MakeUseOf » job search

Two Easy Ways To Create Visual Infographics Of Your Résumé

Angela Alcorn — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 22:31:00 +0000

Creative jobseekers are always searching for new ways to distinguish themselves to potential employers. One of the quickest ways to do this is to make your résumé stand out from the crowd. Once you’ve got their attention, they’ll hopefully notice all those great skills you have. In the meantime, you’ve got to turn your résumé into something which looks really interesting. And who’s got the time for that?

Luckily, for those of us with our résumés in LinkedIn, there are services available to do all of the visually creative stuff for you. All you need to do is sync your LinkedIn account and your visual résumé is ready for use.

Here’s two of the best visual résumé creators you can try for free.

Update Your LinkedIn Profile First!

Firstly, since both of these great visual résumé services import your information from your LinkedIn profile, the best approach to creating a great résumé would be to update your details in LinkedIn before you start exploring these options. That, and your LinkedIn profile is more useful when updated regularly, too.

Vizualize.me

Vizualize.me is a one-click LinkedIn service, meaning you can jump straight into viewing your visual résumé and creating eye-catching content. The content is taken from LinkedIn, but it’s not a two-way sync so nothing will be saved back to LinkedIn after you’ve finished.

There are several great themes to choose from, plus a lot of control over which details are shown in the profile and exactly which colours to use for your style. The resulting infographics are rich and well-designed.

Recommendations from colleagues look especially good in the Vizualize.me format, making a feature of your achievements as seen by the people you work with. Don’t forget that word-of-mouth recommendations are the most memorable! Make sure those kind words about you get noticed.

Re.vu

Re.vu gets you to create an account and choose your URL before linking to your LinkedIn account. Then it’s a simple authorisation process with LinkedIn to get your details imported. You can further tweak your details if you wish, or upload a photo and a résumé in document form if you like.

Once you’ve saved the basic information, you’ll be able to choose a theme for your profile and decide exactly how you’d like your information presented. Then, simply promote it as you wish and update the details whenever you need to.

The re.vu themes are eye-catching and stylish, plus they allow you to upload your own background if you want to personalise the page further. The visualisation of your work history is especially good if you’ve worked multiple jobs as it shows clearly how you’ve spent your work time.

Choices

Both of these services provide great profiles for jobseekers. If I were to make comparisons, I’d say Vizualize.me had more bells and whistles, while Re.vu was easy enough for the average grandparent to understand. Both profiles looked fantastic and took very little time to create. I’d personally recommend using both – since you can’t have too many résumés out there working to get you a job.

4 Things To Remember For Your Next Technical Interview

Jessica Cam Wong — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 01:31:56 +0000

I recently had an interview (for a summer internship) for which I was told beforehand I needed to bring a pencil in case there were technical interview questions to do with coding. I was particularly nervous about the last bit but soon enough, Google winded down my nervousness a bit. I scoured the web for any type of prep material and was glad to find many sources of guidance for situations like mine.

If you’re soon facing a technical job interview, here are a few resources you should probably check out before the big day.

Find Out What NOT To Say Or Do

This really applies to all types of job interviews, not just programming job interviews. I think it’s safe to say that you should really think your answer through before you blurt anything out or do anything. That’s quite common sense, but when you’re nervous, it’s easy to blank out and forget things. Well, you’re not alone.

There’s a relevant discussion on Stack Overflow called “What is the worst interviewee answer?” where you’ll see a lot of amusing things interviewees have said or done. Here are samples from the poll:

I can’t tell you how often this happens in phone interviews: Me: [asks interview question about a specific technology]
Them: [repeats question as I can hear them typing]
[short delay]
[I hear a "ding" from IE when Google gives them a list of pages, "click"]
Them: [reads from a webpage]
Me: OK, well, thank you for your time. Don’t call me, I’ll call you.

That was the top voted poll answer. Lesson to take away – don’t cheat. Surprised?

Here’s another one:

I’ll never forget it. I said…
“So tell me a bit about yourself…
and he replied…
“I recently invented the div inside a span.”
He had it listed on his resume too – just like that – invented it.

