To answer these and many other questions about your list of job titles, we recommend you try any of the following resources: Careers Encyclopedia; a career information center site such as that provided by the American Marketing Association at www.amaboston.org/jobs.htm; College to Career: The Guide to Job Opportunities', and the Occupational Outlook Handbook (http://stats.bls.gov/ocohome.htm). Each of these resources, in a different way, will help to put the job titles you have selected into an employer context. Perhaps the most extensive discussion is found in the Occupational Outlook Handbook, which gives a thorough presentation of the nature of the work, the working conditions, employment statistics, training, other qualifications, and advancement possibilities as well as job outlook and earnings. Related occupations are also detailed, and a select bibliography is provided to help you find additional information.
Continuing with our public relations example, your search through these reference materials would teach you that the public relations jobs you find attractive are available in larger hospitals, financial institutions, most corporations (both consumer goods and industrial goods), media organizations, and colleges and universities.
Periodicals and Newspapers. Several sources are available to help you locate which journals or magazines carry job advertisements in your field. Other resources help you identify opportunities in other parts of the country.
- www.looksmart.com - If you want to search the classified sections of newspapers in other cities, a good source is this site. Using the keyword newspaper classifieds will lead you to where you can search alphabetically by state.
- www.careerpath.com - Connects to classified job ads from newspapers around the country. Select the job title and then select the state or region of the state.
- Targeted Job Posting Publications. - Although the resources that follow are national in scope, they are either targeted to one medium of contact (telephone), focused on specific types of jobs, or less comprehensive than the sources previously listed.
- Job Hotlines USA (www.careers.org/topic/01_002.html) - Pinpoints more than 1,000 hard-to-find telephone numbers for companies and government agencies that use prerecorded
job messages and listings. Very few of the telephone numbers listed are toll-free, and sometimes recordings are long, so-callers, beware!
- The Job Hunter (www.jobhunter.com) - A national biweekly newspaper listing business, arts, media, government, human services, health, community-related, and student services job openings.
- Current Jobs for Graduates (www.graduatejobs.com) - A national employment listing for liberal arts professions, including editorial positions, management opportunities, museum work, teaching, and nonprofit work.
- Environmental Opportunities (www.ecojobs.com) - Serves environmental job interests nationwide by listing administrative, marketing, and human resources positions along with education-related jobs and positions directly related to a degree in an environmental field.
- YNational Vacancy List (www.ymcahrm.ns.ca/employed/jobleads.html) - Shows YMCA professional vacancies, including development, administration, programming, membership, and recreation postings.
- ARTSearch - A national employment service bulletin for the arts, including administration, managerial, marketing, and financial management jobs.
- Community Jobs - An employment newspaper for the nonprofit sector that provides a variety of listings, including project manager, canvas director, government relations specialist, community organizer, and program instructor.
- College Placement Council Annual: A Guide to Employment Opportunities for College Graduates - An annual guide containing solid job-hunting information and, more important, displaying ads from large corporations actively seeking recent college graduates in all majors. Company profiles provide brief descriptions and available employment opportunities. Contact names and addresses are given. Profiles are indexed by organization name, geographic location, and occupation.
Many state personnel offices also publish a weekly or biweekly "open recruitment" listing of career opportunities that have not yet been filled. These listings are categorized by job title as well as by branch of government, and often by whether a test is needed to qualify for the position or not. An increasing number of state personnel or human resources offices are on-line and offer many services on the Web. A fine general website that can help you locate your state personnel office is www.piperinfo.com/state/index.cfm. While each states site is different, you can count on access to the state human resources office and sometimes even the human resources offices of many of the states larger cities. For example, the State of Connecticut lists an additional twenty-seven city sites that each have human resources departmental listings. So, you could search the State of Connecticut Human Resource Office and then jump to the City of Stamford and review city jobs on its site.
