Here are a few tips to help you land that dream job.

1. Proofread everything. From the earliest days of mailed-in resumes, this has always been good advice. However, despite the availability of spell checking tools, I still see resumes and emails from job seekers with typos. I’ve seen otherwise great candidates not make it past the first cut due to an unfortunate mistake. Take your time, and recruit a friend to proofread your submissions.
2. Get recommendations. Your best chance of getting a job with a company is to get a recommendation from another employee. Talk to your friends and past coworkers who have jobs at companies where you want to work. Even if they don’t have a job posted that you are interested in, you might get an inside lead on a job about to open. If you know the job you want and the company, see if you can find a current employee who can put in a good word for you.
3. Network. The best time to network is when you aren’t looking for a job, since it takes some of the pressure off. If you are looking for work, the easiest way to start networking is by finding some local meetups in your town that are attended by other people in your industry. Spend the time getting to know people and learning about companies where you might want to work. After you establish yourself and take the time to get to know people, then you can mention the job search, but don’t be slimy about it, and don’t be that person who only calls people when they need a job.
4. Refresh your LinkedIn profile. This is true even if you don’t use LinkedIn very often or don’t care about LinkedIn. At some point during the hiring process, it’s likely that someone will search for you on LinkedIn, and you want them to find an up-to-date, professional profile.
5. Have a web presence. With the tools that allow anyone to spin up a blog in a few minutes, there is no reason not to have some kind of web presence. At a minimum, put up an about page that has a short bio, link to your resume, portfolio content and links to anything else you want a prospective employer to read about you.
6. Blog regularly. Ideally, you would have a significant number of blog posts demonstrating expertise in your field when a prospective employer visits your blog. If you don’t already have a blog, I really do recommend it for anyone looking for a job. Blogging is one of the easiest ways to demonstrate your expertise to prospective employers. Having recent blog posts shows that you are interested and passionate enough about your field to go above and beyond the typical job seeker.
7. Search for yourself. Pick your favorite three major search engines and search for variations of your name or any online handles you use to see what a prospective employer might find out about you. Knowing what an employer might find will help you proactively address any questions they might have. If you have a web presence and you aren’t coming up very high in the search, you might want to brush up on a little search engine optimization to see if you can improve your ranking (but don’t resort to any tricks).
8. Do your research. Before going into that first interview, learn everything you can about the company, the job, the manager and anyone on the interview team. They won’t expect you to know everything, but they will expect you to be prepared and already know the basics. I try to include a couple of questions about the job and about me just to get a feel for whether they took the time to do their research. With almost everything online, doing your research has never been easier, but neglecting this simple task can get you eliminated.
9. Have answers to standard interview questions. This is another one of those pieces of advice that hasn’t changed over the years. There are plenty of lists of standard interview questions online, and they include things like top strengths, top weaknesses, why you want this job, what attracts you to this company, etc. If you have ready answers for some of these standard questions, you’ll be in much better shape when they throw you a really hard question.
10. Be professional. In all of your communications with prospective employers, you want to be professional. Ditch the unprofessional email addresses, swirly fonts and emoticons. Think about it … would you hire someone using “sexydude” or “hotmama” as an email address, or someone who emails you in purple comic sans? Ideally, your email address should include your name and your email should be in a standard, boring black font. Don’t forget to dress appropriately for that interview, but keep in mind that appropriate means different things depending on the company. While a suit might be expected on Wall Street, it might be less apporopriate for an interview at a local technology startup.

What are your tips for job seekers?

Photo by Flickr user Seabamirum used under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

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It can be too easy to slip into the daily routine of work and the rest of your life without thinking about what you love to do. The beginning of the year is a great time to reflect on what you really want to be doing.

Here are a few suggestions for finding ways to do what you love, and still pay the bills.

Reflect

Before you do anything else, consider what you are passionate about. Think back over the past few months.

• Which projects were you excited to be working on? These are the projects you wanted to work on late into the night — not because you needed to meet a deadline, but because they were so much fun and interesting that you couldn’t put them down.
• Which projects left you feeling energized and excited?
• What was it about the projects that you loved? Were you excited about the data, the technology, the writing, the analysis or some other aspect?

