Maybe you're just out of college, looking for
your first full-time job. Maybe you're looking to change careers after
years in the same job. Maybe you're just curious about what's out there.
No matter. There's only one place to start your search - on the Web.

The Internet Business Network, a research firm based in Mill Valley,
California, estimates that the Web is home to 100,000 job-related sites
and 2.5 million ré sumé s. But who needs statistics? Consider instead
the stories of Jeff Laster and Megan Weeks.

Last summer, Laster, now 36, was finishing his graduate work at
Virginia Tech. It was time to look for a job - and Laster looked to the
Web. He wrote a ré sumé and posted it on his personal home page. Then he
posted it on four of the most popular job boards. He also made a list
of companies that he was interested in and visited their sites.

One of those companies was Texas Instruments. TI's Web site lists
openings at all of its major locations. It also includes a short
diagnostic test, called "Fit Check," to help job seekers figure out
whether their "wants and needs" mesh with those of TI.

Within a few days, Laster had received replies from a dozen
companies. Within three months, he had interviewed with seven of those
companies and had landed six job offers. Ultimately he signed on with
TI.

"The information on the TI Web site was important," Laster says. "It
was a good reality check on my personal contacts."

Weeks, 28, was working as vice president of consumer marketing for an
Internet startup that crashed. She started looking for her next career
adventure and turned to PlanetAll, a free Web service that creates links
between you and your friends, as well as to all the people in their
circle.

A friend on PlanetAll told Weeks about an interactive-ad agency. She
asked if he knew anyone there. He gave her a name, and she went to his
PlanetAll address book, clicked on the name, and emailed his friend.
That friend emailed her back, saying, "It's great that you come
recommended." Says Weeks: "We did some emails, which turned into phone
calls, which turned into spending several days with the company. A few
weeks later, I got an offer."

This edition of @Work is a guide to using the Web to find a job. It
offers tips for creating a great electronic ré sumé . It evaluates the
most popular job sites. And it explains how to figure out which job is
right for you. Forget "pounding the pavement." It's time to move your
job search into cyberspace.

12 tips for rewriting your ré sumé

Writing a ré sumé is a task that every job seeker loves to hate.
Writing a Web ré sumé is even tougher. Here's how to create a document
that will put everyone on the same Web page.

What's in Your Ré sumé ?

1. Think nouns, not verbs. Career counselors used to advise job
seekers to pepper their ré sumé s with action verbs that would impress
HR staffers who scan ré sumé s with their eyeballs. Web ré sumé s also
get scanned - by digital eyeballs. Companies then use software that
combs through ré sumé s for words that signal job titles, technical
skills, and levels of education or experience. And most of those words
are nouns.

"Verbs used to be the important thing," says Kate Wendleton, a career
counselor associated with CareerMosaic, a leading job site. "Now
employers search for nouns - what products you developed, which software
programs you can use."

2. The more buzzwords, the better. Career counselors also used to
advise clients to avoid buzzwords in their ré sumé s. Today buzzwords
are all the buzz. "Applicant-tracking systems" rank ré sumé s by the
number of keywords in them. If a company is looking for an auditor with
experience in Lotus 1-2-3, Microsoft Excel, and Peachtree First
Accounting, it can rank ré sumé s according to which ones include all
three programs, which have two of them, and so on. "Turn your experience
into keywords," urges Margaret Riley Dikel, coauthor of The Guide to
Internet Job Searching VGM Career Horizons, 1996, "and maximize the
number of them in your ré sumé ."

3. Don't forget to describe your personality and attitude. Just
because most ré sumé searches are computerized doesn't mean that
companies don't search for human qualities. A tracking system can
identify behavioral traits - dependability, responsibility, a high
energy level - as easily as it can technical skills. "Be enthusiastic,"
says Yana Parker, author of Damn Good Resume Guide, Ten Speed Press,
1996 . "Let your passion show. Don't use tired language."