You probably should NOT say you invented invalid markup. Just a thought.

Here’s another simple thing you should not say:

“Will you write out a little function for me on the whiteboard here?”
“No.”

Not putting a lot of effort into an interview might just bite you back later on. Lying on an interview might also bite you back.

The setup: “I’m an expert web programmer, was a DBA for a few years, lots of background in security, yeah I know all about that”
The lowball: “Okay, so how would you go about preventing SQL Injection?”
The fumble: “Weeell, thats not really the type of thing I’ve ever dealt with….what is it exactly?”

For more responses, be sure to visit the original poll. Though you may feel tempted to mock some of the poll responses, just remember that when nervousness strikes on the big day, it’s not all fun and games anymore. What you can do before the big interview is realize that there are actual lessons to be learned from these funny responses.

Find Out What Coding Questions To Expect

There’s no guarantee that you will receive a coding question that’s been posted on the web but if you can answer some of the ones that have been asked and shared online, you might have a better chance of not freezing during this part of the interview.

Here are a few sample coding questions:

“Coding exercise: return the summation of a list of line-separated numbers from a text file.”

Give a one-line C expression to test whether a number is a power of 2. [No loops allowed - it's a simple test.]

“How would you count the number of words in a string consisting of uneven number of spaces between words( not dictionary words)? With and without library functions.”

Test yourself with more questions on GlassDoor and Kundan Singh’s website, the latter of which also provides excellent general strategies for technical interviews. Don’t assume all data is given to you during a coding question, think out loud, etc.

If you want actual books on the topic, here are a few titles that have been recommended (links lead to Amazon):

Get A Refresher In C/C++/etc. And Logic

If the last tip revealed that you are rusty in a programming language, here are a few places that will help you get a refresher or crashing course. The book, Programming Pearls (2nd edition) is a classic book that has been recommended quite a bit since it has lots of exercises and tutorials in C and C++ to help you think like a programmer. James also is posting a course here on MakeUseOf, so go check that out. There are also many websites with tutorials (and even video tutorials!) that you can review.

For actual coding practice, a site that I haven’t seen talked about anywhere but that my Java professor had us frequent a lot is CodingBat. It’s a site with simple (and sometimes difficult!) coding exercises in Java and Python. For practice with your logic thinking skills, Project Euler has lots of logic/coding challenges.

Find Out What The Overall Interview Experience Might Be Like

There’s a lot of people that have blogged about their overall experiences while being interviewed for corporations like Microsoft and Google. Even if you’re not interviewing with precisely these companies, your technical interview experience may be similar. Here are a few blog posts of interest:

There are plenty more if you search around. From these posts, you’ll find out that the candidates had a lot of preparation beforehand. The other thing you’ll learn is that the interview process lasts some strenuous 6 hours or more. There are other little things that will help you get a feel for what to expect during on-site interviews, which come after the initial screening interviews. Regardless of how far you get in the interview process, it’s always good to know that there are similar people in your shoes that have survived these interviews, and it is always interesting to read their experiences.

I unfortunately didn’t have a lot of time to prepare for my interview, so I invite you to prepare yourself now with the steps outlined and get lots of practice in logic and coding problems.

Have you had a technical or programming interview before and wish to share your experience? Let us know in the comments!

Image credits: Ambrophoto, Andre Blais, winnond, kentoh

5 Tips For Navigating The Craigslist Jobs Jungle

Matt Smith — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 15:31:08 +0000

Unemployment is an issue in much of the world today. There are many people looking for work, but not enough companies hiring. As a result, job hunters are trying to find ways to find and apply to as many jobs as possible.

Craigslist is an obvious solution, and one I’m familiar with, as I’ve worked with several businesses that I found through Craigslist’s Jobs section. However, I also found myself wasting time on supposed opportunities that turned out to be scams. Learn from my experience and you’ll save yourself time and heartache.

Don’t Pay To Play

Okay, okay. This one might seem a little obvious, but I feel like it is worth saying for those who are just starting in the world of Craigslist job hunting.

