The Official Blog of Jobaloo.com

There’s a new trend online with websites that are really on-line applications. emurse is another example of a great Web 2.0 application/web site. After you sign up for your free account, you then can go in and fill out fields to create your resume. It couldn’t be any easier. In the past when creating a resume in Word, I always dreaded going in and creating the formatting and fields so that it would look just so. Here, you just fill in your information and your resume will be available in a number of different layouts. You can also upload your existing resume and have it available from anywhere. You can keep different resumes for different types of jobs.

Creating the on-line resume is just a very small part of what the service does though. Once the resume is created, you can distribute it directly from emurse. You can keep track of who you have sent it to, and when. If you email it from emurse, these are tracked for you automatically, if you send them via postal mail or fax, you can add in those yourself. You can share your resume online with those that you choose to, via a password protection. You can make your resume available in multiple formats to the recipient.

After you’ve created the resume, when you sign on after that point, on your emurse home page you also get a listing of jobs matching your skills and location, as well as stats about who has viewed your resume.

emurse appears to be a great tool for anyone involved in a job search. I plan on getting my resumes up there, even though I don’t plan on looking for a new job. I’ll at least know where they are, and be able to tweak them whenever I wish.

David Christiansen in Computerworld has a very good article this week entitled Acing the Interview, where he says that there’s more to a successful job interview than simply getting an offer. If you don’t take the opportunity that you have to ask questions at the end of the interview, then as he says: “Unfortunately, when it comes to job changes, the dragon you don’t know often won’t bare its teeth until it has you in its clutches. And then it’s too late.”

This article is directed towards IT works, but the principles apply to anyone interviewing at a new company. Here’s an example of a question and what you would hope to learn by asking it:

How long does it take from the time someone identifies a need for a new piece of hardware to the time it is connected to the network and is available? Tell me about the people and processes involved.

Even if buying a server doesn’t have anything to do with the job you’re considering, it’s important to know how complicated the approval and decision-making process is. This is frequently one of a company’s most process-laden activities, so it’s good to know how painful it is.

If it takes four months to get a server, you can bet there’s a mountain of process, people and organizations between you and the things your projects will need to succeed.

If the interviewer’s answer amounts to “How long would it take you to go down to Fry’s Electronics and buy it?” then you may be facing an employer with a very ad hoc decision-making process. Either way, it’s better to know than to not know.

The other questions listed in the article (go there for what you’re hoping to gain from them) are as follows:

What’s the most frustrating thing you’ve had to do this week?

What do you and your co-workers do at work for fun? (Interesting thought process here.)

In the middle of a project, a developer identifies a key technical improvement that will have significant benefit but also involves additional cost and risk. What’s the process for deciding whether to make the change? Who’s involved, and who makes the final decision?

Tell me about the different positions you’ve had in the company and the different organizations you’ve worked for. How long did you work in each? Did you ask for this position, or were you sent here as a result of an organizational change? Was the position change the result of a promotion?

From a look at Christiansen’s blog, this was his first time being published in a major publication…congrats to David!