As you well know, my articles try to ferret out trends and new and creative ways of Internet job searching. They’re devoted to help you in the following ways:

• To prepare yourself to find new careers and job opportunities through the mountains of material on the Internet,
• To help you answer tough questions at interview because you’ve done your homework about the particular company, its competitors, and the industry it’s in
• To guide you in advancing in your career because you’re constantly updating your information through email newsletters, professional publications and newspapers online, and tons of other resources.
• To help you demonstrate to potential employers that you are always learning by giving you information about virtual courses and websites to keep your skills and expertise razor sharp.

To help you out, I’m always on the prowl for new websites and new ways of finding information online. Recently, there have been many articles about the "invisible Web" which have been controversial because they imply that undercover manipulation of websites is something that you have to do to get what you want. Sometimes they’re known as the "deep Web" or "dark matter" which doesn’t give the right impression either.

In fact, the "Invisible Web" isn’t as invisible as folks would suggest. Sure, it’s fun and convenient to use Google. I have a Google toolbar up at all times to check on information quickly and conveniently. But it’s very important to know how to harness the "Invisible Web."

Why It's Invisible

Why can't search engines find all the content you could possibly need? The reason is that search engines cannot or choose not to add to their indices of Web pages. Here is a list of websites that search engines tend to overlook:

• Sites that require registration or login such as The New York Times;
• Sites that are fee-based or licensed such as Lexis-Nexis;
• Sites that reside on an Intranet or behind a firewall;
• Archives that are included in newspapers;
• Interactive tools such as calculators;
• Newly added web pages because it takes a few weeks for spiders and crawlers to find them);
• Sites that use meta tags to exclude spiders, crawlers, and robots; and
• Information that doesn't exist until a user queries or searches a database such as MapQuest.

How to Uncover the Invisible Web

A recent book and website are also invaluable allies to job hunters. Chris Sherman and Gary Price’s 2001 book is entitled The Invisible Web. It covers major topic areas from government info to business resources to searching for people to current events to education. Their complimentary website, http://www.invisible-web.net/ includes a directory of some of the best resources the Invisible Web has to offer. The lists are comprehensive and continually being updated.

Here are some examples from the Invisible Web and many other sources to keep your job search researching lively and interesting:

Complete Planet It claims to include nearly 40,000 searchable resources, including unusual job boards with numerous excellent keywords to include in your electronic resume.

Onelook is a database of dictionaries of all kinds. At last count, Onelook included 4,822,971 words from 790 dictionaries.

U.S. Census Quick Stats Use this handy helper to find basic demographic, business, and geographic statistics about all fifty states.

CEO Express and RefDesk are comprehensive portals for you to keep bookmarked and to refer to often. They provide tons of useful links to a wide variety of information for renaissance business people.

Search Engine Watch by Danny Sullivan offers monthly updates about search engines and their continuing quest to include the Invisible Web as well as thousands new websites in a timely fashion.

Virtual Acquisitions Shelf and News Desk It is run by Gary Price who is mentioned above. Gary also includes a weekly email newsletter so you can update the quality and quantity of websites that you bookmark frequently.

Lively Librarians

The New York Times had an excellent article on August 29^th about how librarians are harnessing search engines and the Invisible Web to respond online to thousands of inquiries. For example, the Cleveland Public Library’s KnowItNow 24x7 service offers the expertise of librarians who check through Cleveland’s 150 subscription databases and the Invisible Web to answer patrons’ questions.

Not to be outdone, New Jersey has its own Network entitled QandAnj.org that offers reference services in Spanish as well as English.

And California, through its state librarian, Kevin Starr, is trying to build the "nation’s biggest nonprofit online reference service," based in Southern California. Check out http://www.asknow.org or http://www.247ref.org

The great thing about these library sites is that there’s a professional librarian live to answer your questions or to verify that information you’ve gotten through search engines is accurate. These services are mostly around-the-clock, often outsourced during evening and early morning hours so you can get answers whenever you want or need them.

Additional librarian sponsored and supported sites include:

Librarians' Index to the Internet that was developed in the state of California. It has a select and well-annotated selection of sites. For invisible web resources, look for sites that have been labeled or categorized as "Databases."

Library of Congress Catalog Search the largest library in the world. The catalog contains more than 12 million bibliographic records

Google, Step Aside!

So, give Google a bit of competition by tapping into the Invisible Web. You’ll find that it’s not as invisible as you imagined.

Next month we’re going to look more in depth about reference checking. In this post-September 11^th world, employers are even more skitterish about potential employees who may cause them headaches. We’ll explore how easy it is for employers to learn about you and you can set your record straight.

Keep sending me your queries and electronic resumes to vet. I greatly enjoy getting to know my readers and helping you through the difficult quagmire of job searching. I can be reached at jlommel@WorkforceAssociates.com

Have a very happy and safe Labor Day weekend.

Other NetWorking with Jane Lommel columns

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