Sweat of Your Brow Winter 1996

ARTICLE TOOLS

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One mid-November morning I found myself looking for work. The nonprofit I had worked for over the last year had run out of funds and I was out on the proverbial pavement. Only my pavement was composed of bits, not atoms. An Internet true believer, I was on a cyberjobhunt.

Guiding principles of my cyberjobhunt were three: 1. I was seeking a writing or public relations position. 2. I was not willing to move. 3. I wanted work near Pasadena, California.

I dialed up my America Online account and spammed my friends around the nation (forgive me) asking about available jobs. After sending my message, I skipped to the Christianity Online bulletin boards to post an inquiry but quickly recalled how desperate job-search postings read ("Will read and critique your unpublished manuscript . . . for free") and opted against bad PR. I dove off AOL (not cheap at $2.95/hour) with plans to check for replies to my e-mail in a few hours.

After AOL I connected to Primenet, my Internet Service Provider (cheap at 16 cents/hour) and dashed to the newsgroups. In the misc.jobs section I found news:misc.jobs.offered, news:misc.jobs.misc, and so on. I even found fun at alt.fan.u2. I'm in the promised land, I thought.

Then I discovered the ugly truth. The misc.jobs newsgroups serve the interests of computer programmers and government workers.

I trolled for half an hour, dipping in and out of newsgroups, and it was a total drag. All the newsgroups I checked were full of tech and super-tech listings. (If you've experienced differently, write me at genxlatino@aol.com).

Deflated, I retreated to old faithful: the Yahoo web site (http://www.yahoo.com). In Yahoo's employment directory I found over 200 employment web sites-and more ...

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