Feature Article: Internet Job-Hunting Turns a Corner: A Quintessential Careers Annual Report 2005
Special Feature: Career-Related Blogs for Job-Seekers
Quintessential Site: Featured Career Web Site of this Issue
The Career Doctor: Answering Your Questions
What's New on Quintessential Careers: Latest Additions
Q TIPS: Quick and Quintessential Tips to Guide Your Job Search
Notes from the Editor: About this Issue...
We've done an Internet Job-hunting Annual Report every year since 2001, but it
has actually been 18 months since our last one. The 'Net job-hunting scene had not changed
significantly between 2003 and 2004, but now we're seeing signs of a new maturity,
so it was time for a new report.
Quintessential Careers is, of course, all about job-hunting on the Internet, so
it's an area we watch closely.
In this issue, we also introduce a new page of career-related blogs and a media guide
for reporters.
Publication schedule note: QuintZine will be on vacation until July 5. Happy summer solstice!
Why not try some Internet job-hunting on our job portal.
--Katharine Hansen, Credentialed Career Master, Certified Electronic Career Coach,
and editor at
kathy@quintcareers.com
Feature Article: Internet Job-Hunting Report
Internet Job-Hunting Turns a Corner:
A Quintessential Careers Annual Report 2005
by Katharine Hansen
Our last annual report on the state of Internet job-hunting was full of negatives.
Many corporate sites were inhospitable to job-seekers, investigators found conflicts
of interest between publishers and their job sites, and some job-seekers were dragging
down the effectiveness of job boards by indiscriminantly sending resumes for jobs
for which they weren't remotely qualified.
Those problems have not gone away (although the Web sites of more major companies are
job-seeker-friendly than was the case at the time of our last report), but in our
current review of studies and reports, we sense a new atmosphere.
Employers and job-seekers alike are finding new ways and new avenues for using the Internet to meet
their mutual needs. When we produced our last report, the word "blog" was barely in
our vocabulary. It feels as though Internet job-hunting has turned a corner. It's here
to stay, and it's growing up.
Our full report
tells what we've learned in the time since we last produced a report.
Special Feature: Career-Related Blogs
Career-Related Blogs for Job-Seekers
This new Quintessential Careers page features recruiter and company blogs to enable visitors to
learn about employers and opportunities. It also lists blogs by career experts and what we hope
will be a growing section of blogs by job-seekers themselves. :
Check it out.
Announcing Our New Media Center!
Quintessential Careers Announces New Media Center
Need a career expert for a story or article you're working on? Searching for college,
career, and job news? Interested in learning more about Quintessential Careers?
A new section of our site, our Media Center
is your one-stop location for getting the information and resources you need.
Wanted: College Entrepreneurs
Are you a college student who has started a business?
Are you an entrepreneur who started a business
while in college? If so, we'd love to hear from
you soon for an article in an upcoming QuintZine.
LinkedIn touts itself as strengthening and extending members' existing networks of trusted contacts.
It's a networking tool that helps members discover inside connections to recommended job candidates,
industry experts, and business partners.
LinkedIn aims to help members accelerate business effectiveness and career success
by leveraging the network they already have.
Professionals can get access to LinkedIn Jobs, a relationship-powered job network that allows
professionals to search job listings and discover inside connections to hiring managers,
HR professionals and recruiters. Employers and recruiters can post positions on LinkedIn Jobs
and get great candidates recommended by their trusted contacts.
LinkedIn is currently used by 2.7+ million professionals across the globe, making
LinkedIn's base of registered users three times larger than those of all other online business
networks combined. LinkedIn has more than 800,000 users in Europe and 230,000+ in Asia.
Users maintaining their professional networks, keeping in contact with friends and colleagues,
and posting building their profiles and reputation use LinkedIn at no cost. New members must
receive an invitation from an existing member to join. (I'm a member; if you'd like an invitation
to join, e-mail me kathy@quintcareers.com).
Jarret writes: "Can you tell me the best way to use the Internet in terms of job-hunting? I have
not been having much luck in finding a new job, and I am at a loss for what I am doing wrong.
I post my resume on a bunch of job sites and I reply to job postings ... so what am I doing wrong?"
Mara writes: "I read your article regarding Job Interview Follow Up Do's & Don'ts. I interviewed with a company for
a position I was really interested in. The company has no more 50 people, and I met with five. Two of them were in HR.
I sent thank-you notes to each one. After two weeks and hearing nothing, I figured they found someone else. Then
HR emailed me asking me to come in again, and when I responded both by email and phone, I never got
a response. Some people have said it's probably not a company you want to work with. What do you think?"
Tonya writes: "Do you have a sample cover letter on your site that includes how to ask for a certain salary? The
job asks that applicants submit their salary requirement. Can you help me? A template of this?"
Carol writes: "My boss is always trying to make me feel stupid by telling me that I don't understand things.
He will tell me to do something, and then when I do it the way he told me, he tells me I did it wrong. I was on vacation
for a week and when I came back I found out that they were hiring someone else to do most of my job description.
I want to send a letter to the board of directors but am not sure of what I need to say. Can you help?"
Get the latest career, college, and job-search news you need!
Have you read the Quint Careers Weblog (Blog)?
