JumpStart your Job Search

April 24, 2007

So, You want to work from home?

Filed under: Firefox, Job Search, Tools — Michael Brennan-White @ 10:07 pm

Do you have what it takes to work from home?

Job Search Log is looking for a few work at home volunteers to contribute approximately 5 hours a week. We are hoping to increase the number of sites that link to our free web application and invite new members to our community. My goal over the next few months is to be linked from unemployment department, veteran’s affairs and social service departments around the world.

Why are these positions unpaid? For a couple of good reasons. First, I am interested in working with people who have the desire to do this type of work but have never been given the opportunity due to a lack of experience. By doing it in this way, I can provide the opportunity to more people. The last reason is that there is no money to pay someone. Job Search Log is not an income generating venture. I am hoping to help some people, gain some experience and not lose money in the process.

I am seeking interns in one of more of these job types:

  • Research
  • Marketing
  • Web Application Usability Testing

Yes, these positions are unpaid but they offer some benefits well worth your time:

  • Require only a small time commitment
  • You will learn skills directly applicable in today’s job market.
  • This internship will also be good experience for your resume and I will respond promptly to employers if you use JSL as a reference.
  • You may find a job for yourself. After all, this is a web site to help people find work and to organize their job search activities.
  • Did I say it was working from home?

If you are interested, please send me an email at info@jobsearchlog.com.
I hope we can work together to help you gain some useful experience at the same time we are helping others find a new or better job.

Here are some other links you may be interested in:

http://jobsearch.about.com

http://job-hunt.org

Text only. No markup allowed.

April 17, 2007

Out of Work? Got Kids?

Filed under: Introduction, Job Search, Uncategorized — Michael Brennan-White @ 10:59 pm

One of my biggest concerns when I first became unemployed was losing health care for my kids. Luckily they were very healthy but that worry loomed over my head the entire time I was searching.
I was too proud to apply for the assistance programs I was eligible for until the situation became pretty desperate. Even with them being healthy we still racked up some medical bills that we had no way to pay for on six months of unemployment. From personal experience, I recommend that you apply for the benefits you qualify for. That is what you paid taxes for.

Insure Kids Now! is a national campaign to link the nation’s 10 million uninsured children–from birth to age 18–to free and low-cost health insurance. Many families simply don’t know their children are eligible.

Each state has a different name for the program and I had a hard time finding a central clearinghouse for all the states so I am including links to the program for each state. I will also be including a link to the state pages as part of the Job Search Log Jumpstart which helps JSL users kick start their job searching.

Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
DC
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland

Massachusetts

Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming

I apologize in advance if some of the information is incorrect. Send me a comment from the Job Search Log app and I will correct any errors.

April 6, 2007

Alberto. Dude, You need a new job!

Filed under: Bush, Gonzalez, Job, Job Search, Tools — Michael Brennan-White @ 12:15 am

Has there ever been a guy who needed a new job more than this guy. You know when you open your fridge and something smells really bad. Our beleaguered Attorney General has definitely stayed past his expiration date.All agog about AG A.G.

Job Search Log wants to help our guy out. We will establish a profile for Mr. Gonzalez at http://jobsearchlog.com where he can track the jobs that he could apply for. Gonzo can even send customized cover letters to the jobs on his list created using our Cover Letter Wizard to create the “mail merged” templates. We will do our level best to help give our favorite AG A.G. a jumpstart on his job search as Congress tries to give him a drop kick out of the Justice Department.

You can help our pal Al in his quest to land on his feet. Use the JSL Bookmarklet to pass along potential jobs to Mr. Coulda Been A. Justice. Here’s how you do it.
javascript:Qr=(document.getSelection)?
document.getSelection():document.selection.createRange().text;u=(document.location.href);
location.href=’http://jobsearchlog.com/ba.cfm?n=linuxboy&
d=’+escape(document.title)+’&u=’+escape(u)+’&
tags=%s’+’&ad=’+escape(Qr);

Copy the green colored text to your Browser Address Bar or save it as a favorite. This link is a piece of javascript code called a bookmarklet. This is code designed to be run directly from the address bar of your internet browser to perform a task. When you find the perfect job for the big A, select the text describing the job and click the Job Search Log bookmark you just created. A new Ad entry will be created in Job Search Log with the text from the Ad and the URL of the job. You won’t even leave the page you are currently viewing.

