Re: Job search strategies: the personal marketing/jobhuntin' webpage

[David Castro <thetechwriter -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

> Realistically speaking, aside from Monster and HotJobs, do employers ever go
> out there and find out who's available and contact them from their profile
> pages on services like ours, or through search engines? For instance, try
> this search on Google: technical writer resume <your city>.

I don't believe that most employers go looking for potential hires on their
own. That would seem to me to be very time-consuming, especially since there
are people like me, who leave their portfolio sites up even when they are
gainfully employed.

On the other hand, I recently started looking through the access log for my web
site, and found that I'm actually getting a lot of visits to my portfolio. From
the samples that have been downloaded, it appears that it is probably
recruiters looking for someone with experience in the software product that I
documented several years ago (Obsydian/COOL:Plex). But, I did have someone
email me about a document that I had there...he wanted to get a copy of it (the
link was broken), because he used the product, and couldn't find the PDFs for
the documentation! He actually got the docs from me, a former employee, that
the tech support at my former employer couldn't get for him. I thought that was
rather funny!

> Where I have noticed people putting their personal URLs on their postings to
> this group, I've usually seen a nicely-laid-out resume. Have you ever seen,
> or created, a personal site that pushed the envelope:
> -that made you stand out to employers and recruiters seeking resumes and
> samples

I'm not sure how much my portfolio site has helped me in the past. I know that
some of the people who interviewed me took a quick glance at some of the stuff
I had there (enough to come up with some good questions), but usually, when
you're hiring, you don't have *time* to look at all the content on a portfolio!

> -that helped get attention for jobs that aren't necessarily the usual fare

Interestingly, this may come into play for me shortly. My company is almost
guaranteed to lay off employees at the end of January (if not sooner), because
our VCs are bleeding money in the stock market right now. So, I started poking
around on dice.com, seeing what was available in North Carolina. I searched on
the words "technical, writer, JSP", and found a *lot* of opportunities for
folks who know JavaServer Pages technology.

If I end up applying for any of those positions, then the JSP tutorial site
I've created to teach technical writers how to add JSP to their online help
will come in *very* handy. It shows you really know your stuff if you can
create an effective training site on a subject (in my opinion). And to tailor
the subject to an audience (in my case, online help developers) shows the
ability to write to a specific audience.

-David Castro
 email -at- davidcastro -dot- com
 http://www.davidcastro.com

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