My typical habit until recently was to go to monster.com, enter a few combinations of keywords with my locale, find some results, apply where applicable. Next, go to careerbuilder.com enter the same stuff, get slightly different results, apply if necessary, then go to craigslist for more disappointment and near misses or jobs I already applied for.
Then I discovered indeed.com This site provides a google-like scan of all the sites for jobs in my area. It's proven itself very accurate in delivering job leads that may have not been found in other sites.
Additionally indeed.com has an advanced search capability which lets me exclude words like Microsoft's "ASP" since I work primarily in Open source "PHP" and those worlds are somewhat opposite.
The site also offers relevant "salary information," which other sites seem to do poorly, after a lot of ads and vague links. In my opinion, the salary information is more relevant to technology jobs than even my state's labor statistics, because the state's site is clear when categorizing my job category. "Web Developer" is not anywhere to be found on the state sites. I have a feeling the categories were defined in the 1980s. And not parsed finely enough for all the genres the age of new media has provided. But indeed.com provides a very nice parsing of salaries down to the region.
Advanced features are found on other sites, including distance, age, not from recuriter, and the ability to include a specific title. If you sign up to become a member, you can block jobs, and set up search agents.
indeed.com is a useful job search site which culs all the jobs from most major job sites. Until those sites figure out how to block this search engine, searching for jobs will remain much easier for me.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Monday, July 13, 2009
5 Myths of Career Building
As I analyze the numerous career books and advice guides I've read over my own career, there's a lot of ideas that just don't fly in today's economy. Maybe taking the advice is better than ignoring it in some cases, but for the most part I've found that these cornerstones of career building are a load of crap.
In later posts, and perhaps your comments, we can try to revise these, throw more away, or parse new pillars of career advice. But this post is dedicated to exposing the existing parables as worthless as WorldCom stock.
1. Do what you love:
Well, I love mountain biking and it costs me a lot of money. I'm too old and not really built to race competetively, and there is no money in owning a bike shop, unless you have money to invest. So I'm not sure what they're talking about here. Unless you're an engineer, or a pot dealer, (Missy Giove - champion DHiller just got arrested for this), I don't think you're making much money in mountain biking.
Work is not play. That's why they call it work. It requires effort and is often not fun. Accept that and you will go a long way toward being successful. Success if fun. Maybe that's where the confusion comes into play.
2. The Money Will Follow: Okay what if you love landscaping. The market is so competative and there's so many people willing to do about 80% of the detail work for next to nothing, the market cannot bear what you would like to charge. If you are a businessperson you can make good money in landscaping hiring talented lanscapers for a song. But that is not the same as being a good landscaper. If you learn to work hard at sales, you can make a lot of money to spend on good products, plants and equipment, spend your free time landscaping your own yard and really enjoy it.
3. Experience Counts: Fact is that the majority of unemployed people are 40 and over. Many are in Mid-career positions. So in this market at least, experience may be a liability. An entry-level, to 5 years experience resume may open more doors than a full career portfolio. This thought was reinforced recently, when I submitted my resume to Monster.com for review. They told me to delete any reference to anything over 10 years back.
4. You will be paid what you are worth: In Connecticut, where a tradition of Yankee frugality prevails, means that many hiring managers still subscribe to the theory that they should try to get the skillset they need at the lowest salary possible. I have been to quite a few interviews to companies who try to talk you down, and say they can get equal talent at a much lower price, but those are the companies who always seem to be hiring for the same exact position. Nobody will stay at a position like that, unless it is the only position they can get, or have more authority than they could get somewhere else. Additionally, the companies that profess this often, and ironically have "Beware The Lowest Bidder" quote in their lobby.
5. Some careers cannot be offshored
Working on the web, I was surpised when I walked in as a consultant to my first day at a fortun 100 company to see perhaps 70% of the employees were from a far away land. Soon I noticed when I called support lines, the people on the other end had accents that were increasingly hard to parse. Recently I read an article in Wired magazine that the writer himself was not far from being offshored. Let me first say that I love most people from India I have met. Once you get to know them, they are passionate, love to laugh, have a big culture, progressive view of religion and even admit themselves that there are so many Indians working in American jobs it cannot be good for America in the long run. If you concede that you will have to compete with foriegn workers in any job you apply for, you'll be more competative from the start. I'm hoping, that without sounding xenophobic, this fact will someday change.
