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TikTok is reportedly testing a job recruitment tool
You'll be able to post resume videos on your profile, according to 'Axios.'
Facebook’s new career site aims to help job-seekers hone their skills
Facebook has updated some of its career tools and launched a new website in order to help its users find new job opportunities, the company said today. Now, along with posting jobs on their Pages, businesses can also post them in Groups, and Facebook says its Mentorship tool will now make it easier for people to choose a mentor based on relevant goals and interests. Individuals will be able to share info about what they're looking for or what they can offer as a mentorship partner, and members of their Group can look through a list of that information to find a partner. The tool will also provide weekly prompts to keep mentorship pairs' conversations moving along.
CareerBuilder is the latest to jump on the AR bandwagon
How do you spice up a job-finding app when many of them effectively do the same thing? By adding a few buzzword-laden features, apparently. CareerBuilder has launched a revamped iOS app (Android is coming in the "months ahead") where the centerpiece is an augmented reality job search. Think of it as resurrecting Nokia's JobLens -- you're supposed to point your phone at buildings to discover positions (and importantly, salaries) in the world around you. We could see this coming in handy once in a blue Moon when you're just dying to know what people make in a posh-looking office, but you probably aren't going to find a new job wandering around like a lost tourist.
LinkedIn's Career Advice is ready to find you a mentor
Finding someone to help you advance your career can be tricky. After a limited trial in August, LinkedIn is rolling out its Career Advice feature to all its members in the US, UK, India and Australia. According to the company, more than 80 percent of professionals on the site have indicated a willingness to be a mentor or have one.
Google adds salaries to its job search tool
Google already has some tools to help you find a job, but there's been a missing ingredient: salaries. How do you know whether or not it's worth pursuing a new role short of visiting another website? You shouldn't have to worry much longer. Google is adding a suite of new job search tools, most notably salary info. In many cases, Google will display estimated salary ranges plucked from multiple sources (including Glassdoor, LinkedIn and PayScale) whether or not the listing itself mentions pay. If a position represents a big raise, you'll know very quickly.
AI can help you find a programming job
Artificial intelligence isn't just helping you work more effectively... it can help you find work, too. Source{d} is running a job service that matches programmers with employers by using a "deep neural network" to scan open source code for relevant qualities. And it's not just about understanding whether or not you can write well in a given language, either. The AI can even look for coding styles that match the methods of a given company, so you may land a position simply by fitting in more gracefully than anyone else.
Microsoft buys LinkedIn for $26.2 billion
You probably didn't expect your week to start this way: Microsoft has acquired LinkedIn for $26.2 billion. The company plans to integrate the career-oriented social network into many of its apps and services, including Office, Skype and Cortana. You'd get the details of the person you're meeting for a business deal, for example, or get help from an expert when you're working on an Office 365 project. Microsoft is vowing to maintain LinkedIn's overall independence, including the role of CEO Jeff Weiner, and hopes to close the deal sometime in 2016.
LinkedIn's Lookup app finds co-workers with the right skills
LinkedIn doesn't just want to help you find a job or a new hire -- it thinks it can contribute even after you're gainfully employed. The company's new LinkedIn Lookup app for iPhones (there's no mention of Android yet) helps you find and contact co-workers using criteria ranging from names to skill sets. That could be particularly handy if you're trying to find someone outside your department with the right experience, or if you're just curious about that new CEO. Think of Lookup as a lightweight, inter-office social network. It won't replace Facebook or group chat systems like Slack, but it could be the easiest way to introduce yourself to your fellow staffers.
Online 'nanodegrees' boost your career without requiring time off
Climbing the career ladder can be daunting. You frequently need new skills to move ahead, but it's not always practical to take time off just to get some new credentials. However, AT&T and Udacity may have just solved this conundrum by unveiling "nanodegrees:" short online courses that are designed to boost your talents without disrupting your life. The upcoming programs teach subjects like app development and data analysis over the course of six to 12 months, assuming you devote 10 hours per week; you won't have to use up vacation time just to earn a certificate. You'll even get career help in the field you're studying, so you should have a better sense of how any new talents will apply in the real world.