It consists of career and job-search news, trends,
and scoops for job-seekers, compiled by the staff
of Quintessential Careers.
The blog is a great way to stay posted on the most
recent events occurring in the career and employment fields.
CareerLaunch --
from the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, a very useful career and college
site, with resources and links to help teens with self-assessment,
summer opportunities, college search, career development, and more. No cost.
Indeed.com --
a meta-search job site that pulls job postings from more than 500 places,
including the major job boards, the top 200 newspapers, hundreds of professional
associations, and company career centers. Job-seekers can search for
job listings by (what: title, keywords, company; and where: location).
No cost to job-seekers.
Jobcentral --
a national employment network formed by an alliance between two nonprofit associations
to provide job seekers in all industries and occupations, entry-level to chief executive officer,
employment and career opportunities nationwide. Search postings or browse by company.
No cost to job-seekers.
Real Contacts -- a networking
site for job-seekers, where you can stay in touch with your network, discover job
openings, and more. Job openings are communicated through extended network.
No cost to job-seekers.
Find even more career and job site additions to Quintessential Careers by visiting our
Latest Additions section.
Q TIPS: Quick and Quintessential Career & Job Tips
How would you like to have your job-search and career questions answered by Richard Nelson Bolles,
author of the world's best-selling job-hunting book, What Color Is Your Parachute?
Bolles is launching a new Web radio show, "Job Talk," and is seeking questions to answer about the
job search or career change. Each week several participants will be chosen to ask their questions
"live" over the phone. Every question will receive a response whether or not it is selected for the
live program. Please include a contact name, email address, and phone number in your email correspondence.
Email your questions to jobquestion@parachute.com.
Interviewed on networking techniques by HR.com, Lynne Waymon advised, "First of all, say the name back.
If you say, 'Hi. I'm Rich.' Then, I would say, 'Hi, Rich.'
Only about 25 percent of all the people that I have studied do that.
Ideally, you should hear someone's name three times.
The third time should be when I introduce you to somebody
else at that event. That should always be the goal, to
hang onto a name long enough to introduce that person
to one other person." Waymon, who is a professional speaker,
trainer, and co-author of Great Connections: Fireproof
Your Career and Make Your Connections Count, also recommends
looking directly at the person's nametag and not try to sneak
in a furtive glance when the person isn't looking.
More than 60 percent of employers now hire more than one-quarter of their new employees from Internet
job sites, reports The Herman Trend Alert. Still, 11 percent never post a job online, essentially ignoring the 166 million
Americans who use the Internet. These employers also miss the opportunity to hire qualified workers from abroad.
And 13 percent of employers post openings on only a single job board. Since no single job board can meet
every requirement, their results are often disappointing. The single job board approach does not seem to work.
Today, people are looking for jobs online more aggressively than employers are using the technology
to find qualified candidates. This balance will change in the months to come, as employers become more efficient
with their recruitment advertising budgets.
From "The Herman Trend Alert," by Roger Herman and Joyce
Gioia, Strategic Business Futurists. (800) 227-3566 or
The Herman
Trend Alert is a trademark of The Herman Group, Inc.
If your school, organization, business or other
entity has a Web site, we welcome you to link to Quintessential Careers.
If you already have a link from your site, we want you to know we
appreciate it. If you don't have a link to us, please
send a request to your site's Webmaster to establish a
link to Quintessential Careers. Thanks so much!
For more details (including sample HTML copy), see our
Link to Us page.
QuintZine: Topics in Upcoming Issues
WATCH FOR feature articles on these topics in upcoming
issues of QuintZine:
* Job Burnout Quiz
* Job Burnout Remedies
* The Value of Internships Abroad and Study Abroad
* Top 10 Fears of Job-seekers
* For Job-hunting Success, Develop a Detailed Job-Search Plan
* How to Build a Personal Advisory Board
* Keep Your Career Dreams Alive
* MBA Career Portfolios
* Trends/Tips in Career Portfolios
* Pre-Hire Background/Credit Checks
* Noncompete Clauses
* Entrepreneurs
* Get a Job in Sales/Pharmaceutical Sales
* Critical Elements of the Job Search
* Managing Job Stress
* Telecommuting Ranks High
* Sticky Job Interview Situations
* Situational Interviews
* 10 Resume Tips
* Why Hire a Resume Writer?
* Is Your Resume Lost in the Internet Void?
* Career Activist Quiz
* Practice Career Management to Avoid Career Crisis
* The Changing Landscape of College Admissions
* Offbeat Ways to Pay for College
* Financial Aid/Scholarship Timetable
* Build Confidence and Avoid Insecurity in Job Interviews
* Empty Nest Job-seekers
* Baby Boomers Beware
* Are You Sabotaging Your Job-Search/Career?
* Quiz: Marketing Yourself
* Marketing Yourself with internal/External Promotions
* Lifelong Networking
* Networking for the Shy
* Converting a Seasonal Job to a Permanent Position
* Working Night Shifts/Odd Hours
* Quintessential Career Profiles of YOU, our readers
* Q&As with well-known career experts
* Career, College, and Job-Search Book reviews
. . . and much, much more!
Don't ever want to miss another issue of QuintZine? Get a free subscription to
the email version of QuintZine by completing our
subscription form.
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