Bruce Lindberg started a website to make it easier for people looking for IT positions to find their way.
It's getting difficult to do something new on the Internet because so many people are trying.But, as with so many technology issues, there's always a work-around.
That's what Bruce Lindberg discovered when his educational organization created a mini-Monster.com jobs Web page devoted to Minnesota college students in the field of information technology. The idea was that midsize local companies -- ranging from software firms to banks -- would gladly post their IT jobs at www.mnitcareers.org, a website created by Lindberg's Minneapolis-based Center for Strategic Information Technology and Security, which is supported by Minnesota State Colleges and Universities.
Likewise, Minnesota college IT grads seeking jobs and undergraduates looking for internships could post their résumés at MnITcareers.org without getting lost in the crowd as they might on a national jobs website.
But Lindberg, the center's executive director, learned two months into the project that somebody else was already doing that -- the state of Minnesota, which had an improved version of its jobs site, www.minnesotaworks.net.
"When you get into this stuff, you think it will be great," Lindberg said. "But if you look long enough you'll discover it's already being done somewhere else."
Undeterred, Lindberg and his staff of five decided to remodel their site as a Web portal that aggregates information on a particular topic. MnITcareers.org is being changed into a gateway that leads to places such as the state jobs website and to a Minnesota career information website, www.iseek.org. It also provides access to other resources, such as Minnesota MentorNet, a program that helps IT students seek out potential mentors working in the field. Neither students nor employers pay anything to use MnITcareers.org, he said.
In addition to helping students find jobs, the website also aims to let them know which IT job categories are expanding, so that they can tailor their educations to a particular part of the field, Lindberg said.
"Generic computer programming is not growing, but the market for Microsoft .Net applications developers [people writing new software for Microsoft Windows] is hot," he said.
Lindberg believes his site is not competing with for-profit jobs websites because many small and midsize companies (50 to 2,000 employees) in Minnesota don't use those sites anyway.
"Big companies like Target have sophisticated résumé-scanning software and a staff devoted to recruiting at the national level," he said. "But smaller companies need to look for local talent, and they don't have the time to sort through 8,000 résumés."