You’re probably thinking that I am crazy. You’re not alone. My wife does. I think I’m crazy too. To be honest, I am scared as well. But there is only one way to find out if this will ever work – by doing it.

My primary focus will be seeking clients that need help with WordPress. Whether it be setting up clients with a brand new WordPress site or developing a plugin, I am confident that my skills with the WordPress code will be the most successful path with this switch.

As I continue to find work, I’ll also be working on some projects that I have wanted to do for quite some time. I’ll announce them once I get them further along. So between that and freelancing, I’ll be super busy over the next few months.

My next order of business is to develop business relationships, get my website updated to reflect these changes, and find new clients that want great results. I expect I’ll probably be blogging a lot more as well.

So to keep up with what is I am doing I suggest you subscribe to my feed. You can find out all of my social network stuff in the “Follow Me” widget found in the sidebar of this site.

The Etelos platform is totally unique. The fact that a company or developer can use them to deploy an app to each user so they can have their own separate instance is something that I think should be a standard. I think it is perfect for either a proprietary app or open source. I have some ideas of apps that I would love to build – if I ever get time – and I hope that I will be able to use them.

If Etelos can monetize their platform quickly, they will be a force to be reckoned with. There is a lot of competition in the cloud computing space. All of the big guys are all fighting for application builders to use their platform. And they each provide something unique.

Maybe in the future I’ll write a post on what is so great about the Etelos platform compared to the other guys and why I like it and believe in it so much. But for now, I just want to tell them good luck.

Something that would make it even better would be if everybody update their profiles often. It’s really easy to forget about your professional network and your LinkedIn profile until you need to use it.

For those of you who belong to LinkedIn, go to your homepage and find feed and subscribe to it. Not only will you be able to help others more effectively, but when you need to connect with others or find a job, it will make it so much easier because other will know exactly what you need. For those who don’t belong to LinkedIn, make sure you do it when you get a chance.

The groups LinkedIn has added has proven useful as well. It would be great if they also offered RSS feeds for updates made to the groups that you belong to.

It looks like this feature was released in the middle of March. Here are some blog posts that describe it better:

• Feature enhancements from Network Updates to LinkedIn News
• LinkedIn Now Offering Network RSS Feeds

Except I saw a post he did today on how resumes will not help you impress employers. What an amazing idea! One that I totally agree with. The last paragraph reads:

“Great jobs, world class jobs, jobs people kill for… those jobs don’t get filled by people emailing in resumes. Ever.”

Show don’t tell. I know that I can improve on a lot of that stuff. I have a few projects that I have been working on that I need to expose. I’ll do that over the next few weeks.

Those of you who frequent my site may have noticed that I even removed a link to my resume. I had it on my page for my job hunt last year.

Thinking back to my job hunt, it wasn’t my resume that got me my current job. I’m sure it played a role in getting it but my blog got me noticed.

So even though I have not posted as much as I would like, what I am doing here has made a difference. It makes me wonder what could happen if I devote more time to it. What have you done in the past to get noticed?

I thought it would be useful for others to know how I ended up getting the job. By the way, if you are in the Seattle area and interested, Etelos is hiring. Send my your resume and I’ll make sure it gets to the right people.

Now to the details…

I had been unemployed for a few months and looking for opportunities to meet people, find new companies to apply at, anything to find a job. As most of you know, meeting people and using your network is the single most effective way to find a job.

As I was searching for events to network, I saw that Gnomedex 2007 was just starting to allow people to register. As far as conferences go, Gnomedex is cheap ($500) and after doing some research, I found that the best part of the conference is meeting people and exchanging ideas with the other participants. I also had never been to a conference.

After a little nudge from my family, I decided to take a chance and register for Gnomedex. Chris Pirillo made it very easy to see who was also attending the conference. This helped me big time. I was able to find out who was going and concentrate on meeting people from local companies. I did my research and made a list of people I needed to talk to.

