The economy is supposedly bouncing back but searching for jobs still doesn’t get any easier.

Depending on what you’re even looking for, the search can be a tough one. The web may still be booming and creating new jobs, but sifting through it all is still a long process and by the end of it, you might as well consider yourself a Job Search Analyst. In helping others out there search of a job of their own, I’ll compile what techniques I’ve been using to find myself a job. Hopefully you’ll learn something and find yourself a job!

Finding a place to find jobs

Finding a job is hard. Finding a place to find jobs can actually be just as difficult. The best tool I’ve found to find places to find a job (mouthful) is XMarks.com. This website is based off a plug in that aggregates people’s bookmarking habits to create a searchable database of sites around topics. Putting in the right phrase will show you a list of the best sites in that field based on the bookmarking and tagging habits of others.

So when looking for a place to actually find job listings, here’s some ideas:
http://www.xmarks.com/topic/job_boards
http://www.xmarks.com/topic/job_search_engines

Also keep in mind that every topic also has a great list of “related topics” under the search bar to give you other ideas to search for.

Tips on making your search easier

Sure, you can spend every day opening up your bookmarks and searching for jobs you want. Like the title of this post states, searching for jobs online is a much longer process than it seems. In helping to create productivity as well as sanity, there’s a great feature most job boards have, that you must use: saved searches.

Websites like Monster.com and Indeed.com allow you to not only set up saved searches, but they can also e-mail you fresh searches every day. Setting these up will decrease the amount of time you spend hunting to leave more time for writing great cover letters and jazzing up your resume (which we will discuss in the next section). Since the search may be long, you can expect that every morning, you’ll have a fresh batch of e-mails to tear through with plenty of job listings set up with your specific criteria.

Make sure to change up the listings or make your search term the root word. So instead of having saved searches for “blogging,” “blogger” and “blogs” you can just set up a search for the word “blog” and catch as many listings as you can.

Cover letters and resumes

The sad truth is, there are a lot of extremely expensive resume writing services out there. Thankfully, websites like JobFox will evaluate your resume for free when you post it on their job board. Within a few days, they will send you a few tips to clean it up before trying to convince you to pay for a professionally written one. While I would personally like a really great resume written for me, I can’t exactly spend money while I’m trying to find ways to make more of it.

Thankfully, you can go back to XMarks and find a few sites of your own, many of which will offer free advice. Compile a few notes and make your best judgments to really spice up both your cover letter and resume. The most basic tip I can give is be simple, be honest, use “action words,” not “passive words,” and make sure your cover letter is well thought out since that will be a stronger force than a standard resume. Any chance you have to make an impression before an interview is a good idea, so make sure you make a great first impression with your cover letter.

More on cover letters:
http://www.xmarks.com/topic/cover_letter

More on resumes:
http://www.xmarks.com/topic/resume

Keep on pushing on

It’ll be a long journey but if you put a lot of effort out there, there’s no way that some great opportunity will not come back to you. The best thing to do is be committed, be honest and try hard. Any good hiring manager will be able to spot determination and a good skill set. Make sure you put your best foot forward in the search. It’ll be long and it’ll be boring. Do well and your good work will eventually pay off.

I’ll let you know when I land a new job myself. So keep it strong and be sure to share this post with friends.

No related posts.

More info here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jefframos/4252300062/

Haven’t seen one of these in YEARS!

Thankfully The Brooklyn Public Library is still upholding a tradition I remember from my days of a school kid. Don’t forget to follow them on Twitter!

No related posts.

EDIT: Well hey now! This post was linked to by the lovely folks at Joystiq.com! Thanks guys!

For some, Winters in New York City can be the worst time of the year.

Living in New Jersey most of my life, Winter was never truly that bad. Sure, digging your car out of the snow wasn’t pleasant but most homes and apartments were always well heated and I was graced with an autostarter on my car. Trips anywhere were always toasty the moment I got behind the wheel. Traveling anywhere in NJ during Winter meant bundling up in your warm home, running to your car, getting into a warm car, driving, running out of your warm car into the outside world and getting inside somewhere. Living in New York City is totally different.

