Slashdot Mirror
How Do You Manage Your Job-Search Info?
bilsaysthis writes "Finding job postings, tips for effective resume writing and social networking tools to overcome the 'who you know' problem are generally available these days, but what about keeping track of all the information (jobs applied for, people contacted, follow ups, etc)? After looking I found people using all sorts of informal means (text files, spreadsheets, email folders, bookmarks) but nothing very organized or focused specifically on the tasks. What do you use?"
I think anything more would be managing the database, instead of managing the job search.
The following steps should'nt be necessary to do more than once per unemployment period. Preferably as early as possible, as it is the most guaranteed way of finding a job you actually like!
Furthermore, these steps should be followed at least once a week:
Concurrently, the following steps must be followed every day
Finally, a tip regarding CV's. It should be honest, to-the-point, and keep mostly only informaton of interest to the potential employer. E.g. If you are applying for a bodyguard job, make sure to cover all your military training in detail, but only briefly mention you PhD's. If you are applying for a job as a rocket scientist, you can do the opposite. If there are holes in your CV, such as periods of sickness, depression, etc, be brutally honest, and explain why.
To keep yourself organized, you need a pen, and two sheets of paper, one with the names of companies you have already applied for, and another with company/address/contact person/date/time/ for interviews you have agreed to meet up for.
If these steps are too complicated, and you feel you need a DBMS to keep track of you job-hunt, you are doing something wrong.
If you get enough response to have anything to manage, I salute you. Dump 200 résumés out there -- do you get more than 1% response? Most don't even get a automagic thank-you back.
.nosig
[points to head]
Free Mac Mini - Help me
I installed a wiki on my main desktop about a year ago. I manage everything with it, including job-hunting, resumes, contacts, reminders. There are many wikis, but I found Twiki to be the most powerful and flexible with the most features. If you're stuck on Windows, you can even install Apache and Cygwin so that you can use Twiki on it. There's even full instructions on their site walking you through that process.
If I'm out of work, I go fishing, motorcycling, and boating. I also hang out with friends. Eventually, an ex-boss, ex-coworker, or headhunter calls or e-mails and offers me a job. If it sounds good, I take it. If not, I politely bow out and go back to my recreational activities. I initially turned down the job I have now, but was asked to reconsider some months later. Since winter was coming on and I like the guy who wanted me to work for him, I accepted.
Post-Its and e-mail are more than good enough to handle the amount of data I'm dealing with at any given time.
Please also direct job hunters to talk to HR departments. I hear if you get a post card from them, you are "virtually guaranteed" to get a job. Really!
Thank you.
Yeah, right.
Print out (and save)a copy of the job advertisment that you are applying for. Wwhen I was laid off and searching for a job, I received a call about a position that I had applied for 2 months before. Before going in for the interview I had a chance to research the company refresh myself on the skills thaat they wanted. I ended up getting the job.
I send out my resume... ...no, wait, I fill out yet another dumb form while my resume sits and collects virtual dust... ... and just carefully file all the lack of responses (even automated ones!) in my brain.
So far the only danger of this is that it tends to result in lowered levels of certain vital nuerotransmitters, which manifests as "depression".
To answer your question, I have no idea what people do; I had no idea that people were getting so many offers and interviews they needed special tracking software. My system seems to be working pretty well, at least in the sense that no system could possibly be more useful for me.
(What do you do when even networking fails? I have a network, but it consists of people who have work or know people who have work in the theoretical sense of "Gee, it'd be nice if we could do X", but can't scrape together any money for it.)
That is unless you have 200 positions you are applying for. In which case, there is something wrong with your method. It's better to focus on a few good jobs than to go apply for everything and anything.
Best of luck.
how about just get a big binder/folder and sections for different job positions?
:P
You mean, kind of like a database?
In Yahoo! Mail, I toggled that all sent e-mail gets put into a "Sent" folder. This was somewhat useful in tracking who I didn't follow up with, etc.
