Beacon Staffing Services, Inc.

Employment Agencies like Beacon Staffing Services are usually well connected with top employers. If you have a few years of experience and have built up some expertise using skills that employers still feel are hard-to-find, then a good agency should still be able to help, even in tough economic times. But what if you don't have experience yet?

On campus recently at MIT, I was surprised to find many really bright students still without job offers. It seems that this year's economic meltdown is taking it's toll on campus too... Take a look at some of the things you can do to help your own cause in search of that first job.

WHERE ARE THE JOBS POSTED? 

First, some must-know websites. Lets start with the places that companies who are looking to hire new grads use, to post their entry level openings:

• www.experience.com
• www.monstertrak.com

Forget most print media your parents may remember as being helpful...  NO ONE uses them any more... 

What are the best web resources you can use to network, and find people who can help you? What sites are a waste of time? Also, what's one of the best way to teach yourself how to effectively use these tools? (answer = youtube tutorials...)

• LinkedIn
• Let's say you are graduating from Bentley  with a Marketing degree, and you want  to work in the greater Boston area; check out these search results. to see how you might use LinkedIn to find people who will help with your job search. Let me ask you this: Do you think this list might help you contact people who  understand your  situation and would  be willing to take your call? Learn to use LinkedIn; master it. Consider strongly a paid subscription; the search results returned when you have a paid account draw on the ENTIRE LinkedIn database, not just the much smaller result set that the free version returns.
• YouTube tutorial on how to create an account profile on LinkedIn
• More YouTube help: Linkedin - Suggested changes to your public profile
• Demo from YouTube of LinkedIn's Redesigned Homepage
• Everything you ever wanted to know about building a LinkedIn Profile

• Beef up your profile on LinkedIn using info from your resume; if you use Outlook, download the LinkedIn toolbar for Outlook, which is designed to make Outlook & LinkedIn work well together. The toolbar will allow you to easily send 'Invitations' to connect with you on LinkedIn to anyone in your Outlook Contacts...  The 'invitation to connect' is also an opportunity for you broadcast the message that you are in a job search, and to ask the people who know you to forward any job opportunities they may know of... And while we're talking about Outlook Contacts, make sure you get yours up to date with the names and contact info of students, alumni, references, and study abroad contacts you have made over the years. These will form the basis of many future business relationships you'll utilize down the road.
  
• Facebook.com... Not a huge fan of Facebook for finding jobs...Very few companies use it effectively to recruit. BE SURE to turn on your privacy settings so future employers don't see you for the party animal you may be...  Great tool for telling friends and acquaintences, and the world if you want to, that you could use their help because you're LOOKING FOR A JOB! 
• MySpace.com...  ditto Facebook comments
  
• My Alumni Office... (not the Placement Center...). As you will see once you graduate, the Alumni office is machine-like in their ability to find graduates, and regularly ask for some of their money. They know who earned which degrees, where they live, and how to contact them. Sound like something a job seeker could use? Press them for their help, especially if you have been a regular fundraising contributor.
  

What should it look like? One or two pages maximum if you are a new grad; 3-4 pages maximum if you are an experienced professional. Students should include a list of key classes taken, everyone should include GPA (if it is good, i.e. over 3.2), and detail your work experience listed in reverse chronological order. Have two or three people proof it for errors. Some ideas for resume content:

1. Include an Objective to focus the interest of reader on exactly what you want to do.
2. Make multiple flavors of your resume (but ONLY if you can keep track of what resumes were sent to specific companies).
3. Beef up your work experience with details showing exactly what you've done and offering examples of most complex problems you've resolved.
4. Bulletized lists are easier to scan quickly than sentence after sentence in a paragraph
5. Build a section entitled 'Skills Summary" to share with the reader exactly what tools, operating systems, test equipment, languages, trade organizations etc you are expert in, member of etc.
   
6. Add a few hyperlinks to your resume in spots where reader can click if they want details about something they may not be expected to know
   

Where do I post it online? Post your resume online at Monster, YahooHotJobs, Dice, CareerBuilder and on Craigslist. Consider TheLadders (though it is a paid-by-jobseekers site). Go back and update those resume postings frequently because when employers search resume databases, the default listing order is usually by date from 'newest' to oldest. Refreshing the posting date by making small edits puts you back at the top of the search results.

Tired of logging into Monster then HotJobs then Dice then Careerbuilder then boston.com to search for jobs???  You should be! It's almost impossible to keep track of who you have applied to and from where, not to mention that these are only the PAID job postings. There are thousands of jobs advertised ONLY on company jobs pages. And you New Grads, do not assume that all entry level jobs are only found on MonsterTrak.com and Experience.com. They are NOT! In fact many are never posted there either.

Whether you are and experienced professional or just graduating you MUST get familiar with some new sites that will make your life MUCH easier, not to mention will show you MANY more jobs...They are meta-search tools that aggregate job postings from EVERYWHERE, meaning ALL the paid boards you used to log into ine at a time plus nearly all company and employment agency career pages. Think of them as dogpile.com or clusty.com, but for jobs only... Here are the big 3 (indeed and simplyhired are my favorites)

• Indeed.com
• SimplyHired.com
• GetTheJob.com

You MUST learn how to use meta-search job search sites like www.indeed.com, www.simplyhired.com, and www.getthejob.com.

Build agents to email you automatically overnight anytime a new job is posted that matches your skills.

SimplyHired even automates the process of finding people on LinkedIn who work at the company whose job opening you are viewing. It makes it possible to find people you (or your LinkedIn Connections) know at the companies you want to submit a resume to. Send to the HR people in the job posting, but also try to get someone on the inside to float the resume to the right people, or to give you the name of the actual hiring manager.

Good search results only come from understanding how to string the RIGHT keywords together. If you need help understanding Boolean Logic (which is 'necessary' knowledge to build & execute accurate, focused searches which utilize the right keywords), or if you don't understand what 'agents' are, and how to use them in a job search, find someone who can teach you. These are absolute requirements for successful job searching.