Even if you live close to a subway stop, sometimes your destination may be a few blocks away from your home. And no matter how crowded the streets are, it’s always cold in NYC. The worst part about living in NYC is the amount of residents an apartment building may have. Because of which, the temperature is not controlled by you, but by your landlord. Most New Yorkers’ Facebook and Twitter streams were littered with complaints about freezing apartments the moment the chill came into the city. Some resort to space heaters even though those may hike up their electricity bill. And since New Yorkers love to drink, alcohol consumption has also been used as an alternative to stay warm. (I wonder which is cheaper per month?)

However, I’ve made a great discovery in how to keep warm this Winter.

I live in a brownstone in Brooklyn and I have two small rooms. One is my bedroom and the other is my office/TV room. Since this building is old, we have old iron radiators.

Unfortunately, the landlord sets the heat on and off at the oddest intervals and the heater in my office/TV room doesn’t work at all. So when it’s off, my bedroom is freezing. However, no matter what, I’ve noticed my office/TV room is NEVER cold when I’m in there. Lately, I’ve been doing work on my laptop while watching TV and I’ve been catching up on shows via Netflix with my Xbox 360. I’d fire up my big HDTV, put on a show, sit on the couch and work away for a few hours. After I was done, I’d get ready for the day. I would take a shower and head into my bedroom to change only to get hit by a giant wave of cold… But why? How did I not expect my bedroom to be freezing? Then I realized what has been keeping my other room so toasty.

Who would’ve guessed that the Xbox 360 would act as a lovely space heater. We all know the Xbox 360 generates a lot of heat. We also know that Xbox 360s can overheat, especially if they are kept in a closed cabinent. But my TV rack is open so the heat from the Xbox can leak all over my room and keep me warm. Between all the work I can do at home and the TV shows to watch on Netflix, I just saved myself some money on buying a space heater and spending more on my electric bill!

So that’s my little winter tip for all you gamers out there. Save money and snuggle up to your Xbox this Winter to stay warm! Happy gaming! And don’t forget to add my Facebook Fan Page to keep up to date with all my postings, links and discussions!

No related posts.

I just read a great post by Seth Godin about Dunbar’s Number.

With the ever amounting number of friends on social networks, can we realistically keep track with and engage all these people? How far does the number scale up? I personally have about 600 people on my Facebook account. The thing is, I personally know 97% of those people. I only add people to my Facebook account that I’ve met in real life. Only about 3% are “Internet friends.” Although, these are people that I actively engage with and that’s why they also exist on my Facebook account.

Seth’s post is a great read for anyone that has issues with realistically keeping up with all these people.

And don’t forget to add my Facebook Fan Page to keep up to date with all my postings, links and discussions!

No related posts.

As you may know, I started the Beachbody.com workout “Insanity” back on August 24th. On that post you can see my original Day One stats. Since then I haven’t truly been consistent with the work out. I decided to restart the workout today and I compared my stats from then to today’s results. What I saw was shocking!

I actually had overall, a 50.4% increase in reps! I can’t believe I grew that much even though I skipped almost two weeks of the workout! I’m shocked! I hope to keep up with everything starting today so I can really see some amazing results.

I had a great birthday weekend filled with lots of food that wouldn’t help anyone reach their weight loss goals. Here are my current statistics:

Weight: 163
Switch Kicks: 115 (9.5% increase)
Power Jacks: 60 (20% increase)
Power Knees: 125 (13% increase)
Power Jumps: 44 (175% increase!!!)
Globe Jumps: 15 (50% increase)
Suicide Jumps: 15 (87.5% increase)
Push Up Jacks: 23 (53% increase)
Low Planks 60 (5% decrease)

Time to stick with Insanity this time!

And don’t forget to add my Facebook Fan Page to keep up to date with all my postings, links and discussions!

Related posts:

1. New layout, new body (not yet at least!)
2. Going from Extreme to Insane.
3. P90X Lean – Complete!

It took most of my day to get a hold of a layout and theme that I can finally be comfortable with. Very clean, simple and to the point. I started with Thematic from Themeshaper and went and upgraded it to their Power Blogger version. What do you think?

Secondly, I started my first day of Beachbody.com’s newest workout, Insanity.

