One of the most impressive speakers was Peter Weddle, author and expert behind WEDDLEs.com. He summed up his strategy for job seekers using the WINNER acronym. In a nutshell, job seekers must
- Watch for opportunities every day. The best jobs come and go quickly. Use a job search agent (an automated e-mail alert when new jobs are posted on a job board that meet your criteria) for the rest of your work life--not just when you are actively looking for a job.
- Investigate those opportunities. Use sites like Vault and WetFeet as "electronic watercoolers" to find the insider scoop on what working at a particular company is like.
- Network to leverage the opportunities.
- Never be a "graffiti applicant"--don't hit SUBMIT more than once when submitting your resume online, and don't resend it a week later when you don't get a response (the career pros all confirmed that most companies never acknowlege receiving your resume).
- Ensure that you're "interview ready" by doing your research about the company and the job.
- Reject "herdball." Don't waste your time on the biggest job boards, such as Monster.com and CareerBuilder. There are 40,000 niche job boards. The key is to find the ones most likely to post the job that you want.
In the spirit of that last comment, I went out and found a gaggle of niche boards relevant to writers, editors, and other publishing professionals. Here are a few that look like they might be just right:
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