How To Write An Awesome Resume, How to Organize Your Internship Search, How To Make Money While You Are Waiting And Other Advice For The Job Hunter (Link List)

It has been some time since I talked about the unspeakable horrors of the entry level intelligence analyst job search and it will probably be some time before I re-visit that particular issue.  Here are some useful sites to tide you over while you wait:

Top 10 Ways To Rock Your Resume.   Lifehacker has put together a good list of their advice to resume writers.  It is an excellent place to start.

Create A Master Resume For Easy, Targeted Applications.  If you are a college student you should be reading Hack College.  If you know one, forward them this link.  It is one of the best blogs for useful advice about how to get the most out of the college experience and this post is a good example.

MeganMcCollum.com.  Resumes, they are a changin'!  Meg McCollum, one of our recent grads, is on the job market again and took a very different approach this time to the traditional resume for analysts.  It is worth a look if only for some ideas (of course, if you are looking to hire an extraordinary young analyst, you should take a look in order to offer Meg a job...).

RezScore.  This site allows you to upload your resume and get feedback on how good or bad it is.  It actually gives your resume a letter grade!   Even if you are hesitant to upload your resume to the site, you still want to take a look at the "A", "B" and "C" resumes available on RezScore's home page.

The Idealist Guide To Non-Profit Careers For First Time Job Seekers.  While not written with intelligence analysts in mind, this online guide provides a wealth of useful guidance for all entry-level job seekers.  In addition, I find that many people who are interested in intelligence jobs are also interested in serving their country or their communities in other ways.  This guide is even more useful for those students.

Organize Your Internship Applications With A Spreadsheet.  Internships not only help secure a job, they are also one of the best ways to help you figure out if intelligence analysis is right for you.  These internships are typically pretty difficult to find and to get, so multiple applications are a necessity.  This useful tip from Hack College (again) is worth exploring if you find yourself submitting multiple internship applications.

8 Websites To Get Tips On Job Interview Questions And Answers.  After the applications and the resume comes the interview.  These sites offer some helpful tips for managing that part of the job hiring ordeal with equanimity.

5 Salary Comparison Tools For Your Next Job Search.  Another handy list from MakeUseOf.com

A Mind Map Of 100+ Tips For Using LinkedIn More Effectively.  Most students are familiar (too familiar?) with Facebook.  In my experience, though, the social networking site that might actually help you get a job is LinkedIn.  Becoming actively involved in LinkedIn's various groups and taking advantage of its tools for building a professional network are things most students simply do not know how to do.  The mind map, available for download from this site, does a good job of organizing and outlining many of the tasks you can accomplish with LinkedIn.

The Monster List Of Freelance Job Sites.  One of the big problems with a career as an intelligence analyst is waiting for the clearance process to be completed.  While the wait time for this has gone down over the last several years, it is still an unfortunate fact of life.  Rather than working at Wendy's, recent grads often have skills they can use in the freelance world.  This list of sites is essential for these kinds of short term job searches.

Make Money In Your Spare Time Doing Simple Online Tasks.  Another way to help fill some empty months with a little bit of cash flow.

Any other sites I have missed?  Leave them in the comments!

Three Great Databases, Three Cool Resources (Link List)

I have run across a number of interesting databases and resources over the last several weeks. Here is a quick roundup:

World Economic Outlook Database. You have to love the IMF! They have put together a great database of economic forecasts that goes out to 2013 on a wide variety of indicators in just about every country in the world. Authoritative, comprehensive, detailed and free! Not much more you could ask for...

History Research Online. This site is simply an extensive, organized list of history sites on the web and therein lies its utility. It is not entirely clear who runs this site but I found it to be useful in pointing to a number of sites I had not heard about previously.

The Global Terrorism Database. All of the terrorism analysts will no doubt be familiar with this excellent National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (at the University Of Maryland) product but, for the rest of us, it is a great one stop shop for historical information about terrorist attacks. I found the database to be particularly useful in helping me search for patterns and trends I wanted to identify for a recent classroom exercise in crisis briefing and reporting.

Printable Paper. How many times have you needed a sheet of graph paper or some such and not had any on hand? With the Printable Paper site you can download a wide variety of templates for printing out on ordinary bond paper for free.

Picture-based Computer Tutorials. We often have our students push the outside of the capability envelope of MS Office and other software tools we use in our classes. This site has a number of useful picture-based tutorials on how to do all sorts of routine and advanced operations in Word, Excel and Powerpoint as well as in a variety of other types of software.

36 Beautiful Resume Ideas That Work. While I can't comment on how well they might work, I found many of these resume ideas to be useful in thinking about resumes in a new way. If you are looking for ideas on how you might make your resume "pop", there is likely something here for you.

Ins And Outs Of Obtaining And Keeping Your Security Clearance (FEDtalk)

Federal News Radio is sponsoring a segment on its FEDtalk program at 1100 this morning (Eastern Time) about obtaining and keeping your security clearance. It appears that you can listen to the broadcast over the web here in real time or listen to it later here. FEDtalk has a number of other interesting archived programs including one on a "Winning Federal Resume" that looked particularly interesting.

(Note: I haven't listened to any of them yet. I just got clued into them by a good friend today (Thanks, Bradley!). If you hear anything useful (or not) please post it to the comments section)