The famous female Olympic skier Picabo Street (Peek-A-Boo) is not just an athlete, she is a nurse. She currently works at the Intensive Care Unit of a large metropolitan hospital.

She is not permitted to answer the telephone, however, as it caused simply too much confusion when she would answer the phone and say, "Picabo,ICU."

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Another of the million ways that people seekto find jobs (and, believe me, I am trying them all), is the use of social networking software. It has been built into sites like Monster.com but there are many alternatives. One of the biggest names you might recognize is Friendster. Another is MySpace.com. A lot of young people on that one.

Well, there are some of these for professionals. One is called LinkedIn.com (get it? Linked In). A woman I know got my newsletter from her mother (who I know even better), suggested LinkedIn.com and invited me to be connected to her network. She has, like, sixty friends in the network and many of them are very interesting people.

The system claims to be helpful, not only for job hunting, but for locating new clients, prospects, industry leaders, etc. If you have a moment, please give it a try here. Ask the system to invite me to be a connection for you using 'tq@justkidding.com'.

Also, and this is probably more important:

Orbitz, the web-based travel company, has been hiring. As you can see in the cover letter list, I have applied to a couple of jobs from them and to no avail. Both letters went into the black hole of corporate recruiting. Last night I found another ad for a job that I'd like to have. I will apply for it but know that an ad on monster.com produces literally hundreds of resumes and that stacks the odds against me.

What I am looking for is a good contact or two inside of Orbitz. Like Walgreens, this is a big company with employees all over the Chicago area. Please take a moment and try to figure out if you know anyone from that company. It's good if you contact them to introduce me and send me their contact info. I can take the ball from there. I'm perfectly happy if you just want to give me the contact info. Or anything else. I just need to find a way to get some visibility and motion going at Orbitz.

Sincerely,

tqii

The main thing that happened this week is that I completed my new resume! You may recall that I mentioned a placement type that thought that the historical approach just wasn't powerful enough. I hope you'll agree that, whatever the tradeoffs of tradition vs communication, the new resume is a lot clearer about the cool stuff that I have done in my career. I did stick with the passive voice favored by my favorite coach who is an actual corporate HR person. The dreaded "I" word is only used in the summary. Please let me know what you think.

I did get a couple of referrals this week and, in a great innovation one of you forwarded a job listing from a coporate website. He checked to see if they were taking outside applications and sent it on its way. The job required experience in Microsoft technology that I don't have but it was still agreat idea.

Doing a freelance gig today. Some Macintosh-oriented computer work. It was another great thing that came from this communication. I am definitely focused on a real, full-time job. However, I'd love leads to website creation (I can help anyone from a few thousand bucks worth of small business brochure website to a serious business application on the web. I have access to website graphic design resources for companies that consider branding important.)