In later posts, and perhaps your comments, we can try to revise these, throw more away, or parse new pillars of career advice. But this post is dedicated to exposing the existing parables as worthless as WorldCom stock.
1. Do what you love:
Well, I love mountain biking and it costs me a lot of money. I'm too old and not really built to race competetively, and there is no money in owning a bike shop, unless you have money to invest. So I'm not sure what they're talking about here. Unless you're an engineer, or a pot dealer, (Missy Giove - champion DHiller just got arrested for this), I don't think you're making much money in mountain biking.
Work is not play. That's why they call it work. It requires effort and is often not fun. Accept that and you will go a long way toward being successful. Success if fun. Maybe that's where the confusion comes into play.
2. The Money Will Follow: Okay what if you love landscaping. The market is so competative and there's so many people willing to do about 80% of the detail work for next to nothing, the market cannot bear what you would like to charge. If you are a businessperson you can make good money in landscaping hiring talented lanscapers for a song. But that is not the same as being a good landscaper. If you learn to work hard at sales, you can make a lot of money to spend on good products, plants and equipment, spend your free time landscaping your own yard and really enjoy it.
3. Experience Counts: Fact is that the majority of unemployed people are 40 and over. Many are in Mid-career positions. So in this market at least, experience may be a liability. An entry-level, to 5 years experience resume may open more doors than a full career portfolio. This thought was reinforced recently, when I submitted my resume to Monster.com for review. They told me to delete any reference to anything over 10 years back.
4. You will be paid what you are worth: In Connecticut, where a tradition of Yankee frugality prevails, means that many hiring managers still subscribe to the theory that they should try to get the skillset they need at the lowest salary possible. I have been to quite a few interviews to companies who try to talk you down, and say they can get equal talent at a much lower price, but those are the companies who always seem to be hiring for the same exact position. Nobody will stay at a position like that, unless it is the only position they can get, or have more authority than they could get somewhere else. Additionally, the companies that profess this often, and ironically have "Beware The Lowest Bidder" quote in their lobby.
5. Some careers cannot be offshored
Working on the web, I was surpised when I walked in as a consultant to my first day at a fortun 100 company to see perhaps 70% of the employees were from a far away land. Soon I noticed when I called support lines, the people on the other end had accents that were increasingly hard to parse. Recently I read an article in Wired magazine that the writer himself was not far from being offshored. Let me first say that I love most people from India I have met. Once you get to know them, they are passionate, love to laugh, have a big culture, progressive view of religion and even admit themselves that there are so many Indians working in American jobs it cannot be good for America in the long run. If you concede that you will have to compete with foriegn workers in any job you apply for, you'll be more competative from the start. I'm hoping, that without sounding xenophobic, this fact will someday change.
Welcome to GPS
When you first crack "What Color Is Your Parachute?" in your generic 101 college class, you are led to believe many fables. The biggest being that the book itself will help you shape your destiny. I transferred into the final two years of my degree from a community college to a university, believing writing was my destiny. I was strongly supported throughout my degree acquisition by faculty, staff, and a high gpa. When I graduated, I had experience writing professionally in corporate communication and was ready to enter my career. What I didn't count on was that there were few writing jobs available in my locality. Furthermore, the advisor in Communication reminded me that Creative Writers didn't generally get jobs, and Communication writers did. That's why I should change my major from English to his department. What he didn't tell me was that writing Corporate Communication sucked. The primary goal is to write about the sun shining out the companies ass, and how grateful the employees are to bask in it, as they get their two minutes of fame in the company newsletter.
Fewer writing jobs could pay the rent. So like many others, I went into sales. I hated cold-calling. I sold computers. I liked computers. So that led me into computer graphics, which I related to writing in that layout and text went together. I made progress writing and laying-out pages. But most managers wanted to hear their voice in the text. Sometimes it was hard to use a superior's text, epsecially if their voice was from another country and I could not find a valid grammatical reason why it sounded cludgy. I became very good at computer graphics, and later web design, but I had to force my brain to learn programming. But the salary soon eclipsed what I could do as a writer. So I surfed the tides of technology. Learning what terms to use in my resume, and getting deeper into the mechanics of the web, without having the predisposition for technology, but learning enough to make my way. Luckily, I feel that brain is like play-dough, not in a drug sense, but in the sense that I can mold it to work like a programmers, technologists whatever. Being creative might have helped, but being a sponge helped more.
