Job Search Guide For Educational Technologists

Transcription

1 kathy.htm Page 1 Job Search Guide For Educational Technologists Kathy Berry Graduate Student, Educational Communications and Technology University of Saskatchewan May, 1998 Select a different paper Download a copy of the entire paper The purpose of this project, Job Search Guide for Educational Technologists, is: To provide information which will make job searching less tedious and time consuming for Educational Technologists. To locate web sites which provide links to job search information and job opportunities in Canada and the U.S.A. To explore these sights in some detail. To provide URL information for these sights. To gather information from professionals in an attempt to answer some of the most common questions pertaining to Educational Technology. One of the first sites that I entered was the Association for Media and Technology in Education in Canada (AMTEC). It can be found at It has a number of different links. I chose to look at Education. In this site you will find Canadian Provincial Educational Links (this includes each province), Canadian sites-where you will find Industry Canada, Office of Learning Technologies, SchoolNet and more, Post Secondary -one of the links here is the Canadian Association for Distance Education, and finally International Sites. In the Canadian Provincial Education Links, I clicked on Saskatchewan and then on Job Search. This revealed a well laid out Job Search Guidelines Handbook. This handbook includes everything from resume writing through job searching skills, interviews, going beyond the search, your rights and other contacts. Another link in this job search site is S.U.C.C.E.S.S. (Saskatchewan's User-friendly Cyberspace Career and Employment Service Site). It contains a link called Job Searching. In this site you will find the following: National Graduate Registry (Canadian)*-- provides your name and qualifications this information is promoted to employers who are interested in recruiting post- secondary graduates. Electronic Labour Exchange (Canadian) designed to bring job seekers and employers together job seekers can search through positions posted by employers as well as post their own information about the type of work they are looking for and the qualifications that they possess. employers can search the system for a new employee or post job information for available jobs. HRDC National Job Bank (Canadian you can search the Human Resources Development Canada National Job Bank by keyword and/or by province.

2 kathy.htm Page 2 HRDC gives a list of Canadian Provincial Job Banks plus labour market information. Career Path (American) In this site you can search the want ads of the nation's leading newspapers. You can search a database which provides information on featured employers. There are tips and information on finding jobs, writing resumes and preparing for interviews. Career Connect (Canadian) This is the Toronto Globe and Mail website. You can browse ads online and by date. You can also submit resume information free and search a resume database. -here are also articles of interest (I found some very good ones on technology). Job Search and Employment Opportunities: Best Bets for the Net (American): The contents of this site are categorized, for example: Best Bets in Education and Academe Best Bets in Science and Technology Best Bets in Humanities and Social Sciences In Science and Technology you will find some very useful sites such as Career Mosaic and The Monster Board. I will discuss these sights at length later. I would like to take a closer look at the HRDC site mentioned above. Go into the site and click on Work. This option provides links to job opportunities and work place information. It also contains information that would assist those who are doing a job search or planning a career. In this site you can access Career Net, Career Connect, High Tech Career Centre, The Monster Board, Net Jobs, The Public Service Commission(PSC), the Toronto Star Career Classified and the Canadian Armed Forces. While in Work click on Work Search Assistance. Here you will find a self-help series about how to prepare yourself to find a job-everything from resumes to interviews. From here you can access another very good site called What Color is Your Parachute?: Job Hunting Online. It is a site which is designed to aid job hunters who want to use the Internet as part of their job search. This site itself gives you an incredible number of Gateway Sites which deal with careers and job hunting. Some of these sites are purely American and others are Canadian or both. For example, Yahoo! Employment is based in the U.S.A. but does have a Canadian site called Yahoo Canada. What I like about this Parachute site is that it gives you the opportunity to use different search engines. Some of the other engines listed are Infoseek Guide--Jobs and Careers, Lyco's/Points Top 5%--Careers and Jobs, Magellan--Jobs, Excite--Job Directories and Reviews. The Lycos site has a Canadian site called Job Search Canada. This is different from the Job Search site which Amtec describes. I will discuss some of the above sites in detail later. Returning to my original discussion about the Parachute site, some of the other very interesting links which I found contained within are: The Riley Guide, Job Hunt: A Meta-List of Online Job Services, America's Job Bank--Search, JobTrak, Job Smart and there are many, many more. Let's take a look at the Lycos Job Search Canada Site. The URL for it is jobsearch canada.guide@miningco.com Click on Job Searching. This site contains Canadian agencies which offer job help information, company profiles and links to job sites. CACEE Work Web is a charitable, non profit partnership between education and business. It's purpose is to find students and graduates relevant work.

