

Interview Question: What tools have you made to help you find a job? - scumola

Just recently laid off.  Applied for unemployment.  They want me to track all of my applications for work, so I wrote a tool.  I figured that anyone worth their salt would also do something like this.  How's that for an interview question?  :)
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scumola
Just for example, I made a webpage that I can submit an email address, a job
title and a job type to. The webpage submits the data to a database. Every 5
minutes, a cron job wakes up and emails an appropriate resume and cover letter
to the recipient based on the job type. I use the perl MIME::Lite modules to
insert the name and job title into the email. I've got an html and text
version of the emails, and it attaches a PDF of my resume to the email. All I
do is submit an email address, the title and click on the job type, and I can
mass-bomb the job market in a short while each morning. I'm thinking about
putting together a followup button. :)

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scumola
Also, it has a tracking pixel in the html template, so I know if the email was
ever opened - which comes in handy to tell if people are actually getting my
resume submission.

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evo_9
It works out great, actually (if you mean as an answer to what have you been
up too lately).

I find it's always much better to go to an interview when I've been working
hard on code - mine or a others.

Also, if you write something useful it's more impressive to the potential
employer.

I wrote a simple web-app to help find work last year; I found it to be a
pretty effective way to demo my skills to a potential employer too. It's
posted here if anyone wants to check it out: <http://linkpro.dotglow.com>
(demo login below login box).

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tyohn
Maybe you should create a website that other people can use to track their
applications?

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jarek
When I was applying to many internships during school, I had an Excel sheet
that did the job fine. These days I'm being a bit more discriminatory, so a
couple of labels and moderate use of starring in Gmail does the trick.