Once you figure out what you love, the next step is to decide how to do more such projects, and reduce the amount time you spend on work that leaves you exhausted and drained.

Rework the Current Gig

If you already have a great job, but spend too much time on work that isn’t interesting, you can often redefine your job over time to end up with a job that you are passionate about. Volunteer to take on a special project that really interests you, and see if you can make it into a full-time job. I work with someone who loves organizing events. She arranged several events as side projects, and when the team grew, she was able to convince management to make events her full-time job.

You can also look for new opportunities within your company, and change jobs to do something more interesting. If you think there’s a need for a role that doesn’t exist, build a case for it based on real data. Convince management that someone needs to fill this role, and that you are the perfect person to fill it.

Have Side Projects

Side projects can be tricky to balance. On the one hand, they can give you something fun to work on that you can control. But too many of them can leave you drained, and steal your focus from other important work or relationships. For me, the best side projects are ones where I don’t care if I make money. If I need the money, such projects become more like work and less like play.

I tend to launch random, fun websites where I can practice my skills while creating something a few friends will enjoy. Over the holidays, I started working on a vegan cookbook. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I know it’s the right project because I have been working on it constantly over the past few days and looking forward to the work. Eventually, I’ll get to build another website for the book.

Make the Leap

If you’re really unhappy in your current job or freelance situation, take advantage of an economy that is starting to rebound. Now is a good time to:

• Build new skills,
• Start working on different types of projects,
• Look for another job, or
• Make the shift to consulting or freelancing.

Take a fresh look at what you really love to do, and consider all the options.

What projects ignite your passion? Share how you have been able to find work that keeps you excited and energized.

Photo by Flickr user Marcy Kellar used under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

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Web workers don’t need to actively seek jobs to find them. These days, the jobs find their way to us. Job ads are part of the information overload that plagues web workers.

Once upon a time, we had to scour newspapers for jobs. Then we began to rely on friends and web working contacts to let us know about cool opportunities. But now even the most steadfast web company employees are being bombarded daily (or weekly, or monthly) with job offers.

It’s not just social media that’s the culprit — although personal recommendations of some job opportunities via social media certainly adds to their appeal. Web workers routinely have job searches set up on job networks; we have LinkedIn profiles and blogs. We’re constantly receiving tweets, emails, IM and calls from companies that are interested in our skills.

If information technology jobs are to the 2010s what factory jobs were to the Industrial Revolution, then web company owners have some serious competition to consider. Web workers can secure work in any industry, with employers of any size.

Sure, your hip little web outfit might have pool tables, a bring-your-pet-to-work day, and a flexible start time, but unless your company can also compete on the basics — pay rates, expectation of working hours, staff development, company culture — it’ll likely lose staff to the ebbs and flows of the job information that’s coming our way every day.

Here are the five benefits the web workers I know want in their next job (and feel they’re not getting now).

Stability

Even here in Australia, where the GFC had mercifully little impact on the local job market, the web workers I know are tired of restructures, layoffs and retrenchments. For those in other countries, the frustration must be considerable.

But stability also implies predictability: Can we expect our projects to run on time? How often are we fighting fires as a result of inadequate processes? How frequently are we called on to work unpaid overtime at the last minute? Perhaps it’s just me, but web companies seem often to have higher expectations of what their staff will do for them — and be able to achieve — at short notice than organizations in other industries.

Career Plans

Pool tables and iPhones do not a career plan make. While perks are cool, many web workers would like to have some idea of where they’re headed, career-wise. If they can’t see a career progression through your organization, they may well begin to listen to the job-seeking hubbub in their social networks, be they online or off.

The swift growth of web companies means that often, human resources essentials like periodic performance reviews, career goal-setting, and so on, can be neglected, leaving web workers with little idea of where they might be headed with their current employer — or whether that employer even cares.

Remuneration

Those job sites have a knack of sending web workers ads for well-paid jobs. If your web business can’t afford to keep up with market rates — or better them — you may well have trouble attracting or retaining good staff.

Contracting, too, is a growing field where web workers can often earn better rates than they would as a permanent staff member — and it delivers that other great benefit: flexibility.

