High 5 Weekly Career Transitions Roundup: Resumes, Job Boards, and the Blues

This is our weekly roundup of some of the best career-related articles, interviews, blogs, etc., we've read during the week. We share these every weekend so you have some great resources to prepare you for the coming week. Enjoy!

1. 10 Reasons Your Resume Isn't Getting You Interviews
"If you're like most people, you're making at least a few of these mistakes—which will put your resume promptly in the 'no' pile."

2. How to Deal with Job Search Blues 
"Whether you are knee-deep in a job search, involuntarily unemployed or about to start a search on your own, here are a few things to keep in mind."

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3. Recovering from Common Career Setbacks
"Here are five common workplace blunders and what you can do to make the best of them."

4. 4 Best Tips for Using a Job Board
"You've posted your resume on all the most popular job boards. It's been weeks and you've heard zilch in response. It's justifiably frustrating."

5. 5 Tips to Handling a Career Transition in Your 50s and 60s  
"If you are not comfortable around computers, you will not succeed in most of today’s workplaces."

Spend Your Online Time Wisely

You can find a limitless number of helpful online resources for job seekers; however, without a strategy for how to use your online time wisely, you may fall prey to surfing the Internet, clicking from one site to another without purpose.  If this sounds familiar, step back and create a plan for how to get the most out of Internet job searching.
 
Focus on Your Goals
If you haven’t done so already, evaluate your interests, values, qualifications, skills, and experience in order to establish your career goals.  Once defined, these goals should direct your job search efforts, both online and off.  

Popular and Niche Job Boards
Internet job boards are excellent sources for viewing and applying for open job postings across many companies. By using an Internet search engine and a search phrase like “top job boards,” you can locate popular job boards. Niche job boards, those targeted to your occupation and industry, are also great resources for narrowing your search to the most relevant job openings.   

Company Websites
Use the Internet to research companies you’d like to work for.  Then, look for job postings on those company websites that interest you.  Some of these sites enable you to set up job alerts that notify you, via email, when job openings matching your criteria become available.  

Social Media 
Be sure to create a professional online presence on social media sites, like LinkedIn, that are designed for professionals and networking.  Investigate other online communities; begin by looking at relevant industry and professional associations.

Just One More Tool
Think of the Internet as one more tool in your job-seeker toolbox. It is an excellent resource for job seekers, but it should not be your only resource.  The fact is, there is no substitute for face-to-face, professional interactions and networking.  

To Post or Not to Post. Should you Post your Resume Online?

There are definitely two opposite opinions on the subject on whether or not you should post your resume on online job boards. Instead of offering you an opinion, I would like to present you with the pros and cons and let you make your own decision based on the facts.

No matter what you decide about posting your resume online, make sure that it is only one way that you go about looking for a job. This type of passive, wait and see approach to job hunting will only prolong the process. Make sure you are networking, searching for active open jobs, and researching companies in your industry as well as waiting for recruiters to find your posted resume.

Pros of Online Posting
• Some recruiters are of the mindset that instead of posting their jobs and receiving hundreds of resumes that they have to sift through, they would rather conduct a targeted search on a resume database. Recruiters do a key word search on resume databases to find potential candidates.

• Posting your resume online makes it easier for you to apply to jobs when you find one in which you are interested on the job board where your resume is posted. This can save you time in applying to open jobs and will also enable you to respond quicker to job postings.

• Industry-specific boards such as www.dice.com for IT jobs and www.hcareers.com for hospitality jobs are the best bet for posting your resume online. You lessen your chance of spammers and scammers on these types of sites.

Cons of Online Posting
• As soon as you post your resume online, you will get a ton of spam. I helped a gentleman who specialized in accounting and was not very tech savvy post his resume online last year. Within minutes he had 6 emails offering him interviews. Unfortunately, they were either to open his own insurance agency or participate in multi-level marketing companies. If you post your resume online your email account will get spammed.

• It used to be that in order to access resumes on a job board you had to have an employer account with that board. That is no longer always the case. Today, all it takes is a credit card to access resume databases. Beware that you are opening yourself up to identity theft when you post your resume online. Never post your social security number, date of birth, or driver’s license number. You may also consider using a P.O. box or just listing your city and state in the address section of the resume.

• I often say there is no such thing as a generic effective resume. In order to do its job right, a resume must be targeted to a specific, industry, job, and company. How can you hope to achieve this when you are posting your generic resume online?