The “Fit Test” is the first workout you do and it gauges your progress throughout the workout. It has to be done every two weeks and it’s less than 30 minutes but it’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. It’s not even a full work out. It’s just a test! To keep a record, here are my results for the first day:

Weight: 162lbs

Switch Kicks: 105
Power Jacks: 50
Power Knees: 110
Power Jumps: 16
Globe Jumps: 10
Suicide Jumps: 8
Push Ups Jacks: 15
Low Plank Obliques: 63

As you can see, my strengths lie in my speed and stamina, not in my power. I’m not very strong but I think for someone of my fitness level, I have pretty good stamina and speed (despite the lack of exercise I’ve had over the years!). I’m really interested in seeing how the results from this workout will go. I’ll let you know what happens in the next 2 weeks when I do the Fit Test again!

Related posts:

1. Insanity Work Out – Day One Results

I just completed P90X using their Lean routine! I went through the entire 90 day workout and here’s my results!

April 1st, Pre-Vegatarian: 180lbs.
May 18th, First day of P90X: 172lbs
June 15th, 30 days of P90X: 166lbs!
July 13th, 60 days into P90X: 165lbs!
August 18th, 90 days into P90X: 161lbs!

And here’s my reaction video:

I uploaded this through YouTube’s live capture so I’m sorry that the sync is off! AND NO IDEA why the last 45 seconds cut off! Sorry! Silly YouTube!

Here’s a link to Beachbody’s P90X.
Here’s a link to Beachbody’s Insanity.

Related posts:

1. Going from Extreme to Insane.

So most of my friends out there know that I’ve been doing P90X for the past 3 months.

I’ve been doing the P90X “Lean” routine. The Lean routine is centered more on cardio and lean body mass. As you can see, P90X is an extreme workout routine that gives extreme results for those who can really commit to it. Here are my results for the first 30 days:

And here are my results for the next 30 days:

I’m extremely pleased with my results and proud of myself. However, I’ve noticed something about the program that I wasn’t happy with.

While my strength gain and weight loss has been excellent, I noticed I haven’t been getting the gains in endurance and speed that I wanted. A main goal of my transformation was to get back into shape to dance again. I’ve always loved dancing and especially break dancing and other forms of hip hop dancing. While my love for the dance grew, my health went the other way. Having an office job for years can do that to someone!

Because of the first round of P90X, I have gained so much strength that I can do break dancing freezes I could never do before. But to me, the aspects of dancing I want are speed, strength and flexibility. While P90X has made me so much stronger, it hasn’t made me more nimble and flexible in the ways I want. However, BeachBody, the company that makes P90X has a new work out routine called Insanity

Something like this seems to be up my alley. I LOVE body weight exercises. I love nonstop movement exercises. I love moving around and bouncing and sweating my ass off. I hate standing around and getting “my reps in.” I hate doing push ups and pull ups. I hate grabbing my weights and pushing and pulling my way into shape. Something that relies purely on the things I like seems to be a great routine and I can’t wait to start with this.

Once I go through my first round of Insanity, I may go back to P90X to get “ripped.” Of course I’ll keep you up to date on my last month of P90X to show you my results and I’ll keep you all posted on my journey with Insanity!

Related posts:

1. P90X Lean – Complete!
2. Insanity Work Out – Day One Results
3. New layout, new body (not yet at least!)

A few months ago, when I had the idea for my reality show, I decided to try and get my hands in all sorts of cookie jars for the sake of “being discovered.” I forget how I stumbled upon Reality Wanted, but nonetheless, without this site, I wouldn’t be able to tell you this story!

Reality Wanted is a site where users and casting agents collide. Users set up profiles for agents to see and casting directors post listings and troll the community looking for users to get onto their shows. I had put up a profile there months ago for fun, not expecting much at all. So after checking my spam folder last week, I realized I had an email from Reality Wanted that wasn’t their usual listing round up e-mail.

I checked it out and it was from a producer from The Tyra Banks Show! Long story short, they were looking for men with bushy eyebrows and Lord knows I’m a great candidate for that. HOWEVER, I had to shave my beard! For those who know me, my beard is a big part of my look and personality. I haven’t shaved it off in almost 6 years!

For fun I shot a little video about shaving my beard, just to show the producers I had a good attitude about something I never wanted to do in the first place.

The experience itself was not so bad and afterwards I made a reaction video also!

All in all it was an interesting experience to say the least. If it wasn’t for that one random day I decided to make a profile on Reality Wanted, this situation may have never happen. It just goes to show that you never know!

Related posts:

1. John Mayer releases first ever augmented reality music video.