On that list was Eric Berto, the Corporate Communications Specialist at Etelos. I decided to email him prior to the event and he replied that I just needed to look for the big tall guy.

Eric was easy to find. I spoke with him at the first meetup of the conference. He explained what Etelos did. It sounded interesting. So I gave him one of my business cards. He ended up giving it to the people that needed it. I got the interview and the rest is history.

In a future post(hopefully in the near future), I want to get into more detail about what happened after giving my business card to Eric. It’s an interesting story…

During my job search, networking was by far the best way to get an interview. I quickly learned the importance of maintaining a network even if you have a great job.

Speaking of networking. A while back, I read some posts from an awesome blog on business networking. Unfortunately, I didn’t subscribe to the blog and now I can’t find it. If any of you know of any blogs on the subject, let me know. I did a search and couldn’t find anything worthwhile.

Tags: etelos, seattle, gnomedex, networking

For those of you that know anything about me or have been following this blog know that I have been looking for work in the Seattle area. My family and I moved up here from Utah for various reasons. We have enjoyed our time here so far, but I have not had a full time job since moving here.

This week, I began working for Etelos as a web developer. I received an offer during my last week of contract work so it worked out almost perfectly. Last week I didn’t do much of anything, especially with blogging, programming, etc. I had to have a week where I wasn’t looking for a job, and it was nice to have.

So what does Etelos do? Etelos provides a platform that “brings on demand applications to businesses, new service offerings to ISPs and hosting companies, and a new distribution channel for application developers.” I have been spending my first week on the job familiarizing myself with the platform and hope to post some info in the future about what I will be doing.

Here are some links if you would like to know more about the company in general:

• Etelos caps a big week with new CEO and Valley office
• Office 2.0 Database: Etelos

There is one downside to the my new job. It is located in Renton. That means I have a commute very similar to what I had in Utah. I’m hoping in the near future to use public transportation to be able to do some projects I have going or get a car pool going.

Tags: etelos, seattle, web20

I’m sick of creating a profile on just about every web site I visit. And then as I am looking for a job, companies want a copy of my resume (to only store, since they never look at it). This has become especially troublesome lately.

What happens if I update my resume? Each site that has my resume will not know about this change. And I realize this isn’t a problem that needs to be addressed immediately (my immediate needs include finding a job). Currently, I will update my resume on a site if I need to and I want a job bad enough from that employer. But if these employers want the best people, is their current solution the best way to go about it?

The same goes for every site wanting me to create a profile. I have created my share of sites where a profile is useful to each user and hopefully the site provided benefits to each of the users that went to the trouble to provide their personal information.

Let me give an example. When I first started my job search, I created a LinkedIn profile. I have been able to edit my profile, add contacts and have my contacts provide recommendations for me to be included on my profile.

Then last week I found Jobster. They have similar features once you create a profile. You are able to network with other users and have them added to your personal network. Although Jobster made it easy for me to import contacts, I noticed most of the contacts in my network on LinkedIn do not have a profile on Jobster.

I have already emailed some people to ask them to create a LinkedIn profile. Some have done so. Some I sure never will. But do you really think I want to do the same thing by emailing these same people to create a profile on Jobster and add me to the network? Not really.

I recognize that both LinkedIn and Jobster have very similar features, while some features are different. They both are trying to get me to use their network primarily.

What I am looking for is one place to be able to accomplish any task on the web. Ideally, it would be great if LinkedIn and/or Jobster provided an API to allow me and others to create a profile on my own web site and allow all the features that are provided on their own sites.

So when somebody is searching for a Java developer in Seattle, they are provided with my profile information that I updated on my own web site. Once they visit my site, they will also be provided with samples of my work, what I think about, perhaps a beautiful picture of myself. The point is I get to provide them with the information I want them to know and keep it updated on one site.

I know that many sites are starting to implement OpenID into their sites. For those who don’t know, OpenID provides a decentralized single sign-on system. This would make it so I don’t have to register on every site I visit. But not a lot sites support OpenID yet.

