Career Resources on the Net

The Internet is a jumble of resources--some valuable, others less so. In this sea of virtual anarchy, there are resources that allow us to assist our patrons in a variety of tasks from answering the most basic reference questions to serving more complex needs, such as searching out information about a particular career or a specific company. Katharine G. Abraham, Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, notes that "Global competition, changing technology and business practices, and shifts in the demand for goods and services continue to reshape America's job market--creating a widespread need for comprehensive, up-to-date, and reliable career information."1 Through the Internet, we now have the ability to quickly and effectively access this type of data. We can, in a matter of minutes, recover a volume of information that may take hours, or days, to retrieve in print form.

Richard Nelson Bolles has noted that the Internet can be a helpful place for job hunters or career changers to:

• search for vacancies, listed by employers (often called job listings).
• post a résumé.
• get some job-hunting help or career counseling.
• make contacts with people who can help you find information or help you get in for an interview at a particular place.
• find information or do research on fields, occupations, companies, and cities.2

This article showcases a handful of these resources in order to illustrate the value the Internet can play in augmenting career search strategies.

Career Resource Sites

Bolles, author of the well-known career guide, What Color Is Your Parachute?, notes that there "are approximately 11,000 sites on the Internet that deal with jobs, careers, or job-hunting." These sites generally contain a wealth of information about specific topics and links to a wide variety of resources. Bolles' site, hosted by the Washington Post ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-adv/classifieds/careerpost/parachute/front.htm), is a good example of the quality that is available on the Net. Links on this site are divided into six categories: gateway sites, job-listing sites, résumé sites, career counseling sites, contact sites, and research sites. Bolles has developed a rating system whereby he affixes a parachute to the sites he believes hold the most promise to those searching for career related resources. In addition to useful annotations for each of these subdivisions, Bolles includes a brief and informative overview of why a particular technique (such as posting your résumé online, or receiving competent career counseling on the Internet) will or will not work.

The Riley Guide (http://www.dbm.com/jobguide/) is a comprehensive site covering a broad range of topics from online résumé preparation to using the Internet in your job search. The site contains multiple annotated links to local and national job resources and has received several awards for excellence. This resource includes information for job seekers in many professions, geographic areas, and stages of their job search. Advice on résumé preparation, cover letters, and use of the Internet for job searching are but a few of the many areas that are covered in this guide.

Still another site dedicated solely to career resources is The Monster Board (http://www.monsterboard.com/) which covers an immense array of products and services that will be of use to the career searcher. The Monster Board allows users to create and post résumés to its "Résumé City" which is a searchable database of more than 237,177 résumés. These résumés can be viewed by potential employers who pay a fee to access the database. The site also employs a Personal Job Search Agent, playfully called Swoop. This robot searches the site returning matching jobs to the user's "Profile In Box" and notifies the user via e-mail. Career fairs, expos, and industry events are also highlighted on the site.

The Catapult (http://www.jobweb.org/catapult/catapult.htm) was started in 1994 as a site for career services professionals that would help to spread the word about the "many opportunities that derive from the World Wide Web, as it relates to the career planning profession." Today, this site is densely populated with links to Employment Centers, in depth sections on Career Assessment Tools (including self-assessment exercises and definitions of skill competencies), Help Guides, and Career Library Resources. Users will find the breadth and depth of resources at this site an asset in the search for career information.

Government Sites

The federal government is another invaluable resource for career resources online. With its growing commitment to Internet access, the government is making more materials available in electronic format with each passing day. When looking for information about career fields, searchers should not overlook the Occupational Outlook Handbook ( http://stats.bls.gov/ocohome.htm) prepared by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is a nationally recognized source of career information that "describes what workers do on the job, working conditions, the training and education needed, earnings, and expected job prospects in a wide range of occupations. Employment in the approximately 250 occupations covered in the 1996-97 Handbook accounts for about seven out of every eight jobs in the economy." The occupational information presented in this online resource provides valuable assistance to individuals making career decisions about their future work lives and to those of us assisting in career searches.

In searching for a specific job with the government, check out Federal Jobs Digest (http://www.jobsfed.com) which claims to have "more federal vacancies than any other source." On the day I visited this site, there were 5,568 positions in the jobs file. The Digest offers a well organized set of 17 career categories from which searchers can choose. Positions listed under Information Arts, for example, provide a Job Series number, Job Title, and Number of Listings Today. The Job Title section is hyperlinked to a complete listing of positions and contact information as well as links to pay scales and a sample record to help interpret the job posting.

Individuals looking for information on a career with specific agencies within the federal government will find that many of the government's Web sites have links to job opportunities.

Some sites will have just the bare bones--job title, position number, salary, and closing date. Others still, will have more comprehensive listings of information like pay, awards, promotions, hours, and vacation. While there is little uniformity between government sites, there is nearly always an abundance of usable and often valuable information.