Job Search Log is free to use for everybody. You don’t even need to have a law degree from Pat Robertson U to use our pages. You can set up your free profile by visiting us at http://jobsearchlog.com. If you mention that you are a friend of Al, you can even get a Jumpstart on your job search without the requisite years of butt kissing necessary to get a job in government.

March 29, 2007

Clipping Ads is so “yesterday”

Filed under: Job Search, Organization, Tools — Michael Brennan-White @ 10:44 pm

Job Search Log offers you a free location to store the ads you are interested in applying for. You don’t have to be using a specific job search engine, be on unemployment, you can live anywhere and there are no restrictions on the number of ads you can create.

There are two simple ways you can start adding ads to Job Search Log. One is to add them directly into the Ad Entry Form . All that is required to create the ad record is to copy and paste the location of the job posting (URL), title of the job and the text job ad into the Ad page. Once you save the page, it will immediately be available for your viewing in the Saved Ads page .

The other method to add ads into Job Search Log is through the JSL Bookmarklet. Drag the link JSL Ad Bookmarklet to your links bar. Then from any job post you are interested in applying for, select the text of the ad and click the JSL Ad bookmark. The ad, url and title of the page will be saved to your profile and you will receive notification that an ad was saved through an email message. The best thing about it is that Job Search Log does not display, the ad is added behind the scenes. Click here to see more information about the Job Search Log Bookmarklet.

Like every page in Job Search Log, only you will see the ads you’ve saved since they are tied to your private Job Search Log profile.

March 20, 2007

Where are these jobs when I am looking?

Filed under: Introduction — Michael Brennan-White @ 8:41 pm

I.T. worker in Alaska?  CEO for Home Depot?  Attorney General?

But seriously folks, I don’t advocate putting anyone on the dole but there has to be a limit.

March 18, 2007

What good is a Cover Letter without a resume?

Filed under: Job Search, Organization, Tools — Michael Brennan-White @ 11:07 am

I’ve spent many hours time working on creating a cover letter wizard. Completing these pages will create a letter template that is used when generating the “mail merged” correspondence from Job Search Log.

I haven’t spent enough time talking about the other part of the correspondence. The File Upload Manager. Job Search Log allow you to upload resumes and other files to be attached to a emailed piece of correspondence generated by the application. You are welcome to upload multiple resumes which you can use to tailor your application to the job.

You may include two attachments with each email and the resume you attach is linked to the job you are applying for, not the cover letter so you are given the most flexibility possible when creating the application for the job.

The uploads are restricted to only documents (doc, pdf, htm, txt). If you find there are file formats that are not uploadable, please contact me through the Job Search Log contact form.

March 11, 2007

Job Searching from Anywhere

Filed under: Firefox, Job Search, Tools — Michael Brennan-White @ 1:07 am

Job Searching from anywhere just got easier.
javascript:Qr=(document.getSelection)?document.getSelection():document.selection.createRange().text;u=(document.location.href);
location.href=’http://jobsearchlog.com/ba.cfm?n=linuxboy&d=’+escape(document.title)+’&u=’+escape(u)+’&
tags=%s’+'&ad=’+escape(Qr);

Copy the green colored text to your Browser Address Bar or save it as a favorite. This link is a piece of javascript code called a bookmarklet. This is code designed to be run directly from the address bar of your internet browser to perform a task. Please note the bookmarklet is associated with your profile. You should use the bookmarklet available when you login to JobSearchLog.
This is how to use the JobSearchLog Bookmarklet. You would select some of the text in an ad that you would like to add to your profile in JSL. While the text is selected click or select the favorite in Internet Explorer or bookmark in mozilla based browsers like Firefox. An ad will be created in JobSearchLog with the text you had selected as the actual ad, the title of the page you were selecting from as the job title and inserting the URL of the page the job is located on.

For example, if you selected the following text: ABC Corp. is looking for a administrative assistant….. on a page titled ABC Corp. Admin Asst from web page http://www.abccorp.com. If you click or select the JSL favorite you would have a title, url and the text of the ad inserted into an Ad record in your profile.

