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Using the Internet as a Career Tool

One of the great unintended consequences of the Internet and Worldwide Web is the creation of the ultimate career tool. At your fingertips is a wealth of information about careers, companies, networking possibilities and even the jobs themselves. If you know what you're looking for, you can clarify your job goals, target specific companies and geographic regions, even train yourself for a new career.

This guide shows you how to create a useful career resource for yourself. This resource should be a Word document that contains the following:

  • a list of the umbrella associations and societies that serve your profession--both national and regional. You will find many; some will be of more use to you at this stage in your career than others. Some will have membership requirements that you do not meet--yet. Regardless, these sites will still offer valuable advice and resources in career preparation, regional affiliates, networking opportunities, free e-newsletters, print publications, free archives and a list of links to other resources.

  • organizations that you can and should join NOW at a special student rate. Some of these may be same as those in the above list. But these join-now groups with student rates deserve special attention because you want to take action now. Spend your money wisely. In addition to saying how much it costs to join, you also want to know the benefits of joining.

  • URLs of job boards serving your specific career. Everyone knows and frequents the mega-boards like Monster, HotJobs, and so on. And that's their problem. Of more value to you are the job boards maintained by career-specific organizations. You should make special note of job boards where you are allowed to post your resume. Unlike on the mega-boards, these corportion or organization boards are looked at more closely because there are fewer resumes.

  • networking contacts. You are looking for working professionals that you can schedule an informational interview with. In an informational interview you say something like: "Hi, I'm  Pat Michaels, currently a student at the University of Maryland University College, and I'm preparing for a career in (your field). I'm talking to experts like you in to gather the latest information on current trends, legal issues, and other aspects I need to know about to best prepare myself. I'd like ask you a few quick questions." List some personal contacts that you can start with, but also list the names of leading professionals and officers of the professional organizations whom you will call. Don't want to do that? That's fine--others will and they will reap the benefits. Ultimately you will only get the job that you are willing to work for.

  • training sites/pages. At the sites you visit, look for the group's "training and career preparation" area. Here you will usually find an archive of free resources that provide essential background and insider information for anyone preparing to enter this field.

  • LinkedIn profile. In every field there are often a few resources that come up over and again as essential tools for anyone in that field. The number one resource that recruiters are using right now is LinkedIn. If you don't have a professional done profile on this network for professionals (LinkedIn is not a personal networking site), get one.

  • the results of one informational interview. To finish off this document, conduct at least one informational interview. You will collect the subject's history--how he/she became interested, what drew them to the field, their preparation and job history. But most importantly you want their advice about what someone in your position should be doing right now to get ready to get employed.

  • job variations. One of the effects of doing this work will be to expand your understanding of the many different job titles/career sidelines that may be possible in what you once thought was a unified field. For example, on a magazine staff you know that there are editors. But some editors have very different duties and skills. Some specialize in copyediting (rewriting), some in assigning story ideas and managing freelancers, some in writing a special kind of feature (health, beauty, fashion, equipment, and so on). As a final entry on this job resource, list any and all new job possibilities that you discovered by virtue of doing this work.

Finally: How long should this document be? I have some familiarity with many of these fields. Truthfully speaking, you could easily fill up 30 pages with this kind of stuff as you conduct your job search, copy and paste. During my last job search, I ended up with over 100 pages. Regardless of page count, be sure to ask these questions about every source you visit:

  • benefits of joining?
  • student-rate for membership?
  • job board?
  • free training and resources?
  • free publications?
  • networking groups?
  • whom would you contact for an informational interview?
  • links to other resources?

Sample: Organizations, Societies, Portals for Careers in Communications

Again, using communications only as an example, here is a sample of the major associations and societies that can be mined as job resources.

Society for Technical Communication (most states and major cities have branches you can join; job board)
http://www.stc.org/

Society of American Business Editors & Writers (student membership rates; job board)
http://www.sabew.com/news/home.htm

International Association of Business Communicators (student membership rates; job board)
http://www.iabc.com/

Association of Proposal Management Professionals (includes grant writing)
http://www.apmp.org/default.aspx

The American Society of Indexers
http://www.asindexing.org/site/index.html

Public Relations Society of America
http://www.prsa.org/

National Communication Association
http://www.natcom.org/nca/Template2.asp?sid=9

American Copy Editors Society
http://www.copydesk.org/

American Society of Journalists & Authors
http://www.asja.org/index.php

Online News Association
http://journalists.org/2007conference/

TECHWR-L
http://www.techwr-l.com/techwhirl/index.php3

IEEE Professional Communication Society
http://ewh.ieee.org/soc/pcs/

EServer TC Library
http://tc.eserver.org/

Association of Teachers of Technical Writing
http://cms.english.ttu.edu/attw

Newbie Tech Writer
http://www.cloudnet.com/~pdunham/newbietechwriterhome.html

American Medical Writers Association
http://www.amwa.org/default.asp?ID=1

Canadian Science Writers Association
http://www.sciencewriters.ca/

The National Writers Union
http://www.nwu.org/nwu/

MITWA (Mentors, Indexers, Technical Writers & Associates)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MITWA/

Mike's Tech Writing
http://www.mikestechwriting.com/

KeyContent.org
http://www.keycontent.org/tiki-index.php?page=Home

INTECOM
http://www.intecom.org/

International Science Writers Association
http://internationalsciencewriters.org/

World Association of Medical Editors
http://www.wame.org/about

Wikipedia--Technical Writing (look for list of links at end)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_writing

About.Com--Freelance Writing (pop-up alert)
http://freelancewrite.about.com/