Never, ever pay for job opportunities.

Often, these are scams, but they’re not always so blatant. Creative types, such as writers, graphical artists and even programmers, will often come across advertisements for job boards focused on a specific area of expertise. Joining is usually free, but you’re not allowed to apply to jobs without paying – or if you’re allowed to apply, your application is given some disadvantage that virtually guarantees you won’t be selected.

Technically, sites like this aren’t always scams because some people do in fact find jobs through them. Even if you do find an opportunity, however, it will often be of poor quality. The employers who use these boards are often aware that someone desperate enough to pay money to find jobs will also be willing to work on the cheap.

Avoid Suspicious Sales Jobs

Another folly that often trips up Craiglist job searches are the mysterious sales jobs. These are companies that compensate their employees primarily by a sales commission, and often promise outrageous income for little work. Such a job might not be bad if reasonable base pay was available, or if employees weren’t often expected to spend significant amounts of their own time and money in the search for a big sale.

Ironically, these jobs often catch searchers off guard with promises of high base pay. Usually this is qualified by a phrase such as “per appointment” or “expected” because employees are paid not by the hour but for individual sales appointments and leads, plus whatever commission comes from them.

Also look out for group job interviews or promises of preliminary training sessions made by overly enthusiastic employers. Often these so-called interviews turn in to sales pitches, where employers eagerly convince a captive audience to ignore the terrible base pay and lack of benefits in the hopes of earning big commissions.

Apply Now! Seriously

The Internet is all about the now. News, now! Entertainment, now! And of course, jobs – right now!

If you’re going to be successful on Craigslist, you need to approach it with the ability to act immediately. Often, an employer who posts a general advertisement will receive a few hundred resumes within a day. The chances that you’ll be picked aren’t great if you’re not one of the first twenty or thirty applicants. Job hunters applying to positions that require special skills will have a little more time, but it never hurts to be quick.

How can you make sure that you’re one of the first to apply? Use Craigslist’s RSS feeds! Many people forget that this function is available, and I don’t blame them, because the site tucks its RSS feed button down in the bottom right hand corner of its pages. If you want to be lightning-quick, subscribe to your local Craiglist Jobs RSS feed both on your computer and on your mobile device.

Tapping Out Templates

Using templates is controversial among job hunters, but I fall on the side of using them. Today’s high-volume online job search forces hunters to be brief, giving them time to apply for as many jobs as possible.

What I don’t recommend however, is that hunters use pre-packaged templates. Instead, create your own! This can easily be done using Microsoft Word. My suggestion is to create templates for each specific type of job you might apply for, such as customer service, office management, etc. Make sure the template has sections where the name of the specific company you are applying to, if known, can be inserted.

You can even save a copy of the template to your email or on your mobile device so that it can be altered with a document editing app. This will make it possible for you to apply while out and about, ensuring that your application arrives first!

Use Alternative Craigslist Search Engines

Perhaps the biggest limitation you’ll encounter when using Craigslist to search for jobs is Craigslist itself. The grouping of jobs and locations that you are sorting through may not be the best for your specific job hunt.

Fortunately, there are other Craigslist search engines that can help you. We’ve already covered these in a separate article, so go check them out! They could save you a lot of time.

Conclusion

Job hunting is no one’s idea of fun, but these tips will hopefully keep your time unemployed as short as possible. If you have any of your own advice, let us know in the comments!

Image Credit: Job Hunting – The Blog

2 Tools To Turn Your LinkedIn Profile Into A Neat-Looking Resume

Ann Smarty — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 01:30:34 +0000

I have already mentioned that LinkedIn has proved the most meaningful social media network for me for years: I have found that, because of its business focus, it is less vulnerable to spam than other social media networks, almost clutter-free and much more productive.

However LinkedIn isn’t only good for networking: those who maintain detailed LinkedIn profiles can turn them into informative online resumes to jump start their job search.

There are a few handy tools that will both allow you quickly import your LinkedIn professional summary, help make it look neat and professional and even let you host your resume for free.

