tag:www.chicagonow.com,2011:/blogs/job-stalker//93/tag:www.chicagonow.com,2009:/blogs/job-stalker//93.30702- Comments for Whew ... Job hunting adventures and advice from a career-seeker one follow-up call away from a restraining order. Movable Type 4.261 tag:www.chicagonow.com,2009:/blogs/job-stalker//93.30702 2009-11-23T13:55:22Z 2009-11-23T14:47:07Z Whew ... Brendan Tripp http://www.chicagonow.com/profiles/BrendanTripp This was quite the weekend!  Due to the start of my taking over "The Job Stalker" last week, and the various things I was doing to get things prepared and rolling with this, I got a bit "off my schedule" and had a substantial back-log of job possibilities "stacked up" in my browser's tab bar ... in fact, at one point I had in excess of sixty waiting for me to start going through the analysis and application process.

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(By Aaron Logan, from http://www.lightmatter.net/gallery/albums.php {{cc-by}})

As I've noted already, my main source for finding job openings is via Twitter, and I follow quite a number of resources over there which provide a steady stream of job listings.  Every couple of hours I dive into the Twitter stream (I am still using their web interface, although I'm looking at moving over to something like HootSuite or TweetDeck to better manage the increasing numbers of folks I follow) and read everything that's been posted since my last time in.  When I see a job that sounds like it might fit some part of my skill set, I'll open the link, and cut-and-paste it into a browser window that I have up just for job postings.  Eventually I get into these, following up on the info, checking out the companies, and jumping through whatever hoops are involved in a specific application process.  Because of the various "extra stuff" happening last week, I didn't get a chance to get into these until Friday, and spent a chunk of that day, plus most of Saturday, and a few hours on Sunday getting caught up with the back-log of potential job apps ... over the three days, I got out thirty three applications!

Needless to say, all of these weren't "perfect" matches ... my first "filter" is the "hey, I could do THAT!" recognition, followed by the "do I want to do this there?" query, followed by the "would they consider me?" soul-searching ... so between these and positions that I discover I've already applied to, I'll end up knocking about half of them out of the queue.

I probably spend  4-6 hours a day doing the "research" and 2-4 hours a day doing the actual application process.  This does not count the various industry and job search articles and blog posts that I encounter in the process.  The links that I posted previously were an example of that end of the Twitter grind!

Now, would this "system" work for you?  I don't know ... as I've mentioned previously, I have a wide range of positions for which I'd be at least plausible, which means that my "job count" is likely to be higher as I'm looking at opportunities in several different areas, but it IS a way to get connected to a lot of openings.

I'll be passing along specific sites/sources that I use in the next week or so (I still need to get that culled out of my "following" data on Twitter), but I'd strongly recommend, getting signed up on Twitter, following @TheJobStalker there, and start searching for keywords that fit your job hunt!

By the way ... if you're looking for a networking opportunity to go to tonight (Monday, 11/23), the best one I know of is the "Tweetsgiving" event being run by the TweetNetworking group... it should be a quality crowd, and it's for a good cause!

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