Bryan Connor - Young and Freelancing

How to Find a Job with RSS

But what is RSS?

RSS (Rich Site Summary) is a way to broadcast web content that changes frequently. A good example of this is job listings since they are updated daily and syndicated out to subscribers looking for work via an RSS feed.

Why is RSS good for job searches?

How do I get started?

RSS feeds are delivered to you using an RSS reader. Readers pull content from all the websites you tell it to and displays them to you in one place.

Recommended RSS Reader: Google Reader

All the functionality you need with good saving capabilities. Sign up for an account or login with your Google credentials and have a look around. Feeds you are subscribed to show up in the left hand column with an unread count for feed items you haven’t looked at yet. There won’t be any to start out with which is why we need to find RSS feeds.

Other RSS Readers: Bloglines, Newsgator, My Yahoo, Netvibes.

Where can I find RSS Feeds?

In order to add feeds to your RSS reader you need to get the RSS feed URLs from websites. There are tens of hundreds of job sites out there but check on your favorite targeted website for the RSS symbol or the words ‘subscribe’ or ‘RSS feed’. Here area few to get you started:

Design: AIGA Jobs
Development: DevBistro Jobs
Writing: Freelance Switch Writing
Medical: Healthcare Jobs for RN
Education: Inside Higher Ed
Engineering: ThinkJobs – MD

Other major job sites: Career Builder, Monster, Simply Hired

I

f you click on an RSS feed link and the page looks like code just copy and paste the url into the ‘add feed’ box in Google Reader

How can I make the jobs more targeted?

Most job sites will have a search field where you can input your term and when you hit search the results page will often have its own RSS feed so you can stay updated on your search term on that particular site. Many sites also have ways for you to drill down and specify your job by price and location and often these additional details will have their of RSS feeds you can subscribe to.

A philosophy for sorting and responding

A slight drawback to so much immediate information is an overload of job opportunities. Before you get overwhelmed devise a system to sort through and save jobs. Google Reader has a staring system you can use to place jobs you want to inquire about into the starred items folder.

Many jobs will come in that are close to what you are looking for but in most cases there will be so many opportunities to sort through that taking time to respond further to each job that is close would be impossible. Save the opportunities that could really work for you and from there contact the poster through the website or through an email provided in the posting.

Happy Hunting

Orba Squara – The Trouble With Flying

This might be the only piece of music I’ve bought  mostly based on the design and marketing of the album itself.

Orba Squara’s album The Trouble with Flying is an upbeat piece of music with heavy narrative and apparently great design.It’s one of the best examples in my memory of a truly combined effort between facets of a marketing campaign for an album. I quite like some of the music too.

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Glimmer by Warren Berger

Mapping Istanbul

I, as you may know, am a lover of information graphics and more recently a lover of Istanbul. My recent time in Istanbul has left me with lots of great experiences and lots to digest.

Mapping Istanbul has caught my interest as not only a beautiful series of information graphics but as a way to digest and process the city that has a massive history, a myriad of cultural influences, and a diverse life of its own.

The series of narrative information graphics from ProjectProjects catalogs travel routes, population density and demographics, economic factors and much more.

It looks like the only way to purchase the beauty outside turkey is to email the Ottoman Bank Archives and Research Center by email at archive@ottomanbank.com

All images via ProjectProjects.com

Herbert Matter Documentary and Work

I don’t tend to re-blog things that are making the rounds on the internet because you don’t want to see the same thing twice but in this case I actually had to do a bit of hunting to get past the trailer and the logo progress clip to find images of the work of Herbert Matter.

The trailer is for a documentary coming out soon about his life and work. The man was a very influential graphic designer of Swiss birth from the 30′s through the 80′s. His overall mastery of photography, design, typography and in many cases art making put him in the position of great influence in the visual arts and design world. His life crossed paths with the lives of many other greats of the era including Jackson Polluck, Willem de Kooning, Alberto Giacometti, Charles & Ray Eams, and R. Buckminster Fuller.

The documentary looks excellent but I was more interested in seeing some images of his work:

Digging Through Duke Digital Collections

I’ve been digging through the Duke Digital Collections site for a few months now and wanted to share some of the best galleries I’ve found.

Historic American Sheet Music

I first found my way to the Duke Digital Collections site by way of a link to this Historic American Sheet Music Collection. The collection features wild and beautiful examples of typography throughout the featured decades as well as some culturally interesting song titles and images.

Ad*Access

This collection features ads printed in Canada and the US between 1911 and 1955 in the areas of Radio, Television, Transportation, Beauty and Hygiene, and World War II. The imagery and copy writing in these ads are quintessential and really fun to browse through.

Emergence of Advertising in America

For more type goodness and political incorrectness dive into the Emergence of Advertising in America archive and see the enormous variety housed in the catalog spanning 1850-1920. My favorite three sections, exemplified above, are:

Tobacco Advertising (1872 – 1918)
Early Advertising Publications (1870 – 1925)
Advertising Ephemera (1853 – 1921)