PLACES TO GO These are Dick Bolles's five favorite web sites for job hunters (in no particular order). www.metacrawler.com This is the search engine of search engines. You type in a phrase or key words and it searches the results of several search engines. Then it rates the results. Bolles loves this site and said it's a great place to go when you're beginning your research. www.jobsmart.org This site, said Bolles, "has the most incredible series of salary surveys...and a lot of other fun stuff." If you don't know how much salary you should be asking for, you'll want to visit. www.dbm.com/jobguide This site, named the "Riley Guide," is a gateway site, sort of a guide to all guides on the Internet. Margaret Dikel (formerly Margaret Riley) "was the first one on board with a gateway site to all the Internet sites for job hunting," Bolles said. www.golden.net/~archeus/worksrch.htm Gary Will runs this site. Bolles called Will, "one of the best minds on the Web." The site contains dozens of links to articles on things such as interviewing techniques and resume writing. www.learn2.com Bolles said this is the site that teaches you "all the things you need to do to get through life." Among other things, you can learn how to get a close shave, clean your bathroom and talk about wine in an intelligent manner. Warning: Don't go to this site if you're a procrastinator – you'll never leave!

By Sarah Schafer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 10, 1998; Page F09

Moving your job search to the Internet? Be careful; you might only be increasing your frustration, says Richard Nelson Bolles, author of the ultimate guidebook for job seekers worldwide, "What Color Is Your Parachute?"

If you have flowers to sell and you're in Amsterdam, Bolles said, you go to a certain large market in a central location. Everyone in Holland knows that's where you buy and sell flowers, he said. "When the Internet was created, there was the opportunity to create a job market on it that would be like the flower market in Holland," where everyone would go to find and offer jobs. Unfortunately, that didn't happen.

But, said Bolles, once you prepare yourself for the fact that trying to find a job online is a lot like playing the lottery, you might as well try it. Besides, he added, there's much more to do online than simply post your resume or scroll through scattered job listings. Bolles, who has written a section on The Washington Post's Web site (www.washingtonpost.com/parachute) for online job seekers, offers guidelines for those jumping into the ether with hopes of landing the perfect job.

Where do I start?
There are only two alternatives to this, whether or not you're on the Internet. You can start with yourself or with the job market. For example, you can find out what the hot jobs are, where the most openings are, and everyone will say they're in computer engineering. Ten years later you're bored out of your mind, your relationships are in shreds and you're taking Prozac because you let the job market tell you what to go into.

Instead, sit down and say, "What are my skills? What am I good at?" . . . [Once you've decided what kind of job you really want] . . . you should first go to career counseling sites. Your quandary [may be knowing] . . . which field you should be in, in which case sites such as the Birkman Method quiz (www.review.com/birkman/birkman.cfm) might be useful. Or you could be trying to find out if you're a good match for a job, in which case you can go to sites such as www.career-pro.com/profile.htm or www.keirsey.com for personality testing. There's no harm in going to the job posting sites to look, but have a realistic expectation. . . . The odds of this paying off are like the Powerball odds.

Are there any fields where the odds are better?
I estimate about a 75 percent success rate [of getting a job] in computers, engineering, electronics, technology, health care, finance and academics. But there are 20,000 job titles, and if you stop to think about it, at a good site you might see 300 or 400.

How many employers actually post jobs on the Internet?
Nobody in the world knows that. The problem with the Internet is, it loves stats. The stats it loves are called hits – these are what it can use to get advertisers – but effectiveness is another issue. How many employers actually look at the resumes posted, for example, is depressing. One company had 85,000 resumes on its site, and in the last 90 days, how many employers looked at them? 850. Another site had 59,283 resumes posted, and in the last three months only 1,366 employers came to look. Another site had 30,000 resumes, and only 15 employers looked.

Should I still post my resume? What are some of the other drawbacks to doing this?
Yes, but the main problem is that you don't have any idea, except in a few cases, how many employers are looking at you. Also, it's often too easy to think that because you've posted it you don't have to work on your job hunt anymore. This myth is perpetuated by these job posting sites that have these "search while you dream" programs. When you visit these sites they have a search "robot" they claim will do the work for you. For example, it will notify you by e-mail when a job that matches [the key words you've provided] comes in. Job hunters love the idea. It's an incredibly wonderful idea. Unfortunately, the idea often leads nowhere.

Besides actually looking for a job, what other career-related things can I use the Internet for?
There are five uses the career hunter can put the Internet to: career counseling, making contacts, research, looking at job postings and posting resumes. If the first three were done more, you would find a much higher percentage of successful job hunts.

Are newsgroups (online areas where users can post and respond to messages on a specific topic) a good place to go for making contacts and doing research?
It depends on the quality of information in them. There's no [filtering] as far as that stuff is concerned. So, if five disgruntled employees want to put stuff in a newsgroup, no one is going to stop them. But newsgroups are an interesting place to start.

First, you have to figure out with whom you'll share something in common. Say I love gardening, I can type in "gardening" and "jobs" [he types it into Metacrawler, a high-powered search engine], choose newsgroups and search. It displayed 66 groups dealing with gardening and jobs.

If that didn't work, you could just type "gardening," then start talking to the people about gardening there, and once you get an idea of what kind of job you're looking for, start asking those people what's available out there. It helps if you can get people in a specific geographic region. . . . I prefer getting information from the Web rather than newsgroups, though. In newsgroups, you often only find people advertising their services.

Instead of sending a cover letter and resume, is it acceptable to e-mail a potential employer?
Who would you e-mail? For example, what's the likelihood of getting a job through the human resources department [e-mail or no e-mail]? The president would be a better place to start, but if you couldn't get your message across in 30 seconds or less, you'd be dead. Some employers happen to prefer e-mail, but you have to find that out ahead of time. Most employers won't allow people to access them that way, so they'll give the account to a secretary and have him or her sort through the e-mails. Some people get 500 e-mails a day. So the answer is: It varies greatly depending on the employer.

How long should I spend job hunting online?
No more than 15 percent of your job hunting time should be spent online – and that includes all five activities [career counseling, research, making contacts, etc.]. Two-thirds of all job hunters hunt for less than five hours a week, which is despicable. But let's assume you spend 35 hours a week, than you should only spend two to three hours of that online.

Questions on getting ahead? E-mail Sarah Schafer at schafers@washpost.com.