3.7.2004

WARNING!!!

<Note from JobFairy.com: I just got this spoofed email (the attached file is Readme.zip and it's 12.4 KB). Here's the entire message:>

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Dear user of Jobfairy.org,

Our main mailing server will  be temporary unavaible for next two days,  to continue receiving mail in these  days you have to  configure our free auto-forwarding  service. For  more  information see the attached file. Attached  file protected with  the password for security reasons. Password is 20141.

The Management,
    The Jobfairy.org team 

<This is a scam with a nasty little virus attached. If you get it, it ain't from us. We would never send out anything like this anyway. I've already notified the email admins at our provider. Just delete it if you get it; whatever you do, don't open it. It leaves a backdoor for future viral attacks. I hope they catch these little f***ers and nail them to the wall.>

• Employment Situation Summary from the U.S. Governmment
• Job Growth Stalls in February, Surprising Forecasters (nytimes.com)
• Payrolls Disappoint Again

What Makes A Good Online Resume?

Now you've completed your resume. You've saved it as a text file. You understand that you have to post to no less than five sites a day. You're signed up to receive emailed job listings from any job board that will send them to you. You're checking the other boards daily. Well, what else can you do to help yourself stand out? Forget paying for "improved" or "priority" listing status on the job boards. These are just ploys to snare the desperate.

The two big boards for technical employment are monster.com and dice.com. Monster is the biggest; we'll focus on how to make your profile there really count. To start with, there are three options for posting your resume on monster.com; the online resume builder, copying a text file into a text area, and uploading a Word version (which it converts to HTML). Forget any of the other options than the online resume builder. It asks you for the most information. The more information you have out there, the greater your chance of coming up in a keyword search. Make sure you list two phone numbers; you want them to be able to get in touch with you. Hope you have a cell phone or pager!

In the title, load it with key words or functional descriptions, i.e. Unix Oracle WebMethods Java J2EE, or Windows 2000 and MS Exchange System Administrator. In the Objective section, you'll copy in your Expertise section. It will ask you for things like your target job, whether or not you want full time, etc. and where you want to work. When it asks you for your target company information, be generic unless there are certain kinds of companies you're just dying to get into. You can restate the end of your Expertise section in a very non-specific fashion so that it could be interpreted to apply to darn near any company on the planet. The target locations space is important (and you wouldn't get that in the other versions of the online resume). You don't want to say in your resume that you wouldn't (or would) relocate. That's what the profile is for. The Experience section is where you cut and paste from the Experience section of your resume. I hate that it asks you for location information though. Make sure you only list the last 10 years; just like on your resume.

In the Education section, only list your actual degree; the rest can be presented in your resume, unless they have key words that you want to have come up in a search. Under Affiliations, list any technical user group memberships or things like that. Don't list church groups or other memberships that might be used to discriminate against you. Now comes the important part - the Skills section. You will take every single one of your skills from the list and add it in manually here, along with how skilled you are in each, how recently you used it, and the number of years' experience. You'll need to keep this updated about every year or so, or every time you switch jobs and add another listing to your Experience section. You definitely want to come up in the keyword searches!

As to the References, you can include these if you want; I do because they're all well-trained fellow Fairies who know what to say on command. Never list anyone here if you don't know exactly what they'd say to a recruiter in advance. Under the Additional Information listing, this is when you take your Professional Skills section from your resume and copy the whole thing right into the text box. Don't add personal information, like how many children you have, that you like scuba diving, or that you raise standard poodles. Save it and make it available.

Each Sunday, go back in, make a gratuitous edit, then save and announce again. I have found that the Renew option is not sufficient. You don't need to upgrade, buy the premium service, or anything else. I never use the History or Letters section. I have set up an Agent, which I don't have sent to me, because it's worthless. I used to, because they used to send a page of job listings to which I could apply directly from the email. They don't do that anymore, so I don't waste my bandwidth on it; I go to the website directly every day that I'm in the market. I have one created one for the specific area of Colorado in which I live. Every day that I'm looking for work, I view it, and then work from there. More on that next.

How to Respond To Job Listings

With monster, I don't store a cover letter. It doesn't seem to help much; if you are a big fan of cover letters, you can adapt the more generic one out of the sig files zip archive. For a non-IT career field, you probably need one. However, for technical positions, they're still in keyword matching mode. Click apply a couple of times and you're done.

On dice.com, it's a little different. You'll still be doing the side-by-side tiled windows thing. Drag the titles into the second browser window. On dice though, the way I tend to apply is through email. The recruiters have an email address set up through dice on each job posting that will then forward to the actual email in box at their company. Sometimes these fill up and your email bounces. This is why you should try to apply earlier in the day if you're going the dice.com route.

I wish HR monkeys and recruiters would either make their Exchange administrators up their storage quota on the server, or just leave their Outlook open when they leave for the evening (if they have it set to POP3). That would cut down on the full in boxes and bounced messages.

This is when you set up your generic mini cover letter as your default sig file. When you click on the link in the job posting, it's a simple matter to fill in the recruiter's name, add your resume in text format as another sig file (some recruiters won't accept attachments), and send as usual.

Keep in mind that it's a numbers game. The more positions to which you apply, the more calls you'll get from recruiters and hiring managers, the more interviews you'll get, and the sooner you'll get a new job. The Fairy average is applying to about 50 positions a day. That's 6 - 7 days a week. The more effort you put into it, the more quickly you'll get it over with. Fairies may be good at applying to and interviewing for jobs - but they hate it all the same.

When It Comes to Salary, Many Women Don't Push

From a recent White House press briefing:

Q So why not -- why aren't you standing behind [the prediction that America will add 2.6 million new jobs this year]?
WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY SCOTT McCLELLAN: I think what the President stands behind is the policies that he is implementing, the policies that he is advocating. That's what's important.