Flexibility

The numbers of people who wish to work remotely, part time, or with more flexible hours is growing; several of my contacts have left employers who wouldn’t compromise on the full-time, on-site work philosophy. And why not? Lifestyle matters, and in a competitive market, employers who don’t offer flexibility lose out.

Trust

Linked to flexibility is trust: many of the constraints that we face in the workplace reveal that our employers simply do not trust us. Blocking access to certain websites, refusing to consider a policy of remote work, unrealistic non-compete clauses in employment contracts: all of these are common in the web work environment, and are clear signs of the kind of mistrust that poisons company culture.

If you’re interested in learning more about the needs of remote workers, and how to build and manage a successful virtual workforce, it’s something we’ll be covering in depth at our Net:Work conference, coming to San Francisco on December 9.

These points sound elementary. So why are so many of them lacking in web jobs? What do you seek when you look for work on the web?

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To provide you with some holiday ammunition or just a little holiday humor, here are a few of my favorite stories from the comments last year.

Deanna Zandt:

“I often try to make a joke first, it takes the weird edge off for some reason.

Them: So what do you do?
Me: I don’t know…
Them: What?
Me: I don’t know. I get up in the morning, and there’s a laptop there, and I sit at it and type things… [drift off]
Them: Um…
Me: I’m just kidding. I’m a consultant who does online strategy and builds web sites. It’s a weird job and it’s a blast.”

Steve Robillard:

“Me: ‘I am a consultant, I work mostly with higher ed.’

them: ‘Oh, so you work for yourself, I wish I could do that. I would work so much less. It must be great.’

Me: ‘Yeah except every time I try to call in sick I get a busy signal.’”

Julie:

“‘Must be nice to get to sit in front of a computer all day and surf the web.’

‘Yeah, I used to have to commute to an office to do that, but it’s much better now.’”

Travis Chillemi:

My least favorite goes like this:

Them: ‘What do you do?’
Me: ‘I am a web designer.’
Them: ‘Oh! My dentist also does web design. He/She is really good with Frontpage and stuff. He/She even has their own web site. It has something to do with Geocities…’
Me: ‘Yeah. I do dental work on the side, too. I even have my own drill and chair.’
Them: ‘Huh?’”

Taylor Brooks:

“Knowing that the conversation is probably doomed for awkwardness from the jump, I just tell people I’m in the adult film business or a drug dealer. At least you can control (or attempt) to control the awkwardness.”

Jason Glaspey:

“I just tell people that I make the internets.”

Amber Case:

“My entire family asks me to teach them search engine optimization. I want to wear a T-shirt that says ‘No, I will not optimize your web site!’”

Desirea:

“I usually just say ‘I’m a computer programmer.’ It usually scares them off of any other questions. If I get too deep, their eyes glaze over.”

John:

“I do the internets voodoo!”

cbright:

“When I get the glazed-over look, I just say I’m a part-time rodeo clown/psychologist. I’m in marketing, so I’m not actually lyin’…”

What are your favorite answers to the question: What do you do?

Photo by Flickr user Ed Yourdon used under Creative Commons

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Follow directions. This might seem like common sense but, as someone who’s been on the hiring end, I’ve noticed that many applicants still fail to follow directions.  If you don’t follow directions from the ad, you’re telling your potential client that you will have a hard time following job instructions as well.

Get a name, if you can. “To whom it may concern” is never a good opening line. Most job ads include the name of the contact person, and it’s a mistake not to take advantage of that. If there’s no name attached to the ad, look at the company web site or call them to get the name of the person you’ll address the application to.

Keep it as short as possible. Even if you’re required to answer several questions, keep the text concise. You’re competing with dozens of applicants, most of them writing paragraph after paragraph about their unrelated work experience and maybe even their life story. As someone who prefers receiving short but clear messages, I do my best to keep outgoing messages that way as well. It pays off, too. Many of my clients have replied to my applications by saying, “What a breath of fresh air! I was getting tired of reading 40 long emails about this job.”

If you’re worried that you might not be saying enough about yourself, remember that your portfolio and work experience will speak for you.

Have a template ready, but always modify it before sending. Templates are useful for freelancers, but sending these without customization gives off the wrong impression. Unmodified templates indicate that you’re sending the same application to several other potential clients, showing that you’re not that committed to a particular job or project. Whenever I hire contractors, the template applications go straight to the trash bin.