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
That is unless you have 200 positions you are applying for. In which case, there is something wrong with your method. It's better to focus on a few good jobs than to go apply for everything and anything.
Focusing on a few good jobs is a great idea if you're willing to let your job search last quite a while. The area that I live in is bleeding dozens of highly qualified technical people into the job market every month (with a few thousand dropped into the job pool just a year ago). There aren't enough jobs to go around, companies get hundreds of qualified applicants for each position and everybody is taking their time in hiring. I have not seen an entry-level tech job posted in more than two years, I have no idea what people coming out of college are doing if they haven't gotten a job through an internship program. Well, I figure they're fleeing upstate and moving to the city...
Perhaps have a two-tiered system of top picks which are high maintenance contact (send resume, call, check back, network) and the lower maintenance resume spam at all moving targets with some degree of follow-up. Though if you're unemployed, you might consider making it all high maintenance contact...
Here come da fudge!
With http://indeed.com/ you can search jobs across multiple job sites in one search. The byline is 'one search. all jobs'.
You left off step one. Know thyself, otherwise you don't know what companies will fit, and you will not know what you're selling to a potential boss.
I'm looking myself for a job and now that I've read everyone's posts about this subject I've thought about something myself. Get a blog like Live journal and make all you entries private and in the subject line put the name of the company and position. I know LJ doesn't search very well but this is what I use and just put two and two together. I use semagic to post to LJ and its quick and gets the job done. OH and later some other time you can back up you Journal into a format you choose. I'm hyperverbal777 on LJ BTW I'm not saying use LJ but you can use a ton of other sites like blogger, Xanga. This is just an idea. OH I like the Wiki idea BTW!!!!!!
Stan M. ~~~Verbal~~~
Well how about this? A program that combines:
1) The "get to know yourself in every way" module.
2) The online "tell me everything relevent about the companies I'm interested in" module.
3) The "Connect me with strangers and friends alike so we can network" module.
4) The "manage my resources" module.
5) Cool "timing down" screensaver that'll put some pressure on me.
6) The "polish my public face and make me look good" module.
For sure is a problem, maybe that was what drove many companies to outsource or whatever, with the many madiocre people that find jobs through "networking" and the poor results this practice delivers (read Carly Fioroni and the lady from Ebay) there is really no wonder why, why should I overpaid a writer-become-a-programmer 4 times what a real programmer costs in Bangalore.
I think netowrking is not much of a help if you apply for google or any other worthy company (read any where you should use your brain instead of your influence traffic)
With a simple text editor, I keep track of:
company name
email addy
web site
what part of town they're in
job title
job description (buzz-words)
my approx. degree of fit
dated history of my attempted contacts, including actual text of customized cover letter (I usually make these very short) and the filename of the customized resume
I put them in order of my interest in them.
Leave your computer on when you're home, with that file loaded, so when the phone rings, you can make a mad dash to answer with the phone by the computer, and immediately scroll down to see the goods on the company who's calling, so you don't get something confused and sound like an ass (been there, done that).
I also use a physical notepad, to take to interviews. The first page contains my std list of questions that I ask of every potential employer (sometimes I end up asking slightly more questions in an interview than the interviewer). The following pages contain the answers, one page per company (it probably helps after you've done a couple, and they can see that you've had other interviews/interest in you/competition).
I'll also print out the section for that company from my text file and stuff that in there, to take along and read right before the interview, to make sure my memory is fully refreshed and not partly confused with another company's stuff and my conversation history with them.
Attention zealots and haters: 00100 00100
For important stuff, I always resort to pen and paper, and a nice two ring binder. Things don't end up "lost" that way... :D
The friendliest digital photography forums on the net!
The job fairs are worth the time to go to, at least for some markets.
