It has been a particularly frustrating weekend. I feel I am very close on completing most of the work necessary to have the app ready for public consumption and what happens. Changes were made at the hosting company level that are impacting the ability to generate emails through the program. I hope to have them resolved soon so I can continue with the testing.
All the same, still very frustrating.
You create a cover letter by filling out the Add A Cover Letter form.
A sample cover letter is provided as a starting point. Some important things to keep in mind as you create your masterpiece.
One last thing you should be sure to do is to choose the letter type as Cover Letter so that the letter will show up as a choice for the text to be included in the letters populated with your data.
Okay, now you have a bunch of ads on your Saved Ads page. Now you should choose which of these ads you wish to apply for. Click the Save As Job button to (3 guesses) save the ad as a job. The Add a Job form will display with the information you entered when you created the Ad entry already populated on the form.
I would suggest creating a job entry for each job you apply for even if there was an online application and you will not be using the Job Search Log to generate your correspondence. I can guarantee you that there will be at least one occasion when you are searching for information about a job when an employer calls you and the original job information will not be available on the web because they are no longer accepting resumes.
You should fill in as much information as you have available about the job and contact details for the company. This is also the screen where you will specify which cover letter, resume and other attachment you wish to send to the employer. If you don’t have a cover letter created yet, read the Create a Cover Letter tutorial. Trust me, it will not be as painful once you get started and it will make things much easier when you can send information directly from the database rather than creating individual cover letters for each job.
If you use Firefox as your browser, and we recommend it highly, installing the AutoCopy extension should be one of your first moves.
Install the latest version of AutoCopy . After you restart Firefox, look in the status bar to see if AutoCopy is enabled. If it is select some text (the text will be automatically copied to the clipboard) and paste it where you want it to be stored like the text from a job posting on a Jobs Site.
It doesn’t get any easier than that.
My interpretation of an ad is when you are looking through a newspaper and find a job you might be interested in applying for. I would usually circle it to follow up later because I might find an interesting ad on the other side of the page. If I decided later that I would like to apply for the position I would break out the scissors and hopefully find all the ads I circled.
No scissors required. The Job Search Log pages are designed to allow the easy creation of an Ad record and ease of progression from the “ad you circled” to a job you wish to apply for.
At the risk of being repetitive I suggest you use the Firefox (or other tabs enabled browser) when using the JobSearchLog. There are two main reasons for this. First, all your tabs are opened within the Firefox interface so you can easily see the tabs you have available for ease of switching between the tabs. Second, two extensions (plugins) can enhance you job searching. AutoCopy will automatically copy whatever you select from the browser window into the clipboard buffer. Once you use it, you will wish it was available in all the applications you use daily. Another essential extension is URL+. When you right click on a browser page you can choose to copy the URL, page title and selected text (if any is selected). This can be pasted into any application that accepts input from the clipboard.
For our purposes I would suggest doing the following. Have the Add an Ad form open in a tab. Select the text of the ad you wish to insert into JobSearchLog. Right-click the page, select URL + Selection from the URL+ menu item. Go back to the Add an Ad form and paste into the Ad textarea. Select the URL to the Ad, copy and paste the URL into the URL text box of the form. Copy and Paste the Job Title into the Title text box. Click the save button and continue with your job search.
When you are ready to review the ads, click the Saved Ads Menu item. From this screen you can choose to Save the Ad as a job, Delete the ad, or just leave the ad for future review.
Checking your Job Sources on a regular basis will allow you to be sure you are finding all the jobs you qualify to apply for in a timely manner. Obviously it would be a good idea to check sites like Monster and America’s Job Bank more often than it is necessary to review sites updated less often such as the employment opportunities available working for the state of Massachusetts.
All the Job Sources you have defined are available by clicking on the link to View Job Sources. Each Job Source entry is composed of a link to the Job Source, the last time the Source was accessed and a button that when you click it will allow you to edit the Job Source.
Clicking on the Job Source will open the Job Source in a new page or tab depending on your browser settings. Each time you click a Job Source Link the page will be updated to reflect that the source has been visited again. If you use Firefox with the TabMix extension installed you can configure TabMix to open up each Job Source in a new tab. In Firefox or another Tabs-capable browser such as Opera, I suggest that you open a number of Job Sources in individual tabs.
When you find a job that matches your qualifications in the Job Source you can copy and paste the Ad into the appropriate boxes in the Add an Ad Page of JobSearchLog. Ensure that you get the entire URL string as the URL’s on many search engines are extremely long and stretch past the viewable space in the URL text box. If you have URL+ installed (guess, which browser) you may highlight the ad, right click and choose to copy the URL + Selection. When you paste the entry the entire URL will be included. Having a copy of the original ad is invaluable when the job is no longer posted because the job has moved into the interviewer phase.
Each time you add an ad, a new add an ad form will be displayed so you can enter another ad. When you are finished you can click the View Saved Ads menu item to see the ads you have entered but not saved as a Job.
I found this list of Job Search Tips for younger (I would hope) job seekers.
· Bring two pens (one will not work), paper, and a backpack to carry your stuff from previous interviews.
· Don’t be surprised if some employers want to interview you on the spot.
First of all, a job source is simply a web site that you use to find jobs. It could be as simple as a Company Human Resources Page that lists their current positions to a site as comprehensive as Monster.
My goal is to allow you to create a repository of the sources you use for jobs, categorize the jobs you enter by the job source and allow you to keep track of the last time you visited the site.
There are no limit to the number of Job Sources you can define and they will only be available to you after you are logged in. The first thing I would suggest doing is open up the Add A Job Source Page in a tab (you are using Firefox aren’t you). You can do this by right clicking here and choosing to Open the link in a new tab.
First choose what type of source you will be adding by selecting the type in the combo box. Most of the time the job source will be for a Company or Job Site.
Next you can type in the name of the Job Source you will be adding. Since you have the capability to add a large number of Job Sources, you should give a distinctive name for the source. For the purposes of this tutorial, i will use the following naming convention. A search of the job opportunities on Monster.com for PHP positions in the Boston area could be titled Monster Boston PHP allowing you to add a search for different type of positions to be titled Monster Boston ColdFusion etc…
The Site URL field is designed to hold the URL for the start page of the Job Search Engine or Company. http://www.monster.com .
You should now customize your search within the Job Source Site to acheive the results you are looking for. You will end up with a very long URL string to copy into the Search URL field. http://jobsearch.monster.com/jobsearch.asp?cy=us&q=PHP&re=97&lid=893&lid=893&refine=1 is an example.
You may add a comment in the comments field if you wish. You could use this field to document how often you wish to access this search. Since it is a page which will update often I will indicate: check daily for updates .
Click the Add Job Source button and after the source is saved you will be returned to the Add Job Source page. You can click the View Job Sources button to view the Job Sources you have already created.
I have reached the point where less problems exist than solutions
New code includes the update of all things related to a job source, the code to create entries in the FAQ table (which isn’t displayed yet) and the updates to the Top and Side Menus.
Now it is time to add FAQ questions, convert those into an introductory tutorial and then display the FAQ.
Oh yeah, the other 800 pound gorilla in the room is Search.
Companies – Add a company, Send a batch letter to a bunch of companies, edit a company.
Comments – I am close to being able to add and edit comments to a work flow item or to a job, company or ad.
Cats – Still hate them especially the little one that is in heat.
One other big step!!! www.jobsearchlog.com now belongs to me for 3 years. Thank you Yahoo hosting for the 2.99 per year price for the hosting.