Know how to follow up. When I was looking for a researcher two years ago, one of the applicants immediately emailed me the day after, “Do I have the job?” I politely told her that I’m still going through applications and, as I mentioned in the ad, I will contact all applicants within the week. Again, she emailed me the day later, as well as the day after that. While I understand how excited and anxious one can be during the application process, it’s best to keep these feelings to yourself. Constantly following up on your application can drain your energy and annoy your potential client.

Still, you have to be responsive when you’re asked to submit additional requirements or to schedule a phone interview. One of my friends is so afraid of phone interviews that she doesn’t reply to such requests. If you’re not comfortable with some of the requirements, communicate with the prospective client. Don’t leave them hanging.

Although you have to keep several things in mind when responding to online job ads, it gets easier with practice. Don’t get intimidated by these things, as they’re part of the reality of online freelancing. After all, it’s still easier than wearing out your shoes by rushing from building to building and spending long hours in the waiting room for an interview.

Do you have any special tips for freelancers responding to online job ads?

Image by lusi from sxc.hu

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In using the site, it’s clear that there are a lot of potentially valuable tools and resources for job seekers within, but you have to be a little bit focused and savvy in digging them out…qualities that motivated job seekers need to have in any event!

GlassDoor is arranged into three main sections: Salaries, Reviews and Interviews. Salaries, for example, can be looked at from the perspective of things like popular jobs, by industry, location, company and occupation. Digging deeper, into the Business Analyst Salaries area, for example, reveals a number of “sneak peaks” of salary ranges for business analysts at companies like Accenture, Deloitte and JPMorgan Chase. For those three companies, we’re told that business analysts at Accenture make between $44,000 and $75,000; between $36,000 and $73,000 at Deloitte; and from $34,000 to $106,000 at JPMorgan Chase.

I’m not sure how much value there is in seeing those broad salary ranges (which obviously will vary based upon experience and specific needs), but when you dig even deeper to the level of, say, business analyst at Accenture, there’s the potential to obtain interesting information that you would not ordinarily find out until a company is in the process of making a formal job offer. This includes what kinds of bonuses companies might provide (cash, stock and profit sharing), sales-based compensation and tips. The information is provided by GlassDoor community members, so there is the potential for it to be anecdotal or incorrect, but still, the insight provided could be difficult or impossible to obtain elsewhere.

While some areas of the web site are provided on GlassDoor as “sneak peaks” at present, for many selections you’re triggered to register or log in, and are heavily prompted to provide input about companies that you have experience with to augment the community’s knowledge base. (Penelope Trunk calls this “a great moment in altruism” as GlassDoor promotes “helping other people to get a job without knowing how doing so will help you.”) This makes browsing around the site while not logged in feel a bit awkward, and, overall, while looking at GlassDoor I kept asking myself questions like, “Why do I have to log in to see this?” and “Why are salaries, reviews and interviews kept in such rigid ‘silos;’ why not just create comprehensive company pages that integrate all of the content and information associated with them?”

Another impression is that GlassDoor will be most useful for people thinking about working for large companies. Large companies have the potential to get greater numbers of user-generated responses on salaries, reviews and interview-related questions, for one. Additionally, in terms of learning about what to expect on an interview, a large company is more likely to have clearly defined job descriptions and hiring guidelines that will be of use for job seekers. That said, there is great potential value for small companies as well, provided that those leaving feedback are not merely disgruntled current or former employees looking to get even!

Overall, it’s clear that the time has come for a community site that provides deep detail on company salary information, hiring practices and cultures. GlassDoor has the potential to own this space, and I’d fully expect the user interface and site architecture to further improve as the community grows.

What job seeking resource sites do you use? Share your tips in the comments.

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This is the third in a series of online community manager posts over the past couple of weeks here on WebWorkerDaily. I’ve already talked about online community manager jobs and what community managers actually do, so I thought that we’d talk about what it takes to be successful as a community manager. There are skills to learn and work habits that are useful for community managers.

Here are just a few of the skills and habits that people have already mentioned in the comments of the previous posts.