3 kathy.htm Page 3 In Yahoo Canada's website ( I checked out employment. Click on classifieds, then click on employment. Here you will find employment sites all over the U.S.A. and if you want Canadian sites you have to specify that. The site is also categorized into Business and Economy and Education: Career and Vocational. The Business and Economy site offers a comprehensive listing of job banks, for example: Job Seek, Jobs Market, Net Jobs, Canada-Wide, Usenet-can.jobs, Career Internetworking, Job Match in addition to the Canadian sites which I have already mentioned. Also found in this site are links to sites such as Company Job Listings, Job Fairs, Seasonal and Summer Employment. You can also access job profiles for online employment. The homepage of Microsoft Internet Explorer can be found at: Click on Business, then Careers and Work. On this page you will find links to a number of job sites. The sites which I found most useful were; America's Job Bank ( Career Mosaic ( mosaic.com) Job Trak ( Go to America's Job Bank and click on Job Market Information. Here you will find America's Career Infonet. This site contains occupational information which may be helpful when searching for employment plus should aid in the understanding of the job market. Click on Occupation Search to find a listing of families, for example: Education, Computer/Information Technology, Artists etc. Next you can choose one of these families. I chose Education which contained a page of sub-occupations. Next I clicked on Instructional Coordinators. An occupational report on this topic came up. It included a definition of the topic, the projected employment outlook, and earnings. Returning to America's Career Infonet homepage, you can choose another interesting link-resources. This will take you to the Career Resource Library. One link to explore is Check Employment Trends. Here you will find Government Reports and Surveys (keeping in mind that this is an American site), Industry Surveys, Employment News, Magazines and Newspapers. If you go to Employment News, you will find News Releases, Data and Publications plus answers to frequently asked questions such as : What are the fastest growing jobs? What are the occupations adding the most jobs? What are the fastest growing industries? If you go back to the Monster Board home page and click on Canada Job Search Career Mosaic is another interesting site. It was an American site by origin but now has sites all around the world. It seems to be well recognized and respected and has won a number of awards. Over the course of my travels on the Internet, I have seen it come up many times. I chose to view the Canadian site. It's home page is well laid out with links to Jobs, Employers, Online Job Fairs, Resume CM, Career Resource Centre and an International Gateway to worldwide sites. There is also an employment site specifically for employers. If you go to Jobs, you will find links covering many aspects of job hunting. For example, the Career Resource Centre gives tips on job hunting, resume writing, wage and salary information and more. If you visit the HR Plaza site you can read about what more than 1,600 college juniors, seniors and masters' degree candidates have to say about "How college Students Connect With Employers." Another worthwhile site to visit in Career Mosaic is The Hidden Job Market. This is part of the National Business Employment Weekly which is published by the Wall Street Journal. It contains articles, job profiles and salary information plus suggested links, for example: How to Find a Position in the "Hidden Job Market" by DR. Sam

4 kathy.htm Page 4 Sackett. JOBTRACK is another well known web site. It boasts over 300,000 page views per day and 3,000 new job openings per day. It is an American site with over 650 college and university career centers participating. It has received numerous awards and has been featured on television, in newspapers and magazines. If you go to JOBTRACK for Students and Alumni, you will find links to sites such as Jobs--Full-Time, Part- Time, Temporary & Internships, Top Recruiters and Resource Centre. Go into the Resource Centre. You will find a number of links to employment sites. For example: The Riley Guide, which is a comprehensive list of employment opportunities and job resources on the Internet. Another site called Internet Sites for Job Seekers and Employers list over 900 Online Job-Search Resources and Services. In this guide if you click on Where are the Work Opportunities?-you will find many links to job hunting sites. For example: General Recruiters and Major Recruiting Sites, Other Meta-Guides for the Internet Job Search, Job Hunt etc. You may also find sites categorized by occupation. You can click on the occupation of your choice. I chose Engineering, Technology, and Mathematics. In this site I found Virtual Job Fair which includes over 500 companies with thousands of listings for high-tech. Industry. If you go to Women in Technology International, you will find career and job information for Instructional Technologists. There are also articles on how jobs are changing. Returning to the Microsoft Internet Explorer home page click on Employment and Job Search. You will find about three pages of sites. I looked into a number of sites, some of which I have already mentioned or discussed at length. I would like to talk about the Monster Board Career Search (Canadian) found at The Monster Board itself has received rave reviews. This is an easy site to travel. The home page is well organized with links for job seekers such as: Job Search, Employer Profiles, Personal Job Search Agent & Resume Builder. For employers the sites are: Recruit Online, Resume City, and Success Stories. Other feature sites are Hot Opportunities with Top Employers and Information Technology. The later site contains articles from the Toronto Globe and Mail. Some of the articles which I found are: Society's use of Information Technology Skills shortage prevails in advanced technology companies Rarity of Women in Instructional Technology a Glaring Problem Demand for Independent Consultants has become intense If you go back to the Monster Board home page found at ( search.htm) you can narrow your search down to Location, Discipline, and Keywords. Job profiles are provided with their location and application information is provided so that you can apply online. Instructional Systems Technology is another site that I browsed. It is found in the College of Education at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. Their homepage provides information about their department as well as links to Employment Opportunities. The job listings provide the job location and the date and time posted. Many of them are faculty positions at universities across the U.S.A., while others are with private firms. I also looked into the SCN web site (the Saskatchewan Communications Network). Their homepage is quite simple providing links to information about SCN. I chose the Distance Education site which basically describes the services which they provide and forms of technology used.

