SURFING FOR WORK
ON THE WORLD WIDE WEB
by Janet Hawkins
Surf’s up
Gliding across the electronic waves of the World Wide Web is exhilarating. No two rides are the same. There are good links and there are duds. And veteran surfers will tell you, if you’re not careful you can end up somewhere far off your original course.
As more and more people dive into the web, new and exciting applications emerge. Two that are gaining in popularity are career planning and job searching.
There’s a lot to chose from
The web is an endless source of job and career information. With the simple click of a mouse, you can easily find up-to-date occupational data; tips on preparing for a new career; educational and training opportunities; and employment facts, including articles on work environments and appropriate job behavior. You also have access to personal inventories that can help you pinpoint your interests, needs and working styles.
Web surfers need to be cautious, however, since they can get a lot of misleading information from the Internet if they’re not careful.
Many self professed experts create home pages that appear to be helpful, but may actually give false or biased information.
Tried and True Job Sites
The editors of HotBot/HotWired recommend the following Internet sites for job and career planning.
CareerAdviser www.careeradviser.com
If you’re thinking of changing careers, investigating salaries in your chosen field or wondering how green the grass is elsewhere, begin your quest here. CareerAdviser’s links and profiles cover all walks of professional life, and the links to job and resume banks are especially useful.
The CareerBuilder Network www.careerbuilder.com
As with most career sites, posting a resume or searching the nationwide listings won’t cost you a dime – and while the database isn’t the biggest around, the search tools are among the best.
CareerMosaic www.careermosaic.com
CareerMosaic boasts one of the web’s largest job databases, with 70,000 listings nationwide. Posting a resume or searching the listings is free (though the absence of job categories makes browsing more difficult). However, users will have to subscribe to search the resumes and post a job.
Lycos Job Bank www.lycos.com/classified/jobs
Lycos Classifieds has joined forces with three other powerhouse job sites – The Monster Board, the Online Career Center and Career Path.com. You’ll find search tools that provide fast access to job opportunities worldwide and abundant resources for job seekers and employers alike.
The MonsterBoard www.monster.com
Some have described The Monster Board as the 900-pound gorilla of career sites. It boasts over 163,000 job listings, plus a resume database. As with most career sites, it’s free for job seekers, but employers or recruiters must pay for the service.
Virtual Job Fair www.vjf.com
Like its traditional counterpart, the Virtual Job Fair connects companies with candidates instead of listing particular jobs. There are thousands of jobs listed here, from hundreds of companies, large and small. The search tools are keyword-based and very general, but the results – listing both companies and jobs – are effective. It’s important to learn to evaluate what you find on the web very carefully.
Where to begin?
Novices as well as experienced surfers will get the most from a web job search if they have a good introduction first. One way to get it is to talk with a career counselor. That’s what Kevin Dittrich did.
Kevin is an experienced web browser. He’s created his own web page with links to sites that interest him. He found job information easily on the web, but still faced the question: which job would be right for him. That’s where career planning came in.
Start with your interests and skills
Growing up, Kevin wanted to be a police officer. His cousin, a law enforcement veteran, had shared with
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him his love of public service. To Kevin, solving and preventing crimes seemed like a great career. Over time, however, the job didn’t hold the same excitement for him. In high school, he had developed a real interest in chemistry. Was there something that would combine the elements of police work that he liked with the interests and skills that were emerging from his studies? A session with his college career counselor helped him find the answer. Go from general to specific Career counselors will suggest that job seekers who are unsure of their career interests begin with a board or general category search. Examples include careers in health care, science and technology. From there, job titles, regional demographics, employers and job postings can be found. Medicine was a good place to begin for Kevin. A click on Yahoo’s medicine subcategory brought up a list of universities. A search of several university sites produced an interesting field of study: forensic medicine. Kevin and his career counselor were zeroing in. |
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The list of options that followed covered a number of career possibilities, from toxicology and medical science to clinical pathology. What caught Kevin’s eye was forensic pathology. Verify info with visits to other sites Career counselors make it a rule to look at many different sources when helping clients with career searches. One good resource is the Occupational Outlook Handbook.The Handbook, and its companion, the Occupational Outlook Quarterly, provide a summary of job titles, educational requirements and salary averages compiled by the federal government. The salary information was particularly valuable, since it was one of the important factors Kevin would use to consider forensic pathology as a career. Copies of the Occupational Outlook Handbook and Quarterly are available in most college libraries. Volumes of data can also be viewed at its site on the World Wide Web; go to http://www.bls.gov/emp/ for employment projections and an industry occupational matrix, as well as employment, training and earnings data. Individuals with a clear idea of the kind of job they’re looking for may go to one of the many job posting sites available on the web (see the accompanying story, "Tried and True Job Sites"). The web can’t replace the real thing A stop at a business, professional organization or reference site on the web can’t take the place of an in-person visit. Kevin Dittrich will be the first to tell you that. After identifying forensic pathology as a career interest, Kevin got in touch with a professional pathologist with the help of a friend. After a quick drive to Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, he was pretty sure he was on the right track. During a school holiday, he visited his cousin, now a chief of police in Tennessee. While there, he took advantage of another opportunity: He sat in on an autopsy. "I had focused all of my education and career interest on police work," Kevin said. "When I decided I didn’t want to do that, I had to start from scratch." With the help and guidance of his counselor, Kevin now feels he has "a good understanding" of what he wants to do: "The visits I made to morgues and the autopsies I watched enhanced my interest in being a forensic pathologist." Whether you’re an OCC student trying to decide what career path to take or a resident of Oakland County who’s thinking about a career change, OCC’s counselors, located at each of the college’s five campuses are ready to help you assess your skills and explore your interests. It’ll give you a good start on a career you’ll find rewarding and enjoyable. |
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