Application Yourself : Jobs Can Be Found Via Computer, but Don’t Trade Keystrokes for Legwork

As Anthony Maffini faces graduation from college in just two months, he has yet to pin down the right first job, but he is heavily armed with the next best things: offers, interviews and options.

Some of them came from that most traditional of venues, the career-placement center at Fordham University, where Maffini will earn a degree in computer science in May. Others fell into his lap from the Internet, which is fast becoming the employment office of the brave new world.

Maffini, 22, posted his resume on the World Wide Web using a new service called JobDirect (https://www.jobdirect.com). Based in Greenwich, Conn., JobDirect specializes in entry-level jobs and internships for college students and newly minted graduates.

Looking for a job on the Internet “saves a lot of paper. You can have a multiple number of companies look at your resume, look at the things you’ve done and who you are, without doing all the cold calling,� Maffini says. “It’s a lot more immediate.

“It’s kind of like putting a sign along the side of the road,� he says. “If [a company] sees something they like, they’ll slow down and take a look. . . . I’ve only had my resume with JobDirect for two or 2 1/2 weeks, and I’ve had a couple of calls.�

But pluses can sometimes turn into minuses faster than a keystroke. And this very attribute of the Internet job search--put out the resume and wait for the employer to call--can also be a problem for job seekers who look at cyberspace as the only place to find work.

While many in the career counseling world marvel at the Internet’s power and possibilities, Robert Thrisk has a few important warnings for all electronic job seekers.

“I think sometimes people assume now, with this electronic wizardry, that this is the only way to find jobs,� says Thrisk, who is director of Stanford University’s Career Planning and Placement Center. “One easy assumption to make is that all companies are on the Internet. They are not. One must be cognizant of that. It’s just a tool, not the ultimate tool.�

That said, Thrisk continues, wait five years and life will be different along the information superhighway. By then, he posits, 95% of all the jobs openings that are advertised will be advertised on the Net.

Until then, he suggests, use cyberspace’s services as part of an exhaustive job search and don’t forget the traditional ways of finding work: job fairs, recruiting offices, classified ads.

Sara Sutton, co-founder of JobDirect, agrees with Thrisk’s assessment. “It’s still a bit early in the industry to depend on [the Internet] 100%,� she says. “We encourage students to use whatever methods they can. We aim to make ours one of the most effective� online resume banks and job-listing services.

The idea for JobDirect came to Sutton and lifelong friend Rachel Bell in the summer of 1995 in a Boston cab as the two college students were heading to a party. The party was great; the idea was better.

“Once we got the idea, we researched it all summer and realized if we were going to do it, we had to do it now,� says Sutton, who was heading into her senior year at UC Berkeley. “We took a semester off to try it. That semester turned into two years.�

Officially launched in November, the JobDirect Web site bills itself as “an online recruiting service designed to help qualified entry-level job seekers and employers exchange useful, dependable information in a timely and cost-efficient manner.�

Student job seekers can post electronic resumes in the JobDirect database for free and receive immediate notice of “matches� via e-mail. Companies are charged a flexible annual fee generally beginning at about $3,000 a year to gain access to JobDirect’s resume bank and to post their openings on the service.

JobDirect now has 22 employees, offers paid internships at 100 colleges across the country and has a bank of 12,000 resumes. Three flame-painted recreational vehicles visit campuses throughout the country recruiting resumes. About 30 employers are using the service, Sutton says, including IBM, Price Waterhouse, Hewlett-Packard and the Peace Corps.

Sutton’s service is one of thousands on the Internet, most of which cater to older professional workers. This proliferation of career cyber-services is both a blessing and a curse. Like most Internet offerings, these electronic employment offices are overwhelming in the amount of information they proffer.

“The Internet has taken on the role of giant career counselor to the world,� proclaims Your Personal Net (https://ypn.com). “The career resources of the Net give the average job seeker a new level of control, offering everything from huge databases of listings to chat sessions with career counselors.�

In an offering dubbed “Simple Steps: Some Things in Life Just Got Easier,� YPN walks prospective workers through 10 steps to getting a job online, from figuring out what kind of job you want via skills assessments to writing thank-you notes immediately after interviews.

It also offers a thumbnail sketch of the big job boards. A sampling:

* The Monster Board (https://www.monsterboard.com). With 48,000 listings in its database, YPN says, “it’s a job force to be reckoned with.� It also runs a resume bank called Resume City and allows users to search for jobs via disciplines and geography. In its “Online Open Houses,� AT&T; might be offering account executive jobs throughout New Jersey and Pennsylvania, while Price Waterhouse might be proclaiming that it “has opportunities nationwide.�

* Online Career Center (https://www.occ.com). A not-for-profit cooperative, the center has a growing database of about 8,000 jobs and resumes. “In addition to the large number of entry-level positions for the Net-savvy college crowd, the OCC lists opportunities for experienced professionals,� YPN says.

Another board, Los Angeles-based Jobtrak (https://www.jobtrak.com), is like JobDirect in its dealings with younger job seekers. It works with 500 campus career centers across the country and has seen a dramatic increase in the number of jobs employers list on its service.

In 1996, the company says, employers listed 523,512 jobs, up from 268,021 in 1995. The top job category for the last two years is sales and marketing, followed by computers and information science and business and management.

What the Internet does not do is tell a job seeker much about workplace culture. And while prospective employees can research companies via their Web sites, some information won’t be there.

“Companies that are well-known don’t have much of a problem,� Thrisk says, “but with smaller companies, you need to beware. A company [that is] trying to rebuild its image but is in receivership won’t put that on the Web page.�

Most Internet jobs services are more likely to charge employers than job seekers, although some do cost all users money. Sutton warns job seekers to explore their options before committing to pay for anything on the Net.

“There’s a lot out there, and you may find a similar service for free,� she says. In addition, many Internet magazines, such as Webweek and Internet World, review job services and would be a helpful resource for a cyberspace work seeker.

COMING MONDAY: Career Help

Opportunities are abundant in Southern California’s burgeoning entertainment and high-tech industries, but they don’t come easy. Find out the price of success in the Careers section Monday.

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Hunting Online

* Don’t rely solely on the Internet during a job search. Not all companies have Web sites or look for workers electronically. Traditional means are still important: classified ads, job fairs, recruitment offices.

* Try not to be overwhelmed. There are thousands of job-search and resume services, but many experts figure that only 10 to 15 of the best are worth large amounts of time and effort.

* Don’t just float your resume out into cyberspace and wait. Continue your search using traditional means and contact companies directly.

* Be aware that when you put a resume on the Internet, your personal information will be available to every telemarketer with access. Junk mail and cold calls are likely to increase.

* Find a service suited to you; don’t waste time with sites that are difficult to use or unclear on their market.

* The more you can target your search, the better. Don’t just sign on and type in “job search.� Use terms like “entry-level job� or “job in advertising.