To be successful in technology without being technical meant learning words that change salary. A Web Designer does virtually the same thing as a Web UI specialist. The difference is about double the salary. Making web sites "Accessable" is a buzzword that sounds complicated. It isn't its just knowing about 14 rules to add attributes to HTML tags. So here I am sitting next to people whose parachute color was always technology and computer programming. I have a feeling that many suspected I was an imposter. I sensed resentment from quite a few.
I can't help but wonder what would have happened if I stuck with writing and figured the gig out. How good of a writer would I have become? Would I have written books? Or would I have had a miserable struggling life writing spec-sheets and product guides for statistical software.
I get laid off a lot. I'm not always the first to go, but I am sick of going. I am now 44 and without a job. I am sick of programming. So now after making a decent career in the wrong parachute color, navigating the changing currents of computer graphic design and web technology, I wonder, is now the time to get back to my original dream of writing? Blogging can be lucrative, or so the bloggers say. I suppose I'm a decent writer, but am I prolific enough to make a go of it?
Even if the parachute book was right, I'm still in better financial shape than many employed people. I think the journey so far has been a somewhat pleasant one. It has been a challenge and a struggle to learn things that were not native to my natural strengths and talents. And to compete with those who were given a talent by god. But was it wasted time or a wrong path because my strength analysis didn't say I'd be good at it? Maybe, maybe.
So here I am a career GPS with about 16 jobs under my belt at 44. I get interviews. I land jobs. I am not as genetically qualified as others for the position. So add to my experience another skillset, "getting hired".
And so we come to the reason for career GPS. Here my skill for maximizing hiring potential in the wrong color parachute, can help you get a job in your target, whether it matches your color, strengths, weaknesses, or whatever buzzword is used to pigeon-hole you into a career category these days.
copyright 2009 Madpixl, llc.
Fewer writing jobs could pay the rent. So like many others, I went into sales. I hated cold-calling. I sold computers. I liked computers. So that led me into computer graphics, which I related to writing in that layout and text went together. I made progress writing and laying-out pages. But most managers wanted to hear their voice in the text. Sometimes it was hard to use a superior's text, epsecially if their voice was from another country and I could not find a valid grammatical reason why it sounded cludgy. I became very good at computer graphics, and later web design, but I had to force my brain to learn programming. But the salary soon eclipsed what I could do as a writer. So I surfed the tides of technology. Learning what terms to use in my resume, and getting deeper into the mechanics of the web, without having the predisposition for technology, but learning enough to make my way. Luckily, I feel that brain is like play-dough, not in a drug sense, but in the sense that I can mold it to work like a programmers, technologists whatever. Being creative might have helped, but being a sponge helped more.
To be successful in technology without being technical meant learning words that change salary. A Web Designer does virtually the same thing as a Web UI specialist. The difference is about double the salary. Making web sites "Accessable" is a buzzword that sounds complicated. It isn't its just knowing about 14 rules to add attributes to HTML tags. So here I am sitting next to people whose parachute color was always technology and computer programming. I have a feeling that many suspected I was an imposter. I sensed resentment from quite a few.
I can't help but wonder what would have happened if I stuck with writing and figured the gig out. How good of a writer would I have become? Would I have written books? Or would I have had a miserable struggling life writing spec-sheets and product guides for statistical software.
I get laid off a lot. I'm not always the first to go, but I am sick of going. I am now 44 and without a job. I am sick of programming. So now after making a decent career in the wrong parachute color, navigating the changing currents of computer graphic design and web technology, I wonder, is now the time to get back to my original dream of writing? Blogging can be lucrative, or so the bloggers say. I suppose I'm a decent writer, but am I prolific enough to make a go of it?
Even if the parachute book was right, I'm still in better financial shape than many employed people. I think the journey so far has been a somewhat pleasant one. It has been a challenge and a struggle to learn things that were not native to my natural strengths and talents. And to compete with those who were given a talent by god. But was it wasted time or a wrong path because my strength analysis didn't say I'd be good at it? Maybe, maybe.
So here I am a career GPS with about 16 jobs under my belt at 44. I get interviews. I land jobs. I am not as genetically qualified as others for the position. So add to my experience another skillset, "getting hired".
And so we come to the reason for career GPS. Here my skill for maximizing hiring potential in the wrong color parachute, can help you get a job in your target, whether it matches your color, strengths, weaknesses, or whatever buzzword is used to pigeon-hole you into a career category these days.
copyright 2009 Madpixl, llc.
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