Do On-Line Services Work While Looking For Jobs?
Then, of course, there is the Internet-the fastest-growing international on-line information system of all. The Internet is quickly evolving into online cosmos: important general business tool. In response to the Internet s mushrooming applied, all of the major on-line services are scrambling to provide access (particularly to the World Wide Web).

Universities, traditionally the bastion of Internet access, post their own job openings and those of related research institutions. University alumni associations have also become active in on-line job services, including resume databases for experienced alums as well as entry-level graduates.

One of the largest and most popular private job-and-career resources accessed via the Internet is the Online Career Center (OCC). The nonprofit OCC, supported by more than 200 member companies, provides job-and-career information, company profiles, job listings, a resume database, and access to other Internet-based job-and-career resources. The OCC reports a resume database of nearly 20,000 names (free entry), growing by 160 a day, and a listing of up to 12,000 jobs. The OCC tallies more than 4 million individual visits per month. Workers and employers in the U.S., Japan, England, France, and Germany are the biggest users of this system.

Internet career resources-resume databases, job posting locations, career management resources - are now opening up on the Internet faster than can be catalogued. Many employers package job postings with other profile information or link the postings to their World Wide Web home page. Newspapers, associations, recruiters, and individuals are flocking to the Internet to prospect for jobs or clients or to sell their wares.

Success rates for on-line job search and resume databases are difficult to determine. That's because the businesses that maintain these services normally don't go beyond the employer/potential employee "handshake."

These firms are not employment brokers or placement agencies; they only match and introduce. Job-seekers express confidence in this method by renewing their resume placements in resume databases.

In what must be a reflection (or at least a perception) of effectiveness, companies large and small are subscribing to and supporting online recruiting methods. But as outplacement firms, career counselors, and veteran job-seekers will all verify, finding a new job requires a multi-faceted, proactive approach using every available resource. Searching online job postings and placing resumes in resume databases are potent high-tech tools that can augment the process.

GOVERNMENT INFORMATION

The U.S. Government, spurred by the current pro "information highway" administration, uses online technology to help inform its citizenry. Federal job-and-career information is provided online through a series of agencies. The government has also embraced this technology as part of its military-to-civilian transition planning.

Government and industry are involved in preparations to create one-stop career centers. Here, public access to vast databases of occupational information will be sorted and delivered electronically as an aid to individual career planning. State governments, too, are currently enlisting online technology.

RESEARCHING YOUR TARGET COMPANY

Another opportunity on the online highway is for employment-related research: identifying organizations you might like to join, and finding out everything about them.

Here again, all major online services and many smaller specialized services offer resources to help you. Using these services, you could:

• Identify firms in an industry specialty within a specific geographic area
• Electronically sort and create mailing lists and labels for companies or recruiters that fit an area of interest or expertise
• Learn more about organizations to enhance interview performance
  

Many of these services are complex, expensive, and aimed at the professional researcher, so hiring a pro to help is prudent in some instances. Innovative outplacement firms have also included on-line research in their repertoire of career planning/job search techniques. Here again, the burgeoning Internet provides rich deposits of research information just waiting to be mined. The hypertext feature of the World Wide Web often accomplishes much of the task by linking scattered resources together.

Every day more reference texts, directories, and other collections of business information are appearing in electronic (i.e. searchable, selectively printable) form, either as CD-ROM products or as a component of an online research service. Libraries play a central role in these new forms of information dissemination, and are now frequented by white-collar job-seekers performing business research.