Here are a couple of great options:

Resume Builder

Resume Builder is by far the quickest way to turn your LinkedIn profile into a professionally looking, minimalist resume. It was created as part of LinkedIn Labs and the whole process takes no more than a few minutes:

Start here and sign into your LinkedIn profile;
Look over your professional summary and edit / delete any information you need;
Pick a resume template that best suits your style: clean, modern, business, gray, law and more.

Now you can download your resume as PDF, print it, share online (via email, Facebook or Twitter). Note that you will need to set the resume as public to be able to start sharing it.

You can also use the “outline” mode to change the look of your resume: just remove or drag-and-drop the sections you want to change:

2. DoYouBuzz

DoYouBuzz is an excellent and very user-friendly website that lets you quickly build a detailed resume by fetching your professional information from your LinkedIn profile.

It has both free and paid plans (the latter has a few more appealing templates but I never needed them as the free version has proved absolutely complete).

The process is very well organized – you will be surprised how smoothly you are being moved from step to step until you have the resume ready:

Sign up for n account and conform your email;
Import your LinkedIn profile;
Edit / remove any sections that have been fetched from your LinkedIn profile (or add new sections)
Choose and customize your template (you can choose a design and then select your own color palette):

As a result you get a free online Linkedin profile resume that you can both link to or download to send to a potential employee:

Privacy settings and notes:

If you care about your privacy, there are a couple of notable things to mention here:

Your resume will have “nocache” header tag which will prevent Google from saving it in its cache. This means that your future employees won’t be able to access the resume previous versions and will only be able to see the current one (this is a very smart feature by the way)
There are a few privacy settings inside that allow you to hide your resume from public view, exclude it from DoYouBuzz search results or hide it from everyone.

Note: There’s another similar tool called Comoto but it is not that usable.

Are you aware of any other tools that make it easy to re-package your LinkedIn profile and turn it into the detailed resume? Please let us know in the comments!

Image Credit: cc licensed ( BY SD ) flickr photo shared by michaeln3

Get A Job With An Internet Startup Using College2Startup

Angela Alcorn — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 21:31:43 +0000

Do you ever wonder how people get involved with the up and coming Internet startup companies? Are you a recent graduate who’s hungry to find meaningful work with a company who has the potential to really make it big? Do you love the idea of working for a startup, possibly working long hours to achieve lofty goals, but knowing that you’re working on something exciting that could really go somewhere? If this sounds like you then you’re going to love College2Startup.

It’s a simple concept, really. College2Startup work hard to bridge the gap between college students and the newest up-and-coming startups who need great talent. They connect the dots and everyone else involved is happy with the results. But it’s no ordinary job board.

What Is College2Startup?

College2Startup are a bunch of masterminds who connect great startups with talented workers. Essentially, the jobs are advertised via a mailing list which interested workers can subscribe to for free. This means anyone can apply for any of the jobs that come up – and there are some great ones!

What College2Startup does is control the application process. All applicants apply via the College2Startup website using the web form provided. This allows the startups to access a database of possible applicants and to filter them in whatever way they think best. The startups therefore find the best people and the best people also find the best jobs. What’s really exciting about College2Startup is the quality of startups advertising positions and the quality of the jobs they are offering.

Sadly, the College2Startup website is a little lacking in that it doesn’t really make clear which top startups are offering jobs through their service. I was a little dubious to begin with, so I signed up for the mailing list for a while to make sure it was really worth it. In just over a month I’ve seen jobs advertised from big names such as Foursquare, plus numerous smaller startups that sound really interesting.

What’s In It For The Talent?

The jobs on offer from College2Startup are not just your everyday office job. These jobs will test your skills and creativity, lead to all sorts of opportunities and often come with a decent sized pay. If you’re keen to work for a startup, you probably know what you’re up for – and these jobs are unlikely to disappoint you.

Given that the College2Startup service is free for applicants, if you’re looking for work with an Internet startup company there’s no reason why you shouldn’t sign up right now.

