Jane, a
lawyer, wants to explore career opportunities online but she is concerned about
two things: personal information being available to everyone accessing the job
boards and information about her preliminary search getting back to her boss.
Jane is
wise to be concerned about personal information getting into the hands of
disreputable folks. But, as Jane soon discovered, there are levels of privacy
and confidentiality that you can choose on most reputable online job boards.
Precautionary Tips for Online
Searching:
1. Omit
personal information from your resume, when submitting to a job board, such as
name, address, phone numbers and email address.
2. When
registering with job boards, set up a separate email address using a web based
email such as hotmail, Gmail or msn.
3.
Select a few good sites, determined by their privacy policy, reputation and
likelihood of employer use for your career specialty.
4. Check
the Privacy Policy of the selected sites. Many reputable sites provide the
following options:
*You
may store it in a database that is not searchable by employers. It's there in the database and ready for you to send when you respond to a posting. Only those
employers will have access to it. This was Jane’s choice.
* You may store it openly without personal contact information. Employers wishing to contact you do so through the career site.
* You
may store it openly, with contact information available. All parties with
access to the searchable resume database will have access to your resume.
Reputable online Career Sites try to restrict access to employers and
recruiters.
I
encourage clients to use every appropriate job search resource. In addition to
the most prominent websites, I recommend niche sites – those that specialize in
their field, occupation or type of organization. Although I’ve checked the
security procedures of those sites, I ask that my clients read the policy on
confidentiality and security whenever they consider using a job board.
Jane did
post her resume on a career website, using the confidential designation.
However, she found her next job through networking - the most successful career
search method for any position beyond entry level.
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