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The Newest Online Job Hunting Tools

They Can Help, But Be Selective

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There’s a new generation of gizmos and doodads to help you with your job search. Now you can zap your resume to thousands of companies with one click, have multiple job sites monitored for you daily, or get a video resume employers can watch on the Net. How do these products work? And are any of them worth paying for?

Let’s take ‘em one at a time, starting with Multiple Job Site Aggregators (MJSA’s). Now here’s an idea whose time has come: go to one website, tell them what kinds of jobs you’re looking for, and the city or region you want, then poof! Automatic updates on your specified jobs from thousands of sites where openings are posted.

Too bad Canada is well behind the U.S. in this realm. The only legitimate service I could find in this country is petersnewjobs.com. It’s still quite new and is only available for Toronto and Ottawa so far. Still, it’s really intriguing. Their website says they’re already tracking over 7000 sites. According to their blurb, they “scan each site, identify the NEW jobs that have been just posted since the previous day, record the link and job title and package them into a clean, easy to read email and send it to you each day, Monday to Saturday.”

It’ll cost you $20 for a 3 month Toronto job list subscription, or $40 for a year. Not bad, since you get postings from Workopolis and Monster, Canada’s two largest job banks, as well as from thousands of company job pages.

Another new-fangled tool for job seekers is Automated Resume Distribution (ARB). Basically you pay a service like Findajobcanada.com or idonovan.com to send out your resume via e-mail to the recruiters in their respective databases.

The premise seems simple: By putting your resume in the hands of many recruiters at once you vastly multiply your chances of success. At first blush this may make mathematical sense. Unfortunately it’s not that simple.

For instance, what about keeping control of who sees your resume? Say that dozens of competing recruiters in the GTA are on the Findajobcanada.com roll. And a few of them happen to like that resume of yours they’ve all received. So they each send a copy of it to the same employer, for the same job, on the same day, without informing you. Know what? It’s nearly certain you, the applicant, will get rejected—even if you’re a perfect fit. That’s because employers risk getting sued if they choose one of these agencies over the other.

Then there’s the matter of who your resume is sent to within these recruiting firms themselves. Ideally you’d e-mail your applications one at a time, customized in response to a specific job posting. Then you’d find out who at the agency is looking after that particular order. This way you can e-mail it to that person directly, and follow up with a phone call several days later. But with ARB, your resume—except in certain cases—is as unsolicited as spam. One exception to this rule is ResumeTarget.com. They claim to be the only Canadian ARB whose database consists solely of recruiters who have asked to be sent resumes directly, according to your industry type and location.

Lastly, be careful about scams. You should probably avoid any service where you can’t reach a live person by phone to validate how you’ll know if your e-mailed resumes are ever actually sent out.

Pricing-wise, you can expect to pay up to $100 to reach 1,500 recruiters across Canada. Check out the fees at Alljobagents.com, Findajobcanada.com and idonovan.com, for starters. You’ll see there are cheaper packages too.

The third type of job hunting tool that’s emerging is the dynamic resume (versus the regular, static version that sits there on a page nice and quiet). Hop over to WowResume.com for a look-see. What you get is a flash enabled resume with motion, music and graphics.

Truth is it’s definitely eye catching. You’d never know it takes less than a half hour to cut, paste, select and preview a very presentable version. I love how you can choose pulsing rhythms and catchy opening scenes. Dancing lines and colours morph spryly before your eyes into “I’m the right person for the job.”

You can choose from two ways of accessing the resume: On mini-CD, which you can give out the same way we used to do with fridge magnets, or you can have it hosted online via the Web. You can even add file attachments and get a picture of yourself on the CD label (not recommended, by the way, unless you’re Brad Pitt or Jessica Simpson).

The cost is $30 for the version you can download onto any burnable CD you buy yourself. Add $20 if you want the online hosting option. It’s a cool $100 for a pack of 10 customized mini-CD’s.

Not content to merely see your mug on a CD resume? Why not go Hollywood and do the video resume thing. That’s right, you can emote just like Brad or Jessica to score that hot job. MarketYourself.ca, a firm in London, Ontario, will give you an “employment video” for less than $150 Canadian. Better start brush up your acting chops!

But before you call Mr. DeMille in for your close up, consider this: It’s not very likely people will sit still these busy days for dancing, musical resumes, or filmed extravaganzas about your job exploits. I’m convinced that someday these technologies will mature and be more effective. For now I’ll suggest you try to get as many jobs as you can coming to your e-mail everyday, while mastering the basics of networking and meeting recruiters. As things stand, high touch still beats high tech when all is said and done.

Mark Swartz, MBA, M.Ed., is a speaker, career coach and author. He can be reached via e-mail. The above article may contain material not included in the edited version.

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