2424 Software, LLC
July 15th, 2010
Job Hunting in 2010
Saying that the year 2010 is a bad year for looking for work is like saying that Hurricane Katrina was a bad storm. But if you are among the unemployed, or just ready for a change, new tools are available that can help fight today's storm and make a big difference in how successful you are – not just in getting a job, but in getting the best possible job.
In the 1990's with the rise of the Internet, job boards appeared, making it easier than ever before for job seekers to find job openings of interest and for employers to find job candidates of interest. Soon after web-based job boards came to be, on-line resume writing and distribution services emerged to help job hunters easily put their well written resumes on multiple job boards and in the hands of hiring professionals. Today, other online resources enable job hunters to instantly research hiring companies, compare salaries, and even learn about hiring managers.
Yet, despite thousands of job boards and hundreds of resume-related services, the phones of job hunters are not exactly ringing off the hook. With many more job hunters than job openings, job seekers must complete many, many job applications just to land a single interview, and, on average, many interviews are required just to bring in a single job offer. The Internet has made it easy to indentify job openings, but now the bottleneck is the application process.
The key to obtaining the job you really want at the pay you want is to receive multiple job offers – and to receive them all at about the same time! So, how can a job seeker make that happen? Submitting all of your job applications at once would be ideal, but with each application taking 30 minutes or longer, that does not seem too practical. The next best thing is to submit as many applications as possible as quickly as possible. With a high-end sophisticated form filler designed specifically for job hunters, that can be achieved: the 30+ minutes per application can be dramatically reduced. The leading tool for doing this is the FillPerfect® Intelligent Form Filler™ from 2424 Software. FillPerfect is an automatic form filler that comes pre-configured for job applications. Straight out of the box, with no user configuration of keywords, it supports virtually all common fields found on job applications:
- name
- temporary and permenant addresses
- multiple contact numbers
- primary and alternate email addresses
- complete education and employment histories
- multiple references
- career goals
- travel and relocation preferences.
Most form fillers take the "one-size fits all" approach, leaving the user to configure key words as well as the data to be entered. Even worse, they totally fail to handle the biggest issue for job applications – multiple occurrences of items like past employers and references. Even simple keywords make most form fillers virtually useless when it comes to job applications. Consider for example the keyword "Name". "Name" on an employment application could be the name of the high school you went to, the name of a college you attended, the name of your previous supervisor from one of your previous employers, the name of your first, second, third, or even fourth reference, the name of your previous employer – for every job you have every held, or maybe just your name! Unlike other form fillers, FillPerfect is an intelligent form filler. It looks not just at key words and their synonyms, but also at their context, the same way a person does when reading through an employment application. This built-in intelligence enables FillPerfect to do an exceptional job at filling in job applications. Unique and job-specific fields that can not be completed automatically, for example, "Where did you hear about this position?", are highlighted automatically by FillPerfect so that they can be rapidly found and completed.
Using the intelligent FillPerfect form filler, four to six applications can typically be completed in the time normally taken to complete just one. Since more completed applications mean more jobs offers more quickly, it is clear why FillPerfect is the job hunter's software tool of choice. Even in 2010, job hunting still requires a lot of time and effort, but with an intelligent, powerful form filler job seekers can focus on finding job opportunities, rather than on endlessly filling out job applications. You can find out more about FillPerfect at www.FillPerfect.com.
About the author
As a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mark Robison is no stranger to technology. Working with computers for over 25 years, he has experienced first hand their changing and ever-increasing role. In his professional career as a software engineer he has covered the gamut from the room-sized mainframes of the 1970’s to today’s palm-sized computers.
In the early 1980's Mr. Robison co-founded Design Computation, the first company to harness the power of the personal computer for computer aided engineering, and has since worked in a wide range of software and product development positions. Prior to launching 2424 Software with his son, Erik Robison, he served as the Vice President of Engineering at a Roper Industries company where he developed state of the art software with a focus on usability and 24x7 operation.
Mr. Robison lives with his wife Debra in Spring, Texas, where he developed the FillPerfect Intelligent Form Filler to make online job hunting easier and quicker.
You can email him at mark@FillPerfect.com.