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Hints to help ease your 21st century job search
Q. I’m in a good job now. But, at 37, I see a new generation of competitors over my shoulder – clinging to their iPods and IM-ing each other all day – and I’m wondering about a new generation of technology in the job market. In job hunting, what must I know to upgrade as the world moves on? — W.V.P.

A. Think back to when, a dozen years or so ago, some of your co-workers were amazed – or disbelieving – that people like me were insisting the Internet had made it possible to put one’s resume in the hands of employers all over the country … instantly! From those first stirrings of job-search revolution in the early 1990s, astonishing wonders have come along that once again are reshaping the way people and jobs find each other – especially over the past couple of years in a time frame some call “Web 2.0.”

The term Web 2.0, while lacking a consensus definition, refers to a second phase of development of the World Wide Web, a phase that for job-search purposes includes some gee-whiz developments you’ll want to study. (For a wide-ranging technical discussion of the second phase in general, visit wikipedia.org and search under “Web 2.0.”) Now for some meat-and-potatoes illustrations.

SCRAPE, RATTLE AND ROLL
A new breed of meta jobsearch engine makes it possible for job seekers to do onestop shopping without wasting time chasing antique job listings, a downside to older versions.

Among the top meta engines are Jobster.com, Indeed.com and SimplyHired.com.

One meta, SimplyHired.com, even provides the option of searching for jobs at dogfriendly companies that allow you to bring your pooch to work – woof!

Also called vertical jobsearch engines or aggregators, the new meta versions scrape (grab with software) information from a whole lot of sites of the same type and dump the grabbed data into one central site, offering the user a searchable database.

For example, you can look for “human resource manager” and see a large number of job openings, which then can be sifted down to a geographic area in a 25-mile radius from your home.

Despite an abundance of user-friendly features, the future of verticals that do not have contractual agreements with the original publishers of job ads is unclear. A new “grab everything” effort by the search engine Google has the e-recruiting industry in an uproar. Google is attempting to index and post for free all the job openings in the universe, including those that employers paid to place on job boards and in print.

Why the firestorm? It’s an intellectual property and money issue. E-recruiting industry insiders describe Google as “Craigslist (free or very low-priced job ads) on steroids.” And companies now have the technical tools to feed their jobs directly into Google, or into a so-called “national labor exchange” for free, thus completely bypassing job boards and newspapers.

Expect a vigorous fight by U.S. job boards and media for classified-advertising revenues. European media, using terms like “theft” and “kleptomania,” are accusing Google and other aggregators of unfairly exploiting their content, and, threatening to sue, are demanding compensation from search engines.

As for the battle’s future impact on job seekers, stay tuned.

REFERRAL/NETWORKS

Like a drenching rain, online resumes are pouring into employment offices, sending employers scurrying for presumed fixes like giving preference to “referred” candidates. The big sites here are Jobster.com and Linkedin.com.

MORE GEE WHIZ

Although leading job boards will send you daily e-mail alerts about the latest jobs that meet your criteria, the meta search engines take the alerts to the next level, spanning millions of jobs and passing on live job feeds as soon as a meta gets them (click a meta’s “RSS” subscription button).

Future columns will, from time to time, describe options that have the potential to electronically grease your search.

GO FOR BALANCE

While the Web is indisputably the engine driving job market change, Southern California career coach Mark S. James (hireconsultant.com) puts its value in perspective:

“A recipe for unemployment: Click/send, cross your fingers and hope the phone rings. A recipe for employment: Press a full-bore campaign that includes human networking and researching job leads from all media.”