November 22, 1996

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(Stetson University, DeLand, FL) - A new site on the World Wide Web enables new college graduates - and all other job-seekers - to market themselves using the Internet. The Quintessential Career and Job-Hunting Resources Guide, found at http://www.stetson.edu/~hansen/careers.html on the World Wide Web, provides more than 100 listings and links to resources that can help job-seekers find employment.

The site, described as "impressive" by Stephen Abel, a brand manager for Netstart, Inc., provides resources not only to information about traditional job searches, (including resumes, cover letters, and interviews) but directs job-hunters to numerous sites at which they can post resumes online at low or no cost, network with professionals in their fields, and search online job listings. "The Quintessential Guide offers one-stop shopping for job-seekers," said the site's creator, Dr. Randall Hansen, a professor of marketing at Stetson University, DeLand, (Florida).

"It's a very well done and comprehensive site," said Dr. Tom Horton, special consultant at Stetson's Career Services Office. The site is designed to offer greater breadth and scope than similar career sites, Hansen said. "Unlike other career sites, the Quintessential Guide doesn't just provide links to other resources; it provides helpful editorial content and links to even more invaluable information for job-seekers," he said. Hansen noted that the frequently updated site is also the only one to provide a comprehensive bibliography of career-related print resources.

Hansen, co-author with his wife, Katharine, of Dynamic Cover Letters, said he compiled the site after seeing his students struggle to launch their job searches, often waiting until just before graduation. "Because I make significant use of the Internet in teaching marketing courses, I realized the potential of this vast network for helping students jump-start and broaden their job searches in a medium with which they've become quite comfortable," Hansen said.

Doug Kimball, associate director of the Athletic Study Center at Illinois State University, noted that the Quintessential Guide contains "lots of nice resources and is attractively laid out as well." Kimball said he planned to add the Guide to the list of sites for students to check out at Illinois Wesleyan's Career Center.

Hansen explained that from the comfort of their dorm rooms, students can, for example, post their resumes at dozens of sites on the Internet, thus vastly expanding the number of employers to which their resumes are exposed. "They can also search for jobs in California, or New York City - or Finland, as well as search specific databases of job openings in their individual fields," Hansen said. "But you don't have to be a new graduate to use the Quintessential Guide effectively in your job search."

Only a few weeks old, the Quintessential Guide already has garnered two awards from the Internet community. The Guide was honored as a "Delta Cool Web Site" by Delta Cool, an organization that judges web sites based on graphics, content, and ease of navigation." The Quintessential Guide also has received a Leading Learning Fountain award for being a site that displays "leadership in influencing people by helping them learn."