Year 2003: Thank you, Quintessential Careers visitor!

Thank You, Quintessential Careers Visitor!

November 2003 marks the seventh anniversary of the founding of Quintessential Careers.

These seven years have been packed with milestones for our site, as well as for job-seekers, the Internet, the United States, and the world. We've gone from a job-seeker's market during the greatest economic expansion in U.S. history to lean and turbulent times for job-seekers, international conflict, and the first signs that the jobless recovery may not continue to be jobless.

Quintessential Careers has aimed to be here for you in good times and bad and has seen its share of change and growth. Thanks to your support and feedback, the site has grown from a small resource created on a university server to help a marketing professor's students launch their careers to a sprawling, 1,900-page award-winning compendium of quality job-search, career, and college information.

Along the way, we've garnered awards too numerous to mention (though you can follow our award links to read about our honors and awards). Webmaster Dr. Randall Hansen has been recognized by William E. Montag in Resume Guide for $100,000+ Executive Jobs (Wiley 2002) for his pioneering and trailblazing activities in helping millions of students and job-seekers find career direction and new job opportunities, whose "early vision brought critically needed organization, creativity and discipline to the untamed Internet."

Topping the list in Forbes Best of the Web, Personal Finance & Careers: Job-Hunting -- Speciality Category, Quintessential Careers achieved the distinction of Forbes Favorite this year. Forbes said: "Start your specialty job search here... This full-service job-hunting site offers a wealth of career content, including articles, quizzes and tutorials."

Described as "one of the richest websites for career information, advice, and linkages to the world of online employment," Quintessential Careers is cited by virtually every major job-search book that recommends Internet sites, including CAREERXROADS 2003: The Directory to Job, Resume and Career Management Sites on the Web.

Through the last seven years, we've constantly strived to be a job-seeker's one convenient source for just about any career information, offering expert advice on all aspects of job-hunting, including tips, resources, and examples to help you write a better resume and cover letter, information to help prepare you for job interviews, techniques for negotiating higher salaries, strategies for successfully changing careers, as well as advice and resources for attending or returning to college and/or enrolling in graduate school.

We offer easy one-stop access to 1,400 job boards, including those that are specialized and lesser known, along with convenient one-stop access to company career sites. We provide review and analysis of key career assessment tools, complete guidance for researching companies, a large selection of free career and job-hunting articles and tutorials, and a free career and job-hunting electronic newsletter called QuintZine, which will celebrate its fourth anniversary in March 2004.

We continue to add semi-interactive quizzes and activities that provide participants with e-mailed responses. More than 2,300 visitors have taken our Cover Letter Quiz. More than 6,100 have participated in our Practice Interviews. Nearly 1,200 visitors have taken our International Job-seeker Quiz and more than 1,000 have taken our Salary Negotiation, Compensation, and Job Offer Quiz. Of the quizzes added this year, 1,100 visitors have taken our Career Change Quiz, 145 have taken our Job Flexibility Quiz, and 639 have taken our Work-Life Balance Quiz. When we introduced four new resume quizzes at this time last year for our sixth anniversary, we predicted that they might become our most popular quizzes of all. They are well on their way, with more than 1,400 quiz-takers so far.

Other major features added in 2003 include the Quintessential Careers Directory of Life and Career Coaches, a greatly expanded Real World Section of our site for college students and new graduates, an Accomplishments Worksheet, and the first in an annual series of panel discussions with college admissions directors.

The Career Doctor, also known as Webmaster/Publisher Dr. Randall Hansen, continues to provide his column, which helps answer career, college, and job questions, to the Daytona Beach (FL) News-Journal and other media outlets. In addition, the Career Doctor now offers career coaching services. And The Career Clinic provides a low-cost, online-only coaching alternative.

The coaching services are an outgrowth of the credentials Dr. Hansen and Creative Director Katharine Hansen earned this year. Enhancing the professionalism they offer to readers and clients, both earned the credential of Certified Electronic Career Coach (CECC), issued by the Professional R�sum� Writing and Research Association. Katharine also earned the Credentialed Career Master designation from Career Masters Institute. The Quintessential Careers team continues to appear at speaking engagements and is delighted to consider additional invitations through the Quintessential Careers Speakers Bureau.

