Web tips on getting that job

How to create winning job search tactics

Orland Park native Molly Mann worked with a job coach and used a new Chicago-based Web site, GoSavant.com, to land her first job out of college. Even so, her efforts took five months in today's troubled times.

Mann, 22, who started her new job Sept. 15 as a sales representative for a dental products manufacturing company, watched one of GoSavant.com's "Knock 'em Dead" interview videos right before she left for the interview that led to her job offer.

"The tips, along with my coach Karen Marvinac's help, gave me a lot more confidence and acted as a refresher course," said Mann, who majored in sales and business marketing at Western Michigan University.

Mann used a career coach through GoSavant.com; the coaches charge varying fees based on expertise. Her coach helped her realize that she has certain strengths such as persistence and independence.

"You have to stay motivated," Mann said of the months she spent job searching. "GoSavant gave me a structure and a feeling that things can turn around."

GoSavant.com offers free links to job boards, recommended reading, downloadable workbooks, and tips on making career transitions. It also sells:

• Fee-based "live" career coaching via Web cams that can cost anywhere from 50 cents to $3 per minute.

• PowerPoint programs for $1.99 each explaining how to use FaceBook, LinkedIn and other Web sites and resources.

• A series of online videos for $19.99 on topics such as writing effective resumes and cover letters and creating a post-interview plan.

• A $49.99 series of videos by Martin Yate, author of the Knock 'em Dead job-search guide and 12 books on work life.

How to write an effective resume

Anyone who pays for the videos can watch as many times as desired for three months.

GoSavant, a 10-employee startup, began when parent company Access Medical Group realized it could expand to the public its video-training program for doctors who talk about pharmaceutical products.

Access Medical Group Ltd., which former Searle Co. marketing director Fred Howayeck founded 19 years ago, compiles patient brochures, as well as DVDs, PowerPoint slides and Web sites to inform doctors and patients about pharmaceutical products. The company, which employs about 50 and reaps profits, has designed the popular Web sites ThyroidToday .com and USTOO.org, the latter dealing with prostate cancer.

"This past December, when the job market hit the skids, we said, 'We're pretty good at helping physicians with their presentation skills. Can we make this leap and work with someone who can help people with their career skills?' " said Barry Hylas, vice president of marketing at GoSavant.

GoSavant's leaders are looking next at working with job boards, so that the job boards could refer people who come up empty to the GoSavant site, as well as becoming a resource for nonprofit networking and church groups.

Natalie Petouhoff, an analyst at Forrester Research, said the GoSavant site is unique because it lets job seekers practice their interviews by speaking out loud, rather than rehearsing in their heads, and role-play representing their resumes in person in the best way possible.

Petouhoff said though people who use GoSavant don't have the person-to-person contact that real-life job coaches provide, the interactions can still help prepare job seekers, and the Web site is clearly laid out.

How to master the job interview

The market for online help for job seekers is unlimited, Petouhoff said, because people are trying to reinvent themselves in the midst of one of the toughest labor markets in decades.

"People with jobs are exhausted from having to do two to three other people's jobs and want to move to the next level, either inside the company or elsewhere," Petouhoff said.

"Those without jobs are trying to reinvent themselves when jobs are harder to find."

Petouhoff foresees the online job-assistance market exploding alongside Web 2.0 and social-media technologies.

"We are just beginning to understand how to use these technologies to improve our companies internally and our work life in general," she said.

"Companies can start using these same principles of customer service internally to change their own cultures, and make them smarter, leaner, greener and better places to work."