Public Relations Job Sources and Search Firms

The Wall Street Journal (Oct. 3, 2000) printed online job hunting tips that might be of use to PR practitioners.  They are summarized below:

Tips for posting your resume online:

• Post a digital version of your resume with examples of past work experience on your home page.
• Place the word "resume" in the Web site address to increase your chances of pickup.
• Place links to Web sites of present and former employers, colleges, professional associations and publications on your digital resume.
• Create a simpler version of the resume to send to a recruiter or employer and let them know a longer version is available online.
• Read the privacy policies of online job boards to prevent unwanted eyes from viewing your resume.
• Use niche job boards in your field to post your resume.

Tips for finding resumes online:

• Flipping:  Find resumes or conference rosters to a company that might yield biographies, e-mail addresses and other details.  Use a search engine, such as AltaVista.  Use Link: or linkdomain: (Hotbot)  to search for links to a certain company's Web site.  Type Link: (name of company) and "title" and title:resume.  E.g. Link:IBM and "engineer" and title:resume.

• X-raying:  Identify employees by going to those places on a company's web site that are not accessible from the home page.  Type host: or url: before a company's name with the key words.   E.g. host:lucent.com and "public relations"

• Peeling:  Find staff directories or contact lists embedded in web addresses.  Look at long addresses and systematically cut them back until you reach words like "resumes" or "people" or "attendees" to see if name lists show up.

• Anchor Search:  Web pages have words called "anchors" that describe the page and that can be a giveaway.  Type anchor:"view resumes" and "title."  E.g.:   anchor:"view resumes" and "public relations"

• Harvesting:  Look at documents, resumes and home pages for keywords, links, references and locations that can assist further searches.

• Peer searches:  Use a metasearch engine to find people with similar qualifications.  Have the metasearch engine search on key information such as the company's e-mail address or name and see if it turns up staff rosters.

See also The 25 Most Difficult Questions You'll Be Asked On A Job Interview:  http://www.datsi.fi.upm.es/~frosal/docs/25mdq.html