RecreationJungle

The Internet offers huge opportunities for a job hunter, but also presents several potential challenges. It also adds several complexities, and a lot more things to think about…and be careful of.

Job hunting needs to be thought of as a highly personal, highly directed marketing operation where you are the product. Your resume is an advertisement. Your extended network is your source for information.

So where does the web fit in? At AA-Careers, we recently posted a job on Craigslist and got hundreds and hundreds applications in a calendar week. For a single job. That’s increased competition.

Had a strong person gotten ahold of us before we posted the ad, they could have landed the position before having all that competition. How? By finding someone at our office who became aware of the job prior to posting. Everyone knew of the job for at least 11 days before it was posted. Who in your network might know of a job that’s coming available soon?

Be sure to check your cover letter and resume carefully! When we did an analysis of the 650 resumes, we found a large number of errors. 63% of the applicants were easily removed with a fast triage process. How? The same way any employer would. By passing over resumes where the objective didn’t match our job posting. By rejecting candidates whose cover letters gave us reasons not to hire them, like "I know I’m overqualified but I really need a job". By eliminating prospects whose documents that didn’t open properly. And by eliminating job hunters who didn’t bother to spell check their cover letter and/or resume.

So the good news is that job sites give you a sense of who is hiring, and for what kinds of positions. But once those jobs are posted, the competition is intense. You can still compete, if you have a well written resume, designed to appeal directly and clearly to the recruiter. And if you have practiced interviewing – so you don’t stumble at a critical point.

Another issue to be aware of is how quickly and easily you can be looked up on the net. As we Googled several job hunters, we ran into some pictures and comments that were in questionable taste. Nothing insane, but enough to tilt our thoughts about who to hire.

AA-Careers provides a broad set of services for Bay Area job seekers, providing our clients a personal career consultant, a managed job hunting campaign, modern tools like a personal website, video, highly targeted resume, and much more. Let us know if we can help you.

Be careful out there, and good hunting!

Founded in 1969, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has a relatively new grant-making program in environmental conservation. But when it recently granted the New Jersey-based Drew University with $950,000 for the launch of an environmental major, one is hardly surprised. In America, Mellon Foundation has been hailed one of the most generous nonprofit organizations. Yearly, the foundation has been known to shell out around $185 million worth of grants. This particular grant funds a new academic major called ESS or Environmental Studies and Sustainability. It should equip prospective students with the intellectual ammunition to tackle convoluted environmental issues head on. By default, students in this program are expected to live according to sustainable practices. Its multidisciplinary compendium of courses includes Geographic Information Systems and Environmental Science, with room for internships and exchange programs abroad. However, Mellon Foundation’s environment grant-making, all in all, has been very biased towards research on plants and terrestrial ecosystems. Likewise, it prefers leaders in the field at hand. Surely Drew University’s new major touches on these things, let alone exhibit leadership. Nevertheless, the Mellon Foundation has been on the lookout for talented researchers not only in the US but also in South America and South Africa. Apart from the environment, the Mellon Foundation has made grants in other areashigher education, scholarly communications, performing arts, research in information technology and museums and art conservation.

Ted Waitt and the Waitt Family Foundation are active in supporting science and education.

Philanthropist Ted Waitt has a collection of quotes on ThinkExist.com.