In Firefox you have the added capability to add tags to the ad by saving the bookmarklet as a link and assign a keyword to the bookmark. Type the bookmark name in the address bar with the words you would like to use for tags which will appear in the comments for the ad when the ad is saved.

The really nice thing about this bookmark is that all processing should be done behind the scenes. All you should see is the browser window refresh for a second. You will also receive an email notification with the job details sent to the email address associated with your JobSearchLog account.

I hope you will find this new tool useful in your job search efforts. Please don’t hesitate to contact us with questions or suggestions.

The following links contain more information about bookmarklets that you may find interesting:

March 10, 2007

JobSearchLog Jumpstart Now Even Faster

Filed under: Job Search, Organization, Tools — Michael Brennan-White @ 6:04 pm

I’ve automated the creation of 9/10’s of the work to create the Jump Start Job Search Log . In a nutshell what the Jump Start does is create Job Sources in Job Search Log which are your saved searches that are bookmarked and available once you login to the web site.

These new bookmarked searches are built using the location and search term criteria you choose when you fill out the JumpStart form. We create the Job Sources for searches at the following sites:

This list will probably expand and change based on input from users. Once the list of Sources are finalized I will probably give the option to choose which sources are created on the form. Indeed and SimplyHired are really good because they pass along an aggregated feed from the major search engines.

More major updates in the next couple of weeks. Please don’t hesitate to contact us with requests and suggestions and visit the JobSearchLog.com site . Remember, JobSearchLog is free to use, available anywhere you have internet access, and you are welcome to invite other jobseekers to visit.

March 8, 2007

Dynamic Cover Letters from the web!

Filed under: Introduction — Michael Brennan-White @ 1:17 am

We all know that every resume you send out needs to have a cover letter. Even on an email.

Go from:

Dear Hiring Manager,

I am writing this letter as application for positions in your company.

To this (Yes, it is a poor example, but it is late) :

Dear Mr. Jones,

I am writing this letter as application for Web Development positions at Jobster.com .

How much time do you spend creating each letter to send to a potential employer. I discovered that I was spending at least half an hour on each application. So, I ended up with 2-3 cover letters that covered all job types that I would copy and paste address information into. Next I moved on to using Word to generate mail merged letters with address information from a spreadsheet.

This worked well unless I was sending the letter by email or was trying to do my job search away from home.

What I’ve done with JobSearchLog is to allow you to input information about the jobs you wish to apply for into a web database, create cover letters with tokens to show where information from the database should be included. This is done now through a Cover Letter Wizard which allows you to have complete control of the format and content of your letter and takes approximately 10 minutes to complete each letter.

You may create as many letters as you wish to meet your needs and a cover letter can be associated with a job, ad or company to email or print. JobSearchLog also keeps history of which letters were sent to a job or company.

Take a look and please let me know what you think.

Michael

March 5, 2007

Jump Start your Job Search

Filed under: Introduction, Job Search, Tools — Michael Brennan-White @ 12:42 am

Jump Start, Kick in the A$$, Being Thrown off the cliff, JobSearchLog.com has a way to get your job search off to a good start or breathe new life into a search that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.

One complaint I’ve heard about using the pages (from a family member) is that it can be daunting to start. You must type in the places you look for work, create a cover letter to use to send to the jobs and keep track of the positions. I understand that it can be a time consuming startup but it is worth the effort the 1st or 50th time you look for the address for a contact or the original ad you applied to.

To make it easier to get started I created a page called the JSL Jumpstart where based on the information provided about geographic locations you are searching in, the pages you visit and the type of jobs you are looking for we will update a Job Search Log profile to get you going. If you provide a sample of your cover letter, we will create a cover letter that will pull the information from the jobs you enter into JobSearchLog (similar to a Mail Merge using the word processor software on your computer) but done entirely through the web. You will have the full capability to edit the information in your profile easily including the information in the cover letters.

In addition you will be able to create an unlimited number of job sources, contacts, cover letters and face no restrictions on the amount of jobs you apply for, letters you print and/or email, and report on your job search activities. This is all free for your use.

Enjoy the program and please don’t hesitate to contact me with any suggestions or complaints about the program and tell your friends.

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