Like most of the job postings on the Net, the science and technology field is dominated by openings in the computing field. We've listed some of the best of the computing job resources, some resources that show potential for growth, and some of the non-computing opportunities.
The American Institute of Physics offers a wonderful selection of options for those seeking career information in both physics and the physical sciences. The AIP's Employment Opportunities Database provides online access to over 200 job listings, updated weekly, in academia, government, and industry, with options to search the entire database in 12 different branches of physics or in such related fields as materials science and engineering. While a number of postings favor either field experience or advanced degree holders, job seekers at all levels of experience/training will surely find something here of interest.
For those contemplating careers in physics or the physical sciences, the AIP offers a Physics Careers Bulletin Board, an interactive service which allows students to pose questions directly to veteran professionals in the field. Each month six physicists from a variety of career areas are selected to participate in the service. Brief biographies of the participants are made available so that questions can be directed either to the whole group or to a specific individual. The stated purpose of this fascinating service is to address the question "What Can I Do with a Physics Major?" Direction of the discussion can be as broad or as specific as individual students need to make it. As such, the Bulletin Board is one of the very best uses of technology we've seen applied meaningfully in the job search and career information field.
The American Mathematical Society maintains an impressive list of job openings for those with advanced degrees in mathematics. While the vast majority of positions included are in academe, opportunities in both private business and non-profit organizations are listed as well. Updates to the list occur almost daily and frequent users will want to use the option of specifying date of posting among their search criteria. The compilers of the list have standardized entries to a large extent, making the list of over 200 entries relatively simple to scan. Recent graduates will be pleased to find separate listings for post-doctoral fellowships.
Bionet includes postings in the biological sciences as well as professional level support jobs for that field. Genetics, neuroscience, molecular biology, and other specialties are represented as well as as computer systems support jobs, database programmers, etc. Post-doctoral opportunities are well represented. About 50 postings appear each week, both from academe and businesses worldwide. Resumes and messages from individuals seeking employment are accepted on "bionet.jobs", but are more appropriate for "bionet.jobs.wanted".
CareerMosaic's flashy opening screen doesn't announce that it's a purveyor of job information in the high tech field, but currently it hosts job information on about a dozen high-tech firms in the San Francisco Bay area. Participants include Sun, Seagate, National Semiconductor, and others. CareerMosaic provides much more information about employers than do most online resources-- including company profiles and information about benefits and work sites. CareerMosaic is run by Bernard Hodes Advertising, and charges the listing companies for their participation.
None of these usenet newsgroups are specified as being "computing jobs" groups, but traffic observed would suggest that they are almost exclusively so. It is unfortunate that the groups are not broken down into more specific genres (hardware vs. software, networking, etc.). The groups overlap significantly -- the only significant division appears to be contract vs. non-contract. The largest groups are "misc.jobs.offered", with 800-1,000 postings on average each week and "misc.jobs.contract" only slightly smaller.
Smaller groups include "biz.jobs.offered" and "us.jobs.offered" with 150-250 postings appearing on average each week. Newsgroups have a less tightly organized structure than gophers and (most) web sites, so expect to wade through the haystack to find your needle. Browsing and search capabilities depend entirely on your news reader program.
IEEE-USA offers a variety of employment and career development resources that should hold interest both for IEEE student members and career professionals. IEEE's Job Listing Service is divided by geographic region and contains listings as received directly from employers and recruitment agencies. Although IEEE does not check the veracity of the postings, they do screen out any listings that require payment of any fee from the job seeker. The IEEE service contains a significant number of postings...over several hundred in all. In addition, users have the option of selecting IEEE's "auto-response file" system and having regional leads forwarded directly to their e-mail address.
The IEEE service also provides links to a host of additional categories of information including employment assistance information; information on congressional fellowships; and, information on Washington internships for engineering students. While users may find the Job Listing Service cumbersome because of its geographic bias, IEEE suggests the possibility of arranging the listings by subdiscipline as the service grows.
The Monster Board includes over 500 position listings from more than 70 companies. Most of the jobs included are in the computing field, but marketing, communications, and other positions appear in smaller numbers. Over 90 percent of the jobs are in east coast locations, most of them in New England. The Monster Board includes a helpful "browse and select" interface that supports searching by company name, location, discipline, and specific job title. Once you've selected jobs you're interested in, you can enter your resume in an online form.
Like CareerMosaic, the Monster Board is run by an advertising/recruiting firm (ADION Information) and includes lots of graphics -- beware of long download times if you have a slow network connection. You'll probably want to turn auto-load images off on your web browser. Don't be fooled by the link from the opening page to a list of the board's employers. Although it lists only 3 companies, many more are represented in the postings found in the career search section.
Like the other "misc.jobs" groups (above), the "resumes" division is not designated for computer-related postings, but is primarily so by virtue of its most common usage. This group receives about 600-800 postings weekly; 50,000 people read the group according to 1990 statistics from the "misc.jobs" "Welcome" posting. That number is probably much higher now. Read the "Welcome" posting on the list for guidelines on how to post.