CAREERS NOW 04-01-09

News of New Job Tools

DEAR JOYCE: My career is seriously off course and my finances are down. Anything you suggest has to be free or cheap. Suggestions? - M.B.S.

Take a peek at these four new online resources that won't break your budget - they're free.

-- Path 101: Community Powered Career Discovery (path101.com). The tenure of career longevity is shortening. About.com job search guide Alison Doyle explains the offerings on this site as focused not on "What do you want to do when you grow up?" but "What do you want to do next?"

On Path 101, a site operated by tech-savvy Millennials, you can take a personality test and compare results with data reporting what others sharing your background are doing. You can analyze your resume by uploading it from your computer and comparing it with millions of resumes pulled from the Web. And you can ask career questions and get advice from real people on the career paths of interest to you, or review already-answered questions.

-- TwitterJobSearch.com (twitterjobsearch.com). Just when you thought you couldn't bear to hear one more word touting Twitter, the Web site and service that lets users send short text messages from their cell phones to a group of friends, a job search engine for Twitter comes along.

Doyle's cogent comments: "Like other search engines, you can search for jobs based on keywords like job title and location and it will bring up tweets that match your search terms. It's new and still in beta, but I'm impressed." What you essentially are doing with this service is rounding up citizen tweeters across the land to report job openings. Its time-benefit value: The jury's still out.

-- MyFax Free (www.myfax.com/free). Job hunters and small businesses can use this just-announced service to send up to two faxes per day - of as many as 10 pages each - from their computers. You do not need a fax machine, toner or dedicated fax line. But to take advantage of this freebie, be certain to include the "www" part of the Net address when you log on; otherwise, you land on a 30-day trial page.

-- Telonu (telonu.com). This is a new review and rating site for the workplace. The name is shorthand for "tell on you." Employers are laid bare by employees who can write anonymously or sign nicknames or their full names.

Currently, the site is collecting reviews on layoffs, and tracking layoffs nationwide. Data is presented from the employees' perspective on how the layoffs were handled, including comments from the field on severance packages, insurance, outplacement support, morale, job security and whether the laid-off workers would consider working for the company again.

Unsurprisingly, 88 percent knock the way companies are dishing out layoffs, and 81 percent rate their job security as poor or very poor.

Caveat: Use common sense in responding to ads on the site that say things like "Make $5,000 a month working part time at home."

DEAR JOYCE: I've been out of work for six months. Will that gap hurt my career? - T.W.

I don't think so, not in this era of no-fault layoffs. Even for outstanding candidates, extended searches are becoming far more common than they were before the economy hit the fan. The only recent survey I've seen on the topic is one for top managers conducted by Robert Half Management Resources. Based on telephone interviews with 150 senior executives from the nation's largest companies, on average, a top manager can be unemployed for nine months before it impacts career prospects. I've seen no comparable surveys for the rest of us.

In general, if you find yourself on a long and winding road to a new job, try to fit in a measure of new education and volunteer work to both expand your contact roster and give you something extra appealing to say in your resume.

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