The Internet is changing the way Americans search for jobs. Jobs once posted in Sunday want ads now are updated daily on the World Wide Web. Candidates who used to ask for post office box numbers now want e-mail addresses. Interviews that once took place in homey restaurants are today conducted in trendy cyber cafes.
While the impact of the Internet has been dramatic, most experts agree that the it is not replacing traditional employment methods. Instead, it is adding new avenues of opportunities at each step of the hiring process.

"The Internet has not taken away the need for a personal interview," Robert Waltos, Director of Career Recruitment for Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance, said. "But it has brought changes that are helping make the search more efficient and more productive for both candidates and employers."

Online services can help even in the earliest stages the process, before a candidate has narrowed his or her search. Web sites sponsored by professional organizations, like Life Insurance Marketing & Research Association, Inc. and the Institute of Electrical & Electronic Engineers (http://www.ieee.org/), for example, provide information that can help identify and refine a job selection. On a less formal level, newsgroups and "chat rooms" offer opportunities to "talk" to professionals and learn about day to day aspects of their jobs.

When the actual search begins, sites like JOBTRAK (http://www.jobtrak.com/) and Student Center (http://www.studentcenter.com) contain helpful job hunting tips and information about posting a resume online.
Today?s job candidates need to prepare two resumes: a standard version and one for electronic use. Viewing a resume from a computer screen is quite different from looking at a piece of paper, and a special resume is needed to address these design peculiarities. A few general suggestions include:

• Emphasize nouns rather than verbs, since resumes are often sorted by keywords.
• Keep the design simple, with lots of white space for better readability.
• Avoid unusual typefaces and reliance on bolds and italics, which may not show up on other types of computers.
  
• Keep the resume short, with no more than one page of copy for new graduates.
  

  The number of Web sites where jobs openings are posted continues to grow. The large service providers sponsor sites, like America Online?s Help Wanted USA, which lists as many as 7,000 job openings each week. Rival CompuServe offers E-Span, a job database with more than 2,000 openings. Other sites, like the Online Career Center (http://www.occ.com/occ) and America?s Job Bank (http://www.ajb.dni.us/) are available to anyone with access to the World Wide Web. A quick search of the Internet, using an index like Yahoo or Excite, will yield a number of these types of sites.

  Even if the opening wasn?t posted online, the Internet can help a candidate once he or she has secured a personal interview. Most major companies, like General Motors (http://www.gm.com) and Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance (http://www.northwesternmutual.com), maintain Web sites with valuable background that can be used to prepare for an interview. Hoover Online (http://www.hoovers.com/) and Standard & Poor?s Index (http://www.stockinfo.standardpoor.com/) are two good sources for locating corporate Web sites.

  Online databases, like ProQuest and Lexus, which are often available at little or no cost at local libraries, offer another research vehicle.