Interviews

One of the lasting effects of the recession of 2009 may be that many upper middle class parents who expected to send their children to private universities now can’t afford it. And since those families are probably too well-off for financial aid, there will be a huge boom in attendance at state colleges and universities, and even community colleges, which are upgrading their offerings at a furious pace.

But that might not be the only route for future students. Read More »

We’ve all heard the stories of those whose imprudent online postings (usually involving some choice words about an employer or a poor choice of photos of themselves) cost them a job. In the past few weeks it happened to a New York City government staffer, who resigned after posting her views about the President (whom she dubbed “O-dumb-a”) and his handling of the brouhaha over the arrest of  Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

These are gaffes, and the people who made them should know better.

But lately I’ve been pondering the opposite situation. In this era of online engagement and revelation, can it ever be a problem to reveal too little or to have no online persona at all?

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How’s this for a new economy hiring twist? A group of Fortune 500 companies including Starbucks, 7-Eleven and Hyatt Hotels, have invited job seekers to join a free resume-sharing service that allows companies to save on recruiter fees and job-seekers to reach a wider audience of employers.

In order to join, go to UnitedWeWork.org, click on “job seeker,” and you’ll be taken to a page powered by QuietAgent, a job search site that allows you to input your resume and be alerted to job postings that fit your goals. Actually, you can bypass United We Work entirely and go directly to QuietAgent and it seems like you’ll get the same opportunties.  

I’ve been playing around on QuietAgent for a while and like the concept. Once you successfully create your resume, the site matches you with opportunities that fit your profile, much like the dating site eHarmony. The difficulty I had was that I couldn’t easily build my resume because there wasn’t a job function for many of the things I do -- no listings for reporter, journalist, or blogger, for example. Read More »

On Monday morning I met Deborah DiRago because we were both guests on the public radio show, "The Takeaway."  We were there to talk about DiRago’s efforts to find a “job search buddy” -- someone who would help her stay motivated and accountable in her job search.  DiRago has been unemployed since May, when her job in international event planning suddenly disappeared and her company announced it was shutting its doors. 

After a while of navigating the job market on her own, DiRago decided that it would help if she found someone to meet with regularly to move along her job search. She says she is looking for the kind of person who’d hold her to task if she said she was going to make 5 career-related contacts in a given week. 

So far, the job buddy search has been almost as challenging as the job search.

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A few years ago, video resumes got a bad name when aspiring investment banker Aleksey Vayner made the now infamous video showing off his many talents (including images of himself bench-pressing 495 pounds, karate-chopping a pile of bricks, and serving a tennis ball at 140mph). Vayner's video went viral, but not in the way he wanted. Rather than causing a stir around his creative efforts to find a job, Vayner's name became shorthand for "video resume disaster."

But when video resumes are good, they can be very good. As is the case with "Hire Me," a new video created by recent Bentley College graduate Alec Biedrzycki, which was released last Tuesday.


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Now that so much of the job search process happens online, the most common complaint I hear about is the “black hole” -- that mysterious place to which resumes seem to travel from the moment an applicant hits the “send” key.  If you’re involved in a job search where you feel like you repeatedly send out resumes in response to ads and rarely hear back, then it might be time for some new online search techniques.  Try these 5 tricks to shake things up:

Answer questions on Linkedin
Your strongest chance of being hired is to find ways to show off your expertise and build relationships in your field. One easy way to do this is to troll the “Answers” section on LinkedIn and start responding to questions where you think you can be helpful. People whose answers get high ratings show up on a list of experts. Nabbing one of those spots is a terrific way to ensure that people using the site to fill a position will find your profile.

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