But really, aren't the 'inside jobs' the best?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
If you get no response using your real name (presumably you have a non-Anglo Saxon or non-Indian surname), yet you get an immediate responses when you use English or Indian names, then you should immediately inundate them with thousands of variants of the successful name, all with identical or nearly-identical cv.
For example, if Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov does not work but Hubert Penniweather does, then generate hundreds of "similar" names such as Hughie, Huguenot, Huffy, etc. Their personnel people will be so busy sending responses to these politically correct applicants that the company will implode.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
I bought a plain old binder, punched notebook paper, a page that held floppies, and a set of dividers. Label Dividers "Todo", "Open", "Inactive", "Raw Materials".
Each company you're interested in gets a sheet of notebook paper. Glue the ad (or printed online job spec) on the paper. Use that paper to WRITE DOWN every action you take - when you applied, when they called or ding'ed you, etc.
If you need to take action, that company's packet goes in "TODO"; if you're waiting on them, it goes in "OPEN". If they've indicated they're not interested, it goes in "INACTIVE". If you run across a good article on cover letters, a new search site, or whatever, it goes in "Raw Materials".
Make a copy of everything you create on a set of floppies. Use those floppies as templates so you're not starting from scratch each time.
Envy my 5 digit Slashdot User ID!
That's a pretty good idea, especially if you're applying for jobs in that niche - if nothing else it gives you a hook in the interview.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Post a copy of your most recent resume to a number of major job sites.
That will get your contact information and other relevant things in the hands of people you may not know about who are actively searching for matching applicants online.
Most of the serious interviews that I had during my 32-month unemployment period were initiated by someone else who had seen a copy of my resume on a site like Monster, Dice, America's Job Bank, etc.
Just two cents from someone who has been through this whole process recently (for the second time).
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
...that "Submitting a resume is not a fire and forget action", I found during my lengthy period of unemployment that there were many companies which would provide no contact information at all, and some which explicitly stated that phone calls and other personal solicitations related to the jobs being posted on their web site were strongly discouraged.
:-)
In some of those cases I followed up anyway, since I knew something about those companiesor was able to find contact information by other devious means, and in a number of cases I found out they weren't kidding. One guy actually yelled at me for bothering him in his office during business hours, but was a lot more sympathetic when I explained to him why it was that I was going as far as I did to contact him.
I didn't get an interview there, though.
Maybe pissing someone off is a good way to bring attention to yourself, though. That wasn't a tactic I used intentionally.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
After going through the process myself, I would advise using a CRM software solution. Keeping track of opportunities, leads and contacts is essential in a good job search. This class of software lends itself to that.
I will admit that it doesn't do it perfectly, but it is a whole lot better than using a wiki to keep track of every bit of information that you can think of.
Sugar Sales is a great place to start. I like it and have found it very useful! (It's a OSS project)
I journal everything I work on in date order in the book.
"work on" is defined as:
-talk to someone
-send a resume
-get an interview
-notes from that interview
-etc.
Not journalled:
-postings that I read that I discarded
-other items that I saw but did not act upon
Bonus: journal comes in handy for the next roiund of job-hunting, you can see where you were a few years back, and work all of those contacts as well.
Pffff.... it's pointless to keep people's contacts nowadays. Everybody moves, changes address, changes jobs every 3 years nowadays. That's the industry standard, especially for IT.
On the topic of job sites, I just had a freaky moment about half an hour ago. (names of places have been removed)
I went to send a fax to a recruiting place in Location A (for a job I had seen posted previously). I couldn't send the fax - no dial tone.
In fact, none of the phones had a dial tone. I went to get my cell to call the phone company, and the land line rings.
It's a recruiter from the Location B branch of the same firm calling to ask if I was still seeking employment because she'd seen my resume on Dice.
I didn't have quite what they were looking for, but we chatted for a minute about the weirdness of the event. She gave me the direct contact info for the recruiter to bypass the lower steps in Location A and was going to put in a good word for me.
I picked up the phone again right after ending the call and I had a dial tone again...
