S P O N S O R S

November 9, 1996 --- Here are a couple of Resume and Job Hunting Shareware pieces:
• Personal Resume Kit
  
• Right Resume for Windows
  
• JobHunt with Resume for Windows (Lite)
  
• Resume On Disk
  
• Job Search System, Marketing and Sales
  
• Career Match
  
• Job Hunt Manager (needs Mac Filemaker)
  
• Simple-Resume-Guide (Mac)
  

My Boss

November 8, 1996 --- One thing is true. Whether yesterday, today or tomorrow at some point in your life you will say, my boss is a "#!$#@!" .

So opens My Boss, a website devoted to bad bosses and other reasons for changing jobs. According to the creators:

The inspiration for this site came at our annual New Year's gathering of old friends. We traded the usual war stories about school, families, jobs etc. Jobs, however, lingered in the spotlight the longest. It seemed as though everyone present had a story to tell. None of us, regardless of education or experience, felt very happy or secure. The culprit, time and time again, was pretty easy to identify. It was that under-trained, under-brained, insensitive idiot we called a boss. We shared one horror story after another. Some though were quite comical. We could tell this was a major trend.

The site's features include:

• Statistics of Pain
• One Liners (You might recognize your boss here)
• Layoff scoreboard and a
• Kind of meager set of job resources.

If you're feeling frustrated in your current position, take a look at My Boss for some company.

November 7, 1996 --- We didn't like the new look at first. We're so used to the shocking contrasts of current web design styles that the soft and subtle shadings wandered right by us. As we spent time on the site, we became convinced that ESpan has its users at the heart of its new design.

We hate, as you've seen, being reminded that our test browsers don't support Java. With our high end superfast gee whiz equipment, Java still craps out our machines with annoying frequency. Even with the negative message at the front end of our experience, we found the new ESpan to have a characteristic we rarely encouter on the Web: thoughtfulness.

A tour through their site shows that they've carefully tried to understand the needs of their customers. Where most sites "personalize" with a razor sharp appeal to a specific need, ESpan seems to support and nurture. A set of very well organized links and tools provide job hunters and HR professionals both with useful resources.

The gentle colors, strange as they seem initially, serve to support the site's objective of making your interaction with ESpan an effective experience.

Take a look. It's very, very nice.

Blinded By The Light

November 6, 1996 --- R.A.Ward wins our "Most Intense recruiter site of the moment" award. The site greets job hunters who use stable platforms (like Netscape 2.0) with a lecture about using a better browser. We assume that it's so you can see more blinking graphics.

In spite of it's negative introduction, and if a twitching interface doesn't give you seizures, we suggest you take a look.

The company is a serious player in the Healthcare and Technical Recruitment scene in the great Northwest. However, a click on their jobs link took us to a page that said "This page has moved here". Clicking on the here link took us to another page saying the same thing. And so on.

Keep checking, we bet it will be good when they finally get it right.

A Hunting We Will Go

November 5, 1996 --- Job Safari is simple and to the point. With 720 companies listed in alphabetical and geographical order, you search and apply. And, the design is cool. Where do you want to work today?

Timing Your Resume

November 4, 1996 --- Email boxes fill up with crud at the end of the work week (from Wednesday afternoon to Friday Night). All of those free email newsletters seem to descend in one great glob as the week heads towards to the finish line. If you want to be noticed by a human (as opposed to just getting into the resume databases), send your resume out on the weekend.

You'll accomplish several things:

• Even if you prepare your submittals during the week, it will look like you're working weekends;
• The Monday and Tuesday mail is lighter, you stand a better chance of being seen if you hit mail boxes immediately after the close of business or first thing in the morning.
It's not that much different from regular mail.

More Resources

• Companies with Job Ads (Nearly 1500 Links to Companies and their Job Postings)
• Tools (Everything You need for a Job Hunt)
• The daily newsletters are archived in weekly volumes in the Archives. Past issues include:

Many of the items are also included in the Tools Area. The Web's largest collection of Employment related resources is also included in the Tools Area. -----------------