5 kathy.htm Page 5 If you click on Cool Links you will find the Government of Saskatchewan site. From here click on S.U.C.C.E.S.S.(Saskatchewan's User-Friendly Cyberspace Career and Employment Service Site). I discussed S.U.C.C.E.S.S. early in my review of the AMTEC site. The epss.com Job Bank (American) is a site that provides an up to date list of job opportunities. It's URL is the same as it's name. The job type, location, date, time and who posted it are what make up the initial listing. Click on a particular job and get further information such as the job description, the company, the salary, required skills and qualifications and where to phone, fax or . You can apply online. JobSmart is a California based site which provides a job search guide, salary information obtained through salary surveys plus links to Hidden Jobs. You can locate JobSmart at A quick look into WebCrawler classified ads, with a click on Job Opportunities in Instructional Technology brought up some 200 jobs listings across the U.S.A. Job bulletins are also provided by a number of major technological firms. APG Solutions and Technologies provided job bulletins for postings in Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto. Interlan Consulting and Immedia Technologies provided company profiles. There is more information to be found if you are prepared to search. In addition to searching the Internet, I felt that it might be interesting and informative to speak to people employed in business or educational occupations who are involved with educational technology in some form. I had prepared some questions to guide my search. In what areas of the work force are educational technologies most in demand? What are the educational, technical and personal requirements needed for jobs in, for example, the business sector? The educational field? The medical field? How does Canada fit into the big picture? I have found many job sites that are American and few that are Canadian? What do you feel is the demand for Educational Technology in Canada? The information which I have gathered came via , phone conversations or fax. In answer to the first question, the feeling was that employment for Educational Technologists would first of all be found in higher education-(universities and colleges in areas of distance education, distributed learning, professional development, teacher training etc.), next would be industry(banks, private firms), and finally government(mostly provincial and in the area of online learning via ministries of education, industry etc.) The last group would be consultants and freelance needs. For question two, the general consensus was that in terms of Educational Requirements: a graduate degree in educational technology/instructional design/evaluation, training in computers, authoring, project management(very important), teaching and learning research and theory would be the essentials. The required Technical Skills: solid knowledge of computers and systems, good authoring skills. Personality: good communications ability, a team player, ability to do many things well, at the same time, flexible, friendly, efficient, and a good lecturer. In answer to question number three, people tend to be a bit vague, but they do believe that Educational Technologists are becoming more widely understand and accepted but that educating people particularly in the business sector as to the value of these trained personnel is still necessary. Part of the problem is that some people still equate Educational Technology with the old AV model of teaching and learning. Today the AV is java scripting and MM authoring not overheads and slide projectors. Educationally speaking, Provincial governments are very interested in the abilities and quality of tasks which are performed by these people but don't seem to be able to put the money in place to pay them. Some of the people who I spoke with strongly believe that Instructional Technology is the key in putting together

6 kathy.htm Page 6 new media products. People who do not have this background may have the ability to put the content together but will be lacking the ability to design. Web Resources AMTEC - Lycos Job Search Canada - CACEE WorkWeb - Yahoo Employment - Microsoft Internet Explorer - America's Job Bank - Career Mosaic - Job Track - Monster Board Career Search - Canada Job Search S.U.C.C.E.S.S. - searching/jsguidelines/index epss.com! Job Bank - Bank JobSmart - Indiana University, IST job page - Resources Black, Debra D Black & Associates Visual Communication Inc Research Drive University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Sask. Greshner, Toby Superintendent of Curriculum Development and Special Consultant for Educational Technology in Northern Saskatchewan Laronge, Sask.

7 kathy.htm Page 7 Janes, Diane Distance Education and Technology University of British Columbia 2329 West Mall, Vancouver, B.C. Kramer, Charlene Resource Centre Post-Secondary Education and Skills Training Dept. of Education Government of Saskatchewan Regina, Sask. Seiferling, Mary Manager of Distance Education and Multimedia Learning Dept. of Education Government of Saskatchewan Regina, Sask.