As well as the College2Startup mailing list, you can be kept in the loop via Facebook or Twitter.

What’s In It For The Startups?

Due to the College2Startup application system, startups can filter the applicants however they want. Each advertised position is emailed to over 7,000+ startup-friendly applicants who then apply with specifics about their education and qualifications as well as their regular resumé.

In the end, startups pay a modest fee and receive applications from numerous interested parties which they can pick and choose from. That’s not a bad deal either.

7 Websites That Will Help Your Career With Company Information & Anonymous Job Reviews

Saikat Basu — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 19:31:41 +0000

Time was when jumping into a job was very much like stepping into a dark alley. You really didn’t know what you were getting into. Company information came in from the grapevine and hearsay. Getting a job was the prime need; work culture and the question – is this a great place to work – came much later.

But thanks to the information age, the web is the best career tool you can have at your disposal. Type in a company name and you are sure to get more than a few hits which will give you a peek into what a company is about. After all, there are people talking on the web: both disgruntled ex-employees and the contented ones. Take LinkedIn for example; it’s a great tool to find out the raves and the rants.

Going beyond LinkedIn, let’s check out seven more career websites that collect company information and job reviews.

Vault.com

It is one of the preeminent career websites on the web but unfortunately it is not totally free. The free Basic membership gives you company and job overviews; access to discussions and newsletters; and job listings. The topic specific blog is a nice place to do some career related reading especially the Career Advice blog. The discussion boards are a mine of information and you can pick up some valuable pointers thanks to the comprehensive filters the site provides to sift through the messages. Even the Basic account gives you enough hints with its overviews and company rankings.

Ping My Company

The career related website’s ‘disclaimer’ reveals its true purpose (as you can see on the screenshot). Just a scroll down the comments gives you an idea of the companies that are doing well in the employee’s eyes and the ones that aren’t. As a ‘Pinger’ you do not need to get registered and can contribute anonymously your feedback on the company you are working for or never want to work for. Green colored comments show approvals and the red ones augur disapprovals. It’s also a forum for companies to respond to the issues raised by the community.

Rateyourjob-Rateyourboss

It was difficult for me to gauge the popularity of the site, but at least it’s pretty much updated with rants against the guy who is above you on the job ladder. This site does not require a log-in and you can browse or read comments on quite a few jobs and bosses. Of course, the comments are bound to be majorly subjective.

JobBite

You can use the alphabetical listing or the search bar to dive into the index of companies and learn about their work cultures. Each company gets a salary rating along with an organizational one on this plain Jane website.

Wovox

Wovox says it in photos and pictures. It is an assemblage of workplace photos and reviews that enables you to get a good idea of the workplace you might be employed in. Snoop around the site and look at pictures, watch videos, and read reviews. Discover a company and its culture.

Career Leak

This website lets you research employers, job description, and companies. Find out salary information, and get interview tips. The job reviews and salary information are first person accounts by people who are (or were) employed in the companies.

Glassdoor

Glassdoor is a salary comparison website but alongside all that anonymous sharing you also get an idea of the job and company. You can trawl through the job listings or narrow down to the company of your choice. The site has a U.S. focus for now, but it could start covering international workplaces soon. The number of reviews stacked up for the popular names is quite impressive and that really makes for accurate ratings on the site.

Job aspirants can also look through JobVent to see if anyone is blowing steam over their prospective employers there. Then there are the good ‘old fashioned’ social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn that you can use for some serious company research. We have covered quite a few job and career tools in the past. From job search to job tips, the web gives more power to the guy who is beating a path through the corporate hallways. Have you ever researched a company on the web before signing on the dotted line?

Image Credit: Shutterstock

5 Twitter Job Services For Some Real-Time Job Search

Saikat Basu — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 19:31:35 +0000

Twitter may not merit a serious look as a job hunting and recruitment tool. But that’s something a fresher or even an experienced professional will be ill advised to overlook. You can bet that when Twitter increasingly has the power to spread revolutions, it can be a vital ally of your job hunting campaign.

