If one subject is tailor-made for this author, it is Digital Job Seeking. As a multiple dot-bomb and telecom bust veteran, the voice of my experience resonates not with one job search experience, but several. To afford you the benefit of my experience, I’ll offer you the good news and the bad news for both finding a job digitally and finding a digital job.

First, some good news: no matter how bad the economy, jobs are always available for someone with technical skills. The smartest companies will hire you on the basis of your ability to learn rather than what you already know. Companies that hired employees on the basis of their skills in COBOL programming or System 360 Job Control Language realize now that they occasionally got burned when they needed a current employee to learn Java or XPath. How does a company decide whether you can learn or not? The company hires you for a short-term contract (sometimes measured in weeks.) If you prove that you are able to learn the necessary concepts and accomplish what they have outlined in the time allotted, you can be hired either permanently or for an indefinite period contract. The guiding principle here is: never turn down a contract because the period is too short. After completing a three-week contract one time at a local company, I was hired, sight unseen for another contract that was extended to eighteen months and has no end in sight.

The inevitable bad news is that you must be careful how you demonstrate your abilities. Some unscrupulous potential employers may ask you to work on a contingency basis. In other words, you complete a sample of work for free. The agreement usually centers on the issue that if they like what they see, they will hire you. Three years ago, when I was laid off from a software company, the economy had gone soft. It took me two months to find another position, a long time in my book. In the interim, I joined a Yahoo group that offered job listings for technical writers.

The name and URL of the site are irrelevant, since I can’t recommend it on the basis of its job listings. Members called the group the “Bangalore Daily,” referring to the fact that at least 75% of the listings were for jobs in India. The moderator was selling used cars, which should have been a red flag. Our e-mail addresses ended up on mailing lists of spammers and pornographers. In addition, he used us as an audience for each of his own boom-then-bust schemes. His bitter sniping at former employers hinted that perhaps he was using “layoff” as a euphemism. However, the exchange of information with members in a similar situation to my own was eye opening. Among the several hundred participants in the group, not a single user mentioned getting a job as a result of a “sample” submission; however, multiple horror stories alluded to frustrating experiences and wasted time as a result of accepting such an offer, which led nowhere and took time away from more profitable pursuits.

My second piece of good news is that finding a digital job does not necessarily require a high-tech job search. In spite of what some career snobs might suggest, were I looking for a job today, my main source of potential job openings would still be the local Sunday paper want ads. Even during periods of long-term employment, I kept track of the want ads because the ebb and flow of jobs in certain industries and positions told me a lot about the robustness of the current job market, what skills were hot and sometimes what different companies were paying for such skills. In San Antonio, you can get the same information online at MySA.com, but an online search may fail to turn up some gem listed in the printed paper, especially if the position is for a job with a public agency or state or local government.

When doing a digital job search, the bad news is that e-mailing resumes may be a waste of time. In spite of the fact that e-mails are digitally searchable, making them appealing to companies targeting certain job skills, e-mailed resumes are also easy to ignore. Because it is easy to file an e-mail resume, people too lazy to do anything else do get around to filing via e-mail. If a Human Resource Director has a hundred job applications and five hundred spams in his/her mailbox, then receives a nicely-printed letter and paper resume, who do you think will get noticed first? A beautifully formatted printed envelope is requisite if one is applying for a position in my field; however, if one is looking for a programmer or other technical position, a nicely hand-written envelope (including a legible, hand-written return address) is the kind of guerilla job-hunting that just might pay off. If you also file an e-mail resume, you can refer to this fact in your printed letter, gaining the benefit of two media. Another good use of your high-tech skills is to establish a web page with your resume on it. My son’s and mine are posted if you would like to see examples.

My third piece of good news is that outsourcing is big business nowadays. If you have experience in the computer industry, outsourcing providers probably have work for you at attractive pay rates. The upside of contracting is that you can “try out” several companies (and several departments in the same company) for the right fit. You can learn a lot about their corporate culture before you make a long-term commitment. You can demonstrate your skills, and if the company finds them attractive, they may hire you, possibly at a higher salary than they would have offered if they didn’t know you.

The down side of contracting via an agency is that they get a cut of your take. However, in this case, this arrangement is well worth the cut. My agency, for example, pays me weekly at a rate that ranges from slightly below to slightly above what I charge for freelance work. I don’t have to do any billing or deal with delinquent clients, and they keep track of withholding information. All this and direct deposit, too.