And we're constantly adding to our collection of helpful tips for job-seekers.

We're celebrating our seventh anniversary, in part, with three events associated with Stetson University, DeLand, FL, where Quintessential Careers got its start seven years ago. The first event was the Nov. 7 presentation of the second Quintessential Art of Business Purchase Award, where a piece of top student artwork was purchased for Stetson University's permanent art collection and housed in the School of Business Administration's Lynn Business Center. The next two events are scheduled for consecutive days in December. On Dec. 2, the Quintessential Careers team will donate 150 copies of Write Your Way to a Higher GPA to all the first-year business students at Stetson. Read about last year's donation. Then on Dec. 3, it's the 2003 Real World Panel, in which recent Stetson University graduates return to offer their advice, answer questions, and network with current university students. Read about last year's Real World Panel.

In those seven years, we've also grown from one site to a network of career and job-search sites. The Quintessential Careers Network of Career Sites includes the flagship Quintessential Careers, a comprehensive career site offering a plethora of resources; CareerDoctor.org; Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters, where you can order professionally written and produced cover letters and resumes; MyCareerBlast.com, where you have easy access to the specific resources you need for your specific circumstances; and several other sister sites with other growing and developing resources for job-seekers.

We're extremely proud of all we've offered you over the last seven years, and during these uncertain times, Quintessential Careers pledges to continue to support all those seeking to improve their lives through career and educational advancement.

In the coming weeks and months look for new features, including more award-winning content; new tools, tips, and tutorials; online career courses; and career and job-search e-books. Planned upcoming articles include: Keeping Your Spirits Up During a Long Job Search, Should You Take a Survival Job? Following Up All Job Leads: Don't Wait by the Phone, Identifying Hiring Managers, 10 Tips for Creating a Career That Lights Your Fire, Identifying Your Passion's "Building Blocks," Career Assessment for New Grads, Turning an Internship into a Job, 10 Career Change Mistakes to Avoid, Resumes for New Grads, 10 Resume Mistakes, The Scoop on Resume Length, Moonlighting/Holding Multiple Jobs, Career Doctor Compendium III, Career Focus Quiz, Overcoming a Lack of Qualifications/Credentials, Fighting the Overqualified Label, Surviving and Moving Beyond Low-Wage Jobs, Pre-Employment Testing, 10 Things for High-School Students to Remember, First in a Series Tracking College Plans of a High-School Student, Importance of Junior Year, How to Make a Temp Job Permanent, Temping Your Way to Career Change, Mastering Second (and Subsequent) Interview(s), Interview Damage Control, 10 Interview Mistakes, Exude Confidence in Interviews, Job Satisfaction Quiz, Job-search Time-Management Skills, Reinvent Your Career at Midlife, Working Beyond Retirement, Workaholic Quiz, Building Your Brand, Pros and Cons of Nontraditional Careers, Nontraditional Career Paths for Men and Women, Make Your College Application Shine, Changing Landscape of College Admissions, Admissions Annual Report/Panel Discussion, Internet Jobhunting Annual Report, Top Five Networking Strategies, Quintessential Career profiles of YOU, our readers, more Q&As with well-known career experts, and new book reviews.

We want to thank you, our visitors. Without your loyal support, we couldn't have achieved the success we have.

The Quint Careers team sincerely thanks you for using Quintessential Careers!

__________________________

Want an overview of the site? Then visit About the Guide.

Interested in site statistics? Check out some of the numbers in Quint Stats.

Want to see what we've written about ourselves? The read some of our news releases in our press release archive.

Maximize your career and job-search knowledge and skills! Take advantage of The Quintessential Careers Content Index, which enables site visitors to locate articles, tutorials, quizzes, and worksheets in 35 career, college, job-search topic areas.

Find a New Job

What:
Where:
jobs by

Job-Hunting Tools:

Career Tools:

Career Categories:

Thank You, Quintessential Careers Visitor!

November 2003 marks the seventh anniversary of the founding of Quintessential Careers.

Maximize your career and job-search knowledge and skills! Take advantage of The Quintessential Careers Content Index, which enables site visitors to locate articles, tutorials, quizzes, and worksheets in 35 career, college, job-search topic areas.