Become the Ultimate Fighter in EA Sports UFC's career mode
EA dished out some details today on EA Sports UFC's career mode, which will drop created fighters into the game's version of the UFC's popular reality TV series, The Ultimate Fighter (TUF). Participating in the TUF tournament lands players on a team coached by a real-life fighter, training and battling to earn evolution and experience points to boost their combatant's physical skills and unlock special abilities. The game's career mode also features popularity and longevity gauges, the former impacting the attention players receive from sponsors and other fighters, who send players video messages in the game. So long as championship hopefuls fight smart and don't take too many hard hits in their careers, their longevity meter will stay steady enough to grant them lengthy stays in the UFC. EA Sports UFC will enter the octagon on June 17 for Xbox One and PS4 and includes Bruce Lee as an unlockable fighter. [Image: EA Sports]
LinkedIn opens its blog publishing platform to everyone
A handful of big-shot professionals have long had the freedom to express themselves through LinkedIn's blogging platform, but most careerists have had to sit on the sidelines. Starting today, though, just about everyone can have their voices heard -- LinkedIn is opening its publishing platform to all members. Users will soon have the chance to write long-form posts and attract followers from beyond their immediate networks. Only a fortunate 25,000 have access as of this writing, but the company plans to expand publishing privileges to the entire user base in the weeks ahead.
How the Mac shaped my career and life
The celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Mac really pointed out to me how much the brainchild of Steve Jobs has affected my life so far. The Mac literally changed my life. In 1983, I was an engineer for a small natural gas pipeline company in Denver and wasn't really sure that I wanted to continue that career. Fortunately, I was working in a special projects group, and our vice president asked me to work up a five-year plan to start bringing "personal computers" into our company. He wasn't sure why we'd really want them, but he was getting budget requests for them and wanted us to have a coherent direction. After doing a lot of interviews -- what we'd now call requirements gathering -- and checking what was available, I decided on a path of buying IBM PCs, and that's what we started to do. When the Mac came out on January 24, 1984, my boss and I went to see it at a local store, and I was immediately smitten. It wasn't until the more powerful 512K model appeared later in the year that I bought one, and then things got interesting. Compared to the PCs in our office, the Mac seemed like the future. I began carrying it to work every day (it weighed 16.5 pounds), and I was quickly able to get it to do things that were amazing at the time. For example, MacProject was an Apple application that allowed us to begin implementing a project-management system for our pipeline. In 1985, when Aldus PageMaker arrived on the scene, I was totally amazed at what it could do and bragged to our office manager that I could lay out the company's annual report on the Mac for much less than what they were spending to have a design firm manually lay it out. It was tough with version 1.0 of PageMaker, but I was able to do it and have the output sent to film for printing. That resulted in the entire office department requesting Macs, and at this point we pretty much tossed the "five-year plan" in the recycle bin. The Mac was the first device that Microsoft Excel ran on, and it was able to handle spreadsheets that were huge compared to what Lotus 123 could do on the PC. Before I knew it, a lot of managers in various departments were asking for Macs. Next, we realized that we could network the Macs. Our first networks in 1985 used AppleTalk cables strung between cubicles and offices, but it worked. Once we had the network, used mainly for printer sharing, we started looking for other things we could share. We bought some of the early networked fax modems (remember fax machines?), and in 1988, we set up our in-house email system using Microsoft Mail. A few years later, we set up a store-and-forward dialup email system that brought email to our remote offices throughout the state of Colorado. I began to attend Macworld Expo in the late '80s, and this was about the time that I found I was no longer doing much engineering work. By 1990, we had enough Macs in our office to justify starting an in-house IT group that I became the manager of. Our parent company wasn't thrilled with Macs, so I found myself spending most of my time arguing with their IT procurement staff. Our pipeline subsidiary continued to be at the leading edge of IT. I gave talks at some industry seminars in the late '80s and early '90s about our use of HyperCard for training and other purposes in the company. In my personal life, the Mac was also quite important. Early on, I recognized that if I became a Mac developer, I could get significant discounts from Apple on hardware, which they don't do anymore. I started by writing and selling a flat-file database program, the name of which I don't even remember. Later, after HyperCard came out, I sold a number of "stacks" through Heizer Software's stack exchange. When the Newton was introduced -- another amazing Apple innovation -- I wrote several programs for it. I also used my Mac to create newsletters for a few groups that I was a member of, taking advantage of the wonderful world of "desktop publishing" Apple had invented. In 1986, I started up a bulletin board system for Mac and Apple IIGS users called MAGIC (Mac and GS Information Center), which ran until 1994. That site grew to two Macs and four modems (and phone lines), and eventually tied into Fidonet and the rest of the world. I used a number of different BBS programs over the eight years of MAGIC, including FirstClass and TeleFinder. I had my first view of the World Wide Web in 1994 at WWDC, and through the amazing book by Adam Engst of TidBITS fame, I was setting up my first website later that year. I called the site "PDANTIC.COM" -- it was all about Personal Digital Assistants like the Newton -- and you can still find traces of it out on the Wayback Machine. It's almost scary to know that I've been "blogging" for close to 20 years. Career-wise, our subsidiary was swallowed back into our parent company in 1994, which meant that I was helping out a lot of Mac users -- about 1,200 or so company-wide. Unfortunately, our parent company also decided that anyone who worked in IT would be outsourced to IBM (actually a spinoff called ISSC that later became IBM Global Services). I won't detail the next nine years, only to say that despite having to work on a project to move most of the Mac users over to Windows 95, I stuck it out for that long. It was when I bought a 12-inch aluminum PowerBook in 2003 that my dissatisfaction with my career began to boil over. Coupled with anxiety attacks I was having at work, I finally decided to quit and go out on my own. There's a story in there that involves MacJournal and how it helped me out the door of IBM, but that's something for another time. After that point, I relied on the Mac and other Apple products for my livelihood. That's involved having books about the Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad and more published, being a Mac consultant (ACN) for a while and all the while working on other personal websites about mobile technology. The last of those was iPhoneRanch, which didn't last too long before I somehow became a freelance writer for TUAW. This year will mark six years of blogging here and working with some of the greatest bloggers on the internet. So for the past 30 years, my life has been intimately intertwined with the Mac and Apple. There have been some days (the late 1990s) when I didn't think the company would survive, and I cringe to think of what our tech world would be like if Jobs hadn't turned the company around. I owe everyone at Apple a big thank you for making this a very interesting life for me.
Valve introduces Pipeline, a program for teens seeking careers in the gaming industry
Valve recently introduced a program called Pipeline with the aim of providing guidance for high schoolers that are contemplating a future in video games. Pipeline will host content in the form of videos and a forum that will answer commonly-asked questions about careers in the gaming industry. "Pipeline is an experiment to see if we can take a group of high school students with minimal work experience and train them in the skills and methods necessary to be successful at a company like Valve," the site notes. Pipeline is currently nothing more than a video and FAQ, but that will certainly change in due time.
Breakfast Topic: Do you talk about WoW at work?
It's been a little while since we've really talked about this subject. Do you talk about WoW at work? More than just cuddling around the coffee with tales of raids and loot, do you even let on to you coworkers that you've fought the MMO fantastic? With several million players, mainstream exposure, and even celebrity endorsement, WoW has been the game of the day. And with farms and dragons and hobbits, not to mention untold numbers of superhero movies, even the idea of being a geek isn't quite the mark of shame it once was. With this kind of pop culture acceptance, have you fessed up to your mouse-turning ways? I've connected with plenty of folks from coast to coast over our beloved Azeroth, and I'm eager to hear how many of you chat with coworkers about the game.
Google launches VetNet, uses Google+ to link veterans with civilian jobs (video)
As eager as Google has been to help veterans find work in the civilian world, most of its work has been parallel to what's already going on. It's hoping to use its social networking skills from Google+ as the linchpin for a larger effort. Enter VetNet: the portal aggregates job-finding resources from Hire Heroes USA, Hiring Our Heroes and the Institute for Veterans and Military Families, using Google+ pages for program tracks that cover job hunting basics, career networking and entrepreneurial courses. Former soldiers will logically need to sign in, but they'll get access to video discussions through Hangouts, a Google Calendar for events and, naturally, a place to connect with fellow vets. The VetNet hub is already live; if transitioning to work outside the armed forces feels like too much of a solitary pursuit so far, the service could be a prime opportunity.