If I get a job because of this, I'm going to laugh
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
PDF's are nice, but they have one disadvantage for recruiters. They're not easy to disassemble for entry into a database.
I have records of job searches and results going back to 1991.
I use a few different ways of keeping track of various job hunts, client searches, proposals and anything relating to work.
I have a big spiral bound notebook I bought in 1991, and wrote a big title on the bright red covers "Job Log". I have sections for each year I was actively searching for a job. Each phone contact merits at least one line, typically 2. Date & time, name of company, person talked to, phone number (so useful to not have to look up again), summary of conversation, summary of position, note if anything was sent or received as a result. It takes about 20-60 seconds to fill out a line after a call. 1993 has about 10 pages full. 2001 and 2002 cover about 60 pages. 1997 had 3 lines before I got a job, and there isn't another entry for that year because each job led to another through personal contacts. I keep this notebook handy when actively job hunting, so I can flip through it if someone calls and update it in seconds after hanging up. As the review of User Friendly's dead tree edition says "Excellent data integrity, but the search function sucks".
Next I have a bunch of flat computer files, containing a similar set of data, some are duplicates of what is written down in the phone log. Easy to grep. These were built and maintained on the days when I sat down with nothing better to do than spend a whole day job searching. When I'm unemployed, I consider my job to be searching for a new job. Get up at 8:00 AM, shower, eat, sit at 'puter and work through job listings until at least lunch time. A good day will see maybe 5-10 directed contacts, and maybe 10 shotgun style blind mailings. Job hunting happens in little flurries, a bunch of contacts go out, then you sit and wait for replies before repeating the cycle. Spend extra effort during the waiting by documenting every lead and file it all away neatly in text files. You will thank yourself later for the little extra effort when that one great job starts to look solid, but its been 3 months and you can't remember what the original ad looked like or what you bragged about on your CV (but the recruiter does).
I start with a main directory for the year and sub-directories per month and per contact. Into these directories I place copies of every CV ever sent, whether in text, rtf, word or pdf format. I also add small text file notes, pasting the email or web page and putting my own follow up notes.
I also have emails going back almost forever, fully archived and searchable by year. One whole branch is just job searches. I have filters set up to make copies of every email sent to recruiter domains, so I can search back and see that I sent out a CV as an attachment from directory cv02/jan/01_somecompany/CV_AntiCypher.doc. Eudora, lookout, pine, just about any email MUA except thunderbird deals correctly with my sub-directory email archive for searches.
I use M$ word for maintaining my CV, about 80% of HR groups and recruiters require this format. It is constantly evolving, and gets updated with every new request for a copy. The CV I send out always fits easily in 3 pages, a lot of older stuff gets left out. When someone tells me the job requires some arcane skill I have, I just add relevant bits to the one going out. Each CV gets a type of serial number embeded so I can see who is passing around my CVs. Having a customised CV for each job means I'm more likely to trigger keyword searches, which has both positive and bizarre results.
Combine the serialising of the CV with email and both electronic notes and a written notebook, and I can look up any query about a job search or proposition even years later. I can tell how much I asked for, what was offered, and I know who answers their phones and who never bothered to call me back. I also like to see how my CV has evolved over the decades, although the early versions done in word on windoze 3.1 or macwrite on OS6 don't seem to open any more. WTF? Nissus?!?
Keeping track of my personal inf
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Wiki's are pretty flexible. I wish I could find a basic Wiki that didn't need a webserver, yet had a good feature set (there probably is one, I haven't really looked too hard). I use a big text file for "logs" of work done for clients. It's getting unwieldly now that it's rather big because it's one dimensional. Sure there is text search, but can you really remember the exact spelling of a company name or a task? At least a Wiki implies that some meta data is recorded - related pages and the time the page was created/edited. (And revision control, but that's not too relevant to job searches) Ditto for Excel, how many columns do you create? Do you record the cover letter text of every application? The "essay" answers to online job applications? Too inflexible. Plus, I've often desired to add images to my text/excel type logs - a simple chart is worth a thousand words sometimes. A good Wiki will support that.