In its overreaching popularity lies its job hunting prowess. Companies are increasingly using it spread their updates. Vacancies and recruitment’s are just one of them.

Even if you do a simple search for a job lead on Twitter, you will be surprised at the number of links that total up. I am not even telling you to do an advanced Twitter search or develop industry specific social strategy. We are talking here of Twitter services that do the job of distilling relevant job tweets for you so that you can find jobs on Twitter.

Here are five of them.

Tweet My Jobs

Somehow the image on this Twitter job app says it all. It is probably the largest Twitter job board on the web. The About page says that they have 10,052 vertical job channels segmented by geography, job type, and industry. The service is used by people on both sides of the table, the recruiters as well as the job seekers. It is free for job seekers. As a job seeker, you can sign-up and subscribe to a channel of your interest. Any news jobs available are sent as instant notifications as a Twitter feed or on your mobile. Beyond this, you can use the service like a regular job site: post your resume to companies or forward jobs to friends. Using TweetMap, a Google Maps mashup, you can geographically target jobs of your interest.

TwitJobSearch

This Twitter job search engine is another well designed and maintained service which could be the answer to your job search prayers. You can instantly sign-in with your Twitter account and start a hunt. The site allows you to save jobs to your account, have an online resume, and network. Creating a profile on this web service involves some fine-detailing as recruiters see what has been posted. You can also link the public LinkedIn URL or any other online CV you might have. The Advanced Search is just one way to trawl through Twitter job updates. For an industry specific browse, you can go to the directory which lists ‘Job Accounts’ for selected countries. Using the Job Map, you can visually see the jobs that have been tweeted about in the last 72 hours. The site also has a free iPhone app.

Job Shouts

The easiest way to get the dope on the latest job postings collected by this site is via Twitter. JobShouts.com is a social search tool for jobs across many job boards that include LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. All jobs are screened by the site, so the potential to hit the genuine ones is much higher for the job seeker.

Tweetajob

Jobseekers can search for jobs related to their interests and like most Twitter services, you can target jobs by location. Think of Tweetajob as a job search engine powered by Twitter. You can choose to receive job tweets on your Twitter feed or as SMS alerts on your mobile phone. Start searching with your Twitter account and build your profile as it helps the service to send you more targeted job alerts. The site is limited to U.S job postings currently.

Twitter JobCast

The site serves as a simple listing for jobs put out by employers. If you have a Twitter account, you can @reply and find out your suitability for the job. Because it is a simple listing with a #hiring hashtag, the quality may not be top-notch, so it falls upon the job seeker to do all the screening before applying for the job. The listing covers United States, Australia, Canada, UK, and India.

There’s probably nothing more real time than a job search. These five Twitter tools could just help you get ahead of the queue. Here are some more posts that you can pack in your arsenal:

8 Sites For Beating The Job Hunting Blues
Top 10 Most Effective Job Search Websites
5 Salary Comparison Tools For Your Next Job Search
4 Tricks To Get Better Results From Job Search Engines

Do you know of any other search tools to find jobs on Twitter that we can add to the list? Also, do let us know if you have ever managed to bag a job with the help of Twitter.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

intheDoor Helps You Find a Job by Leveraging Your Facebook Connections

Angela Alcorn — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 21:31:45 +0000

Can there ever be too many good ways to look for new jobs? I don’t think so – and I think most job seekers would agree that if it leads to work it’s worth a try. In the Door has created a new, innovative way of searching for work by using your Facebook contacts as leads for jobs that are already advertised.

In The Door revolves around the adage that “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know”. It’s true – what you know merely gets your resumé on the pile along with that of every other talented jobseeker, whereas the people you know can tell the person doing the hiring that you’re the one for the job. In The Door seeks to make it easy to match who you know with the jobs out there.

Using In The Door

The process is simple. You sign up to In The Door with your Facebook login and a list of contacts is automatically generated for you. The contact list features any of your contacts who have entered employer or location information – it’s not limited to people who have already signed up with In The Door. This makes it easy to get started, since you don’t have to wait for a critical mass of friends signing up to In The Door. You may wish some more of them would add relevant information and make it shareable to applications, but if you have enough friends on Facebook it won’t matter that not all of them share this information.

