Lesson Six -
Online Resumes and Job Sites - Selling Yourself

Lesson Goals

·        Find New Career and Job Possibilities

·        Build a Quality Electronic Portfolio Resume

·        Learn to Effectively Market of Your Skills and Talents

Finding Jobs Through the Internet

Online you'll find job training resources of all types and employment opportunities even for jobs that have nothing to do with computers and the Internet (though most jobs these days do indeed require these skills).

If you can read, write, type, are comfortable with computers, and are willing to learn new things, you're highly employable!  Extensive resources on all kinds of careers, both online and offline, can be found at job-finding sites that allow free posting of resumes and many sophisticated features. In this lesson you'll receive an overview of job hunting online. You'll review templates for creating an online resume, and you'll learn about jobs you never knew existed. A worker shortage of 10 million jobs is predicted by 2006. For every new job created, two workers retire. As baby boomers reach retirement age, more and more jobs are expected to become available.

New types of jobs are rapidly appearing. The more you explore, the closer you'll be to finding your dream job. In the hands-on activities for this lesson you'll explore many robust job sites offering free resume templates, resume posting services, job-finding services, and much, much more. Monster.com is perhaps the leader, from which you'll get the most complete overview of available services. Once you've created an online resume, you can post it on all the job sites you can find.

The Strategies Behind Building a Quality Electronic Portfolio Resume

There's a new emphasis on recognizing the value of good people, particularly those who work well with others. Selling yourself as a well-rounded person and not just a set of skills is increasingly important. Your ability to think for yourself and to learn whatever might be necessary is an important job skill. Most knowledge workers are primarily problem-solvers, lifelong learners, and self-starters able to produce knowledge work in a variety of word-processing and multimedia formats such as PowerPoint presentations, web pages, color documents with images, and so on.

Pay close attention to the model resumes and tutorials presented in the hands-on section below.

Hands-on Activities

Within the following resources you will find many exciting sites for learning about new careers, job training, and online resume posting services. Be thorough in your explorations, seek out other similar online resources, and keep your own listing of the best-of-the-best.

Monster.com
http://content.monster.com/
Look over their many free services such as the following three sites

Free resume posting
http://resume.monster.com/
Tutorials for creating a quality resume

Career advice
http://content.monster.com/ 

Job seeker information
http://jobsearch.monster.com/ and on and on.

Freeagent
http://freeagent.com/
Select "Resources." INCREDIBLE!  Point to each arrow in the center of the screen and read the contents for each pop-up menu for each of the major categories on the Resources page. Review their tutorials for becoming a free agent information technology professional. See what else you can find that will be useful to you.

Work At Home
http://www.work-at-home-information.com/
Look at their listing of 100 job search sites. Click on the “Free E-book” button on the lower right to see free resources.

To Complete This Lesson

1.      Send an email to your instructor stating what strategies you're planning to adopt.

2.      Send an email to the listserv (send to isu-ecommerce@mm.isu.edu) with the web address for at least one interesting article or resource related to this lesson.

Optional Skill-Builders

The War Against Ignorance
http://lone-eagles.com/hope.htm
Read this short article.

Guru.com
http://guru.com/
Compare their offerings to the two sites you've just reviewed, monster.com and freeagent.com.  Register your skills in their portfolio databases!  Note the resources for marketing your services and finding work contracts.

Hotjobs
http://hotjobs.com/
See if they offer anything that the others don't. You'll have to first give yourself a free Yahoo account with ID and Password, then again for a Hotjobs account with ID and Password. Tip: You don't have to give real contact information if you don't wish to.