Web Worker Daily

I’ve noticed that many new freelancers tend to be nonchalant when responding to online job ads. Maybe online applications appear more instant and casual when compared with the traditional alternative of showing up for a series of interviews. Even though applying for a freelance job online is fast, it doesn’t mean it’s easy. You need to consider several issues before rushing your application for a prospective project. Read the rest of this entry »

The coupling of the current “post-web 2.0 era” with the ongoing economic slump would seem to make for a perfect opportunity for a startup like GlassDoor, a job-seeker and career community where you can find and share information about companies, careers and specific jobs, including details like pay and interview questions.

In using the site, it’s clear that there are a lot of potentially valuable tools and resources for job seekers within, but you have to be a little bit focused and savvy in digging them out…qualities that motivated job seekers need to have in any event! Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve all probably used either Monster.com or Workopolis.com at some point. Whether or not we did so successfully or enjoyed the process is another story. Looking for work online can feel clumsy, impersonal and of questionable effectiveness. Even professional networking apps like LinkedIn haven’t really made significant advances to the way we go about searching for jobs on the web. A new service, called Raveal, hopes to bring some fresh perspective to the online employment search game.

Raveal is aimed at the job hunter, promising to represent those who list themselves with the service as people, not assets. It’s an attractive prospect when you’re coming from a situation where you feel significantly less than human in the meat market that is Monster. And it has a distinctly simple, clean Web 2.0 look that at least shows the site’s designers take their job seriously. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, I was commiserating with a friend looking for a new job about the unpleasantness of that task. I remembered the hours of fruitless toiling, sending countless resumes off into the void, along with unique, individually tailored cover letters for hundreds of positions. Days that first seem like a pleasant extended vacation eventually become a drawn-out reminder of just how little money you’re making, and just how unproductive your waking hours actually are.

Thing is, I realized that was what it was like before I became a web worker, when my ideal job was still a cozy 9-to-5 in an office somewhere, with a salary, benefits and a paid lunch hour. Once I gave up that ideal in favor of pursuing freelance opportunities online, the dreaded Job Hunting Process, which I thought was written in stone, largely ceased to exist. Sure, what replaced it wasn’t exactly a walk in the park, either, but for all its faults, it definitely beats the cold dread of Workopolis and Monster.com. Read the rest of this entry »