歷年考研英語閱讀理解2004年01
[00:05.81]2004 Text1
[00:10.67]Hunting for a job late last year,
[00:13.25]lawyer Gant Redmon stumbled across CareerBuilder,
[00:16.99]a job database on the Internet.
[00:19.90]He searched it with no success
[00:22.43]but was attracted by the site's "personal search agent".
[00:26.37]It's an interactive feature
[00:28.69]that lets visitors key in job criteria such as location,
[00:32.93]title, and salary,
[00:35.05]then E-mails them when a matching position
[00:37.59]is posted in the database.
[00:40.11]Redmon chose the keywords legal,
[00:43.03]intellectual property, and Washington, D.C.
[00:47.26]Three weeks later,
[00:48.68]he got his first notification of an opening.
[00:52.00]"I struck gold, " says Redmon,
[00:54.63]who E-mailed his resume to the employer
[00:57.04]and won a position as in-house counsel for a company.
[01:01.38]With thousands of career-related sites on the Internet,
[01:04.91]finding promising openings can be time-consuming and inefficient.
[01:10.35]Search agents reduce the need for repeated
[01:13.18]visits to the databases.
[01:15.10]But although a search agent worked for Redmon,
[01:18.13]career experts see drawbacks.
[01:21.25]Narrowing your criteria, for example,
[01:23.68]may work against you:
[01:25.89]"Every time you answer a question
[01:27.99]you eliminate a possibility," says one expert.
[01:32.28]For any job search,
[01:33.99]you should start with a narrow concept
[01:36.72]--what you think you want to do--then broaden it.
[01:40.76]"None of these programs do that," says another expert.
[01:44.35]"There's no career counseling implicit in all of this."
[01:48.39]Instead, the best strategy is to use the agent
[01:51.72]as a kind of tip service
[01:53.84]to keep abreast of jobs in a particular database;
[01:57.68]when you get E-mail, consider it a reminder
[02:00.69]to check the database again.
[02:03.52]"I would not rely on agents for finding everything
[02:06.53]that is added to a database that might interest me,"
[02:10.25]says the author of a job-searching guide.
[02:13.56]Some sites design their agents
[02:15.74]to tempt job hunters to return.
[02:18.56]When CareerSite's agent sends out messages
[02:21.08]to those who have signed up for its service, for example,
[02:25.01]it includes only three potential jobs
[02:28.24]--those it considers the best matches.
[02:31.47]There may be more matches in the database;
[02:34.40]job hunters will have to visit the site again to find them
[02:38.13]--and they do.
[02:40.04]"On the day after we send our messages,
[02:42.46]we see a sharp increase in our traffic,"
[02:45.08]says Seth Peets, vice president of marketing for CareerSite.
[02:50.42]Even those who aren't hunting for jobs may
[02:52.83]find search agents worthwhile.
[02:55.55]Some use them to keep a close watch
[02:57.87]on the demand for their line of work
[03:00.02]or gather information on compensation
[03:02.64]to arm themselves when negotiating for a raise.
[03:06.57]Although happily employed,
[03:08.39]Redmon maintains his agent at CareerBuilder.
[03:11.81]"You always keep your eyes open," he says.
[03:14.43]Working with a personal search agent means
[03:17.03]having another set of eyes looking out for you.
