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While
there remains considerable debate about how many jobs are filled
online and in what areas, few people doubt that the numbers will
increase substantially as years go by, says Hal Lancaster
 It’s
the age of the Internet, so why the heck are we still killing trees
to write résumés?
Well,
that’s just another aspect of the so-called paperless office
that hasn’t yet come to pass. But that doesn’t mean you
shouldn’t be using the resources technology has laid at your
feet to promote your career.
What
can you find there? Ask Scott R. Lucado, who consults with companies
on using the Internet for intelligence gathering. His favourite
tool: Internet help-wanted ads.
“Companies
tell a great deal about their technology in help-wanted ads,”
says Lucado, of Fort Worth, Texas. “Sometimes I wonder whether
organisations realise how much sensitive information seeps out.”
He
was once asked to report on rumours that a company’s rivals
were about to introduce new speech-recognition products. But Lucado
didn’t find any hiring activity outside of research laboratories.
Further checking confirmed that no significant new products were
on the horizon.
You
also can gather intelligence through newsgroups devoted to specific
industries or trades. To search for newsgroups, go to Google.com’s
group directory, or go to websites such as Vault.com, which profess
to be the business world’s cyber-water coolers. Here you can
learn what employees are griping about and how they view their companies,
their industries and their management teams.
You
also can use the Web as a direct job-search tool. Huge databases
such as Monster.com will store your résumé, even help
you write an electronic version, and then make it available to Web-surfing
employers. While there remains considerable debate about how many
jobs are filled online and in what areas, few people doubt that
the numbers will increase substantially as years go by. The companies
are there, the recruiters are there, the databases are there, and,
increasingly, the job seekers are arriving. So you need to be there.
 For
some time, I’ve been recommending that career-minded folks
create a personal website as a repository for all their career-management
resources: résumé, work samples, log of personal and
Web experience, links to professional and business Web sites, and
contact information. From this base, you can print out résumés,
e-mail electronic versions and provide interested employers with
a road map to your experience and knowledge.
Bob
Rindner, a Boca Raton, stockbroker, created an electronic
résumé and placed it on a website that helps him job-hunt
and expand his network of contacts. He routinely refers contacts
to the site, where they can study his résumé and click
on embedded links to get more information. The hyperlinks could
also connect to work samples, thus creating an electronic portfolio
that doesn’t clutter up the basic document.
The
website also makes Rindner instantly accessible to people world-wide.
This has led to consulting assignments from as far away as Tulsa,
Oklahoma, jobs he might not otherwise have known about.
Robert
M Kaye has a personal Web page that shows well the wide range of
background information that should be on such sites. Kaye, formerly
the executive project manager for data integration at DaimlerChrysler,
has sections on his website for organisations and associations he
belongs to, recent business seminars attended and business books
and trade periodicals he has read. He is explicit about his accomplishments.
For instance, he discusses in detail the $8.2 million annual cost
savings he got for one employer by installing new software.
At
Trev Hall’s site, a natty-looking fellow in a long-sleeve yellow
shirt and tie stares out at you. Do you want to know his work history?
Click on his résumé. Want to know what he thinks about
business and technology issues? Click on his essay section. Want
to talk to the man? Click on the pager icon and leave a message,
or click on “Contact Trev” and fill out the e-mail form
that pops up on screen.
Hall,
president of the MBA. class of 1999 at West Virginia University,
Morgantown, made it easier for potential employers to his website
to get a more rounded picture of him as a manager than they’d
normally get from reading a résumé. And the essay
section is a great idea. It enables him to show off his knowledge
on a variety of critical management issues. He then gets down to
business in a section titled “Who Is Trev Hall and what can
he do for your company?”
As
personal websites grow in number, they should organise into communities
of like interests. Hall and his classmates want to form an online
alumni-networking community that can share business ideas as well
as opportunities. Isn’t that what the Internet is all about?
www.hrhub.com
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