4. Personal home pages should be all business. Like many job seekers,
you may want to include a link in your Web ré sumé to a personal Web
page, where you can post detailed information about your career. But
don't muck up your page with photos of you, your family, or your pets.
An HR manager at a big chemical company puts it this way: "I'm not
looking for a pretty face. I'm looking for a skill. What you look like
is not a skill."

What Should Your Ré sumé Look Like?

5. It's not a ré sumé - - it's a movie trailer. Electronic ré sumé s
do eventually get read by real human beings - on a computer screen. You
have about 20 lines to grab their attention. So don't waste precious
real estate on details such as your address. Lead with your technical
skills and personal qualities. "Identify yourself as a solution to
someone's problem," says Parker.

6. Break the one-page rule. Limiting your ré sumé to what will fit on
a single piece of paper doesn't mean much in the online world. If you
can hold your readers' attention, they'll keep scrolling. But don't
overdo it: At some point, most executives do print out ré sumé s that
they find interesting. The new rule of thumb, says Sue Nowacki, a
professional ré sumé writer based in Gainesville, Florida, is to create
an electronic ré sumé that can be printed in three pages.

7. One size doesn't fit all. Nowacki also argues that an online job
search requires four different ré sumé s: a word-processor document, an
ASCII text-only file, an HTML-coded file, and a hard copy. The
word-processor document can be printed, stored in an online database, or
sent as an email attachment but see point 11 . The ASCII file is what
you submit to job-related Web sites. An HTML-coded ré sumé can be posted
as a Web page or submitted to job boards. And you still need a hard
copy, printed on high-quality paper, for companies that use snail mail.

"How many fishermen do you know," Nowacki asks, "who have one lure in
their tackle box, or use the same bait every time?"

What Are the New Do's and Don'ts?

You've created a ré sumé with killer content and a cool design.
You've got multiple electronic versions of it. What's left? Doing the
little things right.

8. Not all text is created equal. Scanners work well with these
typefaces: Helvetica, Courier, Futura, Optima, Palatino, New Century
Schoolbook, and Times. And they work best with type sizes in the 10- to
14-point range.

9. Faxes are fine. If you're asked to fax your ré sumé , set the
machine to the "fine" mode. That results in a higher-quality printout on
the receiving end.

10. Don't send your ré sumé as an attachment. Paste it into the body
of an email message. Most employers ignore attachments. They worry about
viruses, and they don't want to waste time with files that their
computers can't translate.

11. Always include a subject line. If you're responding to a specific
posting, put the reference number in the subject line. If you're
submitting a ré sumé to a database, include a description of your skills
in the subject line. "Sell yourself!" says Joyce Lain Kennedy, coauthor
of Electronic Resume Revolution John Wiley & Sons, 1995 . "It's not
a subject line. It's a theater marquee."

12. Ask the wizard. These days, most word-processing programs come
with good ré sumé templates and with "wizards" - step-by-step guides
that walk you through the templates. If you're looking for a real
wizard, visit the Professional Association of Ré sumé Writers www.parw.com .

Help Wanted - 11 Places to Start Your Search

We've spent time on 11 of the most popular career-related sites. This
table evaluates how they work and how well they deliver in certain key
areas: Do they offer a "personal search agent" - that is, software that
can search for you? Do they help keep news of your search away from your
current employer? And what's the "killer app" that distinguishes them
from other services?

11 Ways to Tell Which Job is Right

You've created a great Web ré sumé . You've posted it on all the
right sites. What happens next? You get offers! Here are Web sites that
will help you figure out which job to take.

What's It Like to Work There?

You never know what it's like to work inside a company until you're
on the inside. But to get a peek, check out Experience Online www.experienceonline.com
. The site's researchers have spent thousands of hours interviewing
insiders about jobs at 200 companies. Users subscribe to a career field
or job skill advertising, consulting, marketing . In return, they get
the scoop on everything from office hours to dress codes. A six-month
subscription to Experience Online costs $34 per category.

