I spent last week starting to get my resume out there. By the way, several entries back, I questioned whether the spelling of résumé found on the Los Alamos National Lab website was correct, but last week, I saw that spelling in a news article on the Slate website and in a Sherlock Holmes story. So, apparently it is an acceptable variation of resume. And I guess that, if you so choose, you can pronounce the word as ray-suh-may. Anyway, last week, I sent out my resume or CV electronically for about ten open positions. I have yet to hear back about any of those positions, but it's going to take time. That's the hardest thing is being patient. But all of the positions I applied for were interesting, each in their own way, so if I only get a response about one or two of them, I would still be excited.

Posted at 8:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (508) | TrackBacks (0)

I now have my resume and CV posted online, and my Summary of Research section has been expanded to include my Ph.D. research. So, basically, all of the lead-up is done for my job search preparation, and now it's time to, well, find a job. I posted my resume on monster.com for whatever that's worth. I have seen some interesting-sounding jobs in their job listings section, but I don't anticipate any employer with a decent job-offering having to make the effort to search a resume bank. But I could be wrong. I did get an offer this morning from Farmer's Insurance to become an insurance agent for them, so that's something. This afternoon, I'm going to go ahead and post my resume on careerbuilder.com and several science- and/or physics-specific resume banks. I've also started emailing around to sundry friends, acquaintances, colleagues and others who are out in the workforce to let them know that if they hear of any job openings to please pass on the info. to me. And I've also found some specific job openings I want to apply for, although when applying for "targeted" job openings, I want to try to take my time and write a good cover letter and do anything else that shows that I'm really honest-to-gosh interested and not just randomly sending my resume anywhere in the hopes that someone will bite. Sooooo, that's my plan right now, let's see how it goes.

Posted at 8:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (338) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm finished reading all of my resume-writing books, and I've spent the last couple days writing up my resume and CV. It was actually pretty easy, especially the resume, where you're only supposed to write one or at most two pages, so you really can't use any fancy creative-writing-type flourishes. Today, I'm going to proofread the final versions of my resume and CV and work on getting them posted on my website, in both and HTML and PDF versions. The HTML version will be a little bit time-consuming because I want to add some links to that one; the PDF version essentially just entails me using the "Convert to PDF" feature in Microsoft Word. I'm also going to add a page to the Summary of My Research part of my Professional section because I basically have nothing in that summary about my doctoral research, which involved testing a controversial theory about these things called plasmons that are collective oscillations of electrons on metal surfaces, and also involved putting xenon and krypton on metal surfaces and seeing how that affected ion neutralization. Adding that extra page may take until Monday, since I take the weekend off from doing work-type stuff usually, but after that, it's job-hunting time. I have some promising-sounding prospects already, so as I've been saying, I'm hoping it won't take too long to find a job. I'm kinda trying to get all my ducks lined up beforehand to make things as painless as possible. As always, check on this Diary section for updates which I promise to post regularly.

Posted at 8:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (0)

So now that I'm all finished with my website, the next step in my job-finding adventure is writing up my resume. And apparently, it is appropriate to write it as a resume, you don't need the fancy accent on the "e" at the end, like resumé. Although, in a third variation on the word, I saw that the Los Alamos National Lab website wrote it with two accents, résumé, which is not only overkill, but I think just plain wrong, since it's not pronounced "ray-suh-may", but what do I know. Anyway, that's one of the many issues I'm tackling in working on my resume. Right now, I'm reading books on how to write a good resume. I've already read The Resume Handbook by Arthur D. Rosenberg and David Hizer, Resumes that Knock 'Em Dead by Martin Yate, and I'm about halfway through with The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Perfect Resume by Susan Ireland. After I finish that book, I'm going to read Landing Your First Job: A Guide for Physics Students by John S. Rigden. When I finish that book, probably by tomorrow, there will be no more excuses for procrastination, and I'll have to get to writing my resume. I'll also probably write a curriculum vitae, which I didn't know was different than a resume, but it is. It lists all of your publications and all of the conference presentations you've made and all of the awards you've won and is generally much longer than a resume. CVs (curriculam vitae) are used when you're applying for academic jobs and some laboratory research jobs, which I'll probably be doing, so I'll have to create a CV as well as a resume. So, that's my plan for this week. By next week, I'll probably have sent a few resumes out, and hopefully by the week after that, I'll have heard back from a few of my job prospects. I'll keep you updated.

Posted at 8:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

*Sigh* Like everything associated with this website, the "Professional" section took way way longer than I expected. Among other things, it was atrociously difficult to convert my Ph.D. thesis, which was written in Microsoft Word, to a PDF document. Even though the newest versions of Word (I have Word 2003) have a handy menu button which supposedly does the conversion with a simple click, it wasn't nearly that easy. Word would change the spacing between words some fraction of a percent in the conversion, which was just enough to scroll a word or two onto the next line and completely mess up the layout of the figures. And Word just gave up trying to convert my longest chapter to PDF. It would churn and churn for about 15 minutes, but when it was finally done and I tried to check the PDF file, it was empty. After trying this about 5 or 6 times, I decided to break the chapter up into smaller documents and convert it that way. Like I said, not very easy. Anyway, I finally got that done, and I finally got the Professional section done. Today, I checked every page on the site using all the browsers I could easily get my hands on - Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator and Mozilla Firefox. It all looks fine, so I'm going to go ahead and move my home page into place as soon as I finish typing this entry. The one thing I haven't done is see how the site looks on a Mac. So if you are viewing fredkontur.com with a Mac and something looks bad, let me know. I have a handy-dandy "Contact Me" button that you can use to send a message directly to my email account. Even if you aren't using a Mac, if you notice a broken link or a typo or something else that isn't right, please send me a message, since I plan on referring to this website in my resumé (which is the next thing I'm going to be working on), so it'd be nice if there were no errors on the site. So, I hope you enjoy it, and feel free to email me. I'll keep everyone who is interested updated on my job search in this diary section.

Posted at 8:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, I am almost finished with my website. In retrospect, this whole thing took much much longer than I had planned, but that's OK. It's not like I'm going to get fired from my job of staying at home all day because I didn't meet deadline. So, today, I'm planning on completing the last part of my site, the "Professional" section, and putting the home page in place, which will officially put my site online.

Posted at 8:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (73) | TrackBacks (0)