Back to the resume problem. It might be cool to have some kind of resume API or tagging system to provide to employers. They can then add it to their tools when trying to find somebody to fulfill a current job opening. I would just have to update my resume on my web site and I would still be found by those employers that need somebody with my skills.

Is there an opportunity here? Possibly.

I have heard a lot about people using their own web sites as a resume. I will be blogging more about that in the future.

Let me know what you think. Why does every site want my resume/profile? Why can’t I keep that information on my own web site?

When I made the goal, I knew I was going to need my blog to promote myself. I didn’t know when I would need it. Had I done it when I actually made the goal, I could possibly be in a better position right now. On the other hand, ihave t could be worse. But I didn’t do it then so I am going to have to do it now.

I have lots of ideas on what I need to do to make this happen. I’m looking for more. How do I use my blog to promote myself? I’ll take it a step further while I don’t have a permanent job. How can I use my blog to find a job? I am confident I will get more ideas from all of you. Then I will share how I do it and you can see for yourself if a blog is helpful to accomplish something.

My take is that blogging is helpful for anything you want to accomplish on the web. Market a company. Sell a house. Lose weight. Make a million dollars. You name it. You just have to know how to do it.

After I learn how to use my blog to get a job, I’ll pursue the million dollars and let you know how I do it.

A good example of using a blog for self-promotion is my good friend Shane Lewis. I grew up with Shane. He is an awesome animator. He found out what a blog was about 18 months ago. He decided to start one and started posting his drawings on it. He’s made a name for himself among the animation community. This will help him big time if he wants to find a job in the future. It will help him in his career for years to come. Shane has worked hard to get to this point. Keep it up Shane!

Hey Shane, if you want to do a little drawing for this site, go for it. I’ll put it up with my redesign in the very near future.

Come on everybody. Have at it. Let me know what I need to do on my blog to help myself find a job. I am open to any ideas.

Various job sites have made RSS feeds available for job searches. All of them should make it a part of their search.

I wrote a post about Jobster earlier today. In it I mentioned I was recieving email alerts but wanted the job postings via RSS. Thanks to Christian who works for Jobster, I was able to add a feed for a job search for programmers in the Seattle area. The RSS feed becomes available whenever performing a search on the Jobster site.

I received another comment in the same post regarding Indeed.com. Indeed.com is a job search engine. They have an RSS feed for any search that is performed on the site as well. Very cool feature.

I want to know why all job sites don’t offer this same feature. Even though I don’t have a job, I don’t have the time (I also forget) to check a particular site every day. Luckily, I have other projects to keep me busy when I am not job searching.

I just took a look at Dice. They have the feature available as well. Monster does too. Good on you.

However, many companies with pages on their sites listing job opportunities do not offer RSS feeds for new jobs submitted. If they want to find the best (me), make it easy for me/them to find the jobs when they become available. Some companies have email notifications, but I, like many others, want RSS.

Today, I finally created my profile on the Jobster web site. There are a few things that set it apart from other job-seeking sites. You can set your status to let employers/headhunters know if you are just looking around or if you are seriously looking for work and everything in between.

Another cool feature on the Jobster site is superstar tags. The tags make it convenient for both job hunters and employers. As a job hunter, I can create my tags and prioritize them, and then search for jobs based on the tags that I create.

I understand the video resume is very helpful as well. I might have to create one in the near future.

Jobster also let you create alerts based on specific criteria. I created one for progamming positions in Seattle. You only have the option to get the alert via email. I would love to be able to subscribe using RSS.

It seems they do have lots of tools for employers. I can’t go over those features because I don’t know what they are. After doing a google search, it seems the tools they provide are very useful.

By the way, I also added a Jobster profile button to my sidebar. How many of these buttons will I have by the end of my job search?

Jobster is also a local company. Hmm. Perhaps they will hire me.