Wanted: Cyber Surfers

By Melissa Prentice

Arizona Daily Wildcat

Thousands of employers have access to your resume, and you haven't mailed a single cover letter. You haven't spent hours poring over the small black print of classified ads, yet a plethora of job opportunities are at your fingertips, 24 hours a day.

This job search of the future is already a reality for those who have dipped into the World Wide Web via the Internet. Online want-ads and resumes Äincluding some that contain photographs, sound and video Ä are reinventing the way job seekers and employers connect.

With dreams of managing a theater, Tom Arriola created "Attack of the 50-Foot Job Seeker," an online movie.

"More exciting than King Kong. Action... Excitement... Suspense... Adventure." Fluorescent blue letters flash across the screen as a thunderous voice beckons the coming of the monster.

"I was hoping to get people's attention," says Arriola, a recent master's graduate of the University of Mississippi.

Arriola's resume and full-color photos of the plays he has directed are all at the fingertips of potential employers.

However, he doesn't depend on employers to stumble upon his high-tech presentation. With his traditional resume and cover letters, Arriola sends a floppy disk containing 30 seconds of video highlights from plays he has directed.

Although his unique approach has garnered a lot of attention, it has only secured one job offer at a children's theater in Arkansas. Arriola says he's not giving up, but is redirecting his attention toward finding a job in virtual reality interactive television.

Although nothing so intricate as Arriola's "attack" has reached the University of Arizona, UA students are also finding themselves traveling on the information superhighway to find jobs.

Brian Carson, an engineering and mines junior, says he is eager to join the online frenzy.

"My plan is to have my resume accessible ... through my home page so potential employers can look me up instead of shuffling paper around an already crowded desk." Carson has already found a wealth of information, including five to six companies he wants to work for.

Kristina Leo, a UA Latin American studies and political science senior, has sought job leads electronically Ä but with little success.

"I've looked for jobs on the 'net ... but a lot of them are computer-related jobs, and I'm not a computer genius," she says. "So I gave up and got accepted to grad school, so now I won't have to worry about getting a job for two years."

Although Leo is no longer actively searching for a job, she continues to use the Internet to "get an idea of what jobs are out there and what jobs pay," and she still forwards information about job openings to friends who might be interested.

Although the Internet hasn't linked Leo or Carson to a job, the UA can boast at least one online success story.

Colleen Vallo spent last summer browsing the weekly job listings in the Chronicle of Higher Education, not in its traditional written form, but on her computer.

After engaging in what became a summer-long "ritual" of religiously reading the ads and frantically mass-mailing resumes, Vallo was about to give up. Then she was hired by the UA journalism department.

"This job was in the last bunch I was going to send," she says. "By that time I had decided not to spend any more time and money sending resumes."

Although Vallo says she isn't yet ready to abandon her "nice-looking resume" in paper form for the online version, she admits it would be "easier and cheaper" to join in "the wave of the future."

Vallo says her ability to join into the technology wave has made her more marketable to employers, especially in communications areas where this technology opens up a whole new job market.

Part of the online appeal is the ability to reach more technically minded, computer-literate applicants, say some employers. Online advertisements seek to fill positions in fields including computers, public relations and physical therapy.

"We only recently started to advertise through the Internet," says Emil Drottar, the vice president of engineering at the CYPLEX Corp. "In theory it should provide easy access to a large pool of people who have above-average technical literacy. We, however, have not received any replies to our ads to date.

"It is also rather less expensive than traditional methods. We are a small company, we do not have deep pockets, so we are always on the lookout for more cost-effective ways to hire."

The Sleep Medicine and Neurological Sciences Institute made its first attempt to appeal to Internet users this week with an advertisement for a sleep technologist.

"You can put an ad into whatever format you want and place it right here in the office; it's easier because you don't have to deal with newspapers," says institute spokesman Steven Holbit. Holbit also stressed the lower cost as an advantage.

With the increasing interest from employers and students job searchers, the UA Job Services is preparing to go online.

Director Bill Ruggirello spent the week looking for a keynote speaker to talk about Internet job searches at a state-wide conference. He wants to create a training program for online job searches by next year.

"We would love to learn more about this and be able to pass on the information to the students," he says.

With improved technology, students would be able to access the center's job listings via UAINFO on the Internet and seniors could schedule on-campus interviews over the phone-linked computer system.

Wendy Hoffmann, of the Arizona Department of Economic Security Job Services program, is less optimistic about the role of Internet in the future of job placement.

"We encourage people to use all their resources and not to rely on anyone," says Hoffmann. "It is usually most effective to deal with a company directly since only about 20 to 25 percent of jobs are ever advertised." Job seekers can use the service to prepare for interviews and improve their resumes, but have to go elsewhere for Internet training.

Although no local online employment training is available, students and employees who are ready to take advantage of these new resume services can turn to an abundance of national services.

"Resumes On Line" provides a large pool of candidates for employers to choose from, says David Czach, president of the online resume service. The company, which now has the potential to service 15,000 students, has a goal of expanding to over two million resumes.

Any student willing pay the $49.95 annual fee, can have his or her resume posted on the service, which is advertised to more than 10,000 personnel departments at companies nationwide.

Shawn Spengler, a graduate student at George Mason University, put his own resume on the Internet a few months ago without the help of a resume service. He was quickly hired by NovaNet, a national computer company, to set up business home pages on the Internet.

In his free time, he now runs "Shawn's Resume Service," to help other students advertise online.

He charges a $15 set-up fee and $7 per month to add resumes to the online service, which he hoped would fund his upcoming wedding and honeymoon. However, so far he has found the time it takes to run the service exceeds the profit he makes from it.

While not every student can produce a full-color video or start their own resume business, the new technology may make job searching a little less difficult.

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