Finding Jobs

Using the site, you will realise that you can browse by location, search for specific keywords or location, or browse the companies represented by your friends. This gives you a wide variety of ways to find work using In The Door. When you find a job you’re interested in, you can always view your contact at the company, allowing you to arrange an introduction.

Browse Companies

Currently, In The Door is still quite new and most of the jobs are USA only. But this will expand quickly and doesn’t completely stop non-USA users from making use of the site. Browsing the companies your friends work for still has advantages, since you could use that information to chat to the friends you know who work (or previously worked) at the company of your choice. It’s easy to see at a glance where your friends work using In The Door. It’s certainly much easier than browsing your friends’ Facebook profiles individually or searching all the companies that sound appropriate.

Once you find a company you like, the jobs available there are clear to see.

Search by Keywords

Searching by keyword means you can narrow down the exact role you’re interested in, or you can search by role as well as location. Handy if you’re not willing to move!

Location Search

The location search page works on the assumption that you’re most likely to want to live in cities with your friends – that and that most of the jobs available via your friends will be in those cities. The cities best represented by your friends will be easy to spot, then you can quickly click a link to see the jobs available in that city.

Competition: Other Places to Find Work

In The Door has plenty of competition in LinkedIn, the Facebook marketplace and a number of similar jobseeking sites with much the same idea, such as Jibe. But with job searching being such an important process, there can never be enough options, really. Unlike Jibe, In The Door is able to be used instantly and permanently without any need to sign up your friends.

How did you find your last job? Through advertising or friends? Do you think In The Door would be useful to you next time you need to search for work? Let us know in the comments!

Image Credit: ShutterStock

Fiverr – A $5 Marketplace For Anyone Looking For A Service

Angela Alcorn — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 21:31:56 +0000

Imagine you’ve got a photo of yourself or a friend which you really like, but you know it could be made perfect with just a little Photoshop magic. Except you don’t really know much about retouching photos yourself so you’re a little stuck. What you really need is a friend or helper who can just do it for you, maybe in return for a few drinks. How will you find that person? Well, these days we have Fiverr.

Instead of hassling your friends, you can browse Fiverr to find someone offering the right sort of services. You can even check out examples of their work and ratings from previous customers before you ask them to do the job. And when you make the deal, you’re only promising $5. It’s only as risky as asking a friend to do you a favour and promising a few drinks in return. How’s that for a great idea?

What’s Fiverr?

In short, Fiverr is a marketplace, connecting people who have skills they’d like to sell for $5 with people who want small things done for $5. The $5 price point is crucial and leads to some fascinating offers.

Sign-up is quick, directly through Fiverr or even quicker with a Facebook login.

What Do People Sell for $5?

On Fiverr, there are people selling Photoshop skills, offering to draw pictures for you, offering to post postcards from a particular country, offering virtual assistant duties, posting special family recipes, singing happy birthday, offering critiques of websites, giving tourist advice of their local area, songwriting, giving industry advice, writing your name in Chinese calligraphy or elvish, taking photos of messages in coffee froth, proofreading and all sorts of other random offers.

Browse by popularity, rating or the type of service and you’ll get a feel for the variety of skills available on Fiverr. The ideas are wild and varied — some of them are so unexpected! Browse away and you’ll find yourself thinking “Hey, that would be cool. Yeah, I’d pay $5 for that!”.

If you do want to buy someone’s services, Fiverr links into PayPal to make payments simple.

What If No-One Offers The Skill I Want?

If no-one’s offering the service you’re after specifically, you can also advertise as a buyer in need of that service. To do this, look for “Request Gigs” in the right-hand column. Say what you’d like done for $5 and see if anyone takes you up on your offer.

What Could You Sell For $5?

