're curious as to what kind of experience, you can look at my linkedin profile here ), I was at least going to get several interviews, if not job offers from several companies. Obviously that was not the case and after finishing summer work in October, I looked for work but to no success. That would be my background.

To give you some context of what kind of work I am looking for, I graduated with Computer Science and Math and was looking for technical work, software or web development more specifically. And because I recently graduated, I was looking for some entry-level work. This means that the resources I will be listing will mostly be of the entry-level technical kind (but there are some general sites I use, and a lot of the technical sites have jobs for other specializations, like Commerce, Accounting, Business Administration, etc.).


Now, onto many of the resources I am using / have used:

University:

The first thing that I used was the career services site of the university I graduated from. The site is here and I started looking through all the full time job postings for any entry-level work related to my specializations. While I did not find many, I did find a few and I kept a task list of all the jobs I did apply for as well as some companies that I found interesting so that I may apply to them if future opportunities popped up.

Side note: I started using the zenpages on Zenbe when I first started to help me with my task, filtering all my e-mails through a work-centric gmail (using my name and adding .jobs) but as I applied to job after job, it started to fill up. I decided to switch over to www.rememberthemilk.com to keep track of the jobs I applied to, the job search sites I used as well as the interesting companies that did not have any current job opportunities but that I wanted to keep an eye on. I think the advantage of using rememberthemilk is that I can add tasks from twitter, e-mail or Jott (from my phone) if I needed to.

The idea that I could look through job postings from my university's site inspired me to look at other universities and their job posting sites. You do have to be an alumni to use those sorts of services, but if you're lucky enough to know people that went to those schools and if they are nice enough people, they'll either offer or you can ask to borrow their id and password to use those resources.

Other than being able to access the job postings board of the universities, I almost forgot about checking the human resources site at the universities to look for work in the universities! Doing this is easy enough, just google "human resources" with the name of the university you are interested in and you'll find the site right away. Of course, there's an added bonus of you having worked at a university before because they'll often hire internally but for any other universities, you will only be able to apply to their external positions.

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Tech Job Search Sites:

From very early on when I was looking for work, I was intrigued by the opportunities of new graduate leadership development programs. These programs almost exclusively accepted new graduates (in my case, technical graduates) and was a great way to gain experience working in the different departments of a large company and contributing a lot of value to the company at the same time. You could build up a network of contacts and get a good sense of direction with your career from mentors. I may not have the right resources but it seems that there aren't a lot of sites that list those new graduate leadership program opportunities, rather, you have to be connected with the company somehow to know that they offer those kinds of programs.

What I did find though was a site that searched through all companies in Canada based on your degree and specialization. www.eluta.ca is a site I still like using because it has a great list of companies that have job opportunities in your specialization and it also usually has information about the company's culture, average salary and how many people they've hired in the past. Although I did use their job search feature, I also just went through the list of companies and looked through the career opportunities on each of their sites just so that I wouldn't be missing anything that the eluta search wasn't picking up.


Another job search site that everyone I know keeps telling me about is t-net. The really good thing about this site, other than listing all the local technology companies here in British Columbia, is the fact that it is really up to date with job postings. This is a site I search probably once every couple of weeks just to see if anything comes up (and again, I like to look through their list of companies and look for job opportunities / interesting companies so that I can keep an eye on those things.

More on general job search sites, social networking and other resources that are helpful for job search in later posts :)