Your Virtual Self and the Job Hunt

I recently received this very interesting and informative article by Susanne Markgren on how to manage your online presence. Certainly, it can be no secret to anyone by now that employers can, and do, search for information about you online. That's only fair; I do the same thing to potential employers before I even bother to fill out their application. Frequently I find information about them which indicates financial woes or other issues that cause me to look askance at some aspect of their management or stability. Who wants to go to the trouble of moving to some place and end up being left high and dry?

As few years ago, as a lark, I googled myself and was amazed that a quote of mine in the local newspaper had been picked up and run in American Libraries. Some took offense at my comment and used the quote as a reason to vilify me. I don't find that online discussion any more, which is just as well. But the thing I have to wonder about is this:

We are told that resumes have to be concise because poor employers are inundated with hundreds of applications and they apparently have no more than 30 seconds to spend looking at any one of them. How, then, is it possible that these same overworked employers have the time to spend googling us and making judgments based on blog entries, Facebook status updates and the like?

I refuse to apologize for having an opinion and expressing it. Those libraries who fear my thoughts lack a fundamental conception of intellectual freedom.

New Scam Preys on Jobseekers

Are there any genuine employers posting on CraigsList? One gets the feeling that there aren't. I've posted before about Janice at getjudgment.com, to whom I had no recollection of being in contact. She offered an interview, but only after I went to some spurious link and entered a lot of personal information.

The new scam seems to be people replying to mail sent to a blind email address on CraigsList for a job with the supposedly welcome news that as they said earlier (even though I've never been in contact with these people before, nor do they bother to say what exactly the job is or how they know about me) yet oddly enough they know of the perfect job for me and they want to schedule an interview...but only after I have gone to a site where I can get a free copy of my credit report and then email them the result.

Uh, sure. Here, perhaps you'd like the PIN number for my ATM card as well...

Challenging Job Requirements

So I was cruising through jobs posted via my state employment agency. Here are just a few of the "very challenging" requirements for a job posted for Charter Communications:

Ability to use, handle, and manipulate objects such as paper, pencils, keyboards, and mouse

Knowledge and ability to use the following office equipment: computer, telephone, copier, fax, calculator, and stapler

Dang! And here I was all over this posting until I saw the bit about being able to use a pencil and stapler!