I've been actively trying to get unemployed for the past couple years, but I keep getting calls from recruiters offering more money, and I end up going back to the cubicle farm. My one weakness is that I can identify is that when I go into interviews I wan the people to like me, even if I don't want the job. And then the recruiter calls me back and quotes me a number and I say I'm busy and he quotes me another number and I say I need more time off and usually about the third number I say, okay, give me a couple weeks.
But now with Gmail, I just let Dice and monster [and anything else that can be so configured] feed filtered job postings to my Gmail acct and also leave all job correspondence there...its searchable and if it ever fills up, I can write a book about how not to get a job and I'll have 6 gmail invites to give my self for my next round of job hunting.
Does this work? I have landed 19 different jobs in 30 years, [and more relevantly: 5 jobs since the dawn of the dot-com era] so yes, it works. Now if somebody can tell me how to use my computer literacy to KEEP a job, I'll be all set!
NOTE: this is a lazier technique than any get-a-job book or headhunter would advise...you should always network...but I am a nerd and mostly incapable of networking with anything that does not have an IP address.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
Last year I did a lot of international job searching. This problem is particularly harder than a one-country search for two major reasons: 1) My CV and cover letter were in more than one language; 2) countries have different preferred formats for CV, and content for cover letters.
I used the tool called LEO ( http://webpages.charter.net/edreamleo/front.html ) and an organized directory structure to keep my applications under control. LEO is, among other things, an easy-to-use outlining editor. The structure was simple: a level for each country and a level for each company I applied to. If I applied for more than one position, there were further sub-levels. Under each company I had links to the CV and cover letter I sent, a copy of the original job posting, and links to any other relevant communication.
Also important was having easy-to-see markings on the company-level items: when did I apply, had a gotten a response, was it good or bad, etc. I just developed a few short codes to denote that information.
The system worked out well; I applied to positions in about 8 different countries in two languages (English and German); I'm not sure how many positions I applied for. Using LEO, I was able to get a quick overview of the status of all my applications. I could search to find out if I'd applied for a position before, or a similar position, or not at all. The process was, I felt, well-organized. It took about 2 months to get a job.
I know I could have used LEO more effectively (i.e. I could have use LEO to hold the documents, rather than just refereces to places on the filesystem) but I didn't want to take time to learn it that deeply.
I use a spreadsheet with the following columns:
Company name
Contact name
e-mail address
Phone number
Fax number
Physical address
Resume sent (checkmark)
Followup made (checkmark)
Interviews (lots of room for comments)
When I need work, usually as a contract is nearing its end, I pull up the previous spreadsheet and doublecheck the information against the current phone book. I update my resume to reflect the last job and the new skills I have acquired. Then I send the first round of resumes to the existing list, with a note that I'm back in the job market.
Then I hit the online job listings, the yellow pages, and the local paper, checking to see if any new placement firms are in business and to get an idea of how strong the local market is. If I spot any new agencies, they get a resume too. If I spot the perfect job, I send a resume specifically for that - although it's not as successful a tactic as sending a resume to the agencies, I have occasionally been lucky.
A few days after the resumes are sent, I start calling (phone) agencies for a followup, to chat up the recruiters.
I track all the contacts on the spreadsheet, and keep track of the interviews and resume submissions too. It's the kiss of death around here if your resume is submitted by two different agencies, so I make sure it doesn't happen.
How well does it work? I've been almost steadily employed since the mid-80s with this approach, and usually have another contract lined up before the first one ends.
I tried Goldmine - didn't like it because it wouldn't sync w/my PDA...
Went to ACT! and it syncs w/my Palm... works like a charm. Also has a pest ^H^H^H^H^Hfollow-up mode that forces me to call back, check, etc...