As you’ve seen, there are many possibilities as to what you can sell through Fiverr. What is clear though, is that people selling their skills must quantify exactly what they will do. For example, “I will proofread one essay under 2,000 words within three days”. If you don’t specify how long the essay, how many essays you will proofread or how long you will take, things will get confusing for the buyer. Also be careful if you’re offering to post things — think of how much it would cost to post worldwide before you offer!

It seems as if some sellers are trying to undercut others by offering to do an incredible amount of work for their $5 fee. That sort of thing happens everywhere — just don’t buckle to the pressure if you think you’re worth more (which you are). Browse the site thoroughly as there are some very imaginative offers out there which would be quite useful for the buyer and yet easy for the seller to do. Let them inspire you into profitable ventures.

At the top of most pages in Fiverr is a box where you can offer your services for $5. Start there and it will allow you to add more details in the next page, including specifics and an example picture. They also make it easy for you to share your Fiverr service offers with your friends on Facebook, Twitter or elsewhere.

What Else Might You Use?

Obviously, Fiverr isn’t the only online marketplace for services in the world. There are many other ways you could solicit services or offer your services for hire online. The Facebook Marketplace is one of the simpler examples, followed by Craigslist. Any freelancing marketplace shows some similarity to Fiverr, eg. PeoplePerHour or MicroWorkers. Also worth considering are the other tools listed in this article on how teens can make money online.

Despite all these similar market options, Fiverr still has a unique selling point – that is, the $5 price tag. This encourages both the buyers and sellers because it’s an appealing amount.

What is the best service you’ve seen on Fiverr? Have you found it easy to use? What do you sell through Fiverr? Let us know in the comments!

Test Your Tech Skills & Find A New Job With Gild

James Bruce — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 17:31:27 +0000

One problem I’ve found when attending job interviews in the past is demonstrating a range of technology skills, without having to show full projects to a client or take expensive specialised certifications. For most of us, we may know a little CSS / PHP / HTML, but how can you show this certificate information to a potential employer?

Meet the Gild, a free website with lots of technology-based certifications, for free, that are actually recognised by companies. If you’re really good, you can win prizes too!

Certification

At the core of Gild, there are over 30 core technology based tests on all the major programming languages as well as software and systems in top demand by major IT companies. Each certification is broken into 3 levels and takes between 20-60 minutes to complete. I’ll be honest and say most of them are quite challenging, even on the basic levels. I tried some last year and got mediocre results, but I spent a few hours again this morning and had improved greatly. Unfortunately, test scores take 3 days to be graded, but you’ll get an email when they’re done.

Profile

This is the really exciting bit that you can show to potential employers, where the results of your tests are shown. You can choose not to display individual results on the public transcript if they’re pretty bad. If you get above a certain score, you will receive a medal too. Unfortunately my British grammar school education only left me with a measly bronze in written English, but no matter. I took the advanced level while writing this article, and I’m fairly certain it pushed me higher! You can view my own public profile here, but promise not to laugh. You can even add a full CV, and use the URL as your professional web presence.

You even get achievements, where you can showcase your medals and such.

Job Search

If you score a perfect 800 on the advanced PHP test, you’d be wise to apply immediately for some of the high level IT jobs that are listed on the site. Another great feature is the “pre-qualified” jobs section, which extrapolates jobs you’re suited to depending on your test results so far. Don’t be sad if you see the following though, you just need to specialise a little more!

Competitions

If you’ve got talent, you can easily get some great prizes that are sponsored by major IT corporations. The competitions are understandably high level and focus on either on programming or abstract cryptography or logic puzzles – but they’re open for anyone to try. The prizes on offer are usually some kind of tech gadget like an iPad or camera, but I haven’t been good enough to win anything yet.

Even if you’re not a programming master, I think this is a great way to gauge your skills overall and leave you with something you can actually show an employer – even if you’re not heading for an IT specific job. For non-tech jobs and smaller companies, employers are often grateful if you can demonstrate some tech knowledge such as HTML and CSS to fix the company site. Even if you’re not looking for a job, taking tests is fun!

Let us know what you think of Gild and what test scores you managed to achieve!