So everyone and their cousin has a mind-bogglingly horrific dot-com layoff story. So Amazon.com, the paragon of new economy excess, laid-off 1,300 people week before last. So foul-mouthed Web sites that track the current downturn are getting way more attention than they deserve. So it’s hard to throw a cell phone on a busy San Francisco street without hitting someone who’s been laid off from a technology-related venture in the past few years. So Bush Jr. may end up presiding over the worst recession since the reign of Bush the First. Does this mean erstwhile creative professionals will find themselves scrambling to snap up low-paying retail jobs in the next year?
Outlook Hazy, Try Again
According to a recent study from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, probably not. It turns out that each of the five fastest growing job categories for the years 1998 to 2008 is computer related. Though they are mostly less creative posts like engineer and database administrator, "desktop publishing specialist" has made the list. Interestingly the rest of the top ten are positions such as personal home health aide, medical assistant, and physician assistants. What does this mean? That our population is, in fact, aging (child-care worker is the fastest declining job category).
In the next five years the baby boomers will start to retire. This could mean that the jobless rate won’t climb as high as it might have, and that jobs will still be readily available for eager young seekers. And where might those eager young seekers turn to find the bevy of computer-related jobs available to them? Why, the Internet of course.
Get a Job Getting Other People Jobs
If Super Bowl advertising (and I’d like to take this moment to let everyone know that Baltimore is my home town) is any indication of the state of the economy — and it generally is — Web-based career services are the only genre of dot-com to survive the bursting of the Internet bubble. Last year’s gaggle of dot-com commercials this year faded to a stray or two, all for job-related services such as HotJobs and Monster.com. And those are just the sites able to pony up the million dollars plus it takes to get your ad sandwiched between football tackles. You could spend weeks wading through all the job sites out there. Not that this is a bad thing. During the last recession I was turned down for a job at Kentucky Fried Chicken and ended up working as a field hand (I managed to get a great tan in between bouts of heat exhaustion however).
Job Sites Ahoy!
Luckily the prospects for our current downturn seem significantly better. A cursory search on the Web found 26 job search sites of various types, not counting regional sites (except those for the Bay Area and California where, apparently, the jobs still are), and there are hundreds more.
Besides Monster.com and HotJobs (which, if you’re exposed to any advertising, you’ve probably already heard about), there is BrassRing.com, which offers pretty much the same services as Monster and HotJobs: resume posting, job listings, career counseling, and newsletters. EmploymentIndex.com lists jobs by category, and FlipDog.com (which powers many other job search sites) and JobsOnline ask you to hand over your personal information (name, e-mail, the usual) before you search their job databases.
Job-Hunt.Org is a compendium of links to other online job resources, and Jobfront is primarily a resume-posting service. JobNet.com holds virtual job fairs (hey, a reason to bring back avatars!), and JobBankUSA.com is another Monster.com-like site. Other sites that seem to have scored well in what must have been a massive domain-name land rush for names with the word job in them include (but sure as heck aren’t limited to): JobSourceNetwork.com, JobVillage.com, and the surely-much-sought-after jobs.com.
Bay Area Job Sites Ahoy!
If you’re looking for a job in the San Francisco Bay Area (and many people are these days), try San Francisco Job Bank, California Jobs, or the ever-popular craigslist (craigslist recently added categories for other cities).
There are also a number of sites that cater to artists, writers, freelancers, and other creative professionals. ArtistDesignerJobs.com (which, as an indication of the way the Web is going, announces prominently that it launched in September) is a good resource, as is ArtistResource.. The aforementioned craigslist has categories for a slew of creative jobs. Another of my favorites is AllFreelance, which supplies links to other freelance and contract job sites.
Outlook Favorable
So with job sites today vastly outnumbering pet food delivery sites, it would appear that the outlook is good for all of those dot-commers who have found themselves pounding the virtual pavement, resumes in hand. I always say change is good (I’ve used this line to console myself through three layoffs in the past five years), and it’s good to know that change won’t necessarily involve crawling back to that supposedly stop-gap job you had back before the Internet revolution.
Read more by Andrea Dudrow.
This article was last modified on January 8, 2023
This article was first published on February 12, 2001
Commenting is easier and faster when you're logged in!