1. The site's Snapshot area describes life inside a company. Go to
Nestlé USA, and you learn that life is buttoned-down from Monday through
Thursday - but casual on Friday, complete with "chocolate martinis on
Hollywood Boulevard."

2. The Company Blueprint describes history, strategy, and culture.
The site warns about Nestlé 's uptight style - but approves of its
"diverse and genuine people."

3. Still want to work there? Then visit the How to Break In section
and get the skinny on interviews: what the company may ask you, what you
should ask in return.

4. There's even an Interview Cheat Sheet, with the straight dope on
company financials and business milestones.

What's It Like to Live There?

Career moves often require geographic moves. HomeFair.com www.homefair.com
offers tools to help you calculate the cost of moving, the cost of
living, and the quality of life in various places.

5. The Moving Calculator helps you figure out how much it will cost
to ship your worldly possessions to a particular city.

6. The Relocation Crime Lab compares crime rates in various
locations.

7. The City Snapshots feature compares demographic, economic, and
climate information for two cities of your choosing.

8. The Salary Calculator computes cost-of-living differences between
hundreds of U.S. and international cities and tells you how much you'd
need to make in your new city to maintain your current standard of
living.

Will I Be Paid Enough?

You want to work at a great company. You want to live in a great
place. But sooner or later, it all comes down to money.

9. The best place to explore your market value is JobSmart http://www.jobsmart.org/tools/salary/index.htm
. The site links to more than 150 general and profession-specific
salary surveys.

10. For information on salaries in the computer industry, try
DataMasters www.datamasters.com .

11. If you're in accounting or finance, check out Experience on
Demand www.experienceondemand.com .

The Accidental Job Seeker

Applicant: Jennifer Beardsley jbrdsly@aol.com , 30, Marketing
Manager, Starbucks Coffee Co.

Web Tool: Career Central for MBAs http://www.mbacentral.com

Experience: "I'd done searching on the Net before,
and I'd been keeping up with friends through my B-school alumni page.
That's where I found a link to this site. One night I was bored, so I
looked it up and typed in my profile. I was done in less than 20
minutes.

"I was working for a small outfit called the Seattle Chocolate Co. I
wasn't really looking for a job. About six weeks later, I got an email
that said, in effect, 'We've found you a match with Starbucks. Here's
the job description. Do you want to send your ré sumé ?' The rest is
history."

Education: "Privacy is a key issue. It's so easy for
your current employer to bump into your ré sumé on one of the online
employment services. That's one reason why I chose this site. It didn't
require me to submit a full ré sumé ."

Online Veteran Seeks Position

Applicant: Rex Ballard rex.ballard@prudential.com ,
42, Information Systems Architect, The Prudential

Web Tool: CareerMosaic www.careermosaic.com

Experience: "Using the Net to find a job was nothing
new to me. Back in 1987, I learned about an opening at FedEx in
Colorado Springs through a Usenet group. But a recent experience that I
had on the Net was truly amazing. I'd been working for a while as an
independent contractor, and I was between assignments. I discovered
CareerMosaic through a banner ad. I clicked on the ad, and it asked if I
wanted to post my ré sumé . I already had an electronic ré sumé , so
after doing some reformatting, I posted it.

"Here's where it gets amazing: I posted my ré sumé on a Saturday
night. By Monday afternoon, I'd received 21 phone calls - from companies
like Netscape, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems. This would have taken
months without the Web. I got three offers within a week."

Education: "The great thing about the Net is that
you become visible to so many people at the same time. That's a problem
too. To keep from getting swamped with calls for jobs you don't want, be
very clear in your ré sumé . Also be clear about money. If you're
looking for $100,000, make sure that companies understand your
expectations. Otherwise, you'll end up fielding calls about $40,000
jobs."

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From FastCompany
By: Gina Imperato _ July
31,
1998