Amber Naslund says, “it’s not a 9 to 5 gig, and it’s a hybrid of so many disciplines – communication, business development, online knowledge, customer or client service.”

Joe Manna says, “most successful community managers are those that come from a strong customer service background.”

Lex Friedman says, “If you like to listen and love acting on good ideas (regardless of their source!), you’re probably a good fit for the career path.”

I also have my own list of what it takes to manage an online community.

• Patience to let others participate without dominating the conversation.
• Networking with a wide variety of people and being able to call on the right ones at the right time.
• Communication skills to get your point across clearly and concisely.
• Facilitation to help people keep discussions moving in a positive direction.
• Technical skills and an understanding of how your community software operates can help.
• Marketing to make sure people know about your online community.
• Self Motivation and the ability to work without much supervision.
• Workaholic tendencies in a global environment where the community never sleeps.
• Organization skills to keep track of the many activities without dropping too many balls.

What do you think it takes to be a successful community manager?

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JobCompass

After pinpointing your location, JobCompass allows you to search for jobs by keyword, specifying the range from your current location which interests you (5, 10, 25, 50 or 100 mile radius). After finding a position which you seem well suited for, it’s simple to send an email to yourself with a link to the job description or, for those with quick fingers and enough patience, to open the listing in Safari and apply for the job straight away.

Read more about this app on TheAppleBlog.

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Since launching in 1999, the company has worked to expand their offerings, integrating some features to create more than just a job site and more of a work tool. What interested me beyond the job marketplace is Elance’s concept of a Remote Work System with the goal of creating a remote workspace for freelance workers to provide them with additional incentive to continue using the site after the job match has been made. The features are meant to help service providers manage a part of their work through Elance and give buyer and service provider more ways to connect and transact business.

The areas Elance has been beefing up to create their “remote work system” include:

1. The Interview Process. Beyond matching up a buyer with a service provider with specific skills that meet their project needs, Elance offer an integrated chat function and a click-to-call function that allows the buyer to place a call to the provider anonymously and for free. Providers can also take “certification” tests via Elance to evaluate their level of expertise and ostensibly giving buyers more of an assurance of a provider’s skills.

2. The Payment System. Elance now offers an escrow account so that once a buyer and seller match up, the buyer can place the payment into an escrow account via Elance with the intent to assuage the provider’s mind that the money is there upon completion of the project. The payment still needs to be triggered by the buyer so even once a provider completes the job, there is no guarantee that they provider will be paid. However, Elance also offers dispute assistance for both buyers and providers.

3. Tracking Project Status. With a new status reporting system in place, buyers can set milestones for providers to meet, and providers can report on their status showing progress against milestones on a percentage basis. Elance recently implemented  a time tracking widget that a provider can apply to a deliverable or milestone, add notes for the buyer, and attach files. The time tracker can also cover units of work such as blog posts. Status reports can then be converted into invoices once work is complete.

The company says that while they are offering enhanced features to help the buyer and provider manage a portion of the project, their site is not necessarily a replacement for a more robust project management system like Basecamp. Like Basecamp, however, the new Elance features offer an archive of interactions and communications between buyer and provider which is especially invaluable for a provider who is working on multiple projects at once.

Out of curiosity, I did several searches to see what freelance opportunities fit my skillset, experience and interest. There were a good number of web site and blog content development jobs open for bid, however, I found too many that didn’t seem to add up in terms of pay.

For example, one blogging job had a budget of $500 but were looking for someone to craft 5 blog posts per week. The duration of the project wasn’t visible but after just a few months time, the pay per post for that job would be embarrassingly low.

Another blogging job was paying an hourly rate which seemed a little unusual for work that is more commonly paid by the unit i.e. on a per post basis. Another wanted 20 articles for less than $500. Maybe a good job for an inexperienced writer working up some portfolio pieces, but there is no way to slice $500 by 20 and get anything resembling decent pay.

So while I’m not convinced Elance contains a wealth of well-paying, high-quality writing jobs for established Web content developers (I can’t comment on the programming jobs since I’m not a programmer), it could be a good place for a novice to find their first jobs. Plus the site provides some extras to help  manage those jobs.

What has been your experience with Elance or other “bid” job sites?

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