Career Centers

Many colleges and universities also have career resource sites that may prove useful. While resources located on these sites are generally geared to the school's students and alumni, outside users may often find links to materials created by the school's staff and to other Internet resources. The Harvard Business School's Baker Library (http://www.library.hbs.edu/welcome.htm) offers a wealth of information to those seeking career resources on the Web. This site contains a multitude of links to print as well as Internet resources. Included on this site are links to materials generated by the library staff and to commercial resources like PR Newswire's Company News On-Call (http://www.prnewswire.com/cnoc/cnoc.html) which offers a "complete and up to the minute one year, archived database of all stories appearing on PR Newswire. . ." and Corporate News on the Net (http://www.businesswire.com/cnn/) from Business Wire. Also included is a section of Bibliographies & Guides which includes a Career Resource Guide, links to company and industry information and a page of Economics & Statistics links.

Brandeis University's Hiatt Career Center (http://www.brandeis.edu/hiatt/hiatt_home.html) offers several pages of links to useful resources. These pages point to employment opportunities, guides to résumé and interview preparation, and a page titled "Profiles of Career Fields" (http://www.brandeis.edu/hiatt/web_data/career_fields.html) that points to resources created through "a collaborative venture of 25 highly selective liberal arts colleges who promote and use innovative technology in the career development process."

The UCLA Career Center (http://www.saonet.ucla.edu/career/) contains much information specific to the needs of its students. The Employer Information & Job Resources on the Web (http://www.saonet.ucla.edu/career/otherjob.htm) contains a large set of links to materials on international job searching, regional and summer jobs as well as links to information about specialized career fields.

Commercial Sites

Adding to the host of sites dealing with career resources are commercial sites. These organizations gather information about industry trends and companies which is then packaged and resold to interested parties. Many of these sites will allow free access to a portion of their information and charge for the full range of services. Hoover's Online (http://www.hoovers.com/) publishes information about more than 12,000 public and private companies worldwide. The company collects data about businesses and publishes these in "Capsules and Profiles." Hoover's notes that its "Company Capsules are a free source of basic information and useful links for all the companies we cover. Capsules contain information on...public and private enterprises in the United States and around the world." Hoover's Profiles "contain detailed information on approximately 2,700 companies in the U.S. and around the world." The profiles are available through a fee for service agreement.

When looking for current news about certain industries or corporations, commercial sites will often provide timely information. Business Wire (http://www.businesswire.com/) claims to be "the leading electronic disseminator of financial and product news releases, photos, advisories, and features from large, medium, and small companies and organizations worldwide." The site offers hourly headlines for each of five topics under the Industry Specific category and is archived back seven days. This site's Corporate News on the Net (http://www.businesswire.com/cnn/) page affords the user an opportunity to review company news releases by industry type. Also available is a link to BigCharts (http://www.BigCharts.com) which allows users access to charts, reports, indicators, quotes on stocks, mutual funds, and major market indexes. Users will also find a link to MarketGuide Reports. MarketGuide provides two free report types: Company Snapshots and Price Charts. For a fee, users can access several other reports that may be of use when searching for company specific information.

And what if your patron's job search involves relocation? Quite naturally there are Web based resources that will assist in this side of the search also. Sites like The Homebuyer's Fair (http://homefair.com/home/) offer several calculators that will compare the cost of living in hundreds of U.S. and international cities, calculate mortgage rates, and compare the value of renting versus owning a home--useful information for those thinking of relocating. Those working as technical writers, Web masters, and other online professionals will be interested in The Salary Zone on the ZD Internet MegaSite (http://search.zdnet.com/zdimag/salaryzone) which has put together "the nation's most comprehensive salary survey for 14 categories of Internet professionals, after compiling data from a total of 3,578 respondents." The Salary Zone also hosts a relocation calculator and affords visitors the opportunity to partake in the salary survey. Perhaps one of the more important aspects of this site is that they have added a section on the data collection methodology used for the survey. Users are able to judge for themselves, the validity of the data they are viewing.

Individual Companies

As the Internet evolves, more companies are seeing the potential of mounting Web sites that extol the virtues of their products and create a worldwide presence. So many of these organizations have also seen the value of posting career opportunities on the Web and in doing so have opened their search for employees to a vast portion of the world. Companies that have taken these steps make finding employees a bit easier while making the career searcher's job much more efficient. With the click of a mouse, the searcher now has access to positions within the company and, on some occasions, background information about the company. This information may have taken hours or days to develop prior to a company's presence on the World Wide Web.

Summary

Patrons, librarians, and information professionals looking for career resources on the Internet are confronted with a maze of information that may prove useful in the hunt for a new career. While the Internet may never evolve into a one-stop shopping emporium for any single type of information, it can be a valuable adjunct to our repertoire of search tools. With over 11,000 resources dedicated to career resources, and our recognized ability to evaluate these sites, we can effectively use this powerful device to help our patrons cash in on career resources on the Internet.

By Timothy E. McMahon.
McMahon is electronic publishing specialist at the American Mathematical Society.