Q That's not in dispute. The number is the question.
MR. McCLELLAN: I know, but the President's concern is on the number of jobs being created --

Q My question is, why was the prediction made --
MR. McCLELLAN: -- and the President's focus is on making sure that people who are hurting because they cannot find work have a job. That's where the President's focus is.

Q Then why predict a number? Why was the number predicted? Why was the number predicted? You can't get away with not -- just answer the question. Why was that number predicted?
MR. McCLELLAN: I've been asked this, and I've asked -- I've been asked, and I've answered.

Q No, you have not answered. And everybody watching knows you haven't answered.

White House Press Briefing, 2/18/04

"Talks will focus on offshoring controversy; Experts to mull the trend to send jobs out of the U.S.

The Daily Camera
February 24, 2004
By Erika Stutzman

Regional events are in the works to highlight what is perhaps the most emotional issue in the economy today: offshoring. The export of traditionally white-collar jobs to foreign countries with cheap wages has inspired outcry much like the shipping of manufacturing jobs overseas did decades ago. At a time when many technical workers remain out of work, the trend has angered workers, inspired political opposition and has put companies on the defensive. "Unfortunately, this is inevitable. It's political football, but it's an economic reality," said Mac Slingerlend, chief executive of CIBER, an information technology firm based in the Denver Tech Center. "We have become an expensive society, and this is the reality the country needs to get used to." Two regional events hope to shed light on the issue. The first event, put on by the Westminster-based Colorado Software and Internet Association, will be held from 5 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday (March 4) at the Westin Tabor Center in Denver. "Offshoring ? the Good, the Bad and the Ugly," will include industry leaders and Sen. Deanna Hanna, D-Lakewood, who sponsored a law to stem offshoring. Cost is $40 for members and $75 for everyone else. The second event is co-sponsored by the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado and the American Electronics Association. That event will be 8 a.m. to noon on March 25 at the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce in Denver. Cost is $119.20 for AeA members and CU alumni and $149 for everyone else. "This is a very emotional issue, and there's a real need for education about it," said Greg Jenik, executive director of Broomfield-based AeA Mountain States. Jenik said the AeA and Leeds plan an academic approach and a "balanced event." But perhaps as a sign of the times, they're having a hard time finding companies who first explored, then rejected the concept of sending jobs overseas. Richard Noe, senior vice president of MBS Outsourcing in Fort Collins, first began outsourcing 20 years ago when he hired data-entry workers in Jamaica. "They were paying pennies down there," he said. Noe's career path led him to MBS, which consults with companies either considering offshoring or actively sending jobs overseas. "Companies are challenged right now. Their shareholders are demanding better earnings. If they can reduce their costs, that is fairly significant," Noe said. He said outsourcing technical jobs in general, which includes offshoring, can save a firm 20 percent to 30 percent a year. Noe, who is speaking at the CSIA event this week, said evidence shows that companies that offshore grow their businesses. "They take those savings and reinvest it in more strategic ways. It makes them more competitive in the long run," Noe said. Slingerlend, who is also on the CSIA panel, said his company is dealing with the offshoring trend by playing both defense and offense. He said CIBER is making parts of its business less vulnerable to foreign jobs. It's also offering to do information technology work overseas. "Companies will do things where they can do them the least expensively," he said. If a client wants its work done in India, CIBER will make that work. "I would rather they go with me than without me," Slingerlend said. Noe said the issue is particularly hard in Colorado. "We're very high tech, so we really feel the pain," he said. "We all know someone who has lost their job to outsourcing. But what we need to do is say it's here to stay. The key here is to get training to do the new jobs. Don't train yourself in a position that will go overseas." Project management and business analysis are growing, he said, as are the jobs to manage offshore operations. Forrester Research has said 3.3 million U.S. services industry jobs and about $136 billion in wages will move overseas in the next 11 years. One of the companies with stated plans to increase offshoring is IBM, which employs about 4,700 in Boulder. Lee Conrad, the Endicott, N.Y.-based founder of Alliance@IBM, a pro-union group, said corporations and politicians who say offshoring is good for the U.S. economy are driven by short-sighted greed. "Good for whose economy? When you see millions of our jobs moving overseas, that is not good for our local, state or national economies," Conrad said. "These are jobs with good pay and benefits being shifted out of the country." He said once an economy loses those jobs, it has an impact on retail, housing and all the other industries that rely on an employed population. But many argue that any measures to force U.S. companies to keep jobs here could force them to be less competitive in a global market. U.S. Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan warned against politicians' proposed "protectionist cures" in offshoring. "We have reason to be confident that new jobs will displace old ones as they always have," he told Congressional leaders. But opponents like Conrad say the way to improve the U.S. economy is to bolster employment at home. "Stop offshoring. Plain and simple. Stop it right now," he said. For more information on these events go to http://leeds.colorado.edu/offshoring/ or http://www.coloradosoftware.org. Contact Erika Stutzman at stutzmane@dailycamera.com or (303) 473-1354."

<Note from JobFairy.com: We're going to watch the spring hiring numbers very carefully. So far, they're not up as much as we expected - although it is still early in the season. I'm willing to bet offshoring has quite a bit to do with that. I have seen more companies than I can remember invest heavily in one strategy, then a new management crew comes in, they change it all, then claim huge cost savings just for doing things differently. Outsourcing may well be one of those things. I can see where you might be able to achieve permanent savings by sending unskilled labor to cheaper parts of the world. But we'll see just how much money is really saved when you can't work hands on with your IT team...>