Vizify offers free infographics all about you, makes you feel like a big shot
Infographics. The stuff of high turnover websites and news channels, right? Well, yes, but now you can bring the same white space and pastel shades to your own internet footprint, courtesy of free infographic web app Vizify. It's still in its trial period for now, which means you'll have to wait for an entry code to tap into the breezy visualization generator, but we managed to plug in as many social networks as we could to see how it all works. The service is definitely centered around those that are very connected to the internet. Vizify will draw information from Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, LinkedIn and also connect through work-based websites you add yourself. It will then populate a clickable front page with circles including images, quotes and links to your profile elsewhere. The service, which is geared at recruitment, crafts a convenient short link to offer up on resumes or job emails. Edit options include a choice of color palettes, and the ability to tweak the layout of the information circles [seen above] and the larger pages that follow it, bringing either more career-centric (or interesting) content to the forefront. Sign up for an access code at the source to give it a try for yourself, or take a stalker-esque trip down an Engadget editor's social network tracks at the second link below.
Microsoft job opening hints at forthcoming backup / restore features for Windows Phone
The current state of performing backups for Windows Phone is far from ideal, although a new job posting from Microsoft suggests that a better solution may be coming to the smartphone platform in its next major software release. According to a job posting from the monolith in Redmond, the company is seeking a talented employee to join its Windows Phone Backup, Migrate and Restore team. The listing goes on to state, "Our goal is to ensure that no matter if someone loses their phone, drops their phone in a lake ... a user can quickly and seamlessly get their phone back to a good state." Whether this involves backup to the cloud, or simply more robust features within the Zune software is never explicitly stated, although Microsoft does suggest it aims to leapfrog the competition in this arena. Not a moment too soon, either.
AMD Radeon HD 7970 review roundup: supremely fast, relatively efficient
AMD's next flagship graphics card was only announced a few hours ago, and it won't arrive on the gaming public's plate until January, but already the tech punditry has tasted it, tested it and spat out a soggy little piece of paper that reads: "the fastest single-GPU card in the world." What we're really looking for, though, is the type of performance that beats older rivals like NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 580 without blowing the house up like a dual-GPU product. As it turns out, most reviewers agree that is exactly what this new $549 Radeon delivers, albeit with the few caveats summarized after the break.
Want a job at Apple? Here's how to get it
So, you want to work for Apple. You're not alone -- a lot of people love the company so much that they'd do anything to work for Apple. Blogger James Holland at Electricpig has written a detailed guide on how to increase your chances of being hired by the geniuses of Cupertino. Most of his guide is common sense -- you need to study, make contacts, be prepared for the interview and know the internal culture of the company. For those seeking employment, those tips are excellent no matter where you're trying to get a job. But Holland's guide goes beyond the obvious, pointing out that joining Apple's Developer Program is a great idea, even if you're not a developer. He also notes that Jony Ive visits his alma mater (Northumbria University) from time to time if you're interested in meeting him, and even suggests that, if all else fails, you can always try to be one of the 1-in-200 applicants who gets hired at an Apple retail store. Holland makes other points that are great for anyone who is looking to either start a new career at The Big Fruit or perhaps move ahead in their boring, humdrum jobs. One that I personally feel is important for anyone is to "never stop studying." Heck, even as a fifty-something tech geek, I find it a necessity to learn new things to stay at the peak of my game. Whether you want to walk the halls of Apple or are just seeking some job-hunting tips that can help you to start or advance a career in tech, Holland's post is worth a detailed read. [via CrunchGear]
Top secret: Cryptic revamps website, hints at new project
Like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon of spun 1s and 0s, Cryptic Studios' website has transformed into a sleek animal. More than just a new look, Crypticstudios.com sports a few interesting surprises. It seems as though the company is deep into "a least one" additional project on top of Star Trek Online, Champions Online and Neverwinter. This unnamed "top secret" project for Atari sparks our imagination. The studio's In Development page has this to say: "We're very excited about what we're working on. Like Neverwinter, our Top Secret work represents our continued commitment to diversify and reach beyond the boundaries of traditional MMORPG gaming. We can't wait to show you more!" Continuing our tour of the site, Cryptic has posted a number of job openings on its Careers page. It looks as though the company is looking for several artists, a content game designer, a senior producer and several other positions. Head on over to the company's website to check out Cryptic's new digs.
