CalOpps Reference

This is a post pertaining to the website called CalOpps:

CalOpps (2008). Welcome to CalOpps. Retrieved October 2, 2012, from https://www.calopps.org/default.cfm

Upon logging into this site you end up at the profile options page, which has 14 links on it many of which are redundant. The edit profile link on the profile options page is where you can add your previous job experiences and change their order. To upload a resume you have to paste a text string into a field. This page has several buttons. The job cart is for saving applications, the my applications link shows recent submissions and the profile information link shows a static version of what is loaded into the edit profile above.

The banner has several other links on that are also on the profile options page like an FAQ and a government employment link with a readme. There is also a member agencies link, which produces a full list of the many Bay Area and California Cities available on the site. They are mostly smaller cities smaller with less than 200,000 people. Finally, the banner has a search link.

Clicking on the search link produces a set of search terms: location, category, keyword, salary and type. Search results vary depending upon when the search is made as can be seen from searchers performed on 081812 and 100212. For instance searching for “all locations” on 081812 produced 34 announcements and 27 on 100212.

Once you have made your search you can reorganize the results by these attributes as well as the date. Doing this on 081812 returned two state wide jobs, four jobs in the East Bay that were attractive to someone like myself with experience using GIS. There were two jobs in Sacramento and the South Bay each. Meanwhile, doing this again on 100212 only returned one state wide job.

Meanwhile, choosing an area like SF/Peninsula will narrow the search. On 081812 produced three administrative jobs and four on 100212 produced 4 additional jobs. These included engineer, manager and analyst in environmental compliance and planning cities jobs (sometime several) in places like Half Moon Bay (2), San Carlos (2) Los Altos, South San Francisco and Menlo Park.

If you are a regular visitor to this site much of this will be pre-populated. My automatic search uses the term GIS and the location SF/Peninsula because I am a geographer in the Bay Area. However, just hitting search sometimes doesn’t produce anything. For instance on 100212 this same search produced only one job for the Public Works director in Foster City.

Here are some examples of jobs that I applied to on this site.

I opened an Assistant Job announcement on 081812 and pushed the apply button. This returned a page with the minimum requirement questions. I then had to update my profile, submit a typing certificate and answer a set of diversity questions. I later received an email in September of 2012 saying that I was passed over for the job because I hadn’t submitted a typing certificate.

In May of 2012 I submitted applications for two jobs in the Peninsula. I got an email and did an interview for one of these and the other was an unpaid internship that I passed up. More recently there was a job that I applied for in the East Bay. I have since received a rejection.

Normally I open up this site once every other week. However, sometimes I get emails from people. For instance, I received an email from a prominent local academic on 080912 which I posted here but the announcement was not going to be posted for another month.

This series is a showcase of the different types of job search resources I have encountered. It is a Resource Bibliography that